Job One for Doug Burgum at Interior

Anticipating a potential Donald Trump win over first Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris in the presidential race, officials and bureaucrats have spent the last 12 months pushing out as many new regulations as they could concoct and simultaneously working to make the repeal or revision of existing regulations hard to accomplish. The term “Trump-proofing” has gone viral across Washington, DC as a result.

This has been a traditional exercise among outgoing Democrat administrations in recent times. You don’t see nearly as much of it happening when a Republican leaves office since those more conservative presidencies tend to have goals to cut regulations rather than invoking more and more layers of government control.

The energy business is certainly no exception to the 2024 piling on of new rules and exercises in Trump-proofing. Incoming Trump officials like EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum will find themselves faced with the most target rich environment imaginable to try to unwind.