Federal Register

The Federal Register is the official daily journal of the US federal government, published since 1936 by the Office of the Federal Register under the National Archives. It carries all executive orders, presidential proclamations, agency rules, and regulatory notices -- including OFAC sanctions instruments. Published every business day without interruption since founding, it is the legal record of the US administrative state: a rule or executive instrument that does not appear in the Federal Register does not exist as binding law.

During the Iran war, the Federal Register became the instrument of record for what the Trump administration had and had not done. When Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on cable television in mid-April that General License U would not be renewed, The Register's zero Iran/OFAC entries between 15 and 18 April confirmed definitively that no replacement instrument had been issued. On 24 April, The Register published document 2026-07994 -- OFAC press release sb0465 -- confirming OFAC's own instrument production remained on schedule even while the White House presidential-actions page recorded zero Iran executive instruments across the entire conflict. The asymmetry is structural: OFAC's administrative publishing runs independently of presidential signature activity. On Cuba, The Register's publication of Executive Order 14404 on 1 May formalised Trump's Cuba policy shift -- demonstrating that when the administration chooses to create a legal instrument, it uses the Register correctly.

For practitioners -- sanctions lawyers, compliance officers, congressional staff, and allied governments -- the Federal Register test is the clearest available: Trump's Iran policy exists as a verbal track on Truth Social, not as a signed track in The Register. The divergence is not a procedural accident; it is the operational architecture of how the administration has chosen to run the conflict, preserving maximum flexibility without legal constraint.