United States: Government, Public Sector

The Department of Energy has released an Expression of Interest seeking input on transferring surplus critical minerals and rare earth elements from five former nuclear weapons production and energy research sites. These materials, including aluminum, lithium, tungsten, and other strategic resources, could help reduce US dependence on foreign mineral imports while supporting domestic advanced manufacturing and defense industries.

On Oct. 7, 2026, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced the first civil penalty under the Outbound Investment Security Program (OISP), which prohibits or requires notification of certain U.S.

The United States Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has released its 2025 Annual Report to Congress, revealing significant trends in cross-border investment reviews and enforcement activities. The report demonstrates CFIUS's intensified focus on identifying unfiled transactions, monitoring mitigation agreements, and scrutinizing deals involving critical technologies and sensitive data.

Federal and state campaign finance regulators continue to scrutinize disclosure requirements and recurring donation practices, while courts weigh the constitutional boundaries of transparency laws. Recent developments include FEC inquiries into software-driven reporting errors, a Ninth Circuit ruling upholding Arizona's donor disclosure law, and California's new quarterly reporting framework for behested payments.

On Sept. 30, 2026, Senate negotiators announced agreement on the text of the “Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026,” a long-awaited bill to reform and expedite federal environmental and energy permitting. The 417-page bill is the product of intensive negotiations among the chairs and ranking members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Environment and Public Works Committee that began early in the 119th Congress.

The U.S. Department of Justice has announced significant changes to the Justice Manual that will reshape how False Claims Act cases are pursued and evaluated. These revisions address the role of informal agency guidance in enforcement actions and establish clear factors for dismissing meritless qui tam lawsuits. Companies facing FCA claims now have new grounds to challenge cases and argue for dismissal based on these updated standards.

With the ever-growing barrage of rhetoric over just how, when, and if, AI will kill us all, the conversation also lends itself to, do we believe it will be AI that kills us, or a bad actor using AI? If I showed you a picture of East Asia at night from space and pointed out that you can’t see North Korea for the lack of available electricity, (It’s 99% blacked out, and only Pyongyang shows a small cluster of light) would you think for a minute that they would have the tech savvy, and high end software, or even hardware, necessary to steal $6.7 billion in crypto since 2017?

On Sept. 30, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth issued a memorandum creating Project Agincourt, formally directing the Department to establish a pathway to AUTOWARCOM by Oct. 1, 2027. The effort will be led by the direct reporting portfolio manager for unmanned systems (DRPM-UxS) under Owen West, currently director of the Defense Innovation Unit, and Max Strasiser, currently at DRPM-UxS.

The Department of Energy has released an Expression of Interest seeking input on transferring surplus critical minerals and rare earth elements from five former nuclear weapons production and energy research sites. These materials, including aluminum, lithium, tungsten, and other strategic resources, could help reduce US dependence on foreign mineral imports while supporting domestic advanced manufacturing and defense industries.

On Sept. 30, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth issued a memorandum creating Project Agincourt, formally directing the Department to establish a pathway to AUTOWARCOM by Oct. 1, 2027. The effort will be led by the direct reporting portfolio manager for unmanned systems (DRPM-UxS) under Owen West, currently director of the Defense Innovation Unit, and Max Strasiser, currently at DRPM-UxS.

Companies doing business with the federal government face an increasingly complex enforcement landscape where a single compliance issue can trigger simultaneous investigations by multiple agencies—federal prosecutors, civil fraud attorneys, inspectors general, regulatory bodies, and state attorneys general. The decisions made in the earliest days of such investigations often determine whether risks are effectively managed or catastrophically compounded.

Recordkeeping may not be the most exciting part of trade compliance, but GTC instructor Arthur O’Meara has one word for what happens when companies get it wrong: draconian. On this episode of Simply Trade Tips, host Lalo Solorzano and Arthur tackle an often-overlooked part of import compliance: keeping the records you may need when Customs comes asking.