As President Trump moves unilaterally to slash the federal bureaucracy and upend longstanding policies, Republicans in Congress have embarked on a spree of deregulation, using an obscure law to quietly but steadily chip away at Biden-era rules they say are hurting businesses and consumers.
In recent weeks, the G.O.P. has pushed through a flurry of legislation to cancel regulations on matters large and small, from oversight of firms that emit toxic pollutants to energy efficiency requirements for walk-in freezers and water heaters.
To do so, they are employing a little-known 1996 law, the Congressional Review Act, that allows lawmakers to reverse recently adopted federal regulations with a simple majority vote in both chambers. It is a strategy they used in 2017 during Mr. Trump’s first term and are leaning on again as they work to find ways to steer around Democratic opposition and make the most of their governing trifecta of the House, the Senate and the White House.
But this time, Republicans are testing the limits of the law in a way that could vastly expand its use and undermine the filibuster, the Senate rule that effectively requires 60 votes to move forward with any major legislation.
Because resolutions of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act need only a majority vote, they are some of the only legislation that can avoid a filibuster in the Senate. This allows them to circumvent the partisan gridlock that stands in the way of most significant bills…
Now Republicans are trying to go much further with the law, including using it to effectively attack state regulations blessed by the federal government. The House this week passed three disapproval resolutions that would eliminate California’s strict air pollution standards for trucks and cars by rejecting waivers from the Environmental Protection Agency that allowed them to take effect.
The move would also permanently prevent federal regulators from writing a similar rule in the future. Both the Government Accountability Office and the Senate parliamentarian, who is in charge of enforcing the chamber’s rules, have said that the E.P.A. waivers do not constitute federal regulations and thus are not subject to the Congressional Review Act.
The pressure now falls on Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, to decide whether he will proceed with the measures anyway, sidestepping the parliamentarian in a move that would undermine the filibuster.
Mr. Thune’s decision is something of a warm-up act for an even more consequential showdown coming later in the year as Republicans try to deliver Mr. Trump’s agenda through the budget reconciliation process, another way of shielding legislation from a filibuster. G.O.P. senators already steered around the parliamentarian in early April, when they pushed through a budget blueprint that deemed the continuation of Mr. Trump’s tax cuts as cost-free, even though nonpartisan budget scorekeepers have estimated it would cost about $4 trillion over a decade….