Earth's End Drafts and Carriage Company

08/17/2026

08/03/2026

Hettinger, North Dakota has fewer than a thousand people. It has a hospital — West River Health Services — and that hospital needed a lab technician.

More than thirty people applied. Not one of them was a US citizen. The applicants came from the Philippines and Nigeria.

That is the reality of rural healthcare staffing in this country, and it isn't unusual.

Then Trump imposed a $100,000 fee on hiring a worker through an H-1B visa. The hospital's lab manager put it in perspective: that single fee is roughly what some rural hospitals pay two lab technicians for an entire year.

The job stayed open.

Twenty Democratic attorneys general sued. Judge Leo Sorokin struck the fee down, ruling it amounted to a tax that Congress never authorized the executive branch to impose. The administration went to the First Circuit for a stay while it appeals.

Last week, the appeals court refused.

The fee is not in effect. Hospitals like the one in Hettinger can fill those positions.

This one never came anywhere near a national broadcast, which is exactly why we're telling you about it.

All eight wins:
https://www.dworkinsubstack.com/p/trump-surrendered-this-week-and-hoped