13. Environmental Protection Agency · Notable · Day one
Apply the Inauguration Day regulatory freeze to EPA with no exceptions
Printed page 436 13. Environmental Protection Agency
“The new President’s Inauguration Day regulatory review/freeze directives should avoid exceptions for EPA actions. This freeze should explicitly include quasi-regulatory actions, including assessments, determinations, standards, and guidance, that have failed to go through the notice-and-comment process and may date back years.”
What has happened
- Done
The Regulatory Freeze Pending Review memorandum of 2025-01-20 applies to "all executive departments and agencies" with no EPA exception — the only carve-out is the OMB Director's discretion for emergencies and statutory or judicial deadlines. It expressly reaches beyond rules as defined in 5 U.S.C. 551(4) to any "regulatory action" under EO 12866, any "guidance document" as defined in EO 13891, and "any agency statement of general applicability and future effect that sets forth a policy on a statutory, regulatory, or technical issue or an interpretation of a statutory or regulatory issue" — the quasi-regulatory actions the Quote names. EPA then applied it, delaying the effective dates of rules published in the transition (#1054).
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Read at
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-01-28/html/2025-01906.htmrather than through the Federal Register page, which 302s automated fetches. - Boundary call: the Quote’s tail — quasi-regulatory actions that “may date back years” — is read as description of what such actions are like, not as a demand that the freeze reach back over old guidance. On the stricter reading the memorandum operates only on pending and not-yet-effective actions and this would be partial. Flagged for a spot check.
- Action
- issue
- Object
- Inauguration Day regulatory freeze as applied to EPA
- ID
- 1155