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The Associated Press WASHINGTON President Donald Trump signed a handful of measures Mon- day rolling back Obama-era regulations under the Con- gressional Review Act. It's part of a larger GOP effort to eliminate an array of regulations issued during President Barack Obama's final months in office and comes days after Trump's effort to repeal and replace "Obamacare" failed. Trump has made overturning what he deems government over- reach a centerpiece of his first months in office. "I will keep working with Congress, with every agency, and most impor- tantly, the American people, until we eliminate every un- necessary, harmful and job- killing regulation that we can find," Trump said at a White House signing cere- mony. "We have a lot more coming." Two of the regulations nullified Monday had to do with school performance and teacher preparation programs. One, issued by the Edu- cation Department in Octo- ber, required that federally funded teacher prepara- tion programs be evaluated based on the academic out- comes of those teachers' students. Republican sena- tors opposed the rules, ar- guing such matters should be left to the states. The other aimed to help states identify failing schools and come up with plans to improve them. Another rule nullified by Trump required fed- eral land managers to con- sider climate change and other long-term effects of proposed development on public lands. The regula- tion had been imposed by the Bureau of Land Man- agement, which oversees more than 245 million acres of public lands. Republicans argued the rule, finalized in December, shifted decision-making au- thority away from state and local officials to the fed- eral government. The sign- ing came the day before Trump was expected to re- verse Obama's signature effort to address climate change, the Clean Power Plan, which restricts green- house gas emissions at coal- fired power plants. The final rule targeted by Republicans had been aimed at forcing govern- ment contractors to dis- close violations of federal labor laws as they sought more work. The "blacklist- ing rule" required contrac- tors to disclose violations of 14 federal labor laws, in- cluding those pertaining to workplace safety, wages and discrimination. The White House argued the rule would "bog down" the federal procurement process, while business groups said that it would increase compliance costs. WASHINGTON Trump signs legislation rolling back Obama-era regulations ANDREWHARNIK—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS President Donald Trump holds up one of four bills during a signing ceremony in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington on Monday. By Sam Hananel The Associated Press WASHINGTON The Su- preme Court seemed to struggle on Monday over whether some of the na- tion's largest hospitals should be allowed to side- step federal laws protecting pension benefits for work- ers. Justices considered the cases of three church-af- filiated nonprofit hospital systems being sued for un- derfunding pension plans covering about 100,000 em- ployees. But the outcome ul- timately could affect the re- tirement benefits of roughly a million employees around the country. The hospitals — Advo- cate Health Care Network, Dignity Health and Saint Peter's Healthcare Sys- tem — say their pensions are "church plans" exempt from the law and have been treated as such for decades by the government agen- cies in charge. They want to overturn three lower court rulings against them. Workers suing the health systems argue that Con- gress never meant to ex- empt them and say the hospitals are shirking legal safeguards that could jeop- ardize retirement benefits. "I'm torn," Justices Sonia Sotomayor said at one point during the hour-long argu- ment. "This could be read either way in my mind." Justice Anthony Kennedy said the Internal Revenue Service issued hundreds of letters over more than 30 years approving the hos- pitals' actions. That shows they were "proceeding in good faith with the assur- ance of the IRS that what they were doing was law- ful," he said. The case could affect doz- ens of similar lawsuits over pension plans filed across the country. Much of the argument fo- cused on how to read a fed- eral law that generally re- quires pension plans to be fully funded and insured. Congress amended that law in 1980 to carve out a nar- row exemption for churches and other religious organi- zations. But in each of the three cases, appeals courts in San Francisco, Chicago and Philadelphia ruled that the exemption applies only to plans that were established by a church. Hospital lawyer Lisa Blatt told the justices that Congress wanted to ex- empt plans associated with or controlled by a church, whether or not a church it- self created the plan. She said federal agencies includ- ing the IRS and the Labor Department have assured them for decades that they are exempt. Blatt said a ruling against the hospitals would "jetti- son 30 years of settled ex- pectations" and open the hospitals to billions in lia- bility. Justice Elena Kagan said if Congress wanted a broader exemption, it used "very odd language" instead of being more straightfor- ward. Arguing for the workers, lawyer James Feldman said Congress was very zealous about creating exceptions to pension laws and did not in- tend to exempt these hospi- tals. He said the IRS letters wrongly interpreted the law and can't be relied on. "These plans have zero involvement with any church," Feldman said. Justice Samuel Alito seemed to side with the hospitals, noting that these and other similar lawsuits exposed the hospitals to bil- lions in damages. The federal government is backing the hospitals. Justice Department law- yer Malcolm Stewart ac- knowledged that Congress could have made the law clearer, but he said lawmak- ers wanted to protect hospi- tals like those being sued. California-based Dignity Health formed in 1986 from the merger of two Catholic hospital systems. Illinois- based Advocate Health Care Network is affiliated with the Evangelical Lu- theran Church in Amer- ica and the United Church of Christ. Saint Peter's is owned by the Roman Cath- olic Diocese of Metuchen, New Jersey, and is head- quartered in New Bruns- wick. A ruling is expected by late June. 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