News from the USA. Main highlights by the end of the week. May 23, 2026

Glory to Ukraine!

Glory to the defenders of Ukraine and all modern civilization!

Today’s edition includes:

• Congress was urgently sent on an early recess: a revolt by some Republicans and what lies behind it
• Latest polls: Trump and all aspects of his policy are recordingly unpopular among Americans
• Shooting at the White House

The past week may go down in the history of the 47th American presidency as a kind of turning point. Just a week ago, the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches seemed unshakable, foreshadowing no particular problems for Trump. The only time Republicans in Congress disobeyed him and refused their support, until last week, was in November 2025, when four Republicans, alongside all Democrats, signed a petition for a forced review of a bill to publish all documents from the criminal case of serial pedophile, rapist, human trafficker, and former close friend of Trump, Jeffrey Epstein. Then all Republicans in Congress, except one, voted to pass this bill.

In all other matters, Republicans in both chambers steadfastly supported Trump.

They passed the “big beautiful law” at his insistence, calling it that because the 47th president liked the name. This law resulted in more than a million Americans losing their health insurance, increased premiums for everyone who did not lose theirs, and allowed the U.S. national debt to rise by $4 trillion to offset the same law’s reduction in income taxes for the wealthiest 1% of Americans and large corporations.

At Trump’s insistence, they agreed to the longest government shutdown in the country’s history—a partial halt of federal government operations due to a lack of budget—because Trump did not want to make any concessions to Democrats on budgetary issues.

After the start of the war with Iran, they repeatedly failed to pass resolutions introduced by Democrats concerning military powers, aimed at prohibiting the president from using the military against Iran without Congress’s consent.

They repeatedly failed to pass resolutions introduced by Democrats on the illegality of customs tariffs implemented by Trump. It took the Supreme Court declaring them illegal to bring things back into legal compliance. Republican members of Congress were afraid to return to legal compliance.

Republicans in Congress agreed with Trump and his administration violating the provisions of the Constitution and law, which establish budget adoption as the exclusive prerogative of Congress and prohibit the executive branch from not implementing the budget adopted by Congress and making changes to it. The administration arbitrarily changed the 2025 budget, stopping funding for some items and reallocating it to others.

They prepared a “big beautiful law-2,” another bill to revise the current budget, for which a simple majority is required in the Senate, and thus Republicans do not need Democratic votes. The consideration of this bill in the Senate was to begin on Thursday, with its swift adoption.

Republican senators, soon after Trump’s inauguration, approved all executive appointments, including endorsing the appointment of completely incompetent individuals to many key positions.

In short, everything proceeded quite uniformly. Republicans control both houses of Congress. Their regulations define that the majority gets everything – control over all committees, a majority in all committees, control of the agenda. When it happens that the White House and both houses of Congress are controlled by one party, the ruling party always uses this to help their president carry out his policies and fulfill at least part of the election promises.

The case of Trump is special. Because what he does goes beyond traditional politics, often beyond the laws, representing unprecedented corruption in US history, much of what he does is in line with his attempts to establish authoritarian rule in the country. But Republicans in Congress tolerated all of this and, having a majority in both houses, allowed Trump to do whatever he does. They allowed this until this week.

But something broke. Hegel, when he spoke about the dialectical transition of quantity into quality and back, reflected the reality of our world. It always happens this way. It’s just that the quantitative measure for different phenomena varies. This past week, it suddenly became clear that the number of provocative actions of the 47th president and the degree of audacity of many of these actions exceeded the limit for a number of Republicans in Congress.

As a result, something entirely unprecedented occurred on Thursday. In the middle of the day, both chambers of Congress were hastily sent on recess by their leaders. The recess was planned but starting on Saturday. Congress always goes on recess before Memorial Day, observed in the U.S. on Monday. Important votes were planned before the recess, but they did not take place. This is because both the Senate Republican Leader John Thune and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson realized they did not have the votes to achieve the results desired by the president – to push through the Senate the “big beautiful law-2” on revising the current budget and to block the House’s resolution on war powers, which would prevent the president from continuing the war with Iran without Congress’s approval. To avoid votes that would be disastrous for Trump, Thune and Johnson announced an early recess for both chambers.

What happened indicates a serious crisis in the president’s relationship with some legislators from his own party who are denying him support. It effectively means Trump lost an unconditional majority in both chambers of Congress. It became conditional, as a portion of Republicans, small but sufficient to deprive the president of a majority, decided to oppose him on two very important issues for him.

What triggered the tipping point that turned quantity into quality?

It was three decisions by the president and subsequent actions.

First. Donald Trump is an extremely vengeful and vindictive person. Revenge is one of the main driving forces of his personality. Among the targets of his revenge are Republican legislators whom he considers disloyal or insufficiently loyal, insufficiently devoted followers, or not ready enough to flatter and please him. He fights against such legislators by putting forward his candidates against them in Republican primaries, who win since Trump’s support among most ordinary Republicans is unwavering. Last week, Trump “knocked out” Senator Bill Cassidy and Congressman Tom Massie from politics this way. He announced support for a faithful MAGA supporter, Paxton, in the Texas Senate primaries against the incumbent Senator John Cornyn. In Cassidy, who will remain a senator until January 3, 2027, Trump acquired an opponent who now does not need to fear his votes and statements. As a result, his vote enabled the resolution on war powers to proceed in the Senate. Trump’s actions against both Cassidy and Cornyn (who was part of the Republican leadership group in the Senate for many years) caused discontent among several Republican senators, enough to prevent Republicans from having the votes needed to make decisions by a simple majority.

Secondly, Trump’s decision to create a fund into which he intended to place $1.776 billion of budgetary money, i.e., taxpayers’ money, to be given to those who, at his direction or call, broke the law and committed crimes, sparked a storm of outrage in the country and dissatisfaction from a number of Republican lawmakers. Republican Congressman Fitzpatrick stated that he would introduce a bill in the House of Representatives to prohibit the transfer of budgetary money to this fund. There is no doubt that such a bill will be considered even against the speaker’s wishes (the petition for its consideration will be signed by all Democrats and a sufficient number of Republicans) and passed. A whole group of Republican senators also expressed outrage at the creation of this fund. Several Republican senators immediately declared they would not vote for the “big beautiful bill-2” unless this fund was closed to those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and attacked police officers (it was precisely for payments to these people that Trump primarily created this fund). Trump sent acting Attorney General, his former criminal defense lawyer Blanche to the Senate for private talks with the opposing Republican senators to persuade them to withdraw their objections. This did not help. Blanche failed to convince anyone.

Incidentally, it is worth noting that the creation of this fund has already been challenged in several civil lawsuits in the courts.

Third. The President decided to obtain $1 billion of taxpayer money for the implementation of his “project of the century,” the construction of a ballroom near the White House, which, as he mentioned during another presentation of this truly insane project a few days ago, will be “the most beautiful building in Washington.” In reality, it will ruin the view of the historic central area and architectural park ensemble adjacent to the White House. Trump demanded that these allocations be included in the “big beautiful bill-2.” However, the inclusion of anything in bills passed through the budget reconciliation process, which requires a simple majority vote in the Senate, is only possible after approval by the Senate’s legal advisor. The current legal advisor, Elizabeth MacDonagh, has been in this position for 14 years. She is completely nonpartisan and, as a highly qualified lawyer, determines whether all current technical procedures of the chamber comply with Senate regulations. This includes reviewing bills passed through the current budget revision process. She ultimately decides what can and cannot be included. Both factions traditionally respect the work of the parliamentarian and never challenge the decisions made. Elizabeth MacDonagh decided that the allocation of $1 billion for the ballroom could not be included in this bill, as it did not meet regulation requirements. Trump was furious. He demanded that Republican Majority Leader Thune ignore this decision or dismiss MacDonagh because, as Trump claimed, she was “appointed by Obama” (a complete absurdity—presidents cannot be involved in appointments to this position, which is made by the majority leader in consultation with the minority leader). John Thune did not yield to the pressure. As a result, the 47th president will not receive budget funding for his ballroom.

The conclusion from all this is as follows: The 47th president has lost the unconditional majority in both chambers of Congress. It formally exists, but in practice, it does not, since when a president cannot push important decisions through Congress, where his party holds the majority in both chambers, it means a rift has formed in his relationships with some lawmakers from his party.

And for Trump, who stubbornly insists on his own way, it is unlikely that he will be able to change this situation.

▶ Republican members of Congress, who are up for reelection this year, will soon have to think not about Trump and the fears that he may start retaliating against them (once the primaries conclude this summer, this possibility for retaliation will disappear). They will have to think about whether they will be part of the new, 120th Congress, which voters will decide on November 3rd.

What voters think about the policies of the 47th president and the Republican Party is evident from the polls. To illustrate this, we present the results of surveys by the liberal New York Times (together with the Siena College poll) and the pro-Trump, pro-Republican Fox News.

Both surveys indicate the same thing. All aspects of Trump’s policies and those of the Republican Party are not supported by the majority or even a vast majority of Americans. Trump is the most unpopular second-term president in history (excluding Nixon, but that’s a special case). His policies in all areas are historically unpopular. There is not a single aspect of his policies that the majority of Americans support. This will determine how Americans vote on November 3, when electing the 120th Congress.

▶ PS When this review was already written, a shooting occurred near the White House. Here is a report from CNN:

“Secret Service agents shot a man who, according to the agency, approached a checkpoint near the White House on Saturday and opened fire on them.

As a Secret Service representative reported, citing preliminary investigation data, shortly before 6:00 PM Eastern Time, a man approached the checkpoint located just outside the White House complex and began shooting at service employees.

Secret Service employees returned fire and wounded the suspect; he later died in a local hospital, the representative clarified.

“During the shootout, a bystander also received a gunshot wound. It remains unclear whether he was injured as a result of the suspect’s initial shots or during the ensuing shootout,” added the service representative.

Secret Service employees were unharmed, and President Donald Trump was at the residence and was not affected by the incident, the agency representative reported. A White House representative stated that the Secret Service informed the president about the incident.

According to a law enforcement representative, the injured bystander is in critical condition.

Three sources told CNN that the suspect’s identity has been established: he turned out to be 21-year-old Nasir Best. According to one of the law enforcement sources, Best had previously come to the attention of the Secret Service – particularly in June 2025, when he blocked the entrance to the White House grounds. The source reported that after Best claimed he was “God,” Secret Service officers detained him and sent him to the Washington Psychiatric Institute for a psychiatric evaluation. The following month – in July 2025 – the Secret Service again arrested Best after he attempted to drive onto the White House complex driveway, the source said. A judge issued an order instructing him to stay away from the White House grounds.

The source stated that during the investigation of last year’s incidents, investigators found that Best had made various statements on social media – for instance, claiming to be the “real” Osama bin Laden – and had posted at least one statement expressing an intention to harm Trump.

There are 973 days left until the end of the story called “Fear: Trump in the White House” © (the title of a book by Bob Woodward, published in 2018).

Thank you to everyone who read. Take care of yourselves and your loved ones. Take care of each other, help each other. Good health to everyone.

Ultimately, what happens in the world depends on us. On whether we fight against evil, do good, remain mere observers, wait passively and believe that someone somewhere will decide for us, or fight against evil and do everything possible for Good to prevail.

We must not allow evil to triumph. The victory of evil would mean the end of the world we live in. We cannot allow this. Especially now.

Ukrainian Friends, I hug and love you all. Please take good care of each other.

Ukraine is and always will be.

And evil will be vanquished and punished. And this will inevitably happen.