A federal judge handed the tech industry a victory Monday, blocking President Donald Trump’s $100,000 fee for H-1B visa applications.

The judge ruled the fee was an “unlawful” tax that Trump didn’t have the authority to impose, siding with 20 states that sued to block it. Companies like Amazon, Apple and Microsoft hire thousands of foreign workers through H-1B visas, which are designed for highly skilled professionals.

But the Trump administration has argued the program is misused, and is “confident this order will be reversed on appeal,” according to a White House spokesperson.

This is a published version of the Forbes Daily newsletter, you can sign-up to get Forbes Daily in your inbox here.

FTX cofounder Sam Bankman-Fried, who is serving 25 years for defrauding billions from customers of the crypto exchange, formally applied for a presidential pardon.

OpenAI announced Monday that it had confidentially filed paperwork for an initial public offering, though the company has not yet decided on timing for the highly anticipated IPO.

Billionaire Michael Saylor’s Strategy, the world’s largest institutional holder of bitcoin, disclosed a bitcoin purchase worth over $100 million on Monday. The filing comes roughly a week after the firm sparked broader crypto pessimism with a rare bitcoin sale, and the cryptocurrency has erased all gains since the 2024........

© Forbes