News news1 story
The stopgap funds agencies through Dec. 11, then senators left town for five weeks with the House still needing to vote.
The Senate approved the continuing resolution early Saturday by a bipartisan 90-6 vote, an 84-vote margin. The bill would fund the government through Dec. 11, moving the deadline 71 days beyond Oct. 1 and past the November midterms. Senators then left for a five-week recess. The House has not voted on the measure and will return in September.
Some numbers behind the new deadline
- Fiscal 1997 was the last time Congress finished all 12 appropriations bills before a fiscal year began. Every year since has needed a stopgap.
- Dec. 11 lands 38 days after Election Day, inside the lame-duck session — members who just lost their seats still get a vote on it.
- All 435 House seats and roughly a third of the Senate are on the ballot Nov. 3.
Red take
A stopgap adds no money and takes none away: every agency stays frozen at last year's level through Dec. 11, so a program Congress voted to cut keeps spending at the old rate. And that date drops the twelve appropriations bills into a lame duck, where members voted out on Nov. 3 still cast deciding votes on the next year's spending.
Blue take
The House does not return until September and funding lapses at midnight Sept. 30, so the live choice was this bill or a second shutdown a year after the 43-day lapse. A 90-6 margin says neither party thought agency operations were the right leverage, and Dec. 11 leaves room to write the twelve bills without paychecks stopped.
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The price does not move. The question is who owes it — and DHS has not spelled that out.
The Department of Homeland Security is amending its rules for the 9-11 Response and Biometric Entry-Exit Fee, the surcharge Congress attached to certain H-1B and L-1 petitions. DHS says the change will "correct DHS's interpretation of statutory language" covering which employers owe the fee and which filings trigger it. It does not say what the old reading was or what the new one is. The document is scheduled for publication in the Federal Register on Monday, August 10, 2026. Under the statute, the fee reaches a petitioner that employs 50 or more people in the United States when more than half of those workers hold H-1B or L nonimmigrant status. The amounts hold at $4,000 for a covered H-1B petition and $4,500 for a covered L-1, the levels set by the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016.
What the notice leaves open
- Which employers and which filings move into scope, and which move out.
- Whether this is a final rule, an interim rule, or a proposal open for comment.
- The effective date.
- Whether it reaches petitions already pending at USCIS.
What an employer already pays per worker, before this fee
- Form I-129 petition fee: $780 for most employers, $460 for small firms and nonprofits, under the 2024 USCIS fee schedule.
- ACWIA training fee: $1,500 for employers with more than 25 workers, $750 for smaller ones — on the books since 1998.
- Fraud prevention and detection fee: $500 on an initial H-1B or L-1 petition.
- H-1B lottery registration: $215 per worker entered, up from $10 before March 2024 — about 21 times the old rate.
- Premium processing, for a decision in 15 business days: $2,805 as of February 2024.
Stack those together and a premium-processed hire at a large employer runs about $5,800 before the surcharge. The surcharge adds $4,000 on top of that.
Donald Trump (Pres-R Florida) added a separate $100,000 payment on certain new H-1B petitions by proclamation in September 2025 — roughly 17 times that routine stack. It came from the White House, not from Congress, and this DHS notice does not touch it. Which new petitions it reaches, and whether it is being collected today, is not established here.
The 9-11 surcharge doubled by 2016 — then held for a decade
The chart tracks the surcharge itself: $2,000 and $2,250 when Congress set it in 2010, $4,000 and $4,500 since the 2016 appropriations act. That price is the one part of the fee this notice leaves alone.
Ongoing4 earlier updates17 days
This story has run 5 times over 17 days, starting Jul 23.
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BackgroundWhat the Strait of Hormuz actually carries
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- The shipping lanes are about two miles wide in each direction, inside a strait roughly 21 miles across at its narrowest point.
- Qatar sends nearly all of its liquefied natural gas through Hormuz, close to a fifth of world LNG trade.
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