After a week that had plenty going on – both inside and outside of the Federal Register – this past one brought far less regulatory policy news. There were only six rulemakings that had some kind of measurable economic impact. From this half-dozen, the most significant item was a deregulatory proposed rule from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regarding ethylene oxide emissions. Overall, federal agencies published roughly $402 million in total cost savings but added 735,809 paperwork burden hours.

REGULATORY TOPLINES

• Proposed Rules This Week: 31
• Final Rules This Week: 47
• 2026 Total Pages: 13,672
• 2026 Final Rule Costs: -$1.1 trillion
• 2026 Proposed Rule Costs: $139 billion

NOTABLE REGULATORY ACTIONS

The most consequential rulemaking of the week was the EPA proposed rule on “National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants: Ethylene Oxide Emissions Standards for Sterilization Facilities Residual Risk and Technology Review Reconsideration.” The rulemaking is yet another instance of the Trump Administration revisiting a Biden Administration rule. In this instance the agency is seeking to “rescind the risk based standards, revise the standard for new aeration room vents that resulted from the technology review, revise the compliance demonstration requirements, and rescind a requirement related to permanent total enclosure.” EPA estimates that such changes will yield $510 million in total cost savings to affected entities (using a 7 percent discount rate across a 20-year horizon).

TRACKING TRUMP 2.0

There was no real shift in the regulatory budget math under Executive Order (EO) 14192 this past week. The only rule that could have potentially affected the administration’s tabulations was this one from EPA. Since it only imposes roughly $10 million in annualized costs – and thus, is not a “significant” rule – the agency declares that it is not a “regulatory action” for the purposes of the EO. In assessing 2026 rulemakings that include an EO 14192 determination, there have been 20 “deregulatory” rules with combined total savings of $1.1 trillion against two “regulatory” rules that involve roughly $280 million in costs. Adding that to the total agencies produced during 2025 (at least from rules that had a clear “regulatory” or “deregulatory” designation), the Trump Administration has enacted $1.2 trillion in total cost reductions thus far under the auspices of EO 14192. Rules for which agencies have claimed one of the EO’s explicit exemptions have accounted for an additional $508 million in costs so far in 2026.

CONGRESSIONAL REVIEW ACT (CRA)

The main CRA news of the week was the introduction of more than a dozen resolutions of disapproval introduced by various Democratic Senators seeking to rescind portions of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule from last May that withdrew various guidance documents issued by the agency going back to 2011. The most novel aspect of this tranche of CRA resolutions is that they each address specific withdrawal orders within the same rule (take, for instance, this one) rather than merely rescinding the overall rule entirely. It is unclear why the lawmakers involved took this approach. Given the current partisan make-up of Congress, however, one would not expect these resolutions to gain much traction and they likely serve more as political messaging actions.

The American Action Forum (AAF) CRA tracker provides a full survey of activity under the law thus far into this term. As of today, members of the 119th Congress have introduced CRA resolutions of disapproval addressing 96 “rules” across the Biden and Trump Administrations that collectively involve $135.7 billion in estimated compliance costs. Of these, 22 have been passed into law, repealing a series of Biden Administration rules that had a combined $3 billion in associated compliance costs. The Trump Administration estimates that the repeal of this rule yields an additional $936 million in savings. While the main window of CRA action has largely passed, there are still outstanding resolutions that could move legislatively. AAF will continue to monitor and update such developments as appropriate.

TOTAL BURDENS

Since the start of 2026, the federal government has published $959.7 billion in total regulatory net cost savings (with $1.1 trillion in reductions from finalized rules) and 38 million hours of net annual paperwork increases (with 8.7 million hours coming from final rules).