Who's behind the news?
Who's behind the news?
Washington, DC, USA · Published every federal working day since March 14, 1936 · Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration
The Federal Register is the official daily journal of the United States federal government — the publication through which the executive branch discloses its regulatory and administrative activity to the public and to itself. It is, by volume of documents published weekly, the largest periodical in the world. Published every federal working day without exception since its first issue on March 14, 1936, the Register is the constitutional-scale mechanism by which government rules become law: a regulation that does not appear in the Federal Register does not legally exist, cannot be enforced against a private party who had no notice of it, and — in the most literal sense — is not part of the government's official record. It is simultaneously one of the most important and most ignored publications in American civic life: essential infrastructure for lawyers, regulators, lobbyists, federal contractors, and administrative scholars, and almost entirely invisible to the general public it theoretically serves.
The Federal Register is published jointly by the Office of the Federal Register (OFR) — an office within the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) — and the Government Publishing Office (GPO). The OFR prepares, edits, and certifies the documents; the GPO produces and distributes the publication in both print and digital formats. The modern web interface at FederalRegister.gov, launched in beta on July 26, 2010 and continuously improved since, makes the full text of every issue since 1994 freely searchable and provides a public API that developers and researchers use to access Register content programmatically. The companion publication, the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), organizes the cumulative body of active federal regulations by subject area; its daily-updated electronic version, the eCFR at ecfr.gov, is the working reference for anyone who needs to know what federal rules currently say.
106,109
Pages in 2024 (all-time record)
2,620
Pages in first year (1936)
90
Volumes published (2026 = Vol. 91)
~30,000
Documents published annually (approx.)
0
Issues missed since 1936
The Federal Register was born from a humiliating legal episode that exposed a fundamental administrative failure of the early New Deal. In 1935, the Supreme Court was preparing to hear arguments in Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan — a challenge to a provision of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of 1933 that regulated the petroleum industry. In the course of briefing, it emerged that the provision being challenged had been revoked by executive order months earlier. Neither the government's own attorneys nor the company's lawyers had known — because there was no central system for publishing or tracking executive orders and administrative regulations. The government was enforcing rules that no longer existed, against a company that had no reliable way to learn which rules were currently in effect. When this was pointed out to the Court, the justices received it with what one observer described as barely suppressed incredulity.
This was not an isolated failure. The New Deal's explosion of regulatory activity — creating dozens of new agencies, each issuing orders, regulations, and interpretations with the force of law — had produced an unmanageable proliferation of legal authority with no central registry, no uniform format, and no reliable system of public notice. Different agencies published their rules in different places, or did not publish them at all. Legal practitioners could not reliably determine what the current state of any federal regulation was. The American Bar Association had been calling for a consolidated publication of administrative documents since the early 1930s. The Panama Refining embarrassment converted that professional recommendation into legislative urgency.
Congress passed the Federal Register Act on July 26, 1935. The Act required the systematic, daily publication of all executive orders, proclamations, and agency rules with general applicability — establishing for the first time the principle that a federal regulation could not be enforced against a private party unless it had been publicly published and the party had had an opportunity to know of it. The first Director of the Federal Register Division was Major Bernard R. Kennedy, appointed by President Roosevelt effective September 3, 1935. The first issue of the Federal Register appeared on March 14, 1936 — 16 pages, styled after the Congressional Record, containing (appropriately) an executive order signed by Roosevelt the previous day.
The Federal Register's role expanded substantially with the passage of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in 1946. The APA created the modern rulemaking framework that governs the vast majority of federal regulatory activity today: before an agency can issue a binding final rule, it must publish a proposed rule in the Federal Register, accept public comments for a specified period (usually sixty days for significant rules), consider those comments, and publish a final rule with a response to significant comments received. This "notice-and-comment" rulemaking process — also called informal rulemaking or "section 553" rulemaking after its location in the APA — made the Federal Register not merely a record of government action but the arena where that action is publicly contested and refined before it takes effect.
The APA's notice requirement transformed the Federal Register into a two-phase publication for most regulatory matters: first the proposed rule (NPRM — Notice of Proposed Rulemaking), which opens the public comment period; then the final rule, typically accompanied by a preamble that explains the rule's purpose, responds to significant public comments, and summarizes the evidence supporting the agency's choices. That preamble — often much longer than the rule text itself — is one of the most important documents in American administrative law: it establishes the administrative record on which any subsequent judicial review of the rule is based, and the quality of its reasoning determines whether the rule will survive legal challenge.
The growth of the Federal Register from 2,620 pages in its first year to 106,109 pages in 2024 is a compressed history of the American regulatory state and its political cycles. The trajectory is not linear but pulsed — rising sharply with activist regulatory periods, dropping at presidential transitions when incoming administrations freeze the regulatory pipeline, and spiking at the end of administrations when departing presidents rush "midnight rules" out the door before their successors can rescind them.
1936
First issue published March 14. The inaugural year produces 2,620 pages — modest by any subsequent standard, containing primarily executive orders and the first round of New Deal agency regulations codified under the Federal Register Act.
1946–1960s
The Administrative Procedure Act (1946) adds the notice-and-comment requirement, expanding the Register's content to include proposed rules alongside final rules. Page counts grow steadily through the postwar regulatory expansion, reaching approximately 10,000 pages annually by the mid-1960s.
1973
Publication schedule changes from six days per week to Monday through Friday only — the schedule still in effect. The Register has never missed a publication deadline under either schedule.
1970s–1980s
Rapid expansion through the environmental and consumer protection regulatory era. The Environmental Protection Agency (created 1970), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (1970), Consumer Product Safety Commission (1972), and dozens of other new agencies generate large volumes of rulemaking. Page counts climb into the 50,000-page range by the early Reagan years.
1994
The GPO and OFR begin publishing the Federal Register in digital form alongside print — the first step toward the modern electronic publication. The complete archive from 1994 forward is available in PDF. In April 2018, GPO completes the digitization of all issues from 1936 to 1994, making the complete historical archive available.
2010
FederalRegister.gov launches in beta on July 26 — the 75th anniversary of the Federal Register Act — as the FR2.0 open government project. The new site provides XML-based full-text search, agency filtering, topic browsing, and a public REST API. The site is built on open-source software and immediately releases its API for third-party use.
2016
The Obama administration's final year sets a then-record of 95,894 pages — the product of eight years of sustained regulatory activity, capped by a surge of midnight rules in the transition period. The Register publishes 3,853 final rules, the highest single-year count in the Obama era.
2017
The Trump administration's first year produces 61,314 pages — the lowest count since 1992 — as the new administration freezes the regulatory pipeline, issues a sweeping deregulatory executive order, and pursues the "two-for-one" rule (eliminating two existing regulations for every new one issued). Deregulatory actions themselves require rulemaking, however, and subsequent Trump years see page counts rise toward the 70,000-page range.
2021–2023
The Biden administration restores the 80,000-page Federal Register as the baseline norm — 74,532 pages in 2021, 80,756 in 2022, and 90,402 pages in 2023 (the administration's highest single year, the second-highest count ever at that point). The increase reflects both substantive regulatory activity and the reversal of Trump-era deregulatory actions.
2024
The Federal Register reaches an all-time record of 106,109 pages — a 19% increase over 2023, 23% over five years. Biden's final year surpasses Obama's 2016 record by more than ten thousand pages. The Competitive Enterprise Institute's Clyde Wayne Crews characterizes it as "a stark reminder of the scale of the regulatory state." Page counts are a highly contested proxy for regulatory burden — they include proposed rules, corrections, and notices alongside final rules — but the trend is unambiguous.
2025–present
The second Trump administration begins with a pronounced deregulatory agenda — Executive Order 14192 ("Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation") sets a 10-for-1 deregulatory ratio; DOGE-related workforce and agency reduction initiatives generate their own volumes of rulemaking and executive orders. Page counts in 2025 are tracking substantially lower than 2024, consistent with the pattern of first-year declines at presidential transitions.
Every issue of the Federal Register is organized into four main categories of content, each with legal significance:
Presidential Documents are issued directly by the Executive Office of the President and include executive orders (which direct the executive branch and have the force of law), presidential proclamations (which address matters of national importance including trade actions, holidays, and national emergencies), presidential memoranda, and administrative orders. Every executive order since the Register's founding in 1936 appears in its pages; the number of executive orders in a given year is one of the most closely watched indicators of presidential administrative activity.
Rules and Final Rules are the legally binding regulations issued by federal agencies under authority delegated by Congress. A final rule published in the Federal Register, after having been through notice-and-comment, becomes part of the Code of Federal Regulations and has the force and effect of law. These rules govern everything from food safety standards to airline maintenance requirements to financial reporting obligations to workplace safety rules.
Proposed Rules (Notices of Proposed Rulemaking, or NPRMs) are advance notice that an agency intends to issue a rule, describing the proposed regulation and inviting public comment. An NPRM published in the Federal Register opens the public comment period; comments are typically submitted through Regulations.gov. The notice requirement is not optional — failure to publish a proposed rule before issuing a final rule is generally fatal to the final rule in judicial review.
Notices are the most numerous and varied category — announcements that federal agencies are required by statute or choose to make public. They include grant application deadlines, environmental impact statement notices, import and export determinations, agency meeting schedules, Federal Advisory Committee Act meeting announcements, and hundreds of other categories. Environmental journalists and advocates monitoring EPA, USFWS, Army Corps of Engineers, and other agencies watch the notices section closely for announcements of permit applications, environmental reviews, and other actions that open brief public comment windows.
The Federal Register's audiences are diverse and their relationships to the publication fundamentally different. Understanding who uses it — and what they are looking for — explains why the modern FederalRegister.gov interface was designed as it was, and why the open API is so significant.
Federal Agencies
Regulators and Policy Staff
Every federal agency monitoring the regulatory activity of other agencies — for inter-agency coordination, for compliance with cross-cutting requirements, for awareness of policies that affect shared jurisdiction. EPA must know what Army Corps is doing on wetlands; OSHA must track how EPA rules affect workplaces it regulates. The Register is the authoritative common record.
Legal Profession
Administrative and Regulatory Lawyers
The Federal Register is the source document for administrative law practice — tracking the status of rules that affect clients, filing comments during proposed rulemaking periods, identifying the administrative record for potential judicial challenge. The preamble language in final rules is scrutinized intensely because it determines what the agency's legal position is and whether the rule will survive "arbitrary and capricious" review under the APA.
Industry and Business
Regulatory Affairs Professionals
Corporations in regulated industries — financial services, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, energy, telecommunications, food manufacturing — employ regulatory affairs staff whose primary job is monitoring the Federal Register for rules that affect them, reviewing proposed rules before comment periods close, and coordinating industry comments. Trade associations provide their members with "Federal Register alert" services. A single rulemaking can determine billions in compliance costs.
Government Contractors
Procurement and Contract Compliance
Federal contractors monitor the Federal Register for changes to Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR), Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS), and agency-specific acquisition supplements. Contract requirements — wage determinations, prevailing wage schedules under Davis-Bacon, security clearance requirements, small business subcontracting targets — are all set or modified through the Register. Missing a rulemaking change can mean contract non-compliance.
Journalism
Accountability and Policy Reporters
Investigative and policy journalists use the Federal Register as a primary source for accountability reporting — tracking regulatory rollbacks, new environmental permits, executive orders, and agency policy changes. The preamble sections of rules often contain data, analysis, and agency admissions that do not appear in press releases. The Register is the paper trail of the regulatory state; any serious journalism about federal policy eventually runs through it.
Civil Society
Advocacy and Nonprofit Organizations
Environmental organizations, consumer advocates, labor groups, and civil rights organizations monitor proposed rules in their issue areas, coordinate member comment campaigns, and track final rules for compliance and enforcement gaps. Organizations like Earthjustice, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Center for Biological Diversity have staff whose entire job is Federal Register monitoring and rulemaking participation.
Academia
Administrative Law and Policy Researchers
Legal scholars, political scientists, and economists use the Federal Register as their primary empirical data source for studying the regulatory state — measuring rule counts, comment volumes, preamble analysis, and the relationship between political transitions and regulatory output. The Competitive Enterprise Institute's annual "Ten Thousand Commandments" report is built on Federal Register data; academic administrative law journals routinely analyze rule preambles as legal texts.
Financial Services
Compliance Monitoring and Risk
Banks, insurance companies, investment advisers, and broker-dealers are subject to extensive federal regulation from multiple agencies simultaneously — Federal Reserve, OCC, FDIC, SEC, CFTC, and others — each of which publishes through the Federal Register. Financial services firms use the FederalRegister.gov API and commercial regulatory intelligence services to maintain real-time awareness of rulemaking that affects their operations.
General Public
Citizens and Community Members
Members of the public have the legal right to comment on proposed rules, and the Federal Register is the mechanism through which that right is exercised. Community organizations affected by proposed permits or rules can find the relevant proposed rulemaking in the Register, access the comment submission portal at Regulations.gov, and participate directly in the regulatory process. The modern FederalRegister.gov is designed to make this access practical rather than merely theoretical.
The Federal Register is not merely an external publication that agencies contribute to — it is the operational infrastructure of inter-agency governance. Several dimensions of this internal-to-government dependency deserve specific attention.
Legal authority and delegation. When Congress creates a regulatory program, it delegates authority to an agency to issue rules implementing that program. The agency's exercise of that authority requires Federal Register publication at every step: the proposed rule, the final rule, and any subsequent modifications. An agency that issues a rule without Federal Register publication has no legally effective rule — private parties cannot be bound by secret regulatory requirements. The Supreme Court established this principle emphatically in Federal Crop Insurance Corp. v. Merrill (1947), holding that parties dealing with the government are charged with notice of published regulations regardless of what government employees may have told them privately.
Inter-agency coordination and conflict management. Federal agencies often have overlapping or potentially conflicting regulatory jurisdictions — EPA and Army Corps on wetlands, FDA and USDA on food products, FTC and sector regulators on financial products. The Federal Register, combined with the formal coordination requirements of executive orders on regulatory review (EO 12866, administered by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs within OMB), provides the institutional mechanism for identifying and resolving inter-agency conflicts before rules take effect. OIRA's regulatory review process requires agencies to submit significant proposed and final rules before Federal Register publication; OIRA coordinates with affected agencies and may require revisions before a rule is published.
Executive orders and presidential coordination. Presidential executive orders — the principal mechanism through which a president directs executive branch operations — are legally effective only upon Federal Register publication. An executive order that is signed but not published is not legally effective. This publication requirement is the administrative law basis for the scrutiny that lawyers, journalists, and civil society organizations give to the specific date and content of Federal Register publication of executive orders — particularly those that create new obligations or restructure agency authority.
Congressional oversight and the Congressional Review Act. The Congressional Review Act (CRA) of 1996 requires agencies to submit final rules to Congress and GAO before they take effect, and gives Congress 60 legislative days to pass a resolution of disapproval to nullify a rule. The 60-day clock begins on the date of Federal Register publication — making the publication date a critical variable in whether a rule is subject to CRA challenge by a new Congress. The Trump administration's aggressive use of the CRA in 2017 — invalidating 16 rules from the Obama administration's final months — depended entirely on precise analysis of Federal Register publication dates and the CRA's procedural requirements.
The modern FederalRegister.gov interface represents a significant democratization of access to the Register's content. Before its launch in 2010, the official digital edition existed as a series of dense PDF files on GPO's servers — technically accessible but practically difficult to search, navigate, or analyze programmatically. The FR2.0 project, launched on the 75th anniversary of the Federal Register Act, rebuilt the publication as a structured, searchable, API-accessible web application built on open-source software and XML-formatted underlying data.
The site's features include full-text search across all documents since 1994 (with the complete 1936–1993 historical archive available on govinfo.gov and HeinOnline), agency-based browsing, document type filtering, topic-based categorization, citation linking between Federal Register documents and the corresponding CFR sections they amend, and integration with the regulatory docket system at Regulations.gov that allows users to navigate from a proposed rule to the public comments it received. The Public Inspection Desk — the system through which documents are made available for examination before official publication — is accessible through the site, giving practitioners advance access to documents scheduled for the next day's issue.
The FederalRegister.gov REST API, released alongside the site's launch, provides programmatic access to the same content in JSON and CSV formats. The API is used by regulatory intelligence firms, academic researchers, news organizations, and developers of civic technology applications. Commercial applications built on the API include compliance monitoring services for financial institutions, regulatory tracking tools for trade associations, and alert systems for advocacy organizations. The OFR has documented use cases including a financial services firm providing small banks with notifications of regulatory action specific to their operations, and the Sunlight Foundation's (now defunct) Scout application that combined Federal Register content with congressional and state legislative data.
An important caveat governs FederalRegister.gov's legal status: the XML-based web rendition does not currently have official legal standing. The official edition remains the SGML-based PDF version published on govinfo.gov. The OFR and GPO have stated their intention to eventually obtain ACFR sanction for the XML edition as an official publication, but as of 2026 that process is not complete. Legal research relying on FederalRegister.gov content should verify results against the official PDF edition on govinfo.gov.
The Federal Register's daily output accumulates over decades into a vast body of active federal regulation. The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) is the annual codification of that accumulation — organizing the complete body of active federal regulations by title (50 titles covering broad subject areas from General Administrative Personnel to Wildlife and Fisheries) and chapter (individual agencies' regulatory domains within each title). The CFR is revised annually on a staggered schedule, with different titles updated at different times of the year.
The annual revision cycle means the printed and official electronic CFR is always somewhat behind current regulatory activity: a rule published in the Federal Register is in effect immediately upon its specified effective date, but may not appear in the next annual CFR revision for months. The Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR), available at ecfr.gov, bridges this gap by providing a daily-updated working version of the CFR that incorporates Federal Register amendments as they are published. The eCFR is not the official legal edition — it is described as an "editorial compilation" — but it is the tool that practitioners actually use for current research because its daily update cycle reflects current law far more accurately than the annual official edition.
The OFR publishes several companion publications that together constitute the documentary infrastructure of federal governance:
Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)
The annual codification of all active federal regulations, organized by title and chapter. 50 titles; revised annually on a staggered schedule. The official legal statement of currently effective federal regulatory requirements.
govinfo.gov/app/collection/cfr
Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR)
Daily-updated working version of the CFR. Not the official legal edition but the practical reference for current research. Updated each federal business day to incorporate Federal Register amendments. The eCFR API is publicly accessible.
United States Statutes at Large
The official compilation of all legislation enacted by Congress in each session. The OFR receives enrolled bills from Congress and publishes them first as slip laws (individual pamphlets) and then in the Statutes at Large volumes.
govinfo.gov/app/collection/statute
Public Papers of the Presidents
The official compilation of presidential public communications — speeches, press conference transcripts, signing statements, messages to Congress, and other official presidential documents. Published annually.
govinfo.gov/app/collection/ppp
United States Government Manual
The official handbook of the federal government — describing the purposes, programs, and officials of each agency, department, commission, and board. A standard reference for anyone navigating the federal bureaucracy. Updated annually.
Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents
Superseded by the Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents (DCPD) in 2009 — a daily collection of official White House materials including executive orders, proclamations, signing statements, press briefings, and presidential speeches. Published on govinfo.gov.
govinfo.gov/app/collection/DCPD
The Federal Register is governed by the Administrative Committee of the Federal Register (ACFR), established by the Federal Register Act itself in 1935 as a permanent executive/legislative branch authority. The ACFR consists of four members: the Archivist of the United States (who serves as chair), the Director of the Government Publishing Office, an appointee of the Attorney General, and the Director of the Federal Register (who serves as secretary). The ACFR has rulemaking authority over the Federal Register publication system — setting prices, prescribing the manner and form of publication, and ensuring proper organization of materials — with regulations published in 1 CFR Chapter 1, subject to presidential approval (delegated jointly to the Archivist and the Attorney General under Executive Order 10530).
The Office of the Federal Register is a component of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which was established as an independent agency in 1985 (having previously been part of the General Services Administration). NARA's current Acting Archivist is Edward Forst, appointed following the departure of Colleen Shogan. The OFR Director serves as the operational head of the Register's publication system; the Director position has historically been a career civil service role within NARA rather than a political appointment, insulating the publication's editorial operations from direct political direction.
The OFR performs document authentication and editorial functions that are more significant than they might appear. Staff specialists review agency submissions for proper format, accurate citation of legal authority, appropriate use of regulatory language, and conformance with the rules of the Federal Register system before documents are accepted for publication. This review does not evaluate the substantive policy choices agencies make, but it enforces the technical requirements that give the Federal Register its legal reliability — ensuring, for example, that an agency correctly identifies the statutory authority for a rule, uses the required preamble structure, and properly identifies which sections of the CFR the rule amends.
The partnership between OFR and GPO for the production of FederalRegister.gov has been a model of inter-agency digital collaboration. The XML-based data pipeline that underlies the modern website — converting agency submissions through an editorial process into structured XML that is then rendered as both the official PDF edition and the web interface — was developed jointly and is maintained through a continuing partnership. The underlying source code for the FederalRegister.gov application is publicly available on GitHub, consistent with the open government and open data principles that motivated the FR2.0 project.
For accountability journalists, the Federal Register is one of the most valuable and underused primary sources available. Several specific uses deserve elaboration for reporters who have not developed Federal Register monitoring as a regular practice.
Rule preambles as primary sources. The preamble section of a final rule — typically many times longer than the rule text itself — contains the agency's own explanation of what it is doing and why, responses to specific public comments (often including verbatim quotations from comments by industry groups, advocacy organizations, and other agencies), citations to the scientific or economic evidence the agency relies on, and often admissions about uncertainty, costs, or unresolved questions that do not appear in press releases or congressional testimony. A reporter covering environmental regulation, financial oversight, or workplace safety can find detailed agency reasoning in rule preambles that is not available anywhere else.
Executive orders as news triggers. Every executive order appears in the Federal Register, often with a preamble that explains the administration's legal theory and policy rationale. The gap between what an executive order's title says and what its operative text actually does — a gap that is sometimes substantial — is only visible by reading the Register publication carefully.
Midnight rules and regulatory timing. The specific date of Federal Register publication matters enormously for the CRA challenge window and for transitions between administrations. A reporter covering regulatory policy in the final months of an administration will find the Federal Register an essential tracking tool for rules rushed out before the transition, and for the subsequent rescission efforts by the incoming administration.
Agency notices as early warning. Many significant environmental and land use decisions — permit applications, environmental impact statement notices, National Environmental Policy Act scoping meetings — appear first in the Federal Register notices section, often before local media is aware of them. Monitoring the notices for a specific geographic area or agency can give a journalist advance awareness of forthcoming decisions that will be significant locally.
The Federal Register is freely accessible in its entirety at federalregister.gov. The official PDF editions from 1994 forward are at govinfo.gov/app/collection/fr. The complete historical archive from 1936 through 1993 in scanned, text-searchable form is also on govinfo.gov; HeinOnline's Federal Register collection provides an alternative searchable historical archive. The FederalRegister.gov REST API documentation is at federalregister.gov/reader-aids/developer-resources/rest-api. Email subscription alerts for specific agencies, document types, or topic areas are available through the site. The eCFR is at ecfr.gov; eCFR API documentation at ecfr.gov/developers/documentation/api/v1. Public comments on proposed rules are submitted through regulations.gov. The OFR's own public affairs and reader aid resources are at archives.gov/federal-register.
https://www.federalregister.gov/
https://www.archives.gov/federal-register
https://www.archives.gov/files/federal-register/the-federal-register/history.pdf (70th Anniversary History)
https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/acfr/background.html
https://ballotpedia.org/Federal_Register
https://ballotpedia.org/Historical_additions_to_the_Federal_Register
https://cei.org/publication/10kc-2025-numbers-of-rules/ (CEI Ten Thousand Commandments 2025)
https://uploads.federalregister.gov/uploads/2012/11/FR2-API-Case-Study1.pdf (FR2.0 API Case Study)
https://news-rac.berkeley.edu/2010/07/federal-register-20-beta-site-launched.html
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