WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Under the Radar - Episode 16

Episode Date: September 20, 2025

This week on “Under the Radar,” hear about an executive order trying to prevent what would be one of the biggest union strikes in modern American history, a bill that aims to help crack down on fentanyl contamination of illicit drugs, an executive order that imposes new restrictions on H1-B visa workers, and more. I’m your host, Luke Miller, and on this show we’ll cover the news you didn’t catch this week from the mainstream media. While they’re covering the President’s latest tweets, here you can hear about the new legislation, executive orders, and Supreme Court decisions that affect you. Welcome, to “Under the Radar.”

This is Under the Radar on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Now, here's your host, Luke Miller. This week on Under the Radar, hear about an executive order trying to prevent what would be one of the biggest union strikes in modern American history, a bill that aims to help crack down on fentanyl contamination of illicit drugs,

an executive order that imposes new restrictions on H-1B visa workers and more. I'm your host, Luke Miller, and on this show, we'll cover the news you didn't catch this week from the mainstream media. While they're covering the president's latest tweets, Here you can hear about the new legislation, executive orders, and Supreme Court decisions that affect you. Welcome to Under the Radar.

The first piece of news I have for you this week is an executive order signed by the president, September 16th, entitled Establishing an Emergency Board to investigate disputes between the Long Island Railroad Company and certain of its employees represented by certain labor organizations. So the Long Island Railroad is a major commuter railroad that serves the New York metropolitan area. There are about 270,000 daily riders of this railroad. So if the railroad were to be shut down like it would be under a strike, hundreds of thousands of people literally would be affected by this. There have been disputes going on between some of the labor organizations that represent the employees of the Long Island Railroad Company. These five labor organizations are dealing with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and trying to strike a deal to avoid a strike.

The strike was supposed to start on Thursday the 18th, but this executive order under the Railway Labor Act, which I'll talk about in a minute, is able to extend the deadline that they gave for the strike, to prevent a strike at least for the time being. Now, the deal that the labor unions are offering to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority would be a 9.5% wage increase over a period of three years, which might seem insignificant, but officials say that the Long Island Railroad Company has the highest paid railroad workforce in the nation. on average, their engineers earn about $160,000 per year. So it's not like they're making minimum wage here. They're already making a good wage. They're trying to get more. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, we're saying that the unions are being unreasonable here. In a statement by John McCarthy, who is one of the executive officials of the MTA,

he said that the unions never had a plan to resolve this at the bargaining table. If these unions wanted to put riders first, they would either settle or agree to binding arbitration. And if they don't want to strike, they should say so and finally show up to the negotiating table. The cynical delay serves no one. So that's kind of the situation at hand here. What the executive order does is it works under the Railway Labor Act to create an emergency board to investigate the dispute and recommend solutions. So essentially the government is going to create an emergency board made up of people

who are not monetarily interested in either side to basically be a peaceful mediator to help recommend solutions to help bring the dispute to an end. The executive order will delay the strike for at least 60. days, allowing more time for mediation between both parties. The executive order is creating an emergency board of three members, a chairman, and two other members that will be appointed by the president to give the president a report on the dispute that's happening. They have to give this report to the president within 30 days of its creation so that they can try to come up with a solution before the expiration of the emergency board. So what's the reason for the federal government

stepping in and getting involved here? You hear a lot of Republicans, a lot of small government conservatives saying things like, well, the federal government shouldn't be stepping in to dealings between private employers and their employees, that it's not the place of the federal government to meddle in such wage disputes. And some people are even saying that in so doing, they're helping to determine private wages, which I think is a little bit of a stretch there for sure. But I want to point out the interest that the federal government has in solving this. A strike by these workers would essentially mean any maintenance of this railroad system, which is federally required to be able to operate, would essentially be shut down.

It would be gone. And if you don't have the mechanics, the engineers that can do these checks, that can make sure everything's running safely as it should be so that they can legally carry passengers, then the railroad's not going to be able to operate. And that's going to affect hundreds of thousands of people, like I was mentioning earlier, 270,000 daily riders of this railroad all across the New York metropolitan area. A good percentage of the people who live in that area don't have, cars because it's easier to use mass transportation to get places. So if the mass transportation is

shut down, they're not going to be able to do that. If this railroad was shut down, you would see massive traffic on the roads with people trying to get taxis, people trying to walk to work, and not just a few people, right? Like all of these people, all of these 270,000 daily riders are still going to have to get to work or still going to have to get to see their family. They're still going to have to get places. And so they're either going to have to drive, walk, or get a taxi to do so, which is going to crowd even more the already crowded streets of New York City. In those kind of situations, problems arise. Like, accidents are much more likely to happen on the road when there's that much more

traffic going on. Mail and packages are going to have a harder time getting places, which means that corporate activity is going to slow down. And if corporate activity slows down, then you run into a supply chain problem even. And I know that's taking it a long way, but a strike would really have a huge trickle-down effect on the rest of the New York City economy. why the Railway Labor Act exists. It exists as a way for the federal government to step in as a mediator and help these sides who are both self-interested solve these kinds of issues in order to

prevent problems that become the government's problem because it does become the government's problem when you have excess traffic and when you have an increased number of motor vehicle accidents and when you have supply chain problems and corporate productivity problems because of this and all of that stuff becomes the problem of the government. That's why the act exists. That's what allows the president to do something like this. And it's not the president doing it himself, right? It's not like he's taking sides. He's not telling the unionized workers that they can't strike. He's not telling the unionized workers that they can't negotiate for higher wages. He's not doing any of that. That's not what the executive order is doing. It just allows him to establish a board of people who can help mediate between the two sides. It delays a strike, which is good for the federal government in the short term especially. And at the end of the day, all the board does is report to the president and hopefully help the two sides reach a solution. that will prevent a strike from happening in the future. The next piece of news I have for you this week is a bill that just passed through both the House and the Senate, support for Patients and Communities Reauthorization Act of 2025.

This week, it passed through the Senate and is waiting on the president's desk for either his veto or his signature. Now, I'll split this bill up into two different categories, first of which are the things that are being reauthorized, and then second are the things that are being added. So first, the things that are being reauthorized for the year's 2020. 26 through 2030. It's an extension of a previous bill that was passed by the first Trump administration that applied for the years 2019 through 2023. The main objects of the bill are to give funding to the Department of Health and Human Services to fund programs that deal with substance use disorders,

mental health, overdose prevention, and treatment. There are programs that are being extended specifically for pregnant and postpartum women, youth, people recovering from substance use disorder, It, the bill offers funding for housing assistance for individuals in recovery. It gives grants to different community organizations or private organizations that are helping to facilitate recovery, rehab facilities, those kind of things. It offers loan repayments for certain health providers that are treating substance use disorders, and it offers mental and behavioral health education and training for those health care providers.

It expands funding for first responders programs, specifically for education for how to treat opioid and non-opioid overdoses. It offers funding for treatment for children, suffering psychological trauma, particularly for children who have had parents that have been drug addicts or have died from drug overdose. Things like that. These are all things that were brought up in the first bill, the bill that was passed in the first Trump administration. We were funded from 2019 through 2023. But there are also some new things that are added on to the bill, some new things that the bill establishes like one of those things is to create a task force to protect the national suicide prevention lifeline from cybersecurity threats. So everybody's heard of the suicide prevention, the hotline,

the number that you can call. In the year 2023, this lifeline experienced a temporary service outage, which opened it up to cybersecurity attacks. And the reason that this is particularly problematic is these kind of calls often include things about mental health history, substance use issues, abuse or trauma experiences, and just general personal information that cybercriminals would like to get to. That's particularly sensitive information. But in that situation in 2003, it was open to cybersecurity attacks when they experienced a service outage. And so the bill is establishing a task force to essentially prevent that from ever happening in the future to help protect that sensitive information, to help people feel more secure calling that kind of number,

getting that kind of help. The other thing the bill creates is a new educational task force. It's called the Federal Interagency Work Group on Fentanyl Contamination of Illegal Drugs. The Trump administration in particular has been very concerned about fentanyl overdoses going on in the United States. President Trump even called it a national security threat that drug dealers, drug traffickers are using our borders with Mexico and with Canada to bring fentanyl into the United States. A lot of the fentanyl overdose deaths are not people who are actively intentionally taking fentanyl.

The way a lot of times it works is that people are taking fentanyl. taking other illegal drugs or even legal drugs, and they have been mixed or contaminated with fentanyl because fentanyl is extremely addictive and it helps get people addicted to those kind of drugs. So particularly illegal drug dealers will mix in fentanyl in order to keep people hooked. The only thing that I'm concerned about with this initiative that's created by the bill is that the stated duties of this work group that's being created are that they'll examine federal efforts to reduce and prevent drug overdose by fentanyl contaminated, elicit, drugs, which are already illegal drugs. So it's not like the federal government is allowing these

illegal drugs to pass through just willy-nilly. So I don't know exactly how the group is going to examine how well the federal government has reduced fentanyl contaminated particularly illicit drugs. And then the other duty of the work group is to make recommendations for educating youth on the potency and dangers of drugs contaminated by fentanyl. So let me just offer an anecdotal note about this. My senior year of high school, playing baseball, we had to go sit. And and hear this lecture about how all these illicit drugs that people are selling, all these illegal drugs are contaminated with fentanyl and people are dying because of it. We heard from a speaker whose son was addicted to heroin. It was a horribly tragic story. The son was addicted

to heroin, he was homeless and eventually died from fentanyl contaminated heroin. My note about this is that the way that that educational effort was received by all of us was, okay, we're just not going to do heroin in the first place. And anyone who's doing illicit drugs in the first place is aware of the dangers that they're facing. So it's falling on deaf ears, at least in my experience, because people who want to do heroin are going to do heroin anyway. This kid, and it's a horrible story, obviously, the kid had been through rehab several times, and he continually went back to it and back to it and back to it. The government has been fighting an educational war on drugs for a really long time now, and at one point, do you have to go beyond

the educational level to really address a serious overdose problem like this? And the bill offers a lot of funding to the government to deal with these kind of situations as they're happening or after they've happened, but it doesn't seem as though the bill is doing a whole lot to prevent these situations from happening in the first place other than through education, which is something that they've been doing for a long time. You're listening to Under the Radar with Luke Miller on Radio for Hillsdale 101.7 FM. The next piece of news I have for you this week is another executive order signed by the president September 19th entitled Restriction on Entry of Certain non-immigrant workers. This executive order applies to the H-1B visa program, which is something that has been

of much debate in the Republican Party in the last year in particular, but has really been essential to the Republican Party labor policy for 40, 50 years now. As you may recall, at the beginning of 2025 and of 2024, you saw people like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramoswami talking about the importance of importing H-1B visa workers, particularly in STEM fields, who could really contribute to those fields. for the United States. And President Trump tended to agree with that position a lot, especially at that time, whereas much more of the party base seemed to be very much against that position, concerned about the fact that there are many H-1B visa workers taking over industries that Americans are seeking employment in and aren't really able to get. And that's what this executive order addresses.

The executive order claims that widespread abuse has led to the replacement of American workers with lower paid foreign labor. And as such, there has been a negative impact on American wages, employment, and national security. A couple of interesting statistics that the executive order lays out between the year 2000 and 2019, foreign STEM workers doubled in number, while total STEM employment grew at about 44.5%. So a disproportionate number of those STEM jobs have been going to H-1B visa workers. Another thing worth noting is that, according to a study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, computer science and computer engineering graduates from American colleges have some of the highest unemployment rates in the country, which, an interesting

comparison here, art history graduates between ages 22 and 27, so once they're getting out of school, these computer science and computer engineering majors have double the unemployment rates of art history graduates. They also point out that many American tech companies are laying off highly skilled, high paid American workers and hiring thousands of H-1B visa workers. One software a company in particular hired over 5,000 H-1B visa workers in fiscal year 2025 so far and has announced a series of layoffs totaling more than 15,000 American employees. And the reason that this is a viable strategy for a lot of these companies is that generally speaking, H-1B visa workers are available at a lower wage rate than most American workers in those same fields demand. And so as a

cost reduction strategy, some of these American companies, particularly STEM companies, are importing a lot of these H-1B visa workers who they can pay a lower rate that doesn't necessarily reflect the going wage rate for those jobs in the United States, which also drives the wage rate down for other American workers in those same jobs, which is just bad for the country all around. So what the executive order does is it requires that when a company petitions a government for an H-1B visa for an employee, they will now have to pay $100,000 per petition that they submit to the federal government per employee. The restriction will begin September 21st and last 12 months unless is extended further. The Department of Homeland Security is going to have to verify payment by each of the

companies per petition. And what this really means is that companies are going to have to decide whether it's more cost expedient for them to pay $100,000 fee per worker that they import from other countries instead of hiring American workers. That's the end goal of this is to prevent these companies from completely replacing American workers in these STEM industries. The other very important factor in this is that when DHS is considering these petitions, the executive order is going to require them to prioritize high-skilled, high-paid foreign workers over low-wage applicants so that the wage rate for American workers isn't driven down by these H-1B visa workers that these companies are importing to come work in the United States

at lower wages. And so what that will hopefully do is to allow the wage rate to stay, constant between H-1B visa workers and American workers so that there's not an incentive, a cost-reduction incentive for these companies to hire more foreign workers and lay off American workers. That's the end goal of the executive order. The next piece of news I have for you this week is another emergency docket Supreme Court case, where the Trump administration is urging the Supreme Court to prevent transgender people from being able to choose a third option for biological sex on their passports. So under the Biden administration, passport applicants were given a third choice for their gender to mark down on their passport.

They could mark down male, female, or X, basically an other option. And in an executive order that I talked about on this show last semester, President Trump indicated that U.S. policy would recognize just male and female. It required every federal administration to just recognize the two sexes in every policy that they enforced. That executive order also directed the State Department to require that government issued identification documents, including passports and visas, accurately reflect the holder's biological sex. So there was a group of plaintiffs in this Supreme Court case. They took this case to federal court in Massachusetts, challenging that executive order. And the judge ruled that the executive order was, quote unquote, motivated by animus towards trans-identifying individuals. The judge blocked the executive order from applying to the plaintiffs in particular, and then,

then later the same district judge was able to block the entire state department from enforcing the policy against all transgender and non-binary passport applicants. And so now the Trump administration is coming to the Supreme Court, asking them to reverse the pause that this district judge put on the executive order and require that all future passport applicants select either male or female on the passport. Which is the entire point of the passport, and that's exactly what the U.S. Attorney General is arguing in this emergency docket case. saying that it's entirely rational for the president to reject gender identity as a basis for legal identification in favor of a biological definition for sex. Because that is the point of government

ID in the first place, right? The government issues ID, they issue passports in order to be able to identify you. And how a person feels about oneself really doesn't play a factor in how the government can identify you. It's the same reason that we have to give legal names for birth certificates and for identification and for everything else is because if you just went by a different name on every individual government document, they wouldn't ever be able to identify you. And that's the whole point of it is if you were to commit a crime, if a crime was committed against you, the government has to be able to identify you. In order to be able to enforce tax policy, the government has to be able to identify you. That's the whole point of a

government issued ID. They have to be able to objectively identify you based on immutable characteristics of which gender identity is not one. That was the reasoning behind the original Trump administration executive order that was passed on the very first that Trump was in office for this second term. A district judge has been able to block the entire federal government from enforcing that thus far, and this emergency docket case is challenging that. The Supreme Court has yet to announce their decision on this emergency docket case, but judging based off of the precedents from this year, the Supreme Court has been allowing state governments to enforce their biological sex over gender identity laws.

And so it would make sense that the Supreme Court is likely to do the same thing for the federal government and enforcement of this executive order as well. The last piece of news I have for you this week is another executive order. This one building off of two different executive orders that I know I've talked about before on this show. This one signed September 16th, 2025 entitled Further Extending the TikTok Enforcement Delay. So I know I've talked about this before, but in 2024, the U.S. Congress passed legislation called Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act that required

the Chinese company Bite Dance that owns TikTok to divest TikTok within a certain time frame, which was originally 270 days, because the American government was concerned about national security risks that Chinese ownership of the TikTok app posed surrounding data privacy of American users, different political influence that the Chinese government might be able to have through the app, and different surveillance concerns that the U.S. government was worried about through the app. And so the bill was passed in 2024. The original deadline for Bight Dance to divest TikTok was a long time ago. The original deadline was extended on April 4th, then was extended again on June 19th,

and is now extended again as of September 16th to December 16th, 2025, during the time the Department of Justice is not allowed to take action to enforce the original act. Again, the original act did give allowance for this kind of extension to happen if progress was being made towards compliance. There's been very little to show that that's actually happening, and it really is starting to seem more and more like we're just never going to enforce this legislation. So to recap this week, we had three executive orders, one aiming to avoid a major labor union strike, one restricting H-1B visa workers, and another which again delays the TikTok ban.

We had a Supreme Court case aimed at removing gender identity from passports and a bill that supports and tries to prevent more victims of fentanyl overdose. Tune in next week for more. Well, that's all I have for you today on Under the Radar. I'm your host, Luke Miller, and I want to thank you for listening and encourage you to tune back in next time for more coverage of the news that fell under the radar. You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Thanks for listening to Under the Radar with Luke Miller, here on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM.