President-elect Donald Trump’s top rule-cutters are pointing to the Supreme Court’s recent regulatory smackdowns as a command to shrink the federal government.
But in many cases, those rulings — namely the justices’ June decision to overturn the Chevron doctrine, which for 40 years had given agencies like EPA the benefit of the doubt in legal fights over regulations — may be roadblocks for the new administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
“Overturning Chevron gives agencies less deference, and that’s true whether they’re trying to regulate more or regulate less,” said Jonathan Adler, a conservative legal scholar at Case Western Reserve University. “If anything, it will make it harder for them to overturn long-standing interpretations or take advantage of statutory ambiguity.”
As questions swirl about DOGE’s authority to cut back what it sees as excess regulation and wasteful spending, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, whom Trump has tapped to lead the effort alongside Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has taken to social media to ground the operation’s ambitions in Supreme Court precedent.
