The Investigative Journal’s daily survey of the Federal Register highlights eight notable items posted in the April 29, 2026 edition. Comment windows, effective dates, and direct links to the underlying notices are flagged throughout. Records cited below are drawn from federalregister.gov and the issuing agencies’ own publications.
1. OCC Preempts Illinois Interchange Fee Prohibition Act
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, an arm of the Department of the Treasury, issued an interim final order declaring that federal banking law preempts the Illinois Interchange Fee Prohibition Act. According to the OCC’s filing, the state law would have barred national banks and federal savings associations from charging or receiving interchange fees on the tax and gratuity portions of payment-card transactions, and would have restricted how those institutions use transaction data. The OCC concluded that those provisions impermissibly intrude on powers granted to national banks under the National Bank Act and the Home Owners’ Loan Act.
The order takes effect immediately, but the agency is taking comments through May 29, 2026. Records suggest the dispute is unusually consequential because Illinois was the first state to attempt to legislate carve-outs of the interchange-fee structure that underwrites most U.S. credit and debit card processing. National retailers, community banks, payment networks, and consumer groups have all been preparing positions for months. Filings indicate the OCC’s preemption analysis relies on long-standing case law holding that state attempts to micromanage how federally chartered banks price their services are blocked by federal preemption.
Read the order: Order Preempting the Illinois Interchange Fee Prohibition Act (2026-08341).
2. OCC Companion Rule: National Bank Non-Interest Charges and Fees
Issued the same day, the OCC’s companion interim final rule on “National Bank Non-Interest Charges and Fees” reads as a regulatory belt-and-suspenders to the preemption order above. The rule clarifies that a national bank’s statutory power to charge non-interest fees includes the power to “assess, collect, impose, levy, receive, reserve, take, or otherwise obtain” such fees — including interchange fees from credit and debit card operations. It further confirms that national banks may charge those fees even when they are set by, or determined in consultation with, third parties such as card networks.
According to the agency, the dual filings are intended to remove ambiguity that has crept into lower-court litigation following several state-law challenges. Comments are due May 29, 2026. The economic stakes are large: U.S. interchange revenues are estimated in industry studies to exceed $170 billion per year, and any regulatory uncertainty about whether national banks may charge them — or about which authority sets the rate — has historically rippled into card-network pricing schedules and merchant-acceptance contracts.
Read the rule: National Bank Non-Interest Charges and Fees (2026-08328).
3. DHS Codifies USCIS Immigration Fees Tied to H.R.1 Reconciliation Bill
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services published an interim final rule codifying immigration fee structures and procedural changes mandated by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R.1), the reconciliation package signed earlier in this Congress. The rule fixes regulatory text for the new asylum filing fee and the annual asylum-pending fee, including the consequences of non-payment; the new Form I-94 fee; the validity period for several categories of employment authorization documents; and the agency’s retention of the Form I-589 (asylum application) filing fee on every submission.
DHS framed the rule as necessary to align USCIS regulations with statutory text. According to the filing, the rule takes effect immediately but the public may submit comments through June 29, 2026. The fee package — particularly the recurring annual asylum fee — is among the most consequential procedural changes to the asylum system in recent memory, and immigration counsel will need to absorb the rule before the next adjudication cycle.
Read the rule: USCIS Immigration Fees and Related Procedures Required by H.R.1 (2026-08333).
4. Treasury Moves to End Paper Checks for Federal Disbursements
The Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service published a proposed rule implementing Executive Order 14247, “Modernizing Payments To and From America’s Bank Account,” which directs the Secretary of the Treasury to halt the issuance of paper checks for federal disbursements to the maximum extent permitted by law. The proposal would amend existing Treasury regulations governing the limited circumstances in which paper checks may still be cut by federal agencies.
According to Treasury, transitioning all federal payments to electronic methods is intended to cut costs, reduce check fraud, and accelerate delivery to recipients. Filings indicate the rule will preserve narrow carve-outs where electronic payments are not feasible — a category Treasury says it will revise as it identifies new operational hurdles among recipients without bank accounts. The comment window closes June 15, 2026. The implementation timetable, the unbanked-recipient exception scope, and the interaction with paper-check Social Security and tax-refund disbursements are likely to dominate public comments.
Read the proposal: Management of Federal Agency Disbursements (2026-08278).
5. HUD Delays Effective Date of January 2025 HOME Program Rule
The Department of Housing and Urban Development published a final action delaying the effective date of the January 6, 2025, HOME Investment Partnerships Program rule — for all provisions not already in force — until HUD publishes an additional final rule. The HOME program is the largest federal block grant directed exclusively at producing affordable housing, and the 2025 rulemaking included program updates and streamlining changes that participating jurisdictions had been preparing to absorb.
The notice was tagged as economically or otherwise significant under Executive Order 12866 in the Federal Register’s metadata, signaling that HUD anticipates measurable downstream effects on state and local recipients. Records suggest the delay gives HUD additional time to weigh implementation feedback received during the prior administration’s transition. Affordable-housing developers, public-housing authorities, and tribal participants should verify which provisions are in effect today versus paused.
Read the notice: HOME Investment Partnerships Program: Further Program Updates and Streamlining (2026-08339).
6. Commerce Issues Technical Corrections to Tariff Schedule Under Proclamation 11021
The Bureau of Industry and Security at the Department of Commerce posted technical corrections to Annex IV of Presidential Proclamation 11021, “Strengthening Actions Taken to Adjust Imports of Aluminum, Steel, and Copper Into the United States,” which the President signed on April 2, 2026. The proclamation expanded duties on covered metal imports on national-security grounds; the implementing notice updates the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTSUS) to keep classifications aligned with the proclamation’s text and adds a clarification.
According to the notice, the corrections were authorized by the proclamation itself, which empowered the Secretary of Commerce to publish HTSUS modifications and technical fixes. Importers, customs brokers, and downstream manufacturers should reconcile their broker tariff tables against the corrected Annex IV before their next entry filing. The Federal Register’s metadata lists no comment window, since the notice merely effectuates a presidential directive.
Read the notice: Notice of Technical Corrections to the HTSUS for Proclamation 11021 (2026-08297).
7. EPA Proposes to Approve Maryland Air-Quality Plan for Waste Combustors
The Environmental Protection Agency proposed to approve a State Implementation Plan revision submitted by Maryland under the Clean Air Act. The state’s plan adds Reasonably Available Control Technology requirements to limit emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOₓ) from municipal waste combustors operating inside the state. NOₓ is a precursor to ground-level ozone, and the Mid-Atlantic ozone-transport region remains a long-standing focus of EPA enforcement.
If finalized as proposed, Maryland operators would have to demonstrate compliance with the state’s RACT thresholds and document their control-technology choices. The comment window closes May 29, 2026. Records suggest the proposal is part of EPA’s ongoing effort to clear a backlog of state plan revisions; the agency has been processing similar SIP revisions across multiple states throughout the spring.
Read the proposal: Air Plan Approval; Maryland; RACT for Municipal Waste Combustors (2026-08364).
8. DOJ Establishes Civil Rights Division Reporting Portal as a Privacy Act System of Records
The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division published a Privacy Act System of Records Notice (SORN) for a new “Civil Rights Division Reporting Portal,” numbered JUSTICE/CRT-012. According to the SORN, the portal will operate as a web-based intake form and database that lets the public report alleged civil rights violations directly to CRT, supplementing the division’s hardcopy mail, telephone, email, and fax intakes. The system will also support status updates back to reporting parties and allow CRT to track portal metrics internally.
For TIJ readers tracking accountability journalism, the SORN is notable for two reasons. First, the routine-uses section of any DOJ Privacy Act notice is the doorway through which complaint data can flow to other federal agencies, congressional committees, and litigation discovery — and the precise list will determine how visible the portal’s content is to outside oversight. Second, the move continues a multi-year trend at federal civil-rights enforcers toward funneling all public engagement through a single front-door application, a design choice that has implications for FOIA processing, intake auditing, and disparate-treatment analysis.
Read the notice: Privacy Act of 1974; Systems of Records — JUSTICE/CRT-012 (2026-08317).
Items Relevant to TIJ’s Investigative Beats
Three of today’s items map directly to beats The Investigative Journal tracks. The OCC’s twin actions on interchange fees are accountability stories about federal authority over financial-services pricing — the kind of regulatory pivot that often shows up months later in litigation discovery, in card-network disclosures, and in state attorney-general filings. Treasury’s paper-check phase-out is the operational fulcrum of Executive Order 14247 and will be measured by whether unbanked-recipient carve-outs survive in the final rule. The DOJ Civil Rights Reporting Portal SORN deserves a follow-up FOIA request after the comment window closes: how DOJ defines its routine uses determines whether independent watchdogs can audit which reports actually reach an investigator.
Each of the entries above is summarized from the Federal Register’s own published text. Where the agencies invite public comment, deadlines are flagged. The Investigative Journal will continue to track the most consequential filings as comment windows close and final rules issue.
Sources: Federal Register documents 2026-08341, 2026-08328, 2026-08333, 2026-08278, 2026-08339, 2026-08297, 2026-08364, and 2026-08317, all linked above. Filings retrieved from federalregister.gov on April 30, 2026.