Presidential Memorandum – Regulatory Freeze

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On January 20, 2025, President Trump issued a Presidential memorandum entitled Regulatory Freeze Pending Review (Order). The following is a summary of the key aspects of the Order and the requirements for compliance by affected departments and agencies, including the FCC:

1) Do not propose or issue any rule in any manner, including by sending a rule to the Office of the Federal Register (Federal Register) until a department or agency head appointed by the President reviews and approves the rule.

2) Immediately withdraw any rules that have been sent to the Federal Register but not yet published so that they can be reviewed and approved by a department or agency head.

3) Consistent with applicable law, consider postponing for 60 days from the date of the Order the effective date for any rules that have been published in the Federal Register or any rules that have been issued but have not taken effect for the purpose of reviewing any questions of fact, law, and policy that the rules may raise. The Order also provides for the consideration of further delays beyond the 60-day period.

4) Following the postponement described in #3 above, no further action is required for those rules that raise no substantial questions of fact, law, or policy.

5) Comply in all circumstances with any applicable Executive Orders concerning regulatory management.

The Order also clarifies that the requirements listed above apply not only to rules, but to any substantive action by an agency that promulgates or is expected to lead to the promulgation of a final rule or regulation, including Notices of Inquiry (NOI) and Notices of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM). Finally, the Order stipulates that should actions be identified that were undertaken prior to January 20, 2025 that frustrate the purpose underlying the Order, the terms of the Order may be extended to address these situations.

The implications of the Order are far reaching and potentially effect FCC rulings taken in the past and those that are currently pending. In recent months on this site, we have discussed many actions and rulings that have been enacted by the FCC that could potentially be affected by this Order. In the 1/21/25 edition of the ICORE Blog we discussed the Commission’s adoption on 1/15/25 of a Declaratory Ruling and NPRM addressing the need to protect the nation’s communications networks from cybersecurity threats and attacks. The Declaratory Ruling states that telecommunications carriers’ responsibilities under section 105 of Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act extends not only to the equipment they deploy in their networks but also to how they manage their networks. The NPRM proposes to adopt specific cybersecurity and supply chain risk management plan requirements and notably would apply these requirements to a broader universe of service providers. The Commission stated that the terms of the Declaratory Ruling were effective immediately and set in place a comment and reply comment period tied to the publication of the Declaratory Order and NPRM in the Federal Register. Given the President’s Order, it is unclear as to what rules service providers will ultimately be required to follow.

On a similar note, in the 11/26/24 edition of the ICORE Blog we provided an update relative to FCC’s 7/18/24 Order related to NG911. In this edition we pointed out that certain aspects of the NG911 Order were not yet effective pending approval by the Office of Management and Budget OMB) under the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA). The OMB/PRA process relative to the NG911 Order is presently still ongoing but could potentially be affected by the Regulatory Freeze Order Described above.

Like the two examples described above, the Regulatory Freeze Order will potentially affect recent and past FCC Orders, NOIs, and NPRMs. We will continue to closely monitor this issue and will provide updates as more information becomes available.

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