The site going down marks a big disruption for major Trump administration proposals, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' overhaul of rules for how schools handle allegations of sexual assault. | Eva Hambach/AFP/Getty Images Government Shutdown Federal rulemaking site goes dark

The website used by the public to comment on proposed federal regulations has gone dark, but the agency that runs it says it's not due to the government shutdown, despite what a message on the website said.

The site, regulations.gov, this morning showed only a message that it is "not operational due to a lapse in funding, and will remain unavailable for the duration of the government shutdown."


The EPA, which runs the site, however, said in a statement that the message was posted in error.

"The language from the banner on the active page was inadvertently used to describe the regulations.gov outage," an EPA spokesperson said. "It is currently being revised to reflect that we are actively working to restore the website following a technical glitch."

The website is a key part of the federal rulemaking process, as it's where the public is able to comment on regulations proposed by the administration, including major rules pitched by the Trump administration on campus sexual assault, the use of drones and taxes. It was operational until at least Wednesday evening.

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The site going down marks a disruption for major Trump administration proposals, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' overhaul of rules for how schools handle allegations of sexual assault, which had drawn more than 54,000 comments as of Wednesday.

Another site where proposed regulations are posted, federalregister.gov, was working this morning, but a link on the site to comment on the proposals redirected to regulations.gov.

The outage sparked calls for the administration to push back comment deadlines on its rules. Comments on the campus sexual assault rule, for instance, are due by Jan. 28.

"Regardless of when the site’s full functionality is restored, the administration should immediately extend all open comment periods for however long the government shutdown lasts to protect the public’s fundamental right to participate in the regulatory process," the nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen said in a statement. "Anything less than a blanket comment period extension for the full duration of the shutdown means the Trump administration is cutting the public out of the regulatory process — and does not take the importance of public comment seriously."

