Stay
A court order pausing the effect of a rule or a judgment while litigation continues, deciding nothing on the merits.
A stay suspends something temporarily. A court may stay an agency rule so it cannot take effect while a challenge proceeds, or stay its own judgment so the losing party can appeal before the ruling bites. An administrative stay is shorter still: a brief pause purely to give the court time to consider a request properly.
A stay resolves nothing about legality. The standard turns on likelihood of success, irreparable harm, the balance of equities, and the public interest, so a stay indicates a court's provisional assessment rather than its conclusion. Reporting a stay as a ruling that a rule is unlawful is a straightforward error, and a common one.
In practice stays determine what is actually in force during litigation that can run for years, which makes them consequential regardless of their provisional character. An effective date that arrives while a stay is in place does not bind anyone, and a stay lifted on appeal can make a dormant rule operative with very little notice.
What the federal government did, once a day.
One email each weekday: the rules, filings, votes and Fed decisions that actually changed something, each one linked to the document it came from.