Cracks inside the Republican Party are getting harder to ignore. According to NPR’s morning news brief from Thursday, June 5, 2026, some Republicans’ frustration with President Donald Trump has started showing publicly — a shift that had, until recently, been kept mostly behind closed doors.
NPR didn’t name specific lawmakers in the brief, but the framing was pointed: this isn’t just private grumbling anymore.
Separately, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had what NPR described as a tense phone call over Israel’s military actions in Lebanon. The call puts two leaders who have long presented a united front in a publicly awkward spot — and it comes as Israel’s operations in Lebanon have drawn scrutiny from allies and critics alike. What exactly was said on the call, and whether it changes anything on the ground, isn’t clear from the brief.
Russia, meanwhile, opened its annual economic forum Thursday. NPR flagged the opening without additional detail in the brief. The forum — held each year in St. Petersburg — typically draws business and government figures from countries that have maintained economic ties with Moscow despite Western sanctions. Whether any notable foreign delegations attended this year wasn’t specified.
The three items don’t connect neatly, but the through-line is pressure — on Trump from within his own party, on U.S.-Israel relations over a conflict that keeps expanding, and on Russia’s economy as the war in Ukraine drags into its fifth year. None of those threads are resolved in the brief, and NPR didn’t suggest they would be quickly.
The full details of the Netanyahu call haven’t been released by either government.
Reported by NPR. Read the original report.
