# Congressional Review Act The **Congressional Review Act (CRA)** is the statute that lets Congress overturn a federal agency rule by passing a **joint resolution of disapproval**. It was enacted March 29, 1996 as part of the Contract with America Advancement Act, a product of the [[Newt Gingrich]] House and the [[Contract with America]]. It is codified at 5 U.S.C. §§ 801–808. ## How it works 1. **Submission.** Before a rule can take effect, the agency must send it to both chambers and to the [[Government Accountability Office]]. 2. **The window.** Congress has 60 days of continuous session (or, in the Senate, session days) to act. Rules submitted near the end of a Congress roll into the next one's window. This "lookback" is why the CRA is a first-year weapon. 3. **Fast track.** In the Senate a disapproval resolution can be discharged from committee by 30 senators. It **cannot be filibustered** and passes by simple majority. 4. **The kill.** If the President signs, the rule is void as though it never took effect. The agency may not reissue it or any rule "substantially the same" without new statutory authority. Congress has never defined that phrase, and no court has either. 5. **No review.** Under § 805 no action taken under the Act is subject to judicial review. ## Why it only works one way The CRA is the legislative veto rebuilt to survive [[INS v. Chadha]]: it needs a presented, signed law. That means it works only when the President agrees with Congress, so in practice it runs **against a departed administration's rules**. Before 2017 it had succeeded once, against the Clinton ergonomics rule in 2001. Trump signed 16 in his first term, Biden 3 in 2021, and Trump **22 in 2025**. By the end of 2025 the Act had repealed 42 rules in its history, and 38 of those resolutions carried Trump's signature. ## 2025–2026: the referees were overruled The 2025 record is a change in *what* counts as a rule, not only in volume. Of the 22 resolutions, 9 targeted actions that had never been treated as rules under the Act: - **California's vehicle waivers.** Three EPA [[Clean Air Act]] preemption waivers let California set stricter vehicle standards. GAO and the Senate parliamentarian both concluded they were **not rules** subject to the CRA. The Senate disapproved them anyway, and Trump signed the resolutions in June 2025. The fight moved to federal court. - **Land-management plans.** Republicans asked GAO whether [[Bureau of Land Management]] resource management plans were rules. GAO said yes, which started a fresh clock on plans as old as 2022. Five such plans, for North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and Alaska, were disapproved in 2025. The same theory failed against the 2024 [[Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument]] plan when the window closed without a Senate vote in June 2026 ([[Antiquities Act]]). - **Public Land Orders.** In **April 2026** Congress used the Act against **Public Land Order 7917**, the January 2023 20-year mineral withdrawal on about 225,500 acres of the Superior National Forest upstream of the Boundary Waters. Trump signed H.J. Res. 140 on April 27, 2026. It was the first CRA disapproval of a Public Land Order ([[Federal Land Management Crosswalk]]). The technique is a lookback with no limit. If an agency never submitted an action because it didn't think the action was a rule, a GAO opinion that it *is* one starts the clock whenever Congress asks, however old the action. Former OIRA administrator Richard Revesz calls this the CRA's "weaponization": the Act's two internal referees, GAO and the parliamentarian, were overruled when their answers were inconvenient, and § 805 keeps courts out of it. The "substantially the same" bar is what makes each use permanent. A future EPA cannot re-grant California's waivers, and a future Interior cannot re-withdraw the Boundary Waters watershed, without Congress first passing a new law. ## See also - [[Administrative Procedure Act]] · [[APA Notice-and-Comment Rulemaking]] · [[Administrative State]] - [[INS v. Chadha]] · [[Legislative Veto]] · [[Joint Resolution]] - [[Federal Land Management Crosswalk]] · [[Emergency Powers Crosswalk]] · [[Impoundment Control Act]] - [[Policy Hub]]