Judge Says the Fee Went Too FarA federal judge in Massachusetts has struck down President Donald Trump’s $100,000 fee for H-1B visa petitions, saying the administration crossed a constitutional line. U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin ruled that the charge worked like a tax, not a penalty, and that only Congress can impose or delegate taxes. That is a small detail, of course, unless you happen to be the branch of government trying to set one with a proclamation. The case was brought by 20 states, led by California, and it challenged the fee Trump announced in September for employers seeking highly skilled foreign workers.The Court Rejected The Administration’s ShortcutSorokin also found that the policy ran afoul of the Administrative Procedure Act, the law that tells agencies to slow down and do the paperwork before changing things that affect real people and real money. According to the ruling, the agencies behind the fee failed to give a solid explanation, failed to consider alternatives, and failed to weigh the impact of the rule. They also did not have a valid emergency or foreign-affairs reason to skip notice and comment. In plain English, the court said the government cannot point to a presidential…

Late-counted ballots changed the scoreboardLos Angeles voters got another reminder that election night is often more of a rough draft than a finish line. In the latest ballot dump, Raman gained more than 19,000 votes, Bass added nearly 16,000, and Pratt picked up just under 8,500. About 80% of that batch went to the Democratic candidates, which pushed Raman past Pratt and cut a once-large gap to just over 3,000 votes. An estimated 146,000 ballots still remain to be counted, so the race is not final, but the trend is plain enough to make campaign staff reach for the coffee and the aspirin.Bass and Raman are projected to move onDecision Desk HQ projected that Nithya Raman will take the second runoff spot and join Mayor Karen Bass in November. ABC7’s Jory Rand noted that Pratt could still come back if a late batch suddenly tilts his way, though that looked like a long shot. Pratt had led by nearly 21,000 votes on Friday, then saw that margin shrink to 7,494 on Saturday as late-arriving mail ballots kept landing in the Democratic column. That is the modern election experience: one night you are ahead, the next night you are doing arithmetic…