The Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families rescinded 35,781 pages of guidance documents after an agencywide review found 74% of its "sub-regulatory footprint" was obsolete. ( Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The Administration for Children and Families officially was established in 1991, but its origins and work stretch back decades, inheriting programs and guidance from earlier Health and Human Services offices — including major initiatives that date to the mid-1970s.
"President Trump's regulatory reform agenda is unparalleled in U.S. history," the Administration for Children and Families Assistant Secretary Alex J. Adams said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
"ACF is proud to do our part to advance the President’s agenda by taking the first of many planned actions, namely removing 36,000 pages of obsolete sub-regulatory guidance that had quietly accumulated over decades and shining a brighter spotlight on what remains," he added. "In essence, ACF has brought our regulatory dark matter to light."
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The rescinded guidance included program-specific documents such as a memo on filing the June 1999 Child and Family Services Plan and Final Report, 2005 avian flu guidance and a 2010 staffing-change notice for the now-defunct Division of Energy Assistance.
The move aligns with the Trump administration’s broader push to pare back regulations and cut what it calls bureaucratic red tape. (Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The Administration for Children and Families said the goal of cleaning up the office with outdated guidance is to reduce confusion and allow grant recipients to focus resources on "delivering outcomes for American children and families," rather than navigating tens of thousands of pages of outdated documentation.
The move aligns with the Trump administration’s broader push to pare back regulations and cut what it calls bureaucratic red tape.
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The Federal Communications Commission, for example, took a hatchet to outdated policies in a sweeping deregulation effort in 2025, including doing away with outdated guidance on the use of telegraphs, rabbit-ear TV receivers and phone booth rules in July 2025.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hhs-wipes-out-36000-pages-regulatory-dark-matter-sweeping-child-welfare-office-purge