Notice & Comment

Recent Rulemakings Reviewed: October 2026

Recent Rulemakings Reviewed is a monthly quantitative snapshot of federal regulatory activity. It is drawn from FRTracker—a platform that ingests Federal Register documents and decomposes rules into structured “obligations.”

An “obligation” in this dataset is a single regulated duty extracted from a rule’s text, comprised of: an actor (e.g., operator, employer, importer), a deontic modal (must, shall, may not), and an action.

Each issue of Recent Rulemakings Reviewed will present the preceding month’s key numbers, some developments worth watching, and links for readers who want to dig deeper.

A note on the figures: all counts are drawn from FRTracker and/or the Federal Register as of this column’s publication time and date. Because document processing and obligation extraction run continuously, monthly totals and per-rule counts can shift modestly as records are reprocessed; the numbers here reflect the database as it stood the day this issue was published.

The numbers

  • Documents published (excluding presidential documents): 2,090
    • vs September 2026: 2,194
    • vs October 2025: 562
  • Final rules: 234
    • vs September 2026: 216
    • vs October 2025: 99
  • Proposed rules: 139
    • vs September 2026: 142
    • vs October 2025: 41
  • Rules flagged significant in Federal Register metadata: 22
    • vs September 2026: 21
    • vs October 2025: 12
  • Comment periods closed last month: 694
  • Compliance obligations extracted from last month’s publications: 2,556

The four document-count rows above are the Federal Register’s own counts, not FRTracker’s. The two figures below them — comment periods closed, and compliance obligations — are FRTracker’s; the Federal Register publishes neither.

The year-over-year comparison must be caveated this month. October 2025 was the first month of the 43-day lapse in appropriations that began October 1, 2025 and ended November 12, and the Federal Register published about a fifth of its usual volume over that span. Read against October 2025, every row above is a surge − but it is more noise than signal. By way of imparting a useful comparator, a month unaffected by a shutdown: October 2024 published 2,874 documents, 275 final rules, 126 proposed rules, and 41 documents flagged significant. Against that baseline, October 2026 is lighter on documents (−27%), finals (−15%) and significant designations (−46%), and a touch higher on proposals (139 against 126).

Against September, October was a little quieter on documents (2,090 against 2,194, as notices fell from 1,836 to 1,717) and a little heavier on final rules (234 against 216); proposals held at 139 against 142, and significant designations at 22 against 21 — twelve of them final rules, ten proposed.

The obligation lens moved more than the document counts did. September’s column found 68% of the month’s rule obligations in proposals. In October the balance swung back: the 234 final rules carry 1,365 compliance obligations and the 139 proposed rules 1,191, so 47% of the month’s rule obligations are proposed, not binding.

One proposed-to-final pair completed in October — a Coast Guard security zone in Los Angeles Harbor. Its proposal and final each carry a single extracted obligation, and it is the same one: no obligation was added or removed between them.

The Shortcut Ledger

Not every rule travels the full notice-and-comment route. An agency can issue a rule as interim-final (issued in final form, with comment invited afterward), direct-final (effective unless significant adverse comment is received), or temporary — each goes around the ordinary notice-and-comment sequence, available where the conditions its statutory basis requires are satisfied. The label alone is neither proof that the shortcut was proper nor proof that it was not. It is offered purely in an informational capacity; the good-cause exception these rules usually rest on can be entirely valid. The pathways are nonetheless relevant, because they are where binding obligations reach the public without a proposal first. The running ledger is at frtracker.app/shortcutledger.

PathwayRulesObligations
Interim-final57
Direct-final519
Temporary3719
Total expedited4745

Every row above is classified from the Federal Register’s own ACTION field, not from our inference. Of October’s 234 final rules, 231 carry an ACTION value; the three that do not — two corrections and a Thrift Savings Plan rule, none with extracted obligations — sit outside the above.

A note on which obligation count this is. The “Obligations” column here — and every per-rule obligation figure in this column — is FRTracker’s extracted-requirement count, the same number shown on the linked Ledger and on each rule’s FRTracker page. The 2,556 figure in “The numbers” above is a narrower subset: only requirements typed COMPLIANCE_OBLIGATION. Each series is computed the same way throughout, but the two series are different measures and must not be compared to one another. (On the narrower method October’s expedited rows read 7 / 13 / 18; the shape is unchanged.)

The interim-final column is the lightest in the series. Across the series the interim-final pathway has run 8 rules and 166 obligations (June), 15 and 349 (July), 11 and 43 (August), 8 and 88 (September), and now 5 and 7. The heaviest is the Postal Service‘s Customs Requirements and Payment Procedures for Certain Customs Charges (6). Three of the five carry none: the Commodity Futures Trading Commission‘s Further Definition of “Swap” To Exclude Casino-Style Gambling Products, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s placement of centanafadine in Schedule III, and the Homeland Security Department‘s Removing 30-Day Refugee Termination Notice. A low extracted count on a rule that removes, defines or schedules does not measure its legal effect. None of the five is flagged significant.

The direct-final column holds small counts. Five direct-final rules carry 19 obligations, none more than six: the Consumer Product Safety Commission‘s Safety Standard for Automatic Residential Garage Door Operators (6), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission‘s AP1000 Design Certification Renewal (6) and Exemptions From Materials Licensing (3), an Environmental Protection Agency Nevada underground storage tank program codification (4), and the Office of Personnel Management‘s Family and Medical Leave Act (none). Temporary rules — 37 of them, 23 from the Commerce Department — carry 19.

The month’s largest rule issued without a proposal is not in the table. The ledger counts three labels, and a rule can reach the public without a proposal under none of them. The Agriculture Department‘s Rural Business-Cooperative Service published Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) on October 1 as a “final rule with comment period,” effective October 16, with comments accepted until November 2. The rule says it “is not required to undergo notice-and-comment rulemaking because of the exception in 5 U.S.C. 553(a)(2) for matters relating to grants,” and that the comment period may inform “future guidance or rulemaking.” The exemption is a statutory one, and this column takes no position on its use here beyond reporting said use. But the rule carries 172 extracted obligations — more than the 47 rules in the table above combined — and restructures the program so that, in the agency’s words, “projects must already be fully built and operational before the applicant ever applies.” A count organized around the interim-final, direct-final and temporary labels does not see it. The grants-and-benefits exemption (Section 553(a)(2) of the APA) is a fourth road around a proposal, and this month it carried more obligations than the other three.

Primary source: Federal Register (2026-21310, 2026-21376, 2026-20178) · FRTracker analysis

Remarkable Rulemakings

The final rule with the most extracted obligations implements the GENIUS Act, and it is not flagged significant. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s Implementing the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act for the Issuance of Stablecoins by Entities Subject to the Jurisdiction of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, published October 23 and effective January 18, 2027, runs 195 pages and carries 179 extracted obligations — the most of any final rule in October. By its summary it implements the GENIUS Act “regarding the issuance of payment stablecoins and certain related activities by entities subject to the OCC’s jurisdiction.” The Federal Register’s metadata does not flag it significant. The OCC proposed the rule on March 2 under the same regulation identifier; FRTracker extracts 81 obligations from that proposal, so the final carries more than twice as many as the text it finalized. That is a comparison of raw counts, not a measured survival rate — FRTracker has linked the two documents as a pair but has not yet completed an obligation-level comparison, which would show which proposed duties survived, changed or were added. It is the fourth GENIUS Act rulemaking in five weeks, after the Federal Reserve Board’s proposal and Treasury’s interim final rule described in September’s column.

Primary source: Federal Register (2026-21706, 2026-04089) · FRTracker analysis

The month’s document with the most extracted obligations is a significant SNAP proposal. The Agriculture Department’s Food and Nutrition Administration proposed Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Electronic Benefits Transfer Card Security Measures on October 23 — 40 pages, flagged significant, 351 extracted obligations, comments due December 22. By the agency’s summary it would “modernize Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) technology and align EBT with consumer payment processing industry standards” and “protect SNAP benefits from thieves.” One forty-page proposal carries 11% of the 3,118 requirements of all kinds FRTracker extracted from everything published in October. Unlike September, when the month’s highest-count documents carried no significance flag, October’s does. It is a proposal, and none of its obligations binds anyone yet.

Primary source: Federal Register (2026-21658) · FRTracker analysis

Volume and weight came apart again, and two documents explain the leader. The Commerce Department led October on document count with 259 filings carrying 60 extracted obligations; the Health and Human Services Department was second with 217 carrying 432. On the obligation side the Agriculture Department leads with 623 on 59 documents — 523 of them in two: the SNAP proposal and the REAP rule. The Treasury Department is second with 566 on 83, of which the OCC stablecoin rule, the Internal Revenue Service’s proposed Federal Scholarship Tax Credit regulations (147), the proposed Outbound Investment Security Program Regulations (103) and the tri-agency Transparency in Coverage final rule (53) are 482. Document counts measure how often an agency writes to the Federal Register. They do not measure what it writes.

Three Developments Worth Watching

1. Crypto, three ways, on one day. On October 6 the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed Adviser and Regulated Fund Custody Rules; Crypto Custody Rules — 234 pages, flagged significant, 116 obligations, comments due December 7. By its summary it would add new custody rules under the Investment Company Act addressing how regulated funds “may custody crypto securities and similar investments,” amend the Advisers Act custody rule to address how registered advisers “may custody client crypto funds and securities,” and add questions on tokenized funds to Forms ADV and N-CEN.

The same day the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network withdrew two proposals, both carrying the significance flag: its October 2023 section 311 finding and proposed special measure treating international convertible virtual currency mixing as a class of transactions of primary money laundering concern — withdrawing the finding as well as the proposal (withdrawal) — and its December 2020 proposal to require banks and money services businesses to report, keep records and verify identity for transactions involving unhosted wallets or wallets hosted in jurisdictions identified by FinCEN (withdrawal); FinCEN “will not take any further action” on the latter. The withdrawals carry no obligations, and they impose none: they end proposals that never took effect. With the OCC’s stablecoin rule seventeen days later, October moved digital-asset regulation in both directions at once — new custody duties proposed for advisers and funds, and two proposed reporting regimes abandoned.

Primary source: Federal Register (2026-20466, 2026-20429, 2026-20430) · FRTracker analysis

2. Health-care prices, by disclosure and by model. The Treasury Department, the Labor Department’s Employee Benefits Security Administration and the Health and Human Services Department jointly finalized Transparency in Coverage on October 6 — flagged significant, 120 pages, 53 obligations, effective December 7. By its summary it reworks the machine-readable price files health plans and issuers must publish — adding product type and provider-network identifiers, changing how in-network rates are aggregated, lowering the claims threshold for out-of-network data, and reducing the reporting cadence — and requires that pricing information be available by phone.

Four days earlier the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services finalized the Global Benchmark for Efficient Drug Pricing (GLOBE) Model (flagged significant, 181 pages, 39 obligations, effective November 30), a mandatory Medicare payment model under section 1115A of the Social Security Act that will test “an alternative method for calculating Medicare Part B drug inflation rebate amounts” for certain Part B drugs. And on October 28 HHS’s health-IT office finalized ONC Deregulatory Actions To Unleash Prosperity (flagged significant, 27 obligations), removing and revising certification criteria for health information technology.

Primary source: Federal Register (2026-20447, 2026-20281, 2026-21943) · FRTracker analysis

3. The oil-and-gas emission standards, reconsidered again. The Environmental Protection Agency proposed Additional Reconsideration Standards of Performance for New, Reconstructed, and Modified Sources and Emissions Guidelines for Existing Sources: Oil and Natural Gas Sector Climate Review on October 29 — flagged significant, 128 pages, comments due December 16. By its summary the proposal responds to petitions for reconsideration of the March 2024 amendments and would, first, “rescind the Super Emitter Program”; subcategorize marginal and conventional well sites; and change requirements for liquids unloading, process controllers, pumps, fugitive emissions, storage vessels and associated gas. FRTracker extracts seven obligations from it — the pattern September’s column noted for the carbon-pollution repeal: a rule written mostly as rescissions and revisions publishes few duties for the extractor to count, and the low count is not a measure of its reach. It follows September’s partial repeal of the power-plant carbon standards.

Primary source: Federal Register (2026-22082) · FRTracker analysis

Further Reading

Most active agencies last month (number = Federal Register documents published):

Significant rules published. Federal Register metadata marks these documents significant under E.O. 12866 §3(f). We show those with the largest extracted obligation count; ordering is ours, designation is theirs.

Rules that took effect. Final rules that Federal Register metadata marks significant under E.O. 12866 §3(f) and whose effective date fell in October, ordered by extracted obligation count. Ordering is ours; the significance designation is theirs. Counts are requirements extracted from each rule’s text, not duties the rule adds. Interim rules are excluded. Most of these were published in earlier months: a rule’s effective date and its publication date are different things, and this list is keyed to the former. Each was confirmed against the Federal Register’s own metadata as a final rule carrying the significance flag.

Three additional significant rules took effect in October with no obligations extracted: the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ correction to the FY 2027 inpatient prospective payment rule; the Energy Department‘s Rescission of Production Incentives for Cellulosic Biofuels; and the Labor Department’s Wagner-Peyser Act Employment Service Staffing.

One rule is deliberately absent. The Transportation Department‘s Cause of Airline Delay and Cancellation Categories Under Section 511(b) of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, flagged significant, was scheduled to take effect October 19, and the Federal Register’s metadata still lists that date. On October 15 the Department delayed it to February 1, 2027. It did not take effect in October.

For readers who want the underlying dataset: the full monthly snapshot is at frtracker.app/monthly/2026-10, with methodology at frtracker.app/methodology.

Andrew Leahey is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Law at Drexel Kline School of Law.

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