Browse regulations

This NPS regulation establishes a discretionary permit system for any infrastructure (utilities, power lines, telecommunications) crossing or located within National Park System lands. It requires extensive application documentation, imposes use fees, mandates co-location with existing infrastructure, gives NPS unilateral power to modify or terminate permits, and requires restoration upon expiration. The 'no practicable alternative' standard lets NPS deny permits if it believes infrastructure should go elsewhere.

The regulation imposes heavy compliance costs and bureaucratic barriers that distort infrastructure markets, raise costs for all Americans, and protect incumbent providers. Vague standards like 'public interest' and 'no practicable alternative' grant NPS unchecked discretion, violating rule of law principles. Co-location mandates force private infrastructure sharing, creating moral hazard and disincentivizing new investment. The hidden tax burden—application fees, use fees, restoration costs, and delay costs—falls disproportionately on smaller firms and ultimately consumers. Hayek's knowledge problem makes centralized determination of 'practicable alternatives' impossible; markets, not planners, should decide infrastructure routing. The regulatory costs exceed any marginal preservation benefits, especially when less restrictive alternatives (e.g., market-based payments to NPS, clear property rights) could protect park resources without such distortions.

The Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships Program provides federal grants to higher education institutions to award fellowships to students pursuing advanced training in modern foreign languages and area studies. The program aims to develop international expertise to meet national needs. Fellowships cover tuition, living stipends, and allowances, with extensive eligibility criteria and administrative requirements for both institutions and students.

The program represents unconstitutional federal overreach into education (Tenth Amendment), distorts market incentives by subsidizing specific academic fields, creates substantial administrative burden, and could be replaced by more efficient state-led initiatives or targeted federal needs-based programs without expanding federal power and regulatory complexity.

This regulation establishes the National Resource Centers Program under the Department of Education, awarding competitive grants to colleges and universities to establish comprehensive or undergraduate centers focused on foreign language instruction (especially less commonly taught languages), area studies, international affairs research, and related outreach activities. Grants support faculty, library collections, curriculum development, summer institutes, and dissemination of information about specific world regions.

Education is quintessentially a state and local responsibility under the Tenth Amendment, not an enumerated federal power. This program unconstitutionally federalizes education policy, distorting academic priorities as institutions chase federal grants rather than responding to student and market demand. The hidden costs include bureaucratic bloat, compliance burdens on recipients, and the erosion of federalism principles that keep government close to the people.

This is a definitions section from 34 CFR part 77, which defines key terms used throughout Department of Education grant regulations (EDGAR). It incorporates by reference the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Handbooks and establishes precise criteria for evidence tiers (strong, moderate, promising evidence), study designs, and other administrative concepts that grantees must understand and apply to comply with federal funding requirements.

This glossary codifies federal micro-management of education through rigid, bureaucratic evidence standards that burden grant applicants with compliance costs while stifling innovation. The definitions create barriers to entry—especially for small organizations—by requiring expensive, WWC-approved evaluations rather than allowing states and localities to determine what works. The incorporated-by-reference WWC Handbooks enable unelected bureaucrats to change the rules without notice-and-comment rulemaking, violating due process and the principle of knowable laws. Education is a purely local and state responsibility under the Tenth Amendment; federal dictates about what constitutes 'evidence' represent unconstitutional federal overreach that distorts incentives and diverts resources from teaching to paperwork.

This regulation establishes mandatory Agency Specific Procedures (ASPs) for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to plan water resources development projects, requiring analysis of net public benefits (economic, environmental, social), stakeholder collaboration, environmental justice, floodplain resilience, and watershed approaches across two tiers of analysis.

It adds layers of costly, time-consuming analysis and subjective non-scientific criteria (environmental justice, Indigenous Knowledge) to infrastructure planning, increasing taxpayer burdens and project delays while federalizing decisions that belong to states and localities; the open-ended 'net public benefits' standard enables bureaucratic mission creep and provides ammunition for obstruction by special interests.

This regulation (32 CFR Part 1662) establishes the Selective Service System's procedures for implementing the Freedom of Information Act. It details how to submit FOIA requests, fee structures for different requester categories, processing timelines, exemptions for withholding records, appeals process, and requirements for public inspection of released records.

Deleting these procedures would eliminate standardized, transparent rules for accessing Selective Service records, leading to inconsistent, arbitrary, or opaque handling of FOIA requests. The public's ability to hold this agency accountable would be undermined, and requesters would lack clear guidance on their rights and the agency's obligations. The regulation operationalizes FOIA's mandate in a predictable, legally sound manner that would be difficult to achieve through informal agency practices.

The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) Program mandates that all Defense Department contractors and subcontractors handling Federal Contract Information or Controlled Unclassified Information implement prescribed cybersecurity standards based on NIST publications and undergo assessments (self or third-party) to verify compliance. The program establishes a phased implementation with multiple certification levels and creates an ecosystem of accredited third-party assessors.

This regulation imposes massive hidden compliance costs—effectively a $14,000+ per household tax on defense contractors—disproportionately crushing small businesses and raising barriers to entry. It violates the Hayekian knowledge problem: centralized bureaucrats cannot dictate optimal cybersecurity for diverse firms with unique threat environments. The unseen consequences include reduced competition, innovation distortion toward checkbox compliance over actual security, and a new bureaucratic assessment industry. National security can be achieved more efficiently through market mechanisms: contractual liability, breach insurance requirements, and performance-based standards that let contractors bear risk rather than obey prescriptive rules.

Establishes the Discharge Appeal Review Board (DARB) as a final review mechanism for veterans seeking to upgrade their military discharge characterization after exhausting service-level remedies. Provides uniform standards across all military services, with procedures for petition, review, and final decision by the Secretary of the Military Department. Requires annual public reporting on outcomes.

Veterans with less-than-honorable discharges face severe consequences for employment, benefits, and civilian life. DARB provides a necessary, uniform final review layer to correct errors and ensure consistent standards across services. Removing it would eliminate the only accessible, administrative avenue for redress, forcing veterans into costly litigation or congressional appeals—options far less effective and equitable. The board's proportionality review ensures upgrades only when supported by evidence, maintaining military integrity while correcting injustices.

Regulation implements the HAVANA Act, providing one-time lump-sum payments (75-100% of Senior Executive Schedule pay) to DoD employees and dependents with qualifying brain injuries from hostile acts/terrorism while overseas, requiring diagnosis by specific board-certified physicians and based on disability criteria.

The program imposes substantial fiscal costs, duplicates existing workers' compensation and disability systems, creates moral hazard for questionable claims, and adds unnecessary bureaucratic overhead without clear constitutional justification.

This regulation requires real estate closing agents to report detailed personal and financial information (names, addresses, TINs, dates of birth, citizenship) about transferees, transferors, beneficial owners, and trustees involved in non-financed transfers of residential real property (1-4 family units) to entities or trusts. Reports are filed electronically with FinCEN within 30 days of closing, bypassing normal confidentiality protections.

Massive surveillance expansion imposing heavy compliance costs on real estate professionals while invading privacy of innocent buyers/sellers. Creates a federal database of sensitive personal information vulnerable to misuse and breaches. Burdens small businesses disproportionately, deters legitimate property ownership through entities/trusts for privacy/estate planning, and represents unconstitutional federal overreach into state-regulated real estate transactions. Criminals will circumvent it while law-abiding citizens bear the costs—another example of unseen consequences outweighing claimed anti-money laundering benefits.

Regulation implements Executive Order 14105 requiring U.S. persons to notify Treasury of certain investments and prohibit others involving covered foreign persons in countries of concern (e.g., China) in sensitive technology sectors: semiconductors/microelectronics, quantum information technologies, and artificial intelligence. Requires due diligence on counterparties, prohibits 'knowingly directing' prohibited transactions, and applies to controlled foreign entities. Violations subject to civil penalties.

While national security is a legitimate government function, this regulation imposes massive compliance burdens on private investment decisions, creates uncertainty through vague definitions, and distorts capital allocation. The 'knowledge' standard exposes businesses to liability based on what they 'could have known' through 'reasonable and diligent inquiry'—an unanswerable standard that encourages excessive due diligence rather than productive investment. The regulation extends U.S. jurisdiction to controlled foreign entities and indirect fund investments, creating extraterritorial overreach. Even if some technology transfers warrant scrutiny, this blanket approach treats all U.S. investors as suspect, raises barriers to legitimate business, and represents precisely the type of administrative overreach that Mises and Hayek warned would strangle economic calculation and liberty. The national security rationale is too broad to justify regulating ordinary private investment in peacetime; targeted export controls on actual technology transfers are less restrictive and equally effective.

Regulation implements Global Magnitsky sanctions under IEEPA, blocking property of foreign persons responsible for serious human rights abuses or corruption. Prohibits transactions with designated individuals/entities, requires blocked funds held in U.S. interest-bearing accounts, and establishes licensing and enforcement procedures through OFAC.

Deletion would dismantle a critical foreign policy tool that holds human rights abusers and corrupt officials accountable, weakening America's ability to project values and protect national security. The targeted, property-based sanctions achieve objectives diplomacy cannot—isolating bad actors with minimal domestic compliance burden. Americans are better off when atrocity enablers cannot access our financial system.

OFAC sanctions regulation (31 CFR Part 525) implementing E.O. 14014 blocking property of Burmese military leaders, government officials, human rights abusers, and entities operating in Burma's defense/jet fuel sectors. Requires U.S. persons to freeze assets, prohibits transactions with blocked persons, and mandates screening against the SDN list.

Violates economic liberty by restricting voluntary exchange with foreign parties; imposes compliance burdens on U.S. businesses and financial institutions; relies on expansive executive power rather than specific congressional authorization; likely counterproductive as sanctions harm Burmese civilians while enabling military elites to consolidate control through black markets and smuggling; contradicts founding principles of limited government and free enterprise

This regulation (30 CFR Part 942) conditionally approves Virginia's state regulatory program for surface coal mining under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) and establishes a cooperative agreement with the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE). It governs permitting, inspection, enforcement, and bonding on federal and non-federal lands, with Virginia as the primary regulator subject to federal oversight and disapproval of state provisions deemed less effective than federal standards.

The regulation imposes substantial compliance costs and bureaucratic overhead while perpetuating federal overreach into state and private land use. It locks Virginia's program into rigid federal standards, preventing state innovation and burdening small operators disproportionately. The unseen consequences include regulatory capture through federal-state collaboration, constitutional erosion of Tenth Amendment limits, and the entrenchment of a $2 trillion national regulatory burden that could be better addressed through property rights enforcement and decentralized, state-level oversight.

Cooperative agreement between Utah and the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) for state administration of surface coal mining regulation on federal lands under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA). It delegates permitting, inspection, and enforcement to Utah's Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining (DOGM) with federal oversight and funding.

Imposes heavy compliance costs and regulatory burden on mining operations, creates barriers to entry favoring incumbents, and distorts market incentives through centralized control. Unseen consequences include reduced supply, higher energy costs, and suppressed property rights. Environmental and reclamation goals could be better achieved through property rights enforcement, liability for damages, and state-level regulation without federal overreach.