Last week, President Donald Trump's administration turned its chainsaws on the Department of Energy (DOE), cutting, canceling, or pausing a handful of onerous regulations set to hobble household and commercial appliances. Anyone who's coughed up a small fortune for a barely functional machine lately knows the stakes.
My 30-year-old Bosch dishwasher was a marvel—efficient, precise—scouring dishes in 45 minutes like a Prussian drill sergeant on a deadline. Last month, it died. I dropped $800 on a sleek successor, expecting progress. Instead, I got a two-hour grease-smearing farce that leaves forks, like my optimism, caked in the grime of dashed hopes—a victim of the DOE's regulatory straitjacket.