President Donald Trump said he spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping Wednesday to discuss a range of issues, including the war between Ukraine and Russia, while stressing that their relationship ‘is an extremely good one’ that will bring ‘many positive results’ in the coming years.

The president and Xi also discussed Trump’s upcoming trip to Beijing in April, which he said he ‘very much’ looks forward to.

‘I have just completed an excellent telephone conversation with President Xi, of China. It was a long and thorough call, where many important subjects were discussed, including Trade, Military, the April trip that I will be making to China (which I very much look forward to!), Taiwan, the War between Russia/Ukraine, the current situation with Iran, the purchase of Oil and Gas by China from the United States, the consideration by China of the purchase of additional Agricultural products including lifting the Soybean count to 20 Million Tons for the current season (They have committed to 25 Million Tons for next season!), Airplane engine deliveries, and numerous other subjects, all very positive!’ Trump posted to his Truth Social.

‘The relationship with China, and my personal relationship with President Xi, is an extremely good one, and we both realize how important it is to keep it that way,’ he continued. ‘I believe that there will be many positive results achieved over the next three years of my Presidency having to do with President Xi, and the People’s Republic of China.’

The president’s call with Xi comes on the same day the Chinese president announced that he had a separate conversation Wednesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., doesn’t have confidence that top congressional Democrats want to fix Homeland Security funding as Congress gears up for tense negotiations in the coming days. 

With the partial four-day government shutdown now over, Democrats and Republicans are readying to relitigate the controversial Department of Homeland Security (DHS) bill, which threatened to completely derail a previous bipartisan funding deal. 

And with nine days on the clock to figure out a way forward, Thune doesn’t believe that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., or Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., are prepared to actually reach a bipartisan deal on the bill. 

When asked if he viewed Jeffries, who rebelled against Schumer’s funding deal with President Donald Trump, as a good-faith partner in the coming back-and-forth, Thune said, ‘He’s just not.’

‘He and, for that matter, Leader Schumer, both are afraid of their shadows, and they’re getting a lot of rollback and pressure from their left,’ Thune said. ‘So, I don’t think they want to — particularly in [Jeffries’] case, I don’t think he wants to make a deal at all.’

Schumer on Tuesday said that Democrats would have a proposal ready for Republicans to review that same day, but Thune noted that no such list had been handed over to his side of the aisle. 

There may still be lingering discourse between the top Democratic leaders, too, after Jeffries turned his back on the Trump-Schumer funding deal. However, both met on Tuesday night, and Schumer affirmed that they were on the same page.

Meanwhile, DHS is currently operating under a two-week continuing resolution (CR) that maintains previous funding levels until Congress can pass legislation to fully fund it. But Thune and other Republicans believe that the truncated time period just isn’t long enough to actually hash out a deal. 

And it’s an open question whether Congress will again need to temporarily extend the funding patch, or allow the agency to shut down.

Compounding frustrations among Republicans is that the original DHS bill was the product of bipartisan negotiations and included several guardrails and reporting requirements targeting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that would limit or block funding if they weren’t met. 

‘I think they want to litigate, have the issue as a political issue,’ Thune said. ‘Whether or not there’s a solution remains to be seen, but at least what they’re saying publicly suggests that that’s not their objective.’ 

The top congressional Democrats appear to have mended their rift over the controversial Homeland Security spending bill and presented a revamped list of demands to earn the party’s support to fund the agency.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., presented a unified front on Wednesday to unveil a retooled wish list of reforms for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after the top House Democrat bucked his colleague’s deal with President Donald Trump.

‘We’re united as House and Senate Democrats,’ Schumer said. ‘We’re going to have tough, strong legislation. We hope to have it within the next 24 hours that we will submit together. And then we want our Republican colleagues to finally get serious about this.’

Schumer laid out congressional Democrats’ requirements for their support of a full-year DHS funding bill, which varied little from the same list of demands he unveiled last week. The only difference now is that he had a buy-in from House Democrats.

Among the demands are an end to roving patrols, oversight by state and local governments where ICE and DHS are operating, along with the right to sue. Lastly, Schumer demanded that there be ‘no secret police.’

‘I find it amazing that the Speaker of the House, [is] saying… they should be allowed to have masks,’ Schumer said. ‘This group, which needs to be identified more than any other group, should have a standard much more lenient and hidden than other police forces?’

‘I would bet when Speaker Johnson goes down to Louisiana, the sheriffs and the police deputies are well identified as they are in almost every city,’ he continued.

Jeffries spurned Schumer and Senate Democrats just a day earlier when he and the vast majority of House Democrats rejected the funding deal that the top Senate Democrat struck with Trump that allowed Congress more time to negotiate over the DHS funding bill.

That divide, for now, appears to have been bridged.

The negotiations over the funding bill are expected to largely take place in the Senate, and Republicans are skeptical that Democrats will negotiate in good faith, given that they abandoned an already bipartisan bill and Jeffries’ defection from Schumer over the Trump-backed spending deal.

But Democrats argue that their demands aren’t too burdensome, and should be accomplished with legislation, not through executive action at the White House.

‘These are just some of the commonsense proposals that the American people clearly would like to see in terms of the dramatic changes that are needed at the Department of Homeland Security before there is a full-year appropriations bill,’ Jeffries said.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent clashed on Wednesday over President Donald Trump’s economic agenda, with the irate congresswoman asking at one point if someone could ‘shut him up.’

The fiery exchange occurred during Bessent’s testimony before the House Financial Services Committee. Waters, the committee ranking member, posed a series of questions about the inflationary impact of Trump’s tariffs on American consumers — and demanded a yes-or-no answer.

So I ask you, Secretary Bessent, will you be the voice of reason in this administration and urge President Trump to stop waging a war on American consumers, harming housing affordability, and putting the economy at risk? Yes or no. You don’t have to explain.

Representative—

Will you be the voice of reason? Will you be the voice of reason?

A study from Wharton University has shown—

Reclaiming my time. Reclaiming my time. Mr. Chair, will you let him know when I ask to reclaim my time—

The time does belong to the gentlewoman from California.

Ten to twenty million immigrants—

Can you shut him up?

What about the housing stock for working Americans? And can you maintain some level of dignity?

The gentlewoman’s time has expired.

No, my time has not expired.

Your time has expired. The gentleman—

The gentleman took up my time. I think you should recognize that, Mr. Chair.

The gentlewoman’s time has expired.

Bessent’s testimony comes as the Trump administration awaits a Supreme Court ruling on whether some of the trade duties imposed in 2025 exceeded presidential authority, a decision that could have broad implications for current tariff actions. 

Tariffs are taxes levied on imported goods. Although they are paid by companies at the border, the costs are often passed along through higher prices, leaving consumers to bear much of the burden.

Congressional Republicans, President Donald Trump and their shared base of support want to see voter ID legislation become law, but the last barrier is the Senate, where political reality has turned the notion into a pipe dream. 

The GOP’s legislative push to codify more requirements and restrictions surrounding voter registration nearly derailed Congress’ attempt to end the latest partial government shutdown on Tuesday. 

In an unlikely turn of events, like Senate Democrats’ push to save expiring Obamacare subsidies’ during the last funding battle and House Republicans’ desire to attach election integrity legislation, dubbed the SAVE America Act, to the Trump-backed package this week brought the issue back into focus. 

Trump, who encouraged House Republicans to stand down from their do-or-die demands, renewed his call to pass voter ID legislation while signing the funding package into law Tuesday.

‘We should have voter ID, by the way,’ Trump said. ‘We should have a lot of the things that I think everybody wants to see. Who would not want voter ID? Only somebody that wants to cheat.’ 

While several Senate Republicans support what the bill could accomplish, they acknowledge the legislation would die on the floor without a handful of Senate Democrats, who nearly unanimously despise the move.  

‘Democrats want to make it easy to cheat,’ Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told Fox News Digital. ‘They don’t want to do anything to secure elections.’

The issue at hand, as has often been the case during Trump’s second term, is the 60-vote filibuster. The president has called on Senate Republicans to eviscerate it several times throughout the last year as the precarious threshold has time and again impeded his agenda. 

Some Senate Republicans, including Johnson, are mulling turning to the precursor to the modern filibuster — the talking, or standing, filibuster.

The modern filibuster is less strenuous, literally, than the standing filibuster. While today’s standard requires that senators hit at least 60 votes, the standing filibuster demanded that lawmakers debate on the floor, consuming one of the Senate’s most valuable commodities — time.

‘The only way that’s going to get passed is if we do a talking filibuster or we end the filibuster,’ Johnson said.

There’s little appetite among Senate Republicans to nuke the filibuster given that it could play right into the desires of Senate Democrats, who tried and failed to modify the procedure when they controlled the upper chamber under former President Joe Biden. 

And many acknowledge that the votes simply aren’t there to do so. 

One Senate Republican told Fox News Digital that the ‘filibuster is not on the table’ as pressure mounts to move on the SAVE America Act, but that the legislation would likely get a shot in the upper chamber and earn 51 Republican votes. But, the lawmaker contended, the question was what happened next in the likely event the bill fails.

The notion of turning to the standing filibuster, the physical and original version of the filibuster, was also swiftly sidelined by Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., who said while there was interest among Republicans to discuss the option, ‘there weren’t any commitments made.’

Forcing the standing filibuster would come with its own ramifications in the Senate, given that the most valuable commodity in the upper chamber is floor time.

That’s because of rules that guarantee any senator gets up to two speeches on a bill. That, coupled with the clock being reset by amendments to the bill, means that the Senate could effectively be paralyzed for months as Republicans chip away at Democratic opposition.

‘There’s always an opportunity cost,’ Thune said.

‘At any time there’s an amendment offered, and that amendment is tabled, it resets the clock,’ he continued. ‘The two-speech rule kicks in again. So let’s say, you know, every Democrat senator talks for two hours. That’s 940 hours on the floor.’

Still, some Republicans hope that the bill gets its moment in the Senate.

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., who was an original co-sponsor of the bill, told Fox News Digital he hoped it got a chance on the floor and contended that it was a ‘very important thing to do.’

‘I don’t know,’ Schmitt said. ‘I mean, we’ll never know unless it happens.’