The Trump Administration released its long-awaited Spring 2025 semiannual regulatory agendas for 60 Cabinet departments, federal agencies, boards, and commissions. This is the first regulatory agenda of President Trump’s second term and it highlights the Trump Administration’s regulatory priorities over the coming year.
Notably, the Labor Department’s (DOL) regulatory agenda has no proposals to reverse the Biden-era, SWACCA-supported Davis-Bacon modernization rule, but it does show that DOL’s Wage and Hour Division intends to issue a direct final rule in October 2025 to revise “Rules of Practice for Administrative Proceedings Enforcing Labor Standards in Federal and Federally Assisted Construction Contracts and Federal Service Contracts” to reflect “recently published substantive revisions to the regulation under the Davis-Bacon Act and the Davis Bacon and Related Acts,” which seems to be a reference to the Biden-era final rules modernizing Davis-Bacon surveys and enforcement.
DOL’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) is also planning to release a proposed rule this month to rescind the Biden-era, SWACCA-supported final rule that made it harder to misclassify employees in the construction industry as independent contractors and to propose alternative regulations. WHD is also planning to propose a rule in December to define the standard for joint employer liability under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
At the Employee Benefit Security Administration (EBSA), the agency is deferring until May 2026 a proposed rule revising the Biden-era, SWACCA-supported final rule on “Prudence and Loyalty in Selecting Plan Investments and Exercising Shareholder Rights” so that “plan fiduciaries select investments and exercise shareholder rights based only on financial considerations relevant to the risk-adjusted economic value of a particular investment, and not to advance social causes.” EBSA also hopes to release a proposed rule on improved transparency of pharmacy benefit manager fee disclosures on October 2025.
DOL’s new regulatory agenda, however, does not provide target dates for issuing a final rule on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s “Heat Injury and Illness in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings” on which SWACCA has been engaged for several years. There is also no target date for the Employment and Training Administration’s pending regulation on “Reducing Equal Employment Opportunity Regulatory Burden in Registered Apprenticeship Programs” on which SWACCA submitted comments on August 27.