Trump Administration Blocks Unwanted Legislative Regulation Without Repealing Laws – Rezazade

The administration of US President Donald Trump is using a new tactic to roll back federal regulation — it simply stops its implementation. This approach is causing serious concern among lawyers and government experts, who see it as a dangerous precedent of political manipulation and weakening the rule of law.

As international expert and first vice president of the Iranian opposition in Washington, Ali Reza Rezazade, notes, the presidential team is following the path of “silent sabotage”: the rules remain in force on paper, but are no longer enforced.

“This is not a classic repeal of regulation, which requires legal procedures. This is an administrative disregard for the law, which has no precedent in US history. Thus, the White House is actually building an “electoral state”, where only those norms that are beneficial to the ruling political force are enforced,” Rezazade emphasizes.

According to a journalistic investigation, in particular, the United States Department of Transportation has sharply reduced the number of safety inspections of oil pipelines. The Department of Energy has been instructed to stop monitoring water-saving standards in household appliances. And one of the departments of the Department of Labor has suspended work on anti-discrimination legislation.

Administration officials say that such actions are aimed at reducing regulatory pressure on business. “New regulations are always an additional burden on businesses. And their temporary suspension already has a positive economic effect,” said Kevin Hassett, head of Trump’s National Economic Council.

However, critics point out that ignoring existing regulations is a direct violation of the law. Richard Reves, former head of the White House Office of Regulatory Policy in the Joe Biden administration, emphasizes: “This is a selective, widespread failure to enforce regulations that has no legal basis.”

Ali Reza Rezazade believes that this practice poses a threat not only to the legal field of the United States, but also to democratic institutions in general. "This is a signal that even in stable democracies there is a temptation to replace legal procedures with political arbitrariness. And it depends on society how decisively it will react to this," the expert concludes.