Apply the day one regulatory freeze to the EPA without exception
What the document says“The new President’s Inauguration Day regulatory review/freeze directives should avoid exceptions for EPA actions.”
The chapter says the freeze should explicitly include quasi-regulatory actions such as assessments, determinations, standards and guidance that have not gone through notice and comment, and which it says may date back years.
What the document actually says“The new President’s Inauguration Day regulatory review/freeze directives should avoid exceptions for EPA actions.”
A new president freezes new rules on day one. The EPA should get no exception.
A new president usually pauses new rules on day one. Agencies sometimes get let off. The book says the EPA should not be.
Regulatory Freeze Pending Review
2025-01-20 · 90 FR 8249
The memorandum of January 20, 2025 freezes rulemaking across all executive departments and agencies, with no exception for the EPA, and its definition of rule goes well beyond notice and comment rulemaking: it reaches guidance documents, notices of inquiry, advance notices, proposed rules, and any agency statement of general applicability and future effect that sets out a policy or an interpretation. That covers the quasi-regulatory actions the chapter names. The fit is not exact. The freeze bars new rules and asks agencies only to consider postponing rules already published, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget may exempt any rule deemed necessary for emergencies or other urgent circumstances, and nothing in it reaches back to assessments, determinations or standards issued in earlier years.
The memo freezes new rules at every agency. The EPA gets no carve out. Its meaning of rule is broad and takes in guidance and notices, so it covers the acts the book names. But it only asks that agencies weigh delay for rules already out. The budget chief may exempt urgent rules. Older standards are left alone.