Washington’s Hidden Rulebook: The 2025 Darklore Depository And The Case For Guidance Document Reform

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.

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.

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.

Decay

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.

“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.

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