rulemaking
Every record this desk has filed under rulemaking, newest first, each with the number of sources it can still show you.
CFTC asks for public comment on its intent to develop rules for retail crypto trades offered with leverage, margin or financing; this is an advance notice, not a proposed rule
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on October 13, that seeks comment on its intent to develop rules for retail crypto trades offered with leverage, margin or financing. It contains no rule text. The agency's inspection copy prints only a bracket for the comment date; the Register's own record for the October 13 issue gives December 14, 2026.
Also filed undercftccrypto-assetspublic-commentfederal-registerretail-investors
FDIC extends comments on proposed bank insider credit thresholds to November 4; the lending changes remain proposed
A notice published October 9 extends the FDIC's comment deadline on bank insider lending thresholds from October 5 to November 4. The August proposal would raise certain dollar limits and update them every five years while retaining capital-based limits. This notice gives the public more time to respond; it does not put the proposed lending changes into effect.
Also filed underbankingfdicinsider-lendingpublic-comments
A $70,000 fee gets a 30-day comment period; the paperwork that would record it gets 60, in one DATES line
DHS's Optional Practical Training fee proposal sets two deadlines in a single DATES line: November 9, 2026 for the rule, December 7 for its information collection. The rule's one sentence about those 30 days measures them against the time an F-1 student needs to change status or depart — notice, rather than time to comment. The Paperwork Reduction Act's 60-day notice provision carries an exception for a collection inside a proposed rule, so on the statutes read here, neither number is a floor someone set for the agency.
Also filed underpublic-commentimmigrationpaperwork-reduction-actfederal-register
NHTSA proposes a negotiated rulemaking committee of up to 18 members to recommend changes to the rules on vehicle headlights and other lighting; comments and nominations due November 9
NHTSA published a notice October 8 proposing a negotiated-rulemaking committee to recommend changes to FMVSS No. 108, the vehicle-lighting safety standard. It proposes up to 18 members from six stakeholder categories and an agency representative, without saying whether that seat is inside the 18. Comments on the plan are due November 9, 2026, and membership applications the same day by 5 p.m. ET. Consensus recommendations go to the Secretary, who may approve them as submitted or modified, before NHTSA proposes a rule.
Also filed undernhtsavehicle-lightingvehicle-safetyfederal-advisory-committee
Federal Reserve gives the public 30 more days, until November 4, to comment on its proposed rewrite of the rules on bank loans to their own executives and directors
The Federal Reserve extended the comment period on its proposal to rewrite Regulation O, the rule on loans banks make to their own executives and directors, to November 4, 30 days past the original October 5 deadline. The Board says commenters requested more time and gives no other reason. The proposal, which is not in effect, would raise decades-old dollar limits — among them the board-approval threshold, from $500,000 to $2 million. Comments citing Docket No. R-1896 are due November 4, through the Board's website or its Washington office.
Also filed underfederal-reservebankingregulation-oinsider-loans
Only the petitioner or the industries that benefit could ask to keep these tariff actions in place
Two 2018 tariff actions on Chinese goods were due to expire this summer unless someone asked for them to continue. The law gives that request to the petitioner or the industries that benefit, and names consumers only in the review that follows. Two other consultations published the same day start from the opposite end.
Also filed undercommentarytradetariffspublic-commentconsumer-impact
One question, five file numbers: three agencies each split a subject across several documents in the same issue, and handled the pointing three different ways
Monday's Federal Register carries twelve documents covering three subjects. The SEC asks in five separate notices whether a professional credential should qualify someone as an accredited investor, and each keeps its own file number and its own comment path. The NRC files a rule and its companion proposal and says a comment on one counts as a comment on both. The FAA files five launch-licensing proposals that all cite the same executive order, and not one of them mentions the other four.
Also filed underfederal-registerpublic-commentdockets
A federal proposal would remove the title IV-B child welfare reporting rules for states and tribes, cutting the hours those reports take by an estimated 61 percent
The Administration for Children and Families proposes removing the regulations behind the Child and Family Services Plan, the Annual Progress and Services Report and Form CFS-101, filed for public inspection October 2 and scheduled to publish October 5, 2026. ACF estimates the change would cut 235 state and tribal agencies' reporting from 49,350 to about 19,355 hours a year, a 60.78 percent reduction, saving those agencies an estimated $1.4 million a year. The review and penalty procedures are not rewritten. Comments are due 30 days after publication, through regulations.gov.
Also filed underchild-welfarefoster-carehhsfederal-register
A comment deadline moved three weeks, and the rule still shows the old date
The Census Bureau's proposed residence criteria say comments are due October 13. On October 2 the Bureau filed a notice moving that to November 2. Checked on October 3, the Federal Register's own record for the rule still returned October 13, with an empty corrections list, on a docket that had already drawn 33,382 comments. A Federal Reserve docket printed to close this Monday will now close November 4, the Board says, with nothing in the Register saying so at all.
Also filed underfederal-registerpublic-commentdeadlines
SEC proposes letting investment advisers and funds self-custody crypto or use state trust companies, with a 60-day comment window after publication
The SEC proposed rules October 1 to let registered investment advisers and regulated funds hold crypto assets in self-custody, or with a state trust company, instead of only banks, broker-dealers and the other custodians the current rules allow. The proposal, File No. S7-2026-35, would attach conditions: written determinations, joint authorization of transfers by at least two people, independent internal control reports and quarterly client account statements. It is not law. The SEC says comments will be due 60 days after the release is published in the Federal Register.
Also filed underseccryptoinvestment-adviserscustody-rules
FTC's call for comment on platform ad tools and impersonation scams is scheduled for Federal Register publication October 1, with comments due 60 days later; it has no draft rule.
The Federal Trade Commission's advance notice of proposed rulemaking on platforms and impersonation scams was filed September 30 for Federal Register public inspection and is scheduled to publish October 1. It asks the public whether to write rules for search engines, social media and other platforms whose ad-optimization tools it says further scams impersonating businesses and government agencies. It contains no rule text. Comments are due 60 days after publication, a date the printed notice will fix; file them at Regulations.gov.
Also filed underftcconsumer-protectionimpersonation-scamsonline-advertisingplatformsfederal-register
Tomorrow's federal rules are public tonight, and the law says that counts as telling you
Every working day, the documents scheduled for the next Federal Register go on public display about a day early, free and without an account. Federal law says that filing, which comes before the printed issue, is generally enough to give notice of what the documents say. On Wednesday a 585-page Medicare drug-pricing rule went up that way two days before publication, and its page had been viewed 1,405 times by a quarter past midnight Eastern. The median document on the same list had been viewed 13 times.
Also filed underfederal-registerpublic-recordsgovernment-transparency
The FTC voted 2-0 to ask whether search engines, social media and other platforms whose ad tools optimize impersonation-scam ads should be held liable for furthering those scams, a narrower return of the 'means and instrumentalities' idea it set aside in December 2024; the 60-day comment clock has not started.
On September 24 the Federal Trade Commission announced a 2-0 vote to send the Federal Register an advance notice of proposed rulemaking asking whether search engines, social media and other digital marketplace platforms commit unfair or deceptive practices when their ad-optimization tools help scammers impersonate businesses and government agencies. The notice names Google.com, Facebook.com, Amazon.com, Apple App Store and LinkedIn.com as examples of such platforms. It floats requiring them to vet ads before posting, stop optimizing ads for impersonators, detect and investigate suspected impersonation ads, remove confirmed ones and discipline the advertiser, or offering those steps as a safe harbor instead. It returns, in narrower form, to a 'means and instrumentalities' provision the Commission set aside in December 2024. The FTC says it received more than 1 million imposter-scam reports in 2025, with nearly $3.5 billion in reported losses. Comments will be due 60 days after the notice appears in the Federal Register. As of September 27 it had not appeared, and the public-inspection lists posted September 24 and 25 did not include it. The notice contains no proposed rule text.
Also filed underftcconsumer-protectionimpersonation-scamsonline-advertisingplatformssection-230
A drafting error in August's layoff rule deleted the two paragraphs that say when a federal worker counts as 'displaced'. For 13 days the definition that governs their priority for other jobs had no criteria under it. OPM restored the text on September 15.
OPM's reduction-in-force rule, effective September 2, carried an amendatory instruction that told the code to replace all of paragraph (1) of the definition of 'displaced' but supplied only its opening line. The effect was to delete the two subparagraphs that say who qualifies: an employee who got a RIF separation notice, or one facing removal for refusing a directed move out of their commuting area. That definition governs who gets priority consideration for other federal jobs under the career transition program. A correcting amendment published September 15 restored the text, effective immediately, and says it makes no substantive change. It does not say how the error was found, whether any case was decided under the truncated definition during the 13 days, or what happens if one was. Two other OPM rules landed the same week: shared hiring certificates, effective October 15 with comments to November 16, and a proposal on excepted-service employment, comments to November 17.
Also filed underopmfederal-workforcereduction-in-forcefederal-register
There are 191 federal comment windows open right now. Thirty-seven of them close within a week, and none of them will be on the news.
This desk keeps a standing sweep of dated federal commitments. Tonight it reads 191 open comment periods and 232 final rules that are published but not yet in force. Half of the open windows close inside 18 days; 37 close inside a week; 13 close in three days. Almost none of them were announced anywhere you were looking, because a comment window is not an event — it is a line in a notice, printed once, on the day the notice appears. This is an argument about what that line is actually for: not a vote you lose, but the only mechanism that forces an agency to answer you in writing, on the record, in a document a court can read afterwards. And a short, concrete, first-hand comment does more of that work than a long angry one.
Also filed undermethodfederal-registercomment-deadlinecivic
EPA finished repealing most of the 2024 power plant carbon rules and, the same day and in the same docket, proposed erasing the rest. One of those is closed to you. The other closes November 2.
The Federal Register issue dated September 17 carries two EPA documents with one docket number between them. The first is a final rule: it repeals most of the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards for power plants, takes effect November 16, and the agency says it is not reopening it. The second is a supplemental proposal arguing that the Clean Air Act does not authorize EPA to regulate power plant emissions for climate reasons at all — which would rescind the 2015 findings and repeal every remaining greenhouse gas standard for the source category. Comments on the second close November 2; a virtual hearing is October 1; the last day to register to speak is September 29, and each speaker gets four minutes. EPA puts the compliance cost savings of the finished repeal at $160 billion present value at a 3% discount rate and $95 billion at 7%, and states in the same table that it has not monetized the health and welfare impacts of the emission changes.
Also filed underepaclean-air-actfederal-registercomment-deadlinepower-plants
DHS proposes taking away the 60 days a laid-off H-1B worker has to find a new job. Comments close November 10.
The Department of Homeland Security published a proposed rule on September 11 that would remove the discretionary grace period of up to 60 days that workers in E-1, E-2, E-3, H-1B, H-1B1, L-1, O-1 and TN status currently get after their employment ends. Without it, the proposal would require a worker to depart the United States immediately upon failing to maintain the employment. DHS's own analysis says some workers may lose income and some may be issued Notices to Appear, and it offers a qualitative assessment rather than a count of the people affected. Nothing has changed yet: this is a proposal, the current rule still applies, and written comments are open until November 10, 2026.
Also filed underdhsuscisimmigrationh-1bfederal-registercomment-period
August 27: 1,443 federal rules were proposed, took public comment, and then produced nothing. Nobody was counting.
A proposed rule names the day its comment period closes. The public writes in. Then either a final rule follows or nothing does — and nothing does is invisible, because no page anywhere says a rulemaking went quiet. This desk joined the two ends of the Federal Register's own record: 8,991 proposed rules published between January 2021 and August 2025, against 16,913 final rules searched through today. Of the 8,001 whose comment periods have closed, 1,443 never produced a final rule. The longest has been silent 4,220 days. Three bugs in the instrument were caught before publication, two of which would have inflated the finding — one by more than double — and all three are described below, because a number this size is only worth anything if you can see how it was almost wrong.
Also filed underfederalaccountabilityfederal-registerinstrumentsprimary-sourceevidence-posturemethod
A record appears here because it carries rulemaking in its own tags. If a record you expected is missing, it was filed under a different subject — the full list is on the topics index.