The Investigative Journal’s weekly survey of federal rulemaking, drawn from the Federal Register, Reginfo.gov, and agency records.
Federal agencies closed out August with a burst of consequential filings. The week’s Federal Register issues carried a $250 million antitrust settlement notice involving private-equity giant KKR, the ticking comment clock on the Department of Homeland Security’s proposed $103,265 H-1B petition fee, and a same-day compliance reprieve for oil refiners under the Renewable Fuel Standard. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Internal Revenue Service each opened major rulemakings with November comment deadlines. Here is what moved in the regulatory state during the week of August 31, 2026 — and the deadlines that matter.
DOJ asks court to approve $250 million KKR penalty over merger-filing violations
The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division published a Tunney Act notice on September 4 announcing a proposed Final Judgment in United States v. KKR & Co. Inc., et al. (S.D.N.Y., No. 1:25-cv-343-LTS). According to the government’s filings, the January 14, 2025 complaint alleged that KKR and related entities failed to make complete and accurate premerger filings under Section 7A of the Clayton Act — the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act — at least sixteen separate times. Under the proposed judgment filed August 26, 2026, KKR & Co. GP LLC would pay a civil penalty of $250,000,000 to the United States within thirty days of entry.
The Competitive Impact Statement notes that KKR moved to dismiss the complaint in April 2025 and that the court has not ruled on that motion; the allegations in the complaint remain allegations, and the settlement will terminate the action only if the court finds entry of the judgment to be in the public interest under the Antitrust Procedures and Penalties Act. The public may comment for 60 days from the notice date, with submissions directed to the Division’s Technology and Digital Platforms Section. For merger practitioners, the filings indicate that HSR premerger-notification compliance remains an active enforcement priority — and that document-production failures alone can carry nine-figure exposure.
Comment window narrows on DHS’s $103,265 H-1B fee
The clock is running on one of the year’s most consequential immigration rulemakings. DHS’s proposed rule, published August 25 and announced by USCIS, would impose a $103,265 fee on all H-1B cap-subject petitions, including those under the advanced-degree exemption, payable at filing and in addition to all other fees. Comments are due September 24, 2026. Cap-exempt petitions — those filed by institutions of higher education and nonprofit or governmental research organizations — would not be covered, according to the notice.
DHS estimates the fee would generate approximately $8.8 billion annually, based on a projected 85,000 cap-subject petitions per year. The proposal follows a federal court’s June order blocking the administration’s earlier $100,000 fee imposed by proclamation, and practitioners have signaled that the new rule may face similar challenges: immigration attorney Cyrus Mehta, quoted in the Times of India and cited in his firm’s August 31 roundup, argued that routing the proceeds through the Immigration Examinations Fee Account to fund other agencies could exceed the department’s statutory authority. Separately, Reginfo.gov records show that OMB has cleared a related DHS proposal to eliminate the discretionary 60-day grace period for nonimmigrant workers whose employment ends — a rule whose text will not be known until publication.
EPA hands refiners an extra month on 2025 biofuel compliance
In a final rule effective September 4 (91 FR 56780), EPA extended the Renewable Fuel Standard compliance reporting deadline for the 2025 compliance year from September 1 to October 1, 2026. The agency issued the rule without notice and comment, invoking the Administrative Procedure Act’s good-cause exemption on the ground that the ordinary process could not have concluded before the deadline it was extending.
The extension responds directly to EPA’s August 31 decisions on 34 small refinery exemption petitions for the 2025 compliance year. The agency reasoned that obligated parties — refiners and importers holding renewable volume obligations — needed time to adjust compliance strategies and RIN credit positions after those decisions, which affect RIN price and availability market-wide. EPA classified the action as deregulatory under Executive Order 14192, determined it is not a major rule under the Congressional Review Act, and stated that private-sector requirements do not exceed $100 million in any one year. Petitions for judicial review must be filed in the D.C. Circuit by November 3, 2026.
IRS moves to codify tax-exemption bar for racially discriminatory private schools
The IRS published a notice of proposed rulemaking on September 4 that would update existing regulations to provide that a private school is not tax-exempt if it discriminates on the basis of race, color, or national or ethnic origin in its educational, admissions, scholarship, athletic, or other policies. The proposal grounds the rule in what the notice calls the fundamental public policy of the United States against such practices — a doctrine the agency has applied administratively for decades.
The regulations would affect private schools in taxable years beginning after May 31, 2027, a date the notice ties to the expected publication of final rules. Written or electronic comments and requests for a public hearing are due November 3, 2026. For school administrators and exempt-organization counsel, the practical question will be what documentation and publicity requirements the final rule attaches to the nondiscrimination standard.
SEC proposes first comprehensive modernization of transfer agent rules
The SEC voted out a sweeping proposal (Release No. 34-106246; File No. S7-2026-30) to adopt new rules, amend existing rules, revise registration Form TA-1 and annual reporting Form TA-2, and rescind one existing rule governing registered transfer agents — the back-office firms that maintain shareholder records, process transfers, and disburse dividends for issuers. The Commission describes the package as a modernization of a regulatory regime that has lagged well behind current market technology and practice.
Comments are due November 3, 2026. Transfer agents sit at a chokepoint of the securities-processing system, and records maintained by them underpin everything from proxy voting to escheatment; how the SEC calibrates recordkeeping, safeguarding, and processing standards here will ripple through issuers, investors, and the growing tokenized-securities conversation.
EPA proposes to exclude ocean-going vessel discharges from NPDES permitting
EPA also proposed to revise the Clean Water Act regulatory definition of “discharge of a pollutant” so that pollutants added by vessels and other floating craft in the contiguous zone or the ocean — where the craft is not secured to the seabed — would not require National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits. The agency frames the change as faithfully implementing a statutory exclusion that the current regulatory text does not fully reflect, with conforming changes to the existing vessel exclusion.
Comments on Docket ID EPA-HQ-OW-2026-6965 are due October 19, 2026, and the agency will hold a public hearing per the notice. The proposal continues the administration’s pattern of narrowing federal permitting jurisdiction by regulation, and the maritime, offshore energy, and environmental bars will all be reading it closely.
FinCEN targets UAE bank’s U.S. access under “Operation Economic Outcast”
The Treasury Department announced on August 28 that its Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has issued a proposed rule that would revoke Banque Misr UAE’s correspondent banking access to U.S. financial institutions. Treasury framed the action as part of “Operation Economic Outcast,” an effort aimed at Iran’s access to banks in the United Arab Emirates.
Correspondent-account measures of this kind effectively cut a foreign institution off from dollar clearing, and their use signals where Treasury believes sanctions-evasion pressure points sit. Comment procedures and deadlines are set out in the NPRM. The proposal lands amid sustained Treasury attention to Gulf financial channels — a space this publication has covered in the context of trade-based money movement.
SEC would add EU debt to “exempted securities” list for futures trading
In a companion week for the Commission, the SEC proposed amendments to Exchange Act Rule 3a12-8 that would add debt obligations of the European Union to the list of foreign government debt designated as exempted securities solely for purposes of futures marketing and trading. The proposing release was issued August 28.
The change would let U.S. persons trade futures on EU debt without the contracts being treated as options on securities, aligning the EU’s now-substantial joint issuance with the treatment already afforded to member states on the rule’s list. It is a technical amendment with real hedging consequences for rates desks as EU-level borrowing has scaled.
Deadline watch
Comment periods and dates flagged in this week’s records:
- September 24, 2026 — DHS H-1B cap-subject petition fee NPRM.
- October 5, 2026 — FDIC “Disclosure of Information” proposal, per the agency’s comment-period extension from the original August 31 deadline.
- October 19, 2026 — EPA NPDES vessel-discharge definitional proposal.
- November 3, 2026 — SEC transfer agent modernization; IRS private-school nondiscrimination regulations; approximate close of the 60-day Tunney Act window on the KKR judgment; and the D.C. Circuit filing deadline for review of EPA’s RFS extension.
On TIJ’s beats
Several smaller filings this week touch trade enforcement and illicit-finance topics this publication tracks. Commerce’s International Trade Administration published its monthly initiation of antidumping and countervailing duty administrative reviews, final results of the AD review on frozen warmwater shrimp from India, and a postponement of preliminary results in the review covering tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane from the People’s Republic of China. FinCEN published notice of a Geographic Targeting Order imposing recordkeeping and reporting requirements on certain money services businesses. And at the Federal Maritime Commission, records show Samsung Electronics America has filed a complaint against ocean carrier CMA CGM — a docket worth watching as shipper-carrier disputes continue to surface post-pandemic.
Editor’s note: This roundup is compiled from public regulatory records — the Federal Register, Reginfo.gov, and agency releases linked above — and summarizes filings rather than adjudicated findings. Allegations in litigation, including the KKR matter, are noted as allegations; the parties named have not been separately contacted for comment for this digest. No state-level regulatory development met our verification threshold this week.
Featured image: The National Archives Building, Washington, D.C., home of the Office of the Federal Register. Photo: David Samuel via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.