WASHINGTON – Under the Obama administration, the White House, the Department of Justice and other federal agencies repeatedly circumvented Congress by using guidance memos to create de facto regulations, changing laws without going through the review process.
In less than a year, however, the Trump administration has dramatically scaled back government overreach, Merrill Matthews, a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation, told WND.
“Guidance typically from the department means there is some question about how to do this, because of the way it was ambiguously written, so a federal agency would provide guidance. But the Obama administration, actually, greatly overstepped those limits in clarifying things to in essence create new law,” Matthews explained.
“The Trump administration is doing better than Ronald Reagan on reducing the flow of regulation,” he said, citing the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Obama ended his presidency with a record-shattering regulatory rulebook. The Federal Register topped off at 97,110 pages, an all-time high, with 18 regulations added for every new law .
While regulations and Federal Register pages, where agency rules and regulations are published, dropped more than one-third under President Reagan over several years, CEI notes, the Trump administration cut the number of pages in the Federal Register 32 percent in the first nine months of this year.
The Trump administration has saved $560 million by cutting regulations, according to American Action Forum.
When Trump ran for president, he promised to slash as many as 80 percent of all federal regulations, and he is on his way to fulfilling that promise.
In a memo released Friday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions explained that the Department of Justice will no longer used guidance documents to amend current law, cement new regulatory requirements or create new rights or obligations beyond what is prescribed by law, as Obama’s Justice Department did.
“Simply sending a letter” to “make new rules” is unconstitutional, he noted.
“It has come to my attention that the department has in the past published guidance documents – or similar instruments of future effect by other names, such as letters to regulated entities – that effectively bind private parties without undergoing the rule-making process,” the memo states.
“Effective immediately, department components may not issue guidance documents that purport to create rights or obligations binding on persons or entities outside the executive branch (including state, local and tribal governments.) To avoid circumventing the rule-making process, department components should adhere to the following principles when issuing guidance documents.”
Sessions also said Friday that the department is ending “regulation-by-litigation.”
“The days of ‘sue and settle’ – when special interests could sue an agency, then get the agency to impose a new regulation in a settlement, often to advance an agenda – are over,” he said. “The Department of Justice is duty-bound to defend laws as they are written, regardless of whether or not the government likes the results. Our agencies must follow the law – not make it.”
A Regulatory Reform Task Force, led by Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand, will also review existing DOJ documents to see if they need to be rescinded or modified.
The guidance documents and regulations Obama issued during the final months of his presidency had far-reaching implications for the coal industry, broadband customers, hunters, women seeking abortion at Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers, and the firearms industry.
The school bathroom mandate was one of the most controversial guidance memos Obama issued. With the help of then-attorney general Loretta Lynch, he instructed public schools that receive federal funding to allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice
Matthews pointed out the Civil Rights law of 1964 “states you cannot discriminate based upon race, creed, origin, religion and gender.”
“[What] the Obama administration did was expand that to gay people and transgender,” he said. “That was not covered under the civil rights legislation.”
He said Sessions is “scaling back guidance and restoring it to depend on what is actually legislated.”
https://www.wnd.com/2017/11/trump-banishing-obamas-memos-regulations/
I'm beginning to believe that Jeff Sessions is going to be a greater AG, than I thought he was. It's for sure he has already done a better job than Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch. They were as guilty as Obama in creating guidance to their people; that allowed them to hamper our Police Departments, release criminals from prison, and drop wording in regard to Muslim Terrorists from their Training Manuals. Now if he would just get his FBI to investigate everyone in the last Administration that were breaking our laws, and covering up the illegal acts by Obama, Hillary Clinton, State Dept., IRS, and HUD.
Got to give it to Trump!!! 
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