On December 4, 2025, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) updated its policy manual to reduce the maximum validity period for Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) for certain categories of noncitizens. The update also incorporates changes to these EAD validity periods made by recent legislation.

On November 4, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued a long-anticipated decision in Shen v. Simpson, upholding the constitutionality of a Florida law, SB 264, which restricts ownership of or investment in Florida real estate by individuals “domiciled” in the People’s Republic of China and to a lesser extent, other countries of concern (which are identified in the statute as Russia, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and Syria) who are not American citizens or green card holders. The restriction encompasses residential, commercial and agricultural real estate. Oral argument in the case was held on April 19, 2024, and it took the court almost one year and seven months to issue its opinion, an unusually long turn-around time. 

The Trump Administration’s Genesis Mission, which President Trump established by Executive Order 14363 on November 24, 2025, marks the most consequential federal intervention in artificial intelligence (AI) to date, consolidating scientific datasets, supercomputing capacity, and national laboratory research assets into a unified, government-backed AI development platform. The initiative reflects a strategic shift toward federal coordination of frontier-level AI capabilities, with comparisons to the Manhattan Project, capturing the scale and urgency of this policy direction.

As 2025 draws to a close, the U.S. privacy landscape continues to evolve rapidly, with significant implications for how businesses handle consumer data and make use of artificial intelligence (AI). This year alone has seen the enactment of comprehensive privacy laws in eight (8) additional states, bringing the total to twenty (20) states with such legislation on the books. These laws impose strict privacy notice requirements that demand immediate attention to any company’s public facing privacy policy.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control of the United States Treasury Department (“OFAC”) announced on November 24, 2025 the imposition of a $4,677,552 financial penalty on a U.S. person (the “U.S. Person”) for violating U.S. sanctions against Russia. This action shows that notwithstanding energetic U.S. diplomatic efforts to end the armed conflict in Ukraine, enforcement of sanctions against the Russian Federation remains robust and could have serious financial repercussions for violators. Even individuals and businesses not focused on cross-border transactions on a day-to-day basis need to be alert to the risk of violating sanctions imposed on foreign countries and nationals.
 

On November 10, 2025, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) published the Tri-Seal Advisory. The Tri-Seal Advisory is a coordinated effort between the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Department of State, and the U.S. Department of Commerce to offer those seeking to transact with Syria certainty regarding permissible trade guidance.