The Monday, Aug. 24 edition of the Federal Register runs 135 pages (91 FR 54657–54791) and carries 84 documents from 32 agencies: five final rules, five proposed rules, 73 notices, and a single presidential document. That presidential document is the one with money attached — the formal record of President Trump’s three-day suspension of new tariffs on Canadian goods, published two days after the suspension expired. Below, TIJ’s daily walk through the entries that matter, with comment deadlines for readers who want a say.
A Tariff Pause, Published After the Clock Ran Out
Leading the issue is Proclamation 11056, signed Aug. 18, which temporarily suspended the additional duties on Canadian alcoholic beverages, dairy, and motor vehicles that the President imposed on July 20 in Proclamations 11046, 11047, and 11048. Those July proclamations invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1338) — a Depression-era authority that permits duties of up to 50 percent against countries found to discriminate against U.S. commerce — in what trade-law analysts at White & Case describe as the first use of Section 338 in the statute’s history.
The proclamation’s stated rationale for the pause: senior executive branch officials advised that “Canada has expressed a commitment to remove the discriminations” at issue — a ban on U.S. alcoholic beverages in provincial retail, cheese tariff-rate-quota allocation practices, and Canada’s motor vehicle tariff scheme — and that the public interest favored a three-day suspension while negotiations continued. The operative text moved the duties’ effective date from Aug. 19 to 12:01 a.m. Eastern on Aug. 22, and directed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to make any needed tariff-schedule modifications and process refunds of duties already collected.
By the time the proclamation reached print this morning, the reprieve had lapsed. Customs brokerage GHY International reported that the 50 percent duties took effect Aug. 22 as scheduled, with CBP entry guidance issued Aug. 21 — and notes the duties apply based on the date goods enter the United States, regardless of USMCA-originating status. No further suspension had appeared in the Federal Register as of this morning’s issue. For importers, the practical record now rests with CBP; for everyone else, today’s publication is the official paper trail of a 72-hour window that came and went before the ink dried.
HHS Reopens the Architecture of Federal Vaccine Recommendations
The Department of Health and Human Services published a request for information (Docket No. HHS-OS-2026-0332) asking whether the three categories the federal government uses for vaccine recommendations — routine (universal) recommendations, risk-based recommendations, and recommendations based on shared clinical decision-making — are adequate, or whether different categories should be adopted. The RFI is issued in support of the Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines and in furtherance of the Aug. 10 executive order “Delivering Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations for Americans,” listed in the Federal Register’s 2026 executive order index as EO 14420.
The notice asks commenters to weigh in on the considerations that should drive category assignments: the strength of available scientific evidence, the appropriate approach when randomized controlled trial evidence is limited or absent, “a presumption in favor of individual autonomy and religious freedom,” the downstream legal and programmatic consequences that flow from how a vaccine is categorized, and the communication practices needed to maintain public trust. That downstream-consequences language is the part worth watching — by the RFI’s own framing, category assignment carries legal and programmatic effects, which is precisely why any recategorization of childhood vaccines would reverberate through coverage and school-entry frameworks nationwide. Comments are due Sept. 20, 2026.
FCC Moves Toward an Import Ban on Anzu Drones
The FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology are seeking comment (PS Docket No. 26-184) on prohibiting the continued importation and marketing of previously authorized equipment produced by Anzu, a U.S.-based drone company — specifically FCC IDs 2BBYS-RAPTOR and 2BBYS-RRC01. The proposal follows the December 2025 addition of all foreign-produced unmanned aircraft systems and their critical components to the FCC’s Covered List, alongside equipment listed in Section 1709 of the FY2025 National Defense Authorization Act, based on an executive-branch interagency determination that such equipment poses “an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States.”
According to the Bureau’s notice, the Enforcement Bureau opened an investigation and sent Anzu a letter of inquiry on May 8 based on publicly available information; Anzu responded in a confidential filing on July 9. The notice states that “public sources suggest” Anzu’s devices are produced by an entity with a technology sharing or licensing agreement with an entity named in Section 1709, and that the drones and controllers are manufactured in Malaysia — both grounds, in the Bureau’s tentative view, for treating them as covered equipment. Anzu’s side of the story remains under seal; the company’s July filing was confidential, and the proceeding is at the comment stage, not a final determination.
The Bureau proposes that Anzu cease importation and marketing within 30 days of a final decision’s publication, while already-purchased drones could continue to be flown. The proceeding lands amid a broader Washington squeeze on foreign-linked drone supply chains — including the Section 232 drone import tariffs TIJ covered in last week’s Regulatory Roundup. Comments are due Sept. 23, 2026.
Entity List: Arrow Electronics Addresses, Turkish AV Firm Come Off
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security published two final rules trimming the Entity List, both effective Aug. 21. The first removes two Hong Kong addresses associated with Arrow Electronics (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. — a follow-on to Commerce’s November 2025 removal of Arrow China Electronics Trading Co. and six Arrow Hong Kong aliases. Notably, the Arrow Hong Kong entry itself remains on the list at five other addresses, still subject to a license requirement for all items with a presumption of denial. The second rule removes Turkish audiovisual systems firm Atempo Proje Taahhüt from the list entirely.
Both actions cleared the interagency End-User Review Committee — Commerce, State, Defense, Energy, and where appropriate Treasury — which must vote unanimously to remove an entry. Records indicate the removals follow the committee’s standard Section 744.16 review process; as with all Entity List actions, the rules took effect without notice and comment under the Export Control Reform Act. The filings do not elaborate on what changed the government’s risk assessment — a recurring transparency gap in Entity List practice that TIJ has flagged in prior coverage of export-control enforcement.
Education Department Proposes a Grant-Rules Overhaul
The Education Department published an 18-page notice of proposed rulemaking (Docket ID ED-2026-OPEPD-2542) revising the Education Department General Administrative Regulations — EDGAR — the rulebook governing how the Department runs its discretionary grant programs. The proposal would streamline the selection criteria the Secretary may use for discretionary awards, clarify continuation-award procedures, tighten merit standards for grants, and reduce the categories of notices the Department must publish in the Federal Register before making awards.
The most policy-significant strand: the Department proposes updating the evidence definitions in 34 CFR Part 77 to align with the Secretary’s September 2025 supplemental priorities on “Evidence-Based Literacy, Education Choice, and Returning Education to the States” (90 FR 43514) — embedding the administration’s education priorities into the definitions that determine which grant applications count as evidence-backed. The Department says it intends to finalize the package in late 2026, meaning the rules would shape upcoming grant cycles. Comments are due Sept. 23, 2026.
Interior Streamlines Environmental Review for Forest Work
The Interior Department published two National Environmental Policy Act implementing-procedure notices establishing new categorical exclusions — one for timber salvage harvest and one for forest and woodland density management. Categorical exclusions allow covered activities to proceed without a full environmental assessment or impact statement, making them one of the quietest but most consequential levers in NEPA practice: the paperwork shrinks, and so does the public-comment surface for individual projects.
In the same issue, the Forest Service docketed a proposed-rule entry on travel management for National Forest System lands, filed under environmental impact statement availability. Taken together, the entries continue the administration’s push — documented in TIJ’s prior regulatory coverage — to accelerate land-management decisions by narrowing case-by-case environmental review. Watchdogs and timber-state officials will read these very differently; the documents themselves, with the agencies’ stated justifications, are linked above.
Also on Monday’s Docket
Elsewhere in the issue: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is processing an indirect transfer of control of the licenses for all three units of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, the largest U.S. nuclear plant by output. The Export-Import Bank noticed two applications for long-term financing exceeding $100 million each — taxpayer-backed commitments TIJ tracks as part of its federal spending beat. The Justice Department is collecting comment on the application form for restoring federal firearms rights, the operational machinery behind the rights-restoration process reopened this year. And the International Trade Commission posted determinations in its import investigations of Wi-Fi routers and mesh devices and cylindrical batteries.
Comment deadlines from today’s issue: HHS vaccine-categories RFI — Sept. 20; FCC Anzu drone prohibition — Sept. 23; Education Department EDGAR proposal — Sept. 23. FERC’s combined electric filings published today carry intervention deadlines of Sept. 3–9. TIJ will track final rules as they emerge.
Sources
- Federal Register, Aug. 24, 2026 issue table of contents
- Proclamation 11056, 91 FR 54789
- HHS RFI, 91 FR 54724
- FCC Public Notice, 91 FR 54713
- BIS, Revisions to the Entity List, 91 FR 54658 and Removal From the Entity List, 91 FR 54657
- Education Department EDGAR NPRM, 91 FR 54666
- White & Case client alert on Section 338 tariffs
- GHY International trade-compliance update
Featured image: U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers (U.S. government photo, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).