U.S. Department of Commerce
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2026
Commerce Department directed NOAA to review California's coastal program after the state delayed oil, pipeline, and spaceport projects
On June 26, 2026, the U.S. Department of Commerce directed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to conduct a formal evaluation of California's federally approved Coastal Management Program under the Coastal Zone Management Act. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who requested the review in a May letter to the White House National Economic Council, said state policies delaying "critical national infrastructure in the name of environmental extremism are unacceptable." The review could alter federal funding to the state if California is found out of compliance.
Commerce Department forces Anthropic to disable two AI models for all foreign nationals in a first-of-its-kind export-control order
On June 12, 2026, the U.S. Department of Commerce — in a letter from Secretary Howard Lutnick to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei — issued an export-control directive citing national-security authorities that suspended all access to Anthropic's Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models by any foreign national, inside or outside the United States, including the company's own foreign-national employees. To comply, Anthropic abruptly disabled both models for all customers worldwide; its other models were unaffected. The government's stated basis was a belief that a method of "jailbreaking" Fable 5 existed, though the letter gave no details; Anthropic said the cited technique surfaced only minor, previously known vulnerabilities also found in other public models and disputed that it justified recalling a model used by hundreds of millions. Contemporaneous reporting described the order as the first time the U.S. government has forced a leading American AI company to take a publicly deployed model offline.
2025
Trump signs EO 14351 establishing Gold Card pay-to-play immigrant visa, bypassing congressional immigration criteria
President Trump signed Executive Order 14351 on September 19, 2025, creating the "Gold Card" program, which directs the Secretaries of Commerce, State, and Homeland Security to treat a $1 million "unrestricted gift" to the Department of Commerce as evidence of eligibility for EB-1, EB-2, or national interest waiver immigrant visas — categories Congress designed for merit-based immigration, not financial payments. The order was published in the Federal Register on September 24, 2025. The program bypasses the EB-5 investor visa framework Congress established at 8 U.S.C. § 1153(b)(5), which requires demonstrated job creation and minimum investment thresholds; the Gold Card requires neither.