Good morning. It is Saturday, May 23rd, 2026, and this is your Morning Brief.

COHOST: This morning feels like a reality check. A lot of institutions are still moving, but several of the biggest stories are about hesitation, delay, and what happens when leaders discover they do not have as much control as they thought.

HOST: We start in Washington, where the sharpest political development in the last twenty-four hours is the Senate Republican revolt that blew up a major immigration enforcement package. Associated Press reports Republicans pushed back hard enough against President Trump that leadership shelved the roughly seventy billion dollar bill rather than force a vote they could not confidently win.

HOST: The immediate problem was not the core border and deportation money. The problem was that the bill picked up two Trump priorities that many Republicans did not want to defend: roughly one point eight billion dollars for what the administration called an anti-weaponization fund, plus another billion dollars tied to security and construction around a planned White House ballroom. What had been sold as a clean enforcement package turned into a loyalty test, and Senate Republicans blinked.

COHOST: That is the part that matters this morning. Yesterday this looked like a messaging headache. Today it looks more like a governing limit.

HOST: Exactly. The continuity here matters because the story advanced. This is no longer just an embarrassing add-on or a bad headline. It is now evidence that even on immigration, one of the president's strongest issues, congressional Republicans can still get tangled up by the president's own demands. If leadership comes back in early June with a stripped-down version, that will tell you they heard the warning. If they cannot, then the bigger takeaway is that internal GOP resistance is becoming more operational and less symbolic.

HOST: The second national story is another delay, but on a much more serious question. AP reports House Republican leaders called off a vote on legislation that would force President Trump to withdraw from the war with Iran after it became clear they might not have the votes to kill it. So instead of beating the resolution, leadership postponed the confrontation into June.

COHOST: Which means Congress is not exactly ending the war, but it is also no longer pretending the politics are simple.

HOST: Right. That is why this remains an active story. The fresh development is the delay itself, because delays in Congress are often a proxy for uncertainty in the vote count. The White House can still argue that hostilities have effectively ended or changed form, but lawmakers in both parties are clearly not done testing that claim. And every sign that more Republicans are uneasy about the war matters outside Washington too, because this still runs straight through oil, inflation pressure, shipping, consumer confidence, and interest rates.

HOST: If you are trying to read the next few days clearly, watch whether the administration offers a more concrete definition of success in Iran, and whether skeptical lawmakers keep pressing for an actual vote rather than another procedural timeout.

HOST: On the AI and technology front, the clearest government move is now official. The Export-Import Bank announced Thursday that it is launching ExportAI, an initiative designed to speed financing for American artificial intelligence exports and expand the global reach of U.S. AI systems. In plain language, Washington wants foreign buyers to find it easier to purchase the American AI stack, with the United States using export finance more aggressively as part of the technology competition.

COHOST: So this is not just about regulating AI at home. It is about selling it abroad before rivals do.

HOST: That is the key point. We have talked for months about the United States trying to control advanced chips and shape the rules around AI. This is the next stage of that strategy. ExportAI turns some of that talk into industrial policy. It says the U.S. government is willing to use financing tools to help trusted American systems land overseas faster. That matters for software firms, chipmakers, cloud infrastructure, and for places like Central Ohio, where the physical footprint of the AI economy keeps showing up in data centers, power planning, and land use debates.

HOST: It also sets up the other major AI story this morning, which is Nvidia. AP reports Nvidia delivered another outsized quarter, with revenue and profit again beating expectations as demand for AI chips stayed enormous. The company also authorized an eighty billion dollar buyback, which underscored how much cash the AI buildout is still throwing off.

COHOST: But the interesting part now is that huge numbers are not enough by themselves. The market expects huge.

HOST: Exactly. That is the durability test. Nvidia is still the most important scoreboard for the AI trade, but each report now has to do more than prove demand exists. It has to prove demand can stay extraordinary long enough to justify the way the entire sector is priced. So the story this morning is not that Nvidia disappointed. It did not. The story is that AI optimism remains real, but it also keeps having to clear a higher bar every quarter.

HOST: Closer to home, one of the most visible Central Ohio accountability stories moved forward this week at Sawyer Towers. WOSU reports Columbus and Franklin County leaders used the start of the demolition of the condemned apartment towers on the Near East Side to highlight new landlord accountability laws and stronger disaster-response tools adopted after the complex's collapse into crisis. Officials are trying to make the demolition mean something broader than the end of two failed buildings.

COHOST: In other words, they are trying to turn one of the city's clearest examples of housing neglect into a policy marker.

HOST: Right. The continuity language here matters because this is not just demolition theater. The city is arguing that what happened at Sawyer Towers exposed real weaknesses in enforcement, emergency response, and tenant protection. So the next question is whether those new laws actually change behavior before the next building reaches that point. With housing pressure still high across Columbus, that is not a niche issue. It is part of the broader affordability story: if more people are stretched on rent or squeezed out of ownership, then the quality and accountability of existing housing stock matters even more.

HOST: The other Columbus story we are still following is the Columbus City Schools staffing fallout. After the board voted to cut two hundred ninety-nine positions to close the last piece of a fifty million dollar budget gap, the district is now moving from vote night into implementation. That is where families, teachers, and staff will start trying to figure out where the thinner support actually shows up.

COHOST: And this is usually where abstract savings turn into concrete friction.

HOST: Exactly. The district says many of the positions were vacant and that attrition softened the immediate blow, but families are not going to judge this by spreadsheet language. They are going to judge it by whether building coverage feels weaker, whether student support is harder to access, whether transportation or maintenance gets slower, and whether next year's school-level staffing plans feel stable. So the reason this stays active is simple: the vote is over, but the consequences are just becoming visible.

HOST: At the state level, the Ohio Supreme Court has now put fresh attention on the long-running fight over pandemic unemployment benefits. The court said unemployment benefits were one of the major issues highlighted in this week's oral arguments, keeping alive the dispute over whether Governor Mike DeWine had the authority to end the federal three-hundred-dollar weekly supplement early in 2021.

COHOST: This is one of those stories where the calendar can fool you. It sounds old until you remember the money and precedent are still very live.

HOST: Exactly. The case still matters because it sits at the intersection of executive power, emergency authority, and roughly nine hundred million dollars that plaintiffs say Ohio workers were wrongly denied. Even if no ruling is immediate, the fact that the argument is getting this level of attention tells you the question is still unresolved in a meaningful way. It is also the kind of case that can quickly re-enter the political conversation if the justices signal the dispute is not moot after all.

HOST: On home lending and housing, the big national-local pattern remains the same, and it is still frustrating. Freddie Mac's latest weekly survey showed the average thirty-year fixed mortgage rate at six point three six percent as of May 14th. That is slightly lower than the prior week, but not enough to change the affordability math for most buyers. And here in Central Ohio, WOSU reported April closed sales fell thirteen point six percent from a year earlier even as inventory improved and the median sales price rose to three hundred forty-six thousand five hundred dollars.

COHOST: More choices, same payment problem.

HOST: That is the cleanest way to say it. Inventory is improving. The market is less frantic than it was in the peak frenzy years. But buyers are still running into financing that keeps the monthly payment feeling too expensive relative to incomes. So the watch item for the next few days is whether rates get any real relief from calmer energy prices and steadier bond yields. If they do not, Central Ohio may keep seeing better browsing conditions without a pro...