The Register prints the policy

Radical immigration policy and a silencing of our public health officials

Updates to federal policy are formally announced to the public through daily issues of the Federal Register, a publication of the National Archives and Records Administration. A new issue with the formal, accepted documentation is printed each workday, but notices are released “for Public Inspection” when they are submitted to the Office of the Federal Register—a way to see “Tomorrow’s Documents Today”. The Federal Register prints things like notices of proposed rulemaking (NPRMs; i.e., federal regulations), requests for regulatory waivers, regular regulatory agenda updates, notices of meetings, and public filings required by legislation (e.g., new sanctions and foreign arms sales, proposed consent decrees, SEC registrations, petitions and permit applications).

With the second Trump Administration’s formal rise to power this week, it was only a matter of time before the policy became official—and so long as our government broadly maintains its organizational outlines and requires public notice of policy, a printing in the Federal Register is where we will see quote-unquote official policy. It’s certainly a more concrete step towards action than words blathered by a public official, although it’s also not action itself. The Federal Register is an official place to look for drastic changes to the federal government presaged by Project 2025; the actions of people will ultimately be what matters*.

Now that we are three(!) days into the second Trump Administration, the first Trumpy additions to the Federal Register are starting to hit. Given the nature of the Register, there’s a bit of a lag. The most recent issues include notices filed by the Biden Administration or that resulted from processes that began during the Biden Administration. Some of the first actions of the Trump Administration have been to withdraw many those Biden-era notices. I’ll address some of those withdrawals in a sec.

One of the first major, operative notices issued by the new Trump administration “for Public Inspection” is 2025-01720, Designating Aliens for Expedited Removal, set to be officially published on 1/24. This notice expands the group of people who can be removed from the United States without an official hearing to that of the harshest interpretation of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows for discretion in its interpretation. It’s a rescission of a Biden Administration order that itself rescinded the homonymous order of the first Trump Administration (a fine example of the ping-ponging being experienced by federal employees right now, thanks to U.S. voters).

This is expressly in line with Project 2025’s agenda, which calls for applying “the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) as written by Congress” (MFL** pg. 141); that is, without any discretionary leeway. Expanding expedited removal in particular is called out by name in the agenda (MFL pg. 142). The Federal Register notice was signed by Benjamine C. Huffman, the Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. The official nominee is Kristi Noem, former Governor of South Dakota. A key component of Project 2025 was ensuring that acting officials were installed as quickly as possible in the second Trump Administration, especially to ensure that their immigration agenda could be immediately implemented (MFL pg. 136). Thus, all of this is aligned with the Project 2025 immigration game plan. They told us what they were going to do, and they are doing it.

Huffman, the current Acting Secretary, is a long-time employee of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, who has risen through the ranks to reach the honor of carrying out Trump and Project 2025’s immigration agenda before the Senate is given an opportunity to carry out its Advise and Consent duties. Huffman has also immediately disbanded all DHS outside advisory committee members (also exactly prescribed by Project 2025; MFL pg. 138).

Now about those Federal Register withdrawals…

As I mentioned above, many of the first Federal Register notices from the second Trump Administration are withdrawals. The withdrawals hit several government agencies, but there’s an obvious trend—every Public Inspection notice from Health and Human Services except for the very standard semiannual regulatory agenda has been withdrawn. They include all remaining Biden-era notices from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The subject matter ranges from now-withdrawn public meeting notices to now-withdrawn foreign cooperative agreements and a now-withdrawn research report. Why have these seemingly benign, normal-government-business activities been slated to be removed from public view?

The public health information withdrawal is even more insidious. Standard journalism outlets are reporting that our nation’s public health agencies have been officially silenced within the Trump Administration. That is, employees within them have been prevented from issuing any communications with the public, including the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a critical resource for the healthcare community. It will be interesting to see if this “pause”—set to end February 1—will extend to the next issues of the CDC’s peer-reviewed journals. It is a particularly dangerous time to lose communications from our national public health services given the current multi-state, multi-species outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza.

The MAGA and conservative movements are still angry at our national healthcare officials for what they perceive as overreach during the COVID-19 pandemic. Project 2025 states, “The federal government’s public health apparatus has lost the public’s trust” (MFL pg. 451). Project 2025 does not explicitly outline a strategy of kicking off the 2025 administration with a pausing of communications from the health agencies. The Project does state that “[n]ever again should public health bureaucrats be allowed to hide information, ignore information, or mislead the public concerning the efficacy or dangers associated with any recommended health interventions” (MFL pg. 452). It additionally prescribes the division of the CDC into two entities: one agency that collects and distributes epidemiological data and a second “responsible for public health with a severely confined ability to make policy recommendations” (MFL pg. 453), which would ostensibly silo the data from the policy. It will be essential to watch these public health developments to see if the communications “pause” is simply a short-term punishment for COVID policy or if it portends longer-term changes to our national health policies.

---

* A discussion of what has happened to our understanding of the rule of law this week is warranted. I am far from qualified to have it, but it’s probably past time for us to stop hiding behind our lack of qualifications and address the problems at hand.

** The Mandate for Leadership of 2025, which is the policy agenda of Project 2025.