Giving Democrats power to stop Trump’s efforts to crackdown on immigration writ large isn’t proving a point to Trump, it’s sacrificing America’s future.

Trump Admin Proposes New $100K H-1B Fee To Offset Immigration Enforcement Costs The Trump administration plans to charge employers a fee of $103,265 for H-1B skilled foreign workers, according to a proposed regulation posted on Monday. Revenue from the fee would be used to offset the costs of running the federal immigration system – including courts and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  A similar $100,000 fee was shot down in June by an Obama-appointed federal judge in Massachusetts, after Trump attempted to implement it via presidential proclamation and 20 blue states went apeshit. The administration’s argument is that the H-1B program has been used to take jobs from Americans, and the additional fee would cause employers to consider the cost of just hiring Americans. Citing a working paper in the National Bureau of Economic Research, the new proposed regulation argues that the new fee would make employers “less likely to hire an H-1B worker over a qualified and highly-skilled American.” The paper found that H1-B workers make on average around 15% less than American counterparts.  The program, passed by Congress in 1991, lets employers hire 65,000 skilled foreign workers per year – with an additional 20,000 visas available for workers who hold advanced degrees from US universities.  The new proposed regulation is set to publish in the Federal Register today – and would exempt some groups such as most US colleges, universities and nonprofit hospitals associated with academic institutions. Unlike last year’s proposal, this one would apply to many people already living in the US – not just new applications submitted from abroad. The new rule would also restrict a major pathway used by tech companies. In recent years, Amazon has received the most H-1B visas – with over 9,300 approved petitions in FY2026 through June 30, the Washington Post notes – citing US Citizenship and Immigration Services

“This Is My Place Of Business”: How Cakes And Coffee Continue To Be Groundzero In An Age Of Rage Authored by Jonathan Turley via Jonathan Turley, “This is my place of business.” Those words from Jim Sheehan, owner of the Wydaho Roasters coffee shop in Driggs, Idaho, have sparked the latest controversy over the right of businesses to refuse service on the basis of religious or political views. Sheehan has drawn national attention after throwing out a group of pro-life teenagers, calling them the equivalent of a Ku Klux Klan meeting in his shop. Sheehan clearly caters to those who want their lattes with an added shot of rage. However, this and a number of other cases have exposed the hypocrisy of many regarding the service businesses must provide customers with opposing views. From cakes to coffee, shops remain ground zero for an age of rage. Years ago, politicians and pundits rallied around the effort to force Jack Phillips, a cakeshop owner, to create cakes celebrating same-sex marriages. Phillips objected that it violated his religious beliefs. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court in what many of us hoped would be a final resolution of this conflict. I had long criticized the framing of the case (and other similar cases) under the religious clauses rather than treating it as a simple matter of free speech. In the end, the Supreme Court punted in a frustrating 2018 decision. In 2023, however, the Supreme Court delivered a major victory for free speech in 303 Creative v. Elenis. It ruled that Lorie Smith, a Christian website designer, could refuse to provide services for a same-sex marriage. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that “the framers designed the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to protect the ‘freedom to think as you