Trump Signs Record Number Of Congressional Review Act Resolutions
President Donald J. Trump continued his aggressive rollback of the administrative state this month, signing five additional Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions into law on Dec. 11 and setting a historic record for regulatory reversals.
With those signatures, President Trump has now approved 22 CRA resolutions in 2025 alone—the most signed by any president in a single year since the law took effect in 1996. That total surpasses the combined number signed by all previous presidents over nearly three decades.
The five newly enacted resolutions overturn Bureau of Land Management (BLM) resource management plans affecting large swaths of North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and northern and central Alaska, according to Ballotpedia. Republicans argued the plans restricted land use, energy development, and local control in favor of sweeping federal mandates.
The Congressional Review Act, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996, allows Congress to review and nullify newly issued federal agency rules. Once a rule is formally submitted, lawmakers have 60 working days to introduce a joint resolution of disapproval.
If both chambers pass the resolution and the president signs it, the rule is voided—and the issuing agency is prohibited from issuing a substantially similar rule in the future.
While the CRA applies broadly to agency actions, agencies themselves initially decide which actions qualify as “rules.” When disputes arise, Congress can ask the Government Accountability Office to determine whether an action should fall under CRA review.
Although the law has existed for nearly 30 years, it has been used aggressively only in recent times. In total, 42 rules have been repealed under the CRA, with the overwhelming majority occurring since 2017.
Between his first and second administrations, President Trump has now signed 38 of those 42 CRA resolutions, accounting for roughly 95 percent of all successful CRA actions in history.
From 1996 through 2016, Congress passed just six CRA resolutions. President George W. Bush signed one, while President Barack Obama vetoed the remaining five. During President Trump’s first term, Congress passed 17 CRA resolutions—Trump signed 16 and vetoed one. Under former President Joe Biden, Congress passed 14 CRA resolutions, of which Biden signed three and vetoed 11.
The 2025 Congress has also expanded the scope of CRA usage in unprecedented ways. The five resolutions targeting BLM land-use plans marked the first time the CRA has been used to overturn resource management plans of that kind.
Lawmakers also disapproved three Environmental Protection Agency notices granting California waivers under the Clean Air Act, which allowed the state to impose its own vehicle emissions standards. While Congress has previously overturned EPA rules, this marked the first-ever CRA rejection of a Clean Air Act waiver.
In addition, President Trump signed the first CRA resolutions disapproving rules from the National Park Service, Department of Energy, Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, further underscoring the administration’s push to rein in unelected regulators.
The legislative blitz coincided with a major confirmation drive in the Senate. Senate Republicans confirmed nearly 100 of President Trump’s nominees, surpassing confirmation totals from previous administrations—including Trump’s own first term.
A 53–43 vote approved 97 nominees in one of the final floor actions of the year, following an intense push led by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) after Republicans retook control of the chamber in January, Fox News reported.
Along the way, Republicans passed President Trump’s signature “one big, beautiful bill” and reopened the government after the longest shutdown in U.S. history.
Confirmations, however, were anything but easy. Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said Republicans faced “unprecedented obstruction from the Democratic minority,” which used blanket holds to delay even low-level executive branch appointments.
Despite the resistance, the Trump administration has pressed forward—reshaping the federal government, curbing regulatory overreach, and asserting congressional authority over a bureaucracy long accustomed to operating without accountability.