The U.S. FDA’s safer technologies program, or STeP, may seem uncontroversial, but agency staff said on a Feb. 1 conference call that the program could be delayed by the change in administration at the White House. This is possibly an artifact of the Biden administration’s Jan. 20 executive order (EO) that applies a freeze to federal agency activities for 60 days, an EO that could affect a wide swath of federal agency activity.