Mr. Reince Priebus, Assistant to the U.S. President and Chief of Staff, has sent a Memorandum dated January 20, 2017, to the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies. This Memorandum is entitled Regulatory Freeze Pending Review. It states that
“The President has asked me to communicate to each of you his plan for managing the Federal regulatory process at the outset of his Administration. In order to ensure that the President’s appointees or designees have the opportunity to review any new or pending regulations, I ask on behalf of the President that you immediately take the following steps….”
The memorandum then spells out several actions the Departments and agencies must take with regulations they are working on. The memorandum defines regulation as follows:
“As used in this memorandum, ‘regulation’ has the meaning given to
‘regulatory action’ in section 3(e) of Executive Order 12866, and also
includes any ‘guidance document’ as defined in section 3(g) thereof as it existed when Executive Order 13422 was in effect. That is, the requirements of this memorandum apply to ‘any substantive action by an agency (normally published in the Federal Register) that promulgates or is expected to lead to the promulgation of a final rule or regulation, including notices of inquiry, advance notices of proposed rulemaking, and notices of proposed rulemaking,’ and also covers 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 U.S. Office of Management and Budget will implement this regulatory review.
