The Federal Register’s September 29 issue ran to 116 documents, and the one that will matter most in a year is a pair of Federal Reserve proposals that start building the rulebook for bank-issued stablecoins. The same issue also carried two final rules, from the Education Department and the Small Business Administration, that took effect the same day they were published and skipped public comment entirely, plus a thirty-year-old advisory committee that needed a full “reestablishment” instead of a routine renewal.
- Federal Reserve: two proposed rules start building the GENIUS Act stablecoin regime. The Fed proposed a general framework for supervising the “permitted payment stablecoin issuers” that fall under its jurisdiction, including a ban on bundling stablecoin services with other bank products, and a companion rule spelling out exactly how a state member bank asks for approval to let a subsidiary issue a stablecoin. Congress passed the GENIUS Act to bring stablecoins under bank-style oversight for the first time, so these are the rules that will actually decide which banks can get into the business and what strings come attached; because this is the first real test of a brand-new statute, how the Fed defines its terms here will shape the stablecoin market for years. (Implementing the Federal Reserve Board’s Responsibilities Under the GENIUS Act, document 2026-19860; Application Procedures for Board-Supervised Insured Depository Institutions Seeking Approval for a Subsidiary To Issue Payment Stablecoins, document 2026-19899)
- Education Department repeals the 2024 Title IX rule, effective the same day, with no public comment. The Department’s final rule undoes the prior administration’s 2024 Title IX regulations and restores the text that existed before that rulemaking, touching more than twenty sections of 34 CFR Part 106. It took effect on September 29, the day it was published, because the Department invoked a “good cause” exception, arguing that notice-and-comment would be “contrary to the public interest” since it would delay updating the CFR. Comment periods exist so schools, students, and advocacy groups can flag problems before a rule takes hold; skipping one entirely on a rule this consequential, and making it effective immediately rather than the usual 30 or 60 days out, is the kind of shortcut that tends to draw a legal challenge over whether “good cause” really applied. (Recodification of Title IX Rules, document 2026-19929)
- SBA strips affirmative-action provisions from its nondiscrimination rules, also effective immediately with no comment period. The rule rescinds or revises four provisions of 13 CFR Part 112, arguing the existing language encourages racial classifications that aren’t “narrowly tailored” enough to survive current equal-protection case law. SBA used a different legal shortcut than Education did, an Administrative Procedure Act exception for rules touching federal loans, grants, and benefits, but landed on the same result: no advance notice, no chance for small businesses or grant recipients to comment on a rule that changes the legal standards they have to follow, and it applies as soon as it’s published. Two same-day-effective, comment-free final rules landing in the same day’s Register, on unrelated topics but the same procedural pattern, is worth watching as a signal of how this administration is choosing to move fast on rules it considers legally exposed. (Removing Constitutional Concerns From SBA Programs, document 2026-19878)
- Interior “reestablishes” a 30-year-old Alaska oil-spill advisory committee instead of simply renewing its charter. The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Public Advisory Committee, created by the 1991 legal settlement between the U.S. and Alaska, has advised on commercial fishing, tourism, subsistence hunting, and wildlife recovery in Prince William Sound continuously since 1992. Federal advisory committees are normally kept alive through routine rechartering under the Federal Advisory Committee Act; needing a full “reestablishment” for a body with that long and continuous a track record suggests its charter lapsed rather than being renewed on schedule, though the notice itself never explains why. Public comments on the reestablishment are due October 6, about a week after publication. (Reestablishment of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Public Advisory Committee, document 2026-19933)
- Justice Department raises immigration court fees under this year’s budget law. The Executive Office for Immigration Review announced the fiscal year 2027 inflation adjustment to fees immigrants and their attorneys pay on certain DHS forms filed in immigration court, fees that exist because of a provision in this year’s budget reconciliation law rather than a standard appropriation. Because these fees now fund part of immigration court operations directly, the size of each year’s adjustment is a small but real gauge of how much the administration is leaning on user fees, instead of congressional appropriations, to keep the immigration court system running. (Inflation Adjustment for EOIR OBBBA Fees for Certain DHS Forms; Fiscal Year 2027, document 2026-19841)
This edition reflects all 116 documents published in the Federal Register on September 29, 2026. Excluded as routine: standard OMB/PRA information-collection notices (roughly two dozen), SEC self-regulatory-organization rule filings (eleven, from exchanges and clearinghouses including Nasdaq, Cboe, IEX, LCH SA, and the Depository Trust Company), antidumping and countervailing-duty proceedings (four, covering methionine, oil country tubular goods, wooden fence pickets, and boltless steel shelving), routine safety-zone, fishery, and environmental-review notices, Sunshine Act meeting announcements, individual DEA registration Decision and Order notices, Privacy Act computer-matching notices for state Lifeline eligibility verification, disaster-declaration notices, and other individually routine administrative filings.
