Copyright forbes
If the government wanted to scare business and entrepreneurs this Halloween, it could dress up as the Federal Register. Sometimes, though, rules can be even spookier. TOPSHOT - This photograph taken on December 12, 2023 shows human skulls and bones aligned against a wall of Paris' Catacombs, the cities former quarries where the remains of some six million people where transferred from saturated Parisian cemeteries between the end of the 18th century until 1861. (Photo by JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP) (Photo by JULIEN DE ROSA/AFP via Getty Images) AFP via Getty Images Agencies also say “BOO” with guidance documents, statements of policy, memoranda, notices, bulletins, advisory opinions, directives, news releases, letters and even blog posts. We call these sometimes frightful proclamations regulatory dark matter. While the U.S. Code archives federal laws and the daily Federal Register’s rules get embalmed in the186,000-page Code of Federal Regulations, dark matter is not so reliably entombed or made visible. Since 2015, I’ve attempted to informally inventory these cryptic chronicles and shadowy scrolls, hoping for policymakers to devise an official portal for them. Darklore Depository: An Unofficial Portal Inventorying Regulatory Dark Matter, Fall 2025 Clyde Wayne Crews Jr. It's telling to note that every federal website can flash a "Government Shutdown Alert" like the Interior Department’s below but—not since the origin of the Web—reliably post its guidance documents. U.S. Department of the Interior, Government Shutdown Alert U.S. Department of the Interior MORE FOR YOU This Halloween, the latest Darklore Depository unearths 70,401 guidance documents linked on agency websites, compared with 108,023 a year ago. These are likely vast undercounts. As the D.C. Circuit described the phenomenon in 2000’s Appalachian Power Co. v. Environmental Protection Agency: Congress passes a broadly worded statute. The agency follows with regulations containing broad language, open-ended phrases, ambiguous standards, and the like. Then as years pass, the agency issues circulars or guidance or memoranda, explaining, interpreting, defining, and often expanding the commands in regulations. One guidance document may yield another and then another and so on. … Law is made, without notice and comment, without public participation, and without publication in the Federal Register or the Code of Federal Regulations (italics added).” Cremations, Burials and Reanimations The drop over the past year stems primarily from documents removed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) database. Other notable HHS declines include the Office for Civil Rights, from 1,991 to five, and the Inspector General’s office, from 207 to one. Even the War Department, which listed 935 a year ago, is now indeterminate. The National Labor Relations Board site is down, but last year contained over 2,200 Operations/Management Memoranda and more than 280 General Counsel Memoranda. Conversely, raising the total, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration added back over 3,000 interpretive letters. Where the Environmental Protection Agency’s portal vanished under Biden, it has now reappeared—10,096 strong—in the new roundup (although over 200 Regional Office documents no longer appear as they did under Trump 1.0). Who Goes There? Even these few tens of thousands reveal more of what we don’t know about guidance than what we do. Before Trump’s 2019 Executive Order 13,891 (“Promoting the Rule of Law Through Improved Agency Guidance Documents”) required public disclosure of guidance on agency web portals, guidance transparency was abysmal. My 2015 “Mapping Washington’s Lawlessness” survey dug up only a few thousand. The House Oversight Committee’s 2018 Shining Light on Regulatory Dark Matter report yielded “only” 13,000 documents. After Trump’s order, an updated inventory of 73,000 documents became possible. Even though Joe Biden revoked E.O. 13,891, along with other streamlining directives, the accessible tally increased to over 100,000—proof of the power of simple disclosure mandates. Some guidance, such as from the Federal Highway Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, dates back to the 1970s. But there is still no full compendium, and many agencies post none at all as the Depository shows. (Any agency maintaining a public landing page not yet included is invited to share its link.) Trump’s straightforward www.[agencyname].gov/guidance landing page convention has largely unraveled like a windblown mummy. Many documents in the current inventory lurk beneath convoluted URL threads. Still, some agencies maintain searchable, indexed tables with dates and classification numbers, sometimes including helpful declarations like “This Guidance Portal contains XX documents.” Independent agencies never subject to Trump’s order are particularly worthy of praise for maintaining such portals voluntarily. Many agencies’ pages remain less than cooperative. These are identifiable in the Darklore Depository where totals have stayed frozen (sometimes retaining “tombstone” landing pages referencing Trump’s now-defunct E.O. 13,891) or where agencies report nothing despite heavy reliance on guidance. Trump should reinstate his executive order illuminating dark matter. Some have claimed that his revocation this year of Biden’s “Modernizing Regulatory Review” actions restored the portals—but that’s not the case. While Trump’s order required agencies to issue formal rules on guidance procedures, Biden had them write new rules revoking those protections. Moreover, the “/guidance” pages Trump required have largely vanished, and agencies that didn’t comply during Trump 1.0 rarely do now (with the notable exception of EPA’s revival). In the absence of a new Trump order, one must comb websites for "Resources," “Laws and Regulations” or “Legal Guidance and Opinions” with crossed fingers. The Void of Indeterminacy Many agencies not listing guidance have it—somewhere. Those labeled “indeterminate” in the Depository sometimes present rabbit holes of sub-guidance: directories, catalogs, manuals, pdfs and more that seem at least potentially regulatory. The Federal Communications Commission, for instance, hosts multiple portals. One can easily retrieve 245 small-business guidance documents, but quantities for telecommunications carriers, equipment manufacturers, and broadcasters remain opaque. Sometimes, in the absence of numbering or classification, crude shortcuts help—like searching a page for “Read More” or “Download PDF.” The 740 entries for Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) policy guidance are a case in point. Complicating matters is the divisibility (or lack thereof) of guidance. A "handbook" might translate into dozens of distinct directives and in turn “rules.” A guidance document cannot simply mean “any agency publication,” and it is easy to disagree as to whether one document (such as a manual or set of FAQs) is a single document or instead a multitude. This is no cause to give up the ghost however, as conventional rules vary in impact too, and no real “unit” exists apart from their dollar or compliance costs. At this stage, there is no reason to assume all guidance issued has made its way to websites at all. The Department of Veterans Affairs lists just three, all relating to recent AI executive orders and use cases—surely the least of its informal directives. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rescinded 67 guidance documents back in May (many reported on the Department of Government Efficiency’s page), yet its total still shows 128, basically unchanged from 2024. Across the board, the safest presumption is that actual guidance quantity remains indeterminate, even when agencies claim a number. Some regulatory players—like the Export-Import Bank or those operating under the Federal Acquisition Regulations—have no clear guidance page at all. The Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) with its Broadband Equity, Access, And Deployment (BEAD) Program stands out here. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission likely issues guidance concerning operations such as horizontal directional drilling or dam safety, but these do not appear among its 55 Policy Statements. USAID with all its foreign intrigue was always murky and indeterminate; now it’s "not found," with many employees reportedly on administrative leave. Guidance portals - page not found International Trade Administration “Indeterminate” does not necessarily mean that it is impossible for someone to dig more deeply and present some defensible cardinal number, or that a tentative agency figure of “at least X” could not be derived. Restoration of Trump’s order, or legislation with the same effect, would be the first step toward reliable numbers. Grants’ Tombs Subsidies, grants, contracting, procurement and business/government partnerships increasingly deserve attention in any guidance portal. The Inflation Reduction Act, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and CHIPS and Science Act all mark escalations in federal steering of research agendas, energy transformations and even ideology. As the federal government has swollen, the dispensation of hundreds of billions of federal dollars represents an increasingly influential regulatory mechanism bypassing the Federal Register. Under Biden and Trump alike, stipulations embedded in taxpayer-funded grant programs and Notices of Funding Opportunity—like those from USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service and Commerce’s Minority Business Development Administration and its aforementioned BEAD program—can act as de facto guidance and belong in any dark matter compilation. Concerns I once left off the list a decade ago—such as grant programs and procurement policies—now qualify as some of the most ghoulishly potent forms of rule-equivalents. The Federal Transit Administration guidance on procurement and grant programs, along with Acquisition.gov’s vast trove, are a mounting arcana of the indeterminate. Mummification Tracking not only guidance added but also that removed is vital. Rescinded, superseded, or inactive guidance should be archived for historical purposes; otherwise, it obscures what’s happening underground in the Darklore Depository. For instance, the Federal Transit Administration’s “zero-emission” and COVID-19 guidance noted last year appear to have been deleted—good for streamlining, but poor for documentation if only the informal Depository caught it. Some agencies list rescinded and active guidance together, further complicating tallies. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), for example, invokes Trump’s original guidance executive order and lists five recissions (four happened under Biden) but keeps them on the same page as the actives. A better approach comes from the Federal Highway Administration, which maintains a dedicated “Cancelled Directives and Memorandums” page worth emulating. This is an argument for portals, clarity and less government. Our informal portal is not comprehensive, and without official backing, as fragile as a cobweb. At the very least, Trump should reissue his order and standardize each agency to a “www.[agencyname].gov/guidance" landing page capturing all additions, recissions and expirations of guidance. Provisions could also require agencies to assess guidance costs, flag “economically significant” documents, and allow public comment. The Guidance Out of Darkness (GOOD) Act to codify portals is even more crucial for permanence. It passed the House of Representatives in March and awaits Senate markup. Other steps include clarifying that guidance is non-binding. Summaries explaining exactly what a particular piece of guidance is would also be very helpful to the public. The National Park Service commendably posts descriptors summarizing what each of 401 documents are, although the page has remained static in recent years. Finally, numerical genus/species classifications of guidance much like the Regulation Identifier Numbers (RIN) for rules are important, enabling searching by subject matter, not just department or agency. (Biden’s “whole-of-government” campaigns drafting all agencies into progressive service on equity, “climate crisis,” care economy and more make this necessary.) The optimistic view: Trump began a dark-matter disclosure process that cannot be fully reversed. It proved rapid transparency is possible. Fresh portals are needed so we can confront the guidance abyss—and keep the public from being haunted by regulatory dark matter. Editorial StandardsReprints & Permissions
