President Cruz: An Energy-Deregulation Blitz

Hero photo: File Ted Cruz senatorial portrait — U.S. Senate Photographic Studio, public domain.

01 The record and the scenario

Ted Cruz's energy record is a deregulation bill he keeps having to reintroduce. The Energy Freedom Act — introduced in 2022 (S.3762), reintroduced in January 2023 — would accelerate federal permitting for energy projects and pipelines, mandate faster agency decisions, and roll back what Cruz calls the Biden administration's war on American energy. He pressed the same case in letters: in 2024 he led Senate Republicans blasting the LNG export-permit re-evaluation as "playing politics with U.S. energy." In January 2025 he became chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee — jurisdiction over pipelines, science, and much of the regulatory state — and in October 2025 sponsored the Advancing Research in Nuclear Fuel Recycling Act (S.3016). Texas oil-and-gas politics made him; the bill list keeps him honest about what he would actually try to do.

This is scenario analysis, not a prediction or endorsement: as of September 18, 2026, AP describes Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris as potential 2028 Democratic contenders and reports Republican discussion around JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Ron DeSantis and Ted Cruz; most figures profiled have not formally entered a presidential race. No one wins a scenario — this one asks what the first 100 days of an energy-deregulation presidency would contain, given Cruz's verifiable record.

02 Day 1: executive orders

Day 1 of a Cruz presidency would be a sequence of executive orders with one theme: unleash supply. The first would likely restore and harden the "no pause, no slow-walk" standard for LNG export permits — the exact policy Cruz attacked in 2024, reversed by executive order and then defended at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy. The second would accelerate federal onshore and offshore leasing where existing statutes allow executive discretion. The third would freeze new EPA rulemaking on carbon — a directive memo, not a formal rule, but the fastest signal a president can send.

What makes Cruz's Day 1 distinctive is that he has watched two administrations fight over exactly these levers. His bill text and letters are a checklist of executive chokepoints: export-permit timelines, pipeline certificate backlogs, Endangered Species Act consultations, and NEPA practice under whatever framework the courts have left standing by 2029. A Cruz first day would feel like a restoration project — every Obama-and-Biden-era constraint that can be reversed by signature, reversed.

03 Days 2-30: agency changes

Days 2-30 belong to the agencies. At EPA, expect directive memos halting pending carbon rules and initiating reviews of existing greenhouse-gas regulations — the same machinery Cruz criticized as administrator overreach, now aimed in the opposite direction. At FERC, a Cruz White House would pressure pipeline certificate timelines, though the commission's independence limits how direct that pressure can lawfully be. At Interior and DOE, leasing schedules and export-permit processing capacity get the treatment: more staff for approvals, deadlines for decisions, and political appointees chosen for one qualification — speed.

The personnel story is where Cruz's Commerce chairmanship matters as a preview. He has spent 2025-26 running committee oversight of exactly the agencies he would now direct, which means a Cruz administration would arrive with a longer list of trusted, pre-vetted deregulators than most incoming presidencies can field. The first month would be confirmations and recess appointments at EPA, FERC, and DOE — the boring machinery of a blitz.

04 The first budget

A first Cruz budget request would fund the blitz. Expect: expanded oil-and-gas leasing programs at Interior, more permitting and export-approval staff at DOE, and — the tell — a line for nuclear fuel-cycle research, reflecting S.3016's vision of a closed fuel cycle as part of "energy dominance." Expect simultaneously deep cuts to anything he labels climate spending: IRA implementation accounts, EPA regulatory offices, clean-energy demonstration programs. The budget is where the deregulation agenda becomes a numbers document.

The awkward item is the IRA itself. Repeal of its energy tax credits is Cruz's stated position and a budget-reconciliation question — repeal raises revenue scoring, which paradoxically helps reconciliation math. But the credits have red-state beneficiaries, and a President Cruz would discover in his first budget request that the coalition for repeal is narrower than the coalition for the speeches. Watch whether the budget requests repeal or simply requests that IRS stop administering parts of it — the difference between legislative ambition and executive work-around.

05 First legislation and what requires Congress

Cruz's own bill is his best witness on what requires Congress. The Energy Freedom Act's core provisions — binding permitting deadlines, mandated approval timelines for pipelines, repeal of regulatory programs — are statutes, and only Congress writes statutes. A President Cruz would send Congress a version of S.3762 on Day 1, argue it through the reconciliation window where tax-repeal items qualify, and pursue ordinary legislation for the permitting mandates, which are procedural rather than fiscal.

The realistic 100-days legislative outcome is a reconciliation bill that captures the tax-side items (IRA credit repeal, royalty-rate changes, leasing revenue provisions) and leaves the permitting mandates for a second, harder fight. Cruz knows this arithmetic better than almost anyone in his party — he has watched three congresses fail to pass his bill. The first 100 days would test whether the presidency changes the arithmetic or just the podium.

06 Deregulator in a party that now picks winners

The comparative frame for a Cruz energy presidency is Cruz versus the 2025-26 status quo he would inherit — and, more sharply, Cruz versus his own party. On paper he is the purest deregulator in the 2028 field: no industrial-policy enthusiasm, no permitting-reform bipartisanship, a decade of bills aimed at one target. Against a Vance-style industrial-policy Republicanism, Cruz's model is anti-pick-winners — build everything, tax nothing, let markets choose. Against a Shapiro-style Democratic permitting reform, the difference is not speed but scope: Shapiro wants the state to build faster; Cruz wants the state to approve faster.

The nuance in his recent record is nuclear. S.3016 — fuel recycling research — is a federal spending program, which sits oddly beside a decade of deregulation bills. Read generously, it is energy dominance with a fuel-cycle strategy attached; read cynically, it is Texas-nexus spending. Either way it makes a Cruz presidency slightly less laissez-faire than his rhetoric — a gap his 100 days would expose.

07 What courts could constrain

The courts constrain a Cruz blitz at three specific joints. First, the major-questions doctrine cuts both ways: it stopped EPA carbon rules Cruz opposed, and it would equally stop a Cruz EPA from deregulating by memorandum where Congress has spoken. Second, LNG export permitting is statutory — the Natural Gas Act sets criteria, and courts review departures from them; a Cruz DOE that approves too fast invites the same APA challenges the 2024 pause drew in reverse. Third, climate-liability and public-nuisance litigation continues regardless of executive orders — a president cannot sign away tort claims that belong to states and private parties.

Cruz's own jurisprudence of skepticism — administrative-state bad, courts-reading-statutes good — would become the constraint on his presidency. The same judges who struck down aggressive regulation would strike down aggressive deregulation-by-memo. The first 100 days of a Cruz energy presidency would be powerful at the levers statutes hand the executive, and litigated everywhere else — which is, on his own telling, exactly how the system should work.