Published March 2026 · FRTracker Telecom Dashboard
This analysis presents quantitative data from the Federal Register. No legal inferences or policy conclusions are drawn.
That's not editorializing — it's the actual title in the Federal Register. Look it up.
Since the start of the second Trump administration, the FCC has published 11 Federal Register documents containing "Delete, Delete, Delete" in the title. Some are standalone deletions; others pair the phrase with broader rulemakings like net neutrality repeal or broadband transparency rollbacks. The name isn't subtle, and it isn't supposed to be.
The question worth answering with data: is this actually deregulation, or is it branding?
The Full FCC Obligation Picture
FRTracker extracts individual legal obligations from every Federal Register rule — discrete duties specifying who must do what. When the FCC publishes a final rule, we compare the proposed version to the final version and count what was added, removed, or modified.
Across all 196 paired FCC rules in our database with obligation-level delta detection:
~119
Obligations modified
Net change: +66 obligations. Despite the "Delete" branding, the FCC has added more obligations than it has removed across all its rulemaking activity. The "Delete, Delete, Delete" actions are a real subset of FCC activity — but they don't tell the whole story.
Recent FCC Rules: Obligation-Level Diff
Showing the 20 most recent paired rules. Rows highlighted in red are "Delete, Delete, Delete"–branded actions. Click any rule to see the word-level redline diff.
FCC Output: Biden vs. Trump 2
Under Biden (Jan 2021 – Jan 2025), the FCC published 2,032 documents including 472 final rules and 396 proposed rules across 4 years. Under the second Trump administration (Jan 2025 – present), they've published 551 documents in ~14 months — 104 final rules and 98 proposed rules.
The pace is lower per month. Deregulation generates paperwork too.
Monthly FCC Rulemaking Volume
Final RulesProposed Rules
Every "Delete, Delete, Delete" Document
All FCC Federal Register documents containing "Delete, Delete, Delete" in the title.
| FR Doc | Title | Date | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-01884 | Delete, Delete, Delete; Withdrawal | 2026-01-30 | final rule |
| 2026-01442 | Delete, Delete, Delete | 2026-01-26 | final rule |
| 2026-00612 | Delete, Delete, Delete | 2026-01-14 | final rule |
| 2025-22633 | Delete, Delete, Delete; Removal of Obsolete Regulations | 2025-12-12 | final rule |
| 2025-21807 | Empowering Broadband Consumers Through Transparency; Delete, Delete, Delete | 2025-12-03 | proposed rule |
| 2025-16641 | Delete, Delete, Delete; Targeting and Eliminating Unlawful Text Messages; Rules and Reg... | 2025-08-29 | final rule |
| 2025-16351 | Delete, Delete, Delete; Removal of Obsolete Regulations | 2025-08-26 | final rule |
| 2025-15919 | Delete, Delete, Delete; Removal of Obsolete Regulations | 2025-08-20 | final rule |
| 2025-15107 | Delete, Delete, Delete; Safeguarding and Securing the Open Internet; Restoring Internet... | 2025-08-08 | final rule |
| 2025-14704 | Delete, Delete, Delete; Removal of Obsolete Regulations | 2025-08-04 | final rule |
| 2025-14702 | Delete, Delete, Delete; Delegations of Authority | 2025-08-04 | final rule |
Methodology
All data sourced from the Federal Register API. Obligation extraction uses FRTracker's deterministic parser (no AI) to decompose regulatory text into discrete actor-deontic-action tuples. Delta detection matches obligations between proposed and final rule versions using SIG_JACCARD_V1 (Jaccard similarity on obligation signature token sets). "Delete, Delete, Delete" documents identified by title substring match (titles containing the phrase, including compound titles like "Delete, Delete, Delete; Removal of Obsolete Regulations"). Obligation aggregates cover all 196 FCC proposed→final pairs with detected deltas, not only the Delete-branded subset. See our full methodology for details.
Source: Federal Register API via FRTracker. Methodology →