The federal government proposed charging international students as much as $70,000 for a single work authorization today, the most eye-catching item in a 133-document Federal Register that also includes a Customs and Border Protection overhaul of how low-value packages enter the country, a pair of quiet deregulatory moves from the Indian Health Service, and the Army Corps of Engineers walking back a 23-year-old promise of rigorous environmental review for a Louisiana canal project.
- Homeland Security: Homeland Security proposed charging international students on F-1 visas $70,000 for their first work authorization under Optional Practical Training and $30,000 for every one after that, including STEM extensions. The fee has to be paid by the student’s school before a school official can even enter the authorization into the federal tracking system, and the department says plainly that without new revenue it may have to shut the program down entirely. Comments are due by November 9, giving universities, employers, and students roughly a month to weigh in before the fee can be finalized. Read the proposal.
- Customs and Border Protection: CBP proposed replacing the old postal entry process for low-value shipments with an all-electronic “Informal Mail Entry” category, adding tracking-number and sender-identity requirements along with a bonding requirement that low-value importers haven’t needed before. The rule is CBP building the plumbing for a post-de-minimis world: the $800 duty-free exemption for small packages has been suspended since August 2025 and is set for permanent repeal in 2027, so this is what replaces the old light-touch system once that exemption is gone for good. Comments are due December 7, and CBP’s own estimate puts the net cost at roughly $9.3 billion over the next decade, a number commenters now have something concrete to push back on. Read the proposal.
- Indian Health Service: IHS finalized two separate rules on the same day to strip old language out of its section of the federal regulatory code, one about billing non-beneficiaries for care, the other covering provisions the agency says have been duplicative or formally “suspended” since a 1999 notice. Neither rule went through a public comment period, both take effect December 7, and the agency insists current practice won’t change either way, which leaves the question of why clearing obsolete language off the books took two separate rulemakings instead of one, and why it sat there for decades before anyone bothered. Read the first rule and the second.
- Army Corps of Engineers: The Corps withdrew a notice of intent it issued back in 2003 to prepare a full Environmental Impact Statement, the government’s most searching form of environmental review, for deepening the Houma Navigation Canal in Louisiana. In its place, the Corps says a shorter Environmental Assessment is now the appropriate level of review, citing a 2020 change to the project’s legal authorization. An EIS typically means years of detailed study and extensive public input, while an EA is a faster process meant for actions not expected to cause significant impact, so swapping one for the other after sitting on the more rigorous review for 23 years is a real downgrade in scrutiny, and the notice offers no comment period on the switch itself. Read the notice.
- Institute of Museum and Library Services: IMLS, the small federal agency the administration’s own budget request has proposed eliminating, published a request for comment on a brand-new grant program aimed at small history museums, historical societies, and historic sites. Agencies generally don’t start the months-long process of standing up a funding opportunity, which this notice is the first formal step toward, unless they expect to still be around to award the money, so a new program announcement from an agency slated for closure is worth watching to see whether it survives long enough to actually make a grant. Read the notice.
This edition draws on the full Federal Register issue for October 8, 2026, which ran to 133 documents. Categories screened out as routine include airworthiness directives, antidumping and countervailing duty determinations, a cluster of nearly identical Securities and Exchange Commission self-regulatory-organization filings tied to exchanges adopting nearly round-the-clock trading hours, routine EPA state implementation plan approvals, Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act notices, advisory committee meeting announcements, and standard OMB/Paperwork Reduction Act information-collection notices.
