If the government shouldn’t be in your bedroom, why is it spying on your bathroom?
This month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order repealing the federal government’s definition of “showerhead.” That definition was 13,000 words long. The White House argues that this move will make “America’s showers great again.”
If you aren’t familiar with the federal government’s regulatory regime, this may not make much sense. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines showerhead as “a fixture for directing the spray of water in a bathroom shower.” Even for bureaucrats, adding another 12,988 words seems particularly inefficient.
That long definition exists to place restrictions on how much water showerheads spray. During his rallies, Trump would joke about his struggles using low-flow showerheads on his “beautiful hair.”
Engineers didn’t forget how to make functional showerheads. Instead, the bureaucracy placed artificial limits on their performance. Trump is “returning to the straightforward meaning of ‘showerhead’ from the 1992 energy law, which sets a simple 2.5-gallons-per-minute standard for showers,” according to the White House.