Thursday’s Federal Register, Volume 91, Number 198, ran 242 numbered pages, and the item that matters most is a health order the government has now written five times since June.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention extended its suspension of the right of certain travelers to enter the United States because of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the notice shows how an emergency measure settles into a routine.
The Transportation Department also gave the airlines a delay they requested, the Justice Department proposed to keep new immigration fraud files closed to the people named in them, and the Internal Revenue Service proposed rules that make taxpayers repay every dollar of excess health subsidy.
Thirty Days at a Time
The notice publishes an order signed October 9 by Assistant Secretary for Health Brian Christine, effective at 5 p.m. on October 11 and running through November 10. It bars entry of people who were in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda or South Sudan within the previous 21 days, regardless of their country of origin. Exceptions cover citizens and nationals, military and government personnel serving overseas, and people whom customs officers or CDC excuse case by case.
The chain runs back to May 18, when CDC issued the first order, and to May 22, when an amended order reflected a change to 42 CFR 71.40(f) that ended the exemption for lawful permanent residents. New 30 day orders followed on June 21, July 13, August 12 and September 11, each continuing the last without change, and now this one.
The notice concedes that the order is not a rule subject to notice and comment and took effect immediately, then offers a 15 day comment period that closes October 30. Publication came four days after the order took effect, so the public is invited to weigh in on a measure that is already running, and the order expires eleven days after comments close. CDC also says it lacks the personnel to enforce the order, so it asked the Department of Homeland Security to do it, and DHS has separately redirected affected flights to specific airports.
The signed order is on the CDC site.
A Map With No Legend
The epidemiology is grim by CDC’s own account. It calls the outbreak the largest and deadliest in the history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the second largest on record, with seven times as many cases at 100 days as the 2014 West Africa outbreak. The country reported 8,665 confirmed cases and 4,178 deaths across 64 health zones as of October 5, up from 6,779 cases and 3,267 deaths across 61 zones on September 9, and the virus has reached another province. Contact tracing slipped to 80 percent from 87 percent in September, well under the 95 percent CDC says is needed to slow the spread, and the notice says the true size may be two to four times what surveillance shows.
The one public comment on the previous order asked CDC to publish measurable criteria for adding and removing countries, noting that Uganda and South Sudan are in a different position from the Congo. It also questioned applying the order to lawful permanent residents and to people who only passed through. CDC replied that a blanket threshold based on presence in a listed country is more protective and easier to run than individual exposure assessments, called the status of residents outside the scope of the notice, and promised to keep evaluating. It did not publish criteria.
The country list shows why the question was fair. Uganda reported 20 confirmed cases and two confirmed deaths, with the last confirmed case on June 21, and finished its 42 day monitoring period on August 27. The notice acknowledges that Uganda contained its outbreak, yet Uganda remains covered, and CDC rates it at travel health notice Level 2, against Level 4 for two Congolese provinces. South Sudan has reported no confirmed cases in this outbreak and is covered because of its border and weak health system. Kenya announced its first case on October 6, a traveler who went from the Congo through Uganda and flew from Kampala to Nairobi on October 2, and Kenya is not on the list.
What follows is an inference and not a statement in the notice. The list appears to follow travel corridors and border exposure more than case counts. The reasoning rests on three passages, the treatment of Uganda after its monitoring period ended, the description of South Sudan as high risk without a confirmed case, and CDC’s reply to the comment declining to adopt individual or measurable standards. The notice never says what would take a country off the list.
Asked on the Twenty First, Granted With Four Days to Spare
The Transportation Department delayed the effective date of a September 3 final rule on how airlines classify the causes of delays and cancellations, moving it from October 19 to February 1, 2027. The rule implements a provision of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 and requires ten kinds of events to be excluded from the Air Carrier cause code, which is reserved for circumstances within a carrier’s control, and sorted into a new category. Airlines for America asked for the delay in a September 21 letter, saying carriers needed time for a revised information collection to win approval from the Office of Management and Budget. The new categories now apply to flights on or after January 1, 2027.
DOT skipped notice and comment on the ground that there was not enough time before October 19, and it said it only recently became aware of the carriers’ need. The notice appeared 24 days after the letter. What follows is an inference. The September rule told readers that it required revisions to an information collection and approval from OMB, which suggests the timeline was knowable when the rule was written. The reasoning rests only on those two statements, and the notice does not say when DOT sought OMB approval.
The Rest of the Docket
Justice published two new Privacy Act records systems, each paired with a proposed exemption. The first covers the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s Fraud and Abuse Prevention Program, with records on complainants, witnesses and subjects that include alien registration numbers and audio recordings of hearings. A proposed rule would exempt it from the Act’s accounting of disclosures and access provisions, which include a person’s right to request their own records, citing law enforcement sensitivity.
The notice lists a March 22, 2025 presidential memorandum on preventing abuses of the legal system among its authorities. A second proposal exempts a new Bureau of Justice Statistics data system that holds names and Social Security numbers, to protect statistical confidentiality. Comments on both are due November 16.
The IRS proposed rules carrying out the 2025 budget law’s changes to the premium tax credit. For tax years after 2025 the cap on repaying excess advance payments is gone and the full excess is added to tax liability, lawfully present noncitizens under 100 percent of the poverty level lose eligibility, and enrollment through an income change special enrollment period no longer qualifies. Comments are due November 30, with a telephone hearing on December 8.
The Federal Maritime Commission proposed a $200,000 per voyage fee on Spanish vessels and limits on imports of certain Spanish goods, over Spain’s denial of docking to certain vessels. The Commission says its December 2024 notice drew more than 8,000 comments, many outside the investigation’s scope. Spain argued that the Commission lacks jurisdiction and that diplomacy is the proper path, and the Commission replied that it can rescind remedies after a diplomatic solution. Comments are due December 14.
The Federal Labor Relations Authority restored its earlier regulations after a federal court in Massachusetts held its March 24 interim final rule arbitrary and capricious and vacated it, a rule from which Member Anne Wagner had dissented.
The Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a 56 page rewrite of its fund cross trading rule that would widen the securities eligible for such trades and add fund reporting, with comments due December 14.
The National Credit Union Administration issued three proposals. One finalizes interim Central Liquidity Facility rules from 2020 and 2021, six years on, and another says federal credit unions need not seek a legal staff opinion before petitioning the Board for new incidental powers.
The Farm Credit Administration modified four records systems, and one notice reports a filing with Congress and OMB on a date that appears as three asterisks.
The Food and Drug Administration reprinted four emergency use authorizations for animal drugs against New World screwworm, issued to Elanco, Zoetis, Bimeda and Sergeant’s Pet Care between August 7 and September 3.
The Office of Personnel Management issued a direct final rule making technical updates to its Family and Medical Leave Act rules for statutory changes enacted in January 2021 and December 2023.
This edition reviewed all 242 documents published in today’s Federal Register issue. Excluded as routine, absent an anomaly signal: agency information-collection notices under the Paperwork Reduction Act, meeting and hearing announcements, FAA airworthiness directives and airspace designations, FEMA flood hazard determinations, SBA disaster declarations, antidumping and countervailing-duty determinations from the International Trade Administration and International Trade Commission, SEC self-regulatory-organization filings, and routine Postal Regulatory Commission, PBGC, and Defense Department filings.
