Beltway Buzz, December 5, 2025

NLRB Nominee Clears Committee Hurdle. On December 3, 2025, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) advanced the nomination of Scott Mayer to be a member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) by a vote of 12–11. Mayer now joins fellow NLRB nominees, James Murphy (nominated to be a member of the Board) and Crystal Carey (nominated to serve as the Board’s general counsel), in awaiting a vote by the full Senate. If confirmed, Mayer and Murphy would join current Board member David Prouty and return a functioning quorum to the agency.

After Mayer’s nomination was approved by the HELP Committee, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) added Mayer’s name to another tranche of executive branch nominees to be confirmed en banc. This latest group of ninety-seven nominees also includes the aforementioned Murphy and Carey. As of this writing, Thune has started the process of teeing up a Senate floor vote for this group of nominees.

If Mayer, Murphy, Carey or any other nominee is not confirmed before the end of this first session of the 119th Congress, of which there are only two scheduled weeks remaining, then the nominations will be sent back to President Donald Trump and these individuals will have to be renominated. When the second session of the 119th Congress begins in January 2026, the Senate could vote to let any particular nominee remain, meaning that the nominee would continue where he or she left off in the confirmation process. Of course, Senate Democrats are free to withhold consent and force President Trump to renominate candidates.

Federal Judge Enjoins New York Labor Law. A federal judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York has enjoined New York state’s enforcement of its amended labor law. Enacted on September 5, 2025, the New York law empowers the state’s Public Employment Relations Board to assert jurisdiction over private-sector union elections and labor-management disputes—subjects traditionally within the sole purview of the NLRB. The judge ruled that the law was likely preempted by the National Labor Relations Act and that New York’s arguments that “unique circumstances”—such as the Board’s lack of a quorum and the ongoing litigation concerning Board members’ for-cause removal protections—created an exception to preemption, were without merit.

USCIS Freezes Immigration Benefit Requests. On December 2, 2025, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a policy memorandum, titled, “Hold and Review of all Pending Asylum Applications and all USCIS Benefit Applications Filed by Aliens from High-Risk Countries.” Effective immediately, the memorandum instructs USCIS personnel to: (1) place a hold on all applications for asylum and for withholding of removal “regardless of the alien’s country of nationality”; (2) place a hold on all benefit requests from applicants of the nineteen countries listed in President Trump’s June 4, 2025, travel ban proclamation; and (3) re-review benefits requests from foreign nationals of those nineteen travel-ban countries who entered the United States on or after January 20, 2021. According to the memorandum, the purpose of the policy change is to “fully assess all national security and public safety threats along with any other related grounds of inadmissibility or ineligibility.”

State Department to Scrutinize Online Presence of H-1B Applicants. Beginning December 15, 2025, the U.S. Department of State will begin vetting the social media profiles of H-1B visa applicants. Consequently, the State Department is instructing “all applicants for H-1B and their dependents (H-4) … to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media profiles to ‘public.’” In June 2025, the State Department initiated a similar online vetting process for F, M, and J student visa applicants.

OSHRC Chair Sworn In. Jonathan Snare has been sworn in as chair of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC). Snare is a veteran of the U.S Department of Labor (DOL) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and he was serving as deputy solicitor of labor at the time President Trump nominated him for the OSHRC role. Snare will need another commissioner to join him to restore a functioning quorum to the three-member Commission.

Tennessee Special Election Makes History. On December 4, 2025, Matt Van Epps (R-Tennessee) was sworn in as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, just two days after winning a special election to represent Tennessee’s Seventh District in Congress. The special election was held to replace outgoing Republican Representative Mark Green, who retired less than one year into his fourth term in Congress to pursue an opportunity in the private sector. After his swearing in, Van Epps claimed that this was the first time in history that a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point (Van Epps was an Army helicopter pilot) succeeded a fellow West Point alumnus (Green was an Army flight surgeon) for the same congressional seat.