Musk and Ramaswamy think they have new power to cut federal regulations. Here’s why it’s not so simple

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy intend to lean on two recent Supreme Court rulings that they argue will make it easier to tear up a multitude of federal regulations.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy intend to lean on two recent Supreme Court rulings that they argue will make it easier to tear up a multitude of federal regulations. The duo, who President-elect Donald Trump named to lead the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, point to the decisions in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency in 2022 and in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo earlier this year, both of which limited federal agencies’ regulatory authority. However, multiple legal and regulatory experts told CNN that Musk and Ramaswamy are misinterpreting the decisions, which could actually make it harder to overturn existing rules. “These recent Supreme Court rulings won’t make their life easier in reducing the stock of existing regulations,” said James Broughel, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank that aims to reduce regulations. Decisions “like Loper Bright work against them,” he said. In the Loper Bright ruling, the justices overturned long-standing judicial precedent that required courts to give deference to federal agencies’ rulemaking when a law is ambiguous, with the new decision meaning that courts will give more scrutiny to the regulatory moves the executive branch is making. In the West Virginia case, the Supreme Court cut back agencies’ power to address issues of major economic and political significance when Congress hasn’t explicitly given the agencies those authorities. “Together, these cases suggest that a plethora of current federal regulations exceed the authority Congress has granted under the law,” Musk and Ramaswamy, who have many business ventures that would benefit from fewer regulations, wrote in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. “DOGE will present this list of regulations to President Trump, who can, by executive action, immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission. This would liberate individuals and businesses from illicit regulations never passed by Congress and stimulate the U.S. economy.”