Regulations.gov comments, Oct 26 – Nov 1, 2026

70,889 comments were posted across 349 dockets, 1% more than the week before. Most of them went to a few places: the top 3 dockets drew 88% of the week's total.
"Posted" means the day the agency made a comment public, not the day it was submitted, and agencies often post in batches, so a big week can be a backlog being released.

Decennial Census of the Population of Americans; Proposed Residence Criteria and Proposed Regulations for...

Bureau of the Census. 37,741 comments were posted this week, up from 26,578, and 147,800 so far. The comment period ended Nov 3.

In a random sample of 25, 24 opposed and 1 supported; 16 of them were near-copies of other comments in the sample, which points to form letters.

Nearly all of these commenters oppose the proposed census rule and ask the Bureau to withdraw it. They argue that excluding people by immigration status violates the constitutional mandate to count every resident and would skew apportionment and federal funding. Others object to counting people where they spend winter, which they say would shift seats and money away from colder states. Many also object to dropping race and ethnicity questions, which they say would hurt civil rights enforcement, health planning and the visibility of specific groups. One commenter supports the rule, favoring exclusion of non-citizens from apportionment and a citizenship question, and a couple of commenters also ask for a longer comment period.

National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska Production Site Development

Bureau of Land Management. 15,696 comments were posted this week, down from 24,366, and 72,215 so far. Comments are open until Nov 10. 63% of the week's posts came on Oct 27, so this looks like a batch release.

In a random sample of 25, all 25 opposed; 24 of them were near-copies of other comments in the sample, which points to form letters.

All of the sampled commenters oppose the proposed streamlined permitting for oil and gas production sites in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. Most use one of two near-identical form letters, and a shorter variant of the first appears once. They call for a full, project-specific environmental review under NEPA rather than a generic set of conditions, and for cumulative impacts to be studied. They also stress protecting wildlife, wetlands, birds, caribou and the Teshekpuk Lake area, and keeping public input and Tribal consultation. Many add that the Arctic is warming quickly and that further drilling worsens climate change.

Electronic Disclosure by Group Health Plans Under ERISA

Employee Benefits Security Administration. 8,733 comments were posted this week, up from 3,848, and 60,851 so far. The comment period ended Sep 22. 100% of the week's posts came on Oct 29, so this looks like a batch release.

In a random sample of 25, all 25 opposed; a script found no near-copies among them.

Every comment in this sample opposes the proposed rule and asks the Department to withdraw or reconsider it. Commenters say that treating inaction as consent is not real consent for health coverage notices, and they want paper to stay the default with electronic delivery by opt-in. They stress the harm to seniors, rural residents, low-income households, people with disabilities, military members, and those with cybersecurity worries. Many also say the rule is driven by insurer cost savings rather than evidence that people will read and understand electronic documents. Several note that people who like electronic delivery can already opt in, so the current system works.

Also moving

Optional Practical Training Fees (Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau) is new: its first comment was posted Oct 8, and 1,100 came in this week.

Exemptions from Materials Licensing (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) is new: its first comment was posted Oct 6, and 471 came in this week.

Racial Nondiscrimination in Private Schools (REG-119986-25) (Internal Revenue Service) jumped to 715 comments this week, 6x its recent weekly average.

Eliminating the Discretionary 60-day Grace Period (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) closes Nov 11. It has 28,243 comments so far, 381 of them this week.

The numbers

The 11 dockets with the most comments posted:

Sample summaries: a model labeled each sampled comment and wrote the summary; the counts and the near-copy check are computed by script, and a second model labeled stance again as a check (agreement with the first model is in digests/samples/). Theme groupings are the model's own and approximate. A sample of 25 is not a poll.

Sampled summaries: Sonnet 5.5 with a Haiku 5.5 stance check; cost $0.11. The sampled comment IDs and text hashes are in digests/samples/, so the sample can be redrawn and checked against regulations.gov.
Counts come from the spicy-regs mirror of regulations.gov (data through 2026-11-06). The mirror can run slightly below regulations.gov's own API for busy dockets; see proof/ for the checks. Dockets with under 200 comments in the week are left out of the sections above.