House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) will bring Hanan Lischinsky, the brother of an Israeli Embassy worker who was shot and killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., last May, as his guest to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night.Lischinsky is the brother of Yaron Lischinsky, who was killed with his girlfriend, Sarah Milgrim, while leaving a museum event for young diplomats and Jewish professionals hosted by the American Jewish Committee. The two were shot by a suspect who was seen on video shouting “free Palestine” and “I did it for Gaza” after the attack.
Milgrim and Lischinsky met when they both worked at the embassy. Lischinsky’s family said that he was going to ask Milgrim to marry him on a trip to Jerusalem that was planned for the month after their deaths.
“On May 21, 2025, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were murdered on the streets of Washington, D.C. These two young diplomats of the Israeli Embassy, devoted to the cause of peace and to one another, had their futures stolen in a violent act of antisemitism,” Johnson said in a statement.
“Yaron’s brother, Hanan Lischinsky, has shown remarkable courage in shedding light on the extremism that took his brother’s life,” the statement continued. “I am honored to invite him as my guest for President Trump’s State of the Union address.”
In late May, Elias Rodriguez was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, the murder of foreign officials, causing death with a gun, and firing a gun in a violent crime.
In August, the Department of Justice charged Rodriguez, who is 31 and from Chicago, with nine more crimes, including federal hate crimes. Prosecutors are still thinking about whether or not to seek the death penalty.
Late last week, Johnson bragged that Trump would have plenty to showcase and brag about during his State of the Union address.
“GREAT NEWS: IRS data shows average tax refunds are up almost 11% so far this year. This is REAL relief brought to the American people by our Working Families Tax Cut — a bill that EVERY SINGLE Democrat voted against. Working families are keeping more of their hard-earned money — just like we promised,” Johnson wrote on X.
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The most recent data from the IRS show that people who file their taxes early are getting bigger refunds than they did at the same time last year.
As of February 6, 2026, the average tax refund was $2,290, which is almost 11% more than it was at the same time last year. The IRS said in a statement last week, “Average refund amounts are strong.”
According to forecasters, people who file their taxes this year will get bigger checks because of a number of new tax rules that were added to the “one big, beautiful” bill that President Trump signed in July 2025. Piper Sandler, a financial services company, said that the average payment would go up by about $1,000 for each filer.
Experts say that the people who will get the most out of this are the ones in the top 10% of households. According to an analysis by investment firm Principal Asset Management on January 30, lower-income taxpayers will also see gains, but they are less likely to get as big of a refund as higher-income households.
The first day of tax season was January 26, 2026. The IRS has gotten almost 22.4 million returns as of early February. This is a small drop from the 23.6 million it got at the same time last year.
The IRS says that people who file electronically usually get their refunds in less than 21 days.
As tax season goes on, refunds will probably get bigger. That’s partly because people with lower incomes tend to file their taxes early, while people with higher incomes, who have more complicated tax returns, take longer to file.
Andrew Lautz, director of tax policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said in a policy brief last month that the average refund amount usually starts out small, reaches its highest point in mid-February, and then drops slightly until the end of tax season. The Bipartisan Policy Center says that the average refund last year was $2,939.
During tax season, the IRS usually releases new data every week and then gives a few updates after the filing deadline on April 15.
The agency said that when it posts an update on February 27, it expects the number of refunds to be higher. That’s because by then, the agency will have already processed some of the refunds for Americans who claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit and Additional Child Tax Credit.
These are refundable tax credits for working families with low to moderate incomes.
