Author: Reed Shaw

This symposium is for AI skeptics, AI believers, and everyone in between.

Last week, ProPublica reported that the United States Department of Transportation is planning to use Google Gemini, a large language model, to draft federal transportation regulations.

Even the shadow docket holds important lessons for litigants challenging the Trump administration’s funding actions and others.

Last month, Jeffrey Clark, the Acting Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, issued yet another memorandum (M-25-36) describing how the Trump Administration intends to “streamlin[e] the review of deregulatory actions.”

The Trump administration is deploying a previously limited tactic to achieve its deregulatory goals: entering consent decrees—settlements between the parties that are entered as court orders—with private plaintiffs to wipe a challenged law or regulation from the books.

The administration is adding a political loyalty test to federal job applications. That is unlawful.

Section 705 is best read to allow courts to stay agency action across the board. For litigants seeking to move quickly against unlawful executive action, it should be a powerful tool.

There is a powerful means to challenge executive action apart from the Administrative Procedure Act.

Agencies could conceivably use AI at numerous points in the rulemaking process, raising a host of legal and policy questions. AI tools of various stripes could be used to identify subjects for rulemaking or regulations in need of revision or elaboration.