Beltway Buzz, June 18, 2026

$100,000 H-1B Fee Temporarily Back in Effect. Just days after the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts vacated President Trump’s $100,000 H-1B proclamation, the policy is temporarily back in effect. Here’s what happened. Shortly after the district court vacated the policy, the administration filed an appeal of the decision with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. The administration also filed a motion to stay with the district court, asking the court to pause its ruling during the pendency of the appeal. The district court granted a temporary administrative pause of its ruling while the administration petitions the court of appeals for a full stay as the appeal on the merits goes forward. This means that the administration can continue to collect the $100,000 fee for now, though this may change after the court of appeals rules on the administration’s motion to stay. Evan D. Anderson has more.

Proposed EEO-1 Rescission Moves Forward. The White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has completed its review of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) draft proposal to eliminate the Employer Information Report (EEO-1). This means that the EEOC is likely to release the proposal for public comment at any moment. Meanwhile, the EEOC has still not opened the EEO-1 filing portal for the 2025 reporting year.

Teamsters Run It Back With O’Brien. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters voted to reelect Sean O’Brien as its general president during the union’s convention this week. O’Brien’s new five-year term will begin in March 2027. Consider his political influence during the current administration alone:

• O’Brien managed to persuade twenty Republicans to vote for the Faster Labor Contracts Act (FLCA) in the U.S. House of Representatives and three Republicans to cosponsor the bill in the U.S. Senate. One of those cosponsors, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), invited O’Brien to promote the FLCA during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in October 2025.
• O’Brien reportedly pushed the White House to endorse the Railway Safety Act, which was subsequently included in the “Building Unrivaled Infrastructure and Long-Term Development (BUILD) for America’s 250th Act” (“BUILD America 250 Act”) (H.R. 8870), which is making its way through the House.
• O’Brien successfully advocated for the appointment of former representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR)—who supported the Protecting the Right to Organize Act—to be secretary of labor in the Trump administration. (Chavez-DeRemer, who was sworn in as labor secretary on March 11, 2025, stepped down on April 20, 2026.)
• O’Brien was a featured speaker at the Republican National Convention in 2024.
• O’Brien accompanied former senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) at Mullin’s confirmation hearing to be secretary of homeland security.

O’Brien will undoubtedly continue to play an outsized role in Washington, D.C., labor policy debates, no matter what happens in the 2026 midterm elections.

Senate Committee Advances College Athletics Bill. Today, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation voted, 19–9, to approve the Protect College Sports Act. The bill would establish a federal framework governing multiple aspects of collegiate athletics, including play eligibility, student-athlete transfers, and name, image, and likeness (NIL) rules. However, as the Buzz has previously discussed, the bill “is neutral on, and does nothing to alter, employee or non-employee status for student athletes.”

Smoot-Hawley. This week in 1930, President Herbert Hoover signed into law the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, despite a petition signed by more than 1,000 economists urging him to veto the bill. What started as a limited effort to help struggling American farmers by imposing new tariffs on foreign agricultural products quickly ballooned into a broader legislative scheme to increase tariffs on more than 20,000 imported products. Spearheaded by Senator Reed Smoot (R-UT) and Representative Willis C. Hawley (R-OR), the law turned out to be a disaster. Foreign countries immediately instituted their own retaliatory tariffs, leading to a freeze of international trade that deepened the Great Depression. The law was a political disaster, as well, as Hoover, Smoot, and Hawley, all lost in the 1932 elections. Though technically not repealed, Smoot-Hawley was essentially replaced by the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934 that President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law.

The Buzz will return to its regularly scheduled programming on Friday, June 26, 2026.