Beltway Buzz, May 8, 2026

DHS ‘Duration of Status’ Proposal Nears Finalization. A proposed U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) / U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rulemaking, “Establishing a Fixed Time Period of Admission and an Extension of Stay Procedure for Nonimmigrant Academic Students, Exchange Visitors, and Representatives of Foreign Information Media,” took a significant step toward finalization this week. After reviewing the public comments on the proposal for approximately seven months, on May 5, 2026, ICE transmitted a draft final rule to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for review. The OIRA review process can take days or even weeks and is the last step in the regulatory process before a rule is finalized.

The proposal would set a four-year maximum period of stay for students on F-1 and J-1 nonimmigrant visas. In 2020, the first Trump administration proposed a similar rule, but it was later withdrawn by the Biden administration. Larkin Dykstra has additional details.

NLRB GC Reassigns Cases to Address Backlog. According to media reports, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has approximately 17,000 open unfair labor practice cases. To help alleviate this backlog, this week the Board’s general counsel (GC), Crystal Carey, transferred 3,500 unfair labor practice cases from overloaded regional offices to locations with greater capacity to process them in a timely manner. In addition to this week’s action, earlier this year, Carey took steps to streamline case processing by ensuring that pertinent information is collected when an initial charge is filed.

‘Faster Labor Contracts Act’ Update. With the U.S. House of Representatives in recess, progress on the Democrats’ efforts to force a vote on the Faster Labor Contracts Act—a bill that would impose an artificial collective bargaining timeline on employers and labor unions—has understandably stalled. Additionally, the bill would empower government bureaucrats to set the contractual terms if the parties cannot reach an agreement in a prescribed time period. Republican leaders in the House aren’t interested in advancing the bill, so Democrats are hoping to get at least 218 House members to sign a petition that, pursuant to House rules, would trigger a floor vote. So far, 199 members of the House—all Democrats—have signed the petition. Proponents of the discharge petition will need the 13 remaining Democrats to sign, in addition to 6 Republicans, though House membership numbers are often in flux. A companion bill in the U.S. Senate has sixteen cosponsors, including three Republican senators: Josh Hawley (Missouri), Bernie Moreno (Ohio), and Roger Marshall (Kansas).

DOL Drops Defense of Biden-Era Overtime Regulation. This week, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) dropped its defense of the Biden-era overtime rule. The rule, which would have increased the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (FLSA) minimum salary threshold overtime exemption to $58,656 per year beginning on January 1, 2025, was vacated by two different federal district courts in Texas in late 2024. In early 2025, the Trump administration actually filed an appeal of one of these decisions, presumably as a placeholder to buy time to figure out how it would eventually address the regulation. Now, with the DOL dropping the appeal and no longer defending the rule, the 2019 regulation remains in place, which sets the salary basis threshold for the overtime exemption at $35,568 per year. Looking ahead, the most recent regulatory agenda (released in September 2025) lists potential changes to the FLSA overtime regulations as a “long-term action.”

USCIS to Resume Benefit Requests for Certain Physicians. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has quietly lifted a hold on the processing of benefit requests—such as visa and work authorization renewals—filed by physicians from certain countries. These holds were the result of USCIS policy memoranda issued in late 2025 and early 2026 that ordered “a comprehensive review of all policies, procedures, and screening and vetting processes for benefit requests for aliens from countries listed” in President Donald Trump’s expanded travel ban of December 2025. Amidst an ongoing physician shortage in the United States, USCIS has now updated its website to state, “Holds have been lifted for … applications associated with medical physicians.”

An Ap-peel-ing Bill. This week, the House passed legislation that would make it legal to peel bananas. Well, that is at least how the bill’s champion, Democratic Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington State, describes her bill that was included as an amendment to the Farm, Food and National Security Act of 2026 (H.R. 7567) (colloquially referred to as the “Farm Bill”), which passed the House this week.

The “Cutting Red Tape on Child Care Providers Act of 2025” (H.R. 1889) responds to state regulations that supposedly prevent child care providers from peeling bananas or cutting raw vegetables to serve to children. These regulations classify such actions as “food preparation,” which requires multiple sinks and other public health-related capital investments. According to Representative Gluesenkamp Perez, daycare providers are, therefore, incentivized to provide children with packaged foods rather than fresh fruits and vegetables. The “Cutting Red Tape on Child Care Providers” bill would address this situation by prohibiting states that receive federal childcare grants from enacting “any barriers on the simple preparation of fresh fruits and vegetables for facilities, licensed or licensed exempt.”