This is deeply ironic given that an number of the best software engineers I know have EE degrees.

Yikes. I would have been unemployed by that measure because I work as a SWE without a CS degree.

You and many others. My first mentor was a cognitive science major, and she was the person every developer on the team went to for help.

This is one of those policy decisions that I guess might sound reasonable on the outside, but has absolutely no bearing on reality.

Not getting H1B is not equal to unemployment.

But it does equal to unemployment in the United States because you can only get limited mileage out of OPT. Moreover, you need to work in an industry where employers are willing to sponsor an H-1B. Many of us have had to "pivot" to industries like Software when we realized that we were un-hireable in non-software industries due to our immigration status.

That example was likely conceived by the journalist and not the administration, I don't see it in other articles on this. I don't believe it will be that strict since degrees looks so different in different parts of the world.