A couple of new rules will be hitting the Federal Register on the first day of May, including a few environmental regulations. Here they are:

Military:
The Navy is proposing to change its procedural rules for receiving and responding to complaints about the misconduct of attorneys acting under the service's legal branch, the Judge Advocate General. 

Social media outlets are coming under new scrutiny from regulators after last week’s phony report about White House explosions caused the Dow Jones industrial average to take a brief nose dive, The New York Times reports.

The move comes as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is struggling to keep up with Twitter and other emergency technology issues in the financial sector, according to The Washington Post.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is moving to make it easier for stay-at-home spouses to get approved for credit cards, according to The Dallas Morning News.

The Food and Drug Administration is setting out to investigate the proliferation of caffeinated food, The Associated Press reports.

The Obama administration has trimmed Affordable Care Act application forms to three pages, according to The Hill’s Healthwatch blog.

A draft form released last month topped out at 15 pages, raising concerns the process would discourage applicants.

The printing and graphic design industry wants the Obama administration to hurry up and regulate the rags that are used to sop up hazardous chemicals.

The draft of a final rule from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been sitting at the White House for more than a year, and the Printing Industries of America and the Specialty Graphic Imaging Association had one question for the White House during a meeting last week: Where’s our rule?

“It may seem crazy, industry asking for more regulation,” said Gary Jones, the assistant vice president of environmental, health, and safety affairs for the Printing Industries of America, who attended the meeting.

The rule would create consistency across individual state-level standards that regulate the rags used by printing companies, auto-body and furniture refurbishing shops to clean surfaces. The rags pick up cleaning solvents along the way.

Right now, the protocols aren’t actually legally enforceable, and vary by state.

A group of House Republicans is pressing the Department of Energy for details on a loan program that has come under fire for its assistance to a number of failed green companies.

Five GOP leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee are pushing the department to give details about apparent discrepancies between the number of advertised and realized jobs created by the government program, which provides loans for some renewable energy projects.

In a letter, the representatives assert that expected jobs "have failed to materialize," yet the Energy Department has not updated its website to reflect the jobs estimated to be created or saved by the program. 

The federal environmental watchdog needs a better strategy to update its toxic chemical regulations, a government audit has concluded.

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on the Environmental Protection Agency's attempts to reform its chemical oversight found that the EPA has not developed planning practices to guide its work or strategies to directly address upcoming challenges. 

Outgoing Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Monday that new fuel economy standards he helped usher in with President Obama are “a big deal” that will outlast both of them.

“That will be part of President Obama’s legacy. What a legacy — cleaning up the air in America, getting cleaner burning cars,” LaHood said at a news conference in which Obama tapped Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx to lead the Transportation Department (DOT).

The updated Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards require cars to get 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. They were finalized last August.

The Obama administration is pushing to protect public lands that could be used for producing renewable energy.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on Tuesday will publish a regulation in the Federal Register to limit mining claims near areas that have been identified as potential sites for wind or solar energy production or that are included in pending permits.

The move will prohibit claims for mining operations on a renewable energy proposal's right-of-way lands while the BLM considers the application. The bureau has had an interim rule on the books since 2011, but the adoption of the final rule will give the government a long-term mechanism to safeguard those lands.

Stay-at-home spouses will have an easier time obtaining their own credit cards following updated rules issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

On Monday, the CFPB announced that it had updated existing regulations to ensure that spouses or partners that do not work outside the home would still be able to qualify for credit cards. The change came after new credit card regulations made it much more difficult for those people, lacking an income of their own, to obtain approval for credit cards. The change comes after a public outcry from those individuals and members of Congress.

“Stay-at-home spouses or partners who have access to resources that allow them to make payments on a credit card can now get their own cards,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “Today’s final rule is an example of the Bureau’s commitment to working with consumers and financial institutions in order to ensure responsible access to credit for American families.”