This op-ed by State Policy Network’s Tony Woodlief was published by The Wall Street Journal on February 18, 2025.
Three days before President Trump’s second inauguration, Joe Biden’s Justice Department unwittingly handed him an opportunity to curb its abuse of federal power. The department has been using guidance—a form of agency communication that is, by law, supposed to clarify regulations, not make new ones—to coerce its enforcement targets. In its haste to enshrine this power in the federal code, the DOJ opened it to nullification under the Congressional Review Act. Lawmakers need to act quickly.
It’s no secret that the Biden administration abused its power of guidance. In 2021 the DOJ introduced an interim rule rescinding Trump-era restrictions on guidance, which prevented federal agencies from using guidance to impose de facto binding obligations on individuals or entities. Because the DOJ is the enforcement arm for many federal agencies, its rules determine the coercive power these agencies wield. Ideologues at federal agencies used guidance to link school-lunch funding to schools’ alignment with progressive gender and sexuality policies; to upend corporate defenses against environmental, social and governance proposals by activist shareholders; and to threaten school administrators with investigations if they didn’t adopt race-conscious disciplinary practices.
Read the full piece in The Wall Street Journal here.
To schedule an interview with Tony, please contact Camille Walsh at walsh@spn.org.