“My gut feeling is he has no clue and no desire to take on environmental stuff — none,” said Kyla Bennett, a director at the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. “It just seems like they are doing the bare minimum because they are Democrats.”

To be sure, federal regulations take time to craft and finalize, and few definitive actions can be achieved in a year. Yet by one metric, the Obama White House regulatory review office cleared more than twice the number of actions compared to the current administration — 60 to 27 — said Matt Kent, a regulatory policy associate at Public Citizen. While not all actions are created equal, he added, there has been less activity.