The Federal Register desk · read live
Today’s issue.
Every document in it.
The Federal Register is the daily journal of the United States government: the rules, proposed rules, notices and presidential documents that federal agencies publish, one issue every working day. This page reads it. The current issue is counted by type and then listed in full, what agencies filed this morning for tomorrow is listed beside it, and every comment period closing inside the next thirty days is listed with the days remaining.
The Register runs a public API and this desk asks it directly — no key, no account, no server of ours in the middle. Every title, abstract, agency name, docket number, page count and closing date below is printed as the Register returned it a moment ago, and every document is one click from its own page at federalregister.gov and from the PDF the Government Publishing Office prints. Where a number is worked out here rather than read, the page says so on the line under it.
the current issue, counted · what is filed for tomorrow · comment periods closing inside thirty days · a search of the whole Register
Today’s issue
Counted, then listed.
The Register publishes four kinds of document and this is how many of each are in the current issue. The counts are not a tally of the rows below them: they come from the API’s own counting endpoint, asked about this one issue, which is the only way to be sure a count is the issue’s and not merely of what arrived. Press a counter to narrow the list to that kind. Every entry carries the abstract the agency filed with it, in the agency’s own words or none at all.
Today’s issue
waiting for the Register
On the desk tomorrow
Filed today. Published later.
Before a document appears in an issue it sits on public inspection at the Office of the Federal Register, filed and readable but not yet published. This is that list, as it stands right now: what each document is, which agency filed it, the hour it was filed, and the issue it is scheduled for. Special filings — the ones an agency asked to have filed outside the regular window, usually because they cannot wait — are listed first and named as such. It is the same list the Register’s own reading room shows, and it is a day ahead of the issue above.
On public inspection
waiting for the filings
Comment closes
Thirty days to say something.
When an agency proposes a rule it has to take comments from the public, and the window shuts on a stated day. These are the documents whose window shuts inside the next thirty days, soonest first, with the days remaining counted from your own clock. Where the Register gives a regulations.gov address for the docket, the entry links straight to the form you would file on; where it gives none, the entry says the docket number and nothing more, because the address is the Register’s to give and not this page’s to guess.
One caution, and it is the reason to read the document itself: the Register publishes a closing date, not an hour. A comment period usually shuts at the end of that day in Washington, but the document is where the deadline is actually stated, and some of them state it differently. Treat the count below as the number of days you have, not the number of hours.
Closing soon
waiting for the Register
The filter
Ask the Register directly.
A word, an agency, a kind of document. The three go to the Register as conditions on one request, so what comes back is its answer to the whole question and not this page’s guess at it: the count is the count of everything that matches, twenty are drawn at a time, and pressing More asks for the next twenty rather than revealing rows already held. Where a search term is given, the passage under each result is the Register’s own excerpt with its own matches marked. A search you run is written into this page’s address, so it can be sent to somebody.
The filter
nothing asked yet
Leave the term empty and pick an agency to read everything it has published, newest first.
About
A reader, not the record.
Everything on this page comes from the Federal Register’s own public API at federalregister.gov, read by your browser directly. Four endpoints do all of it: the documents endpoint fills the issue, the comment list and the filter; the type-facets endpoint supplies the counts on the four counters; the public-inspection endpoint fills tomorrow’s desk; and the agencies endpoint fills the agency menu. No key, no account, no cache of ours in between. If a call fails, the panel it feeds says the call failed and shows nothing — it does not fall back on something it kept from an earlier day.
This is not the official text and it is not legal advice. The legal edition of the Federal Register is the one the Government Publishing Office prints and certifies at govinfo.gov; the Register’s own site at federalregister.gov is the authority on every document listed here, and each entry links to it and to the GPO’s PDF. Nothing on this page has been summarised, paraphrased or shortened: an abstract is the one the agency filed, an excerpt is the one the API returned, and a document with neither is shown with neither.
Two things are worked out here rather than read, and both are said where they appear. The days remaining on a comment period are counted from midnight on your own clock to the closing date the API gave, in whole days. The totals under the counters are the API’s counts for the issue, and where a list is shorter than the count above it the page says how much shorter. Dates are dates: a publication date is a day and no hour, and it is never dressed up as a time. The filing times on the public-inspection panel are the exception, and they are shown as times because the Register really does stamp them to the minute.
The API has two limits worth knowing. It stops counting a result set at ten thousand, so a broad search reports “10,000 or more” rather than a number the desk made up, and it stops paging at fifty pages, which the pager says when you reach it. To comment on a document, follow the regulations.gov link on its entry, or the docket number to regulations.gov yourself. Nothing you type on this page is stored or sent anywhere but to the Register.