The Trump administration's 2026 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions contains 3,954 entries—the highest count since 2012—even as the White House continues its "one-in, ten-out" campaign to shrink federal regulations. Released quietly over Independence Day weekend by the Competitive Enterprise Institute's analysis, the Agenda surveys recently completed and forthcoming rulemaking priorities across federal departments and agencies. The administration touts an anticipated $1.5 trillion in regulatory cost savings, but this edition lacks the detailed dollar breakdowns and agency-by-agency boasting that accompanied previous deregulatory announcements.
The Agenda breaks down into 2,518 active rulemakings (pre-rule documents, proposed rules, and final rules anticipated soon), up from 2,098 in last year's edition. Among these, 893 active entries appear for the first time—substantially more than the 680 that appeared across both spring and fall Agendas during Biden's final year. Completed actions since the prior Agenda total 628, down from 911 in Trump's lone 2025 edition and 689 in spring 2024 when Biden was issuing rules rapidly. Long-term priority rulemakings stand at 808, roughly unchanged from last year, with the Department of the Interior alone accounting for 143. Economically significant rules—those with at least $100 million in economic effect—jumped to 345 from 243 last September. A cursory review indicates dozens of completed actions are streamlining-oriented, including 18 "removal of" entries, 14 "extension" entries, and three administrative simplifications.
The report finds that despite the large pipeline, final rulemaking isn't actually expanding: only 1,519 final rules have been published so far in the Federal Register, keeping the administration on track for "another of the lowest annual rule counts on record." The analysis notes that Trump's elevated number of new entries "partly reflects reversals and rollbacks that add to the rule count even as conventional notice-and-comment regulation has slowed." According to the report, 126 completed actions appear in the Agenda for the first time without prior notice, down from 183 last year but up sharply from just 45 in fall 2024—a trend the authors attribute to Trump's executive orders prioritizing speed and encouraging use of the Administrative Procedure Act's "good cause" exemption.
The counterintuitive rise in total rules reflects a basic reality: a rule can't simply be eliminated under the Administrative Procedure Act—a replacement rule typically must be drafted first. The elevated count captures substantial streamlining actions like rescissions, withdrawals, and enforcement relaxations, meaning many entries work to undo rather than add regulations. The net count is even lower since many final rules are deregulatory, and a significant number of the administration's economically significant rules offset one another in direct comparisons. Yet the report warns that "bureaucracy is sticky"—the Agenda still doesn't point toward eliminating entire departments like Education, plenty of conventional rulemakings continue, and Trump's own interventions including tariffs and industrial policy initiatives "can offset or even overwhelm gains achieved through streamlining conventional regulation."
The report characterizes the Trump era as "one of America's premier chronicles of getting things undone—a period in which a federal government doing less became an explicit governing objective." But it cautions that a future progressive administration would be able to resume conventional regulation with the same vigor seen under Biden or Obama. The analysis also criticizes the administration for not returning the Unified Agenda to its legally contemplated twice-yearly publication schedule. The bottom line: the highest rule count in 14 years doesn't signal regulatory expansion—it documents the messy bureaucratic work of undoing the federal rulebook, one replacement regulation at a time.