President Donald Trump is making calls on Monday to potential holdouts on a plan to avoid a government shutdown at the end of this week, a White House official confirmed to Fox News digital.

Three sources have said Trump world is making calls to Capitol Hill ahead of the late Tuesday afternoon vote.

Two senior House Republicans said they expected Trump to speak directly with critics of the bill sometime before the vote on Tuesday.

The House and Senate must pass a bill and get it to Trump’s desk before the end of Friday to avoid a partial government shutdown.

Two sources said Trump aides have been in contact with lawmakers who could vote against the bill, while the third source said the White House has also phoned reliable ‘yes’ votes to ensure Republicans will ‘show a unified front’ during the vote.

‘I’m sure the president is making calls,’ one senior House Republican told Fox News Digital.

But as of late afternoon Monday, the pressure campaign has not reached every House GOP lawmaker with doubts.

One GOP lawmaker who said they were undecided about the bill said they had not heard from the White House, nor House leadership.

The legislation is a rough extension of fiscal year (FY) 2024 funding levels known as a ‘continuing resolution’ (CR).

Republicans have traditionally rejected CRs in droves, frequently advocating for ‘regular order’ involving 12 annual appropriations bills crafted by Congress. 

But unlike with previous CR votes, House Democratic leaders have signaled that the left will not vote against shutting down the government en masse as usual over the last two years.

Democratic leaders have accused Republicans of using the CR to pave the way for Trump and Elon Musk to carry out their Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) efforts — something conservatives are using as an argument to their own colleagues in favor of the bill.

It’s possible at least several moderate Democrats running in competitive races next year will vote to avoid a shutdown, but Republicans are expected to largely shoulder the burden on their own.

At least one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., is already opposed. He wrote on X, ‘Unless I get a lobotomy Monday that causes me to forget what I’ve witnessed the past 12 years, I’ll be a NO on the CR this week.’

It’s not immediately clear if the White House has made any private overtures to Massie for his vote, and his spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment.

Former Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita, however, responded to him with a pointed message on X, ‘Tick tock Tommie.’

Meanwhile, a third House Republican, who said it ‘wouldn’t surprise’ them if Trump was making calls, was frustrated at what they saw as repetitive political theater by dissenters.

‘You’ve got these handful of members that see themselves as the ‘purists,’ and if we all just shared their vision, all of the problems we faced would magically disappear. This act is getting old!’ the House Republican said. ‘Can you imagine if we just shut down the government during a unified government because we can’t get an agreement out of the House?’

Fox News Digital reached out to Speaker Mike Johnson’s office and the White House for comment but did not hear back by press time.

House Republicans released the text of their 99-page continuing resolution on Saturday.

Trump was previously credited with helping get House Republicans’ framework for a massive conservative budget overhaul over the line after lengthy phone calls with two holdouts, Reps. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., and Tim Burchett, R-Tenn.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Monday that the mineral deal, sought by President Donald Trump, is ‘not the main topic on the agenda’ for the meeting set with the Ukrainian delegation in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. 

‘I wouldn’t prejudge tomorrow about whether or not we have a minerals deal,’ he told reporters on board a flight to Saudi Arabia. ‘It’s an important topic, but it’s not the main topic on the agenda.

‘The minerals deal is on the table that’s continuing to be worked on – it’s not part of this conversation, per se,’ he said, noting that Tuesday’s meeting in Jeddah can be considered successful even without securing such an agreement.

‘It’s certainly a deal the president wants to see done, but it doesn’t necessarily have to happen tomorrow,’ Rubio added. 

The Ukrainian delegation is set to include Andriy Yermak, head of the presidential office, Andrii Sybiha, minister of foreign affairs, Pavlo Palisa, colonel of armed forces of Ukraine and an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as well as Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who was not only involved in initial talks with Russia following its February 2022 invasion, but who also survived a poisoning attack after a peace meeting in March that year. 

Rubio will meet with the delegation in the city of Jeddah around noon local time on Tuesday.

‘The important point in this meeting is to establish clearly their intentions, their desire, as they’ve said publicly now, numerous times, to reach a point where peace is possible,’ Rubio said, adding that he will need to be assured that Kyiv is prepared to make some hard decisions, like giving up territory seized by Russia, in order to end the three-year war. 

‘Both sides need to come to an understanding,’ he said. ‘The Russians can’t conquer all of Ukraine, and obviously it will be very difficult for Ukraine, in any reasonable time period, to sort of force the Russians back all the way to where they were in 2014. So the only solution to this war is diplomacy and getting them to a table where that’s possible.

 ‘Then we’ll have to determine how far they are from the Russian position, which we don’t know yet either. And then once you understand where both sides truly are, it gives you a sense of how big the divide is and how hard it’s going to be,’ Rubio explained. ‘I’m hoping it’ll be a positive interaction along those lines.’

Steve Witkoff, special envoy to the Middle East who has increasingly been involved with the talks regarding Ukraine and Russia, told Fox News’ Dana Perino on ‘America’s Newsroom’ Monday morning, that the Trump administration has ‘gone a long way’ to ‘narrow the differences’ when dealing with Moscow and to get it to the negotiating table – though he did not go into detail. 

Witkoff suggested relations with Ukraine began to once again improve after Zelenskyy sent Trump a letter in which he apologized for the Oval Office exchange that went sour late last month after he refused to sign a mineral deal and angered the Trump administration – resulting in a series of explosive outbursts on live TV. 

While a mineral deal is unlikely to be achieved this week, according to Rubio, he said he hopes that with a successful meeting in Jeddah, he can secure the resumption of aid to Ukraine, though he did not detail if this would include the defensive aid the Trump administration halted, despite Russia’s continued bombardment against Ukrainian targets, or the intelligence sharing which the U.S. also stopped following the Oval Office showdown. 

‘The pause in aid broadly is something I hope we can resolve,’ Rubio said. ‘I think what happens tomorrow will be key to that.’

Rubio also said that Russia will see its own consequences if it doesn’t agree to negotiate on ending the war in Ukraine, including additional sanctions. 

‘It should be clear to everyone that the United States has tools available to also impose costs on the Russian side of this equation,’ Rubio said. ‘But we hope it doesn’t come to that. 

‘What we’re hoping is that both sides realize that this is not a conflict that can end by military means,’ he added. 

On Friday, in a posting on the Truth Social platform, Trump threatened Russia with ‘large scale Banking Sanctions, Sanctions and Tariffs,’ until a ceasefire and peace settlement are reached.  

A former Iraqi refugee pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State group, according to the Justice Department. 

Abdulrahman Mohammed Hafedh Alqaysi, 28, pleaded guilty to creating and developing logos for ISIS’ media wing, known as the Kalachnikov team, and sending hacking videos and instructions to ISIS members between 2015 and 2020, the Justice Department announced Friday. 

He also pleaded guilty to providing stolen credit card information and creating fraudulent identity documents for the designated terrorist group. 

Alqaysi, currently a legal permanent resident in Richmond, Texas, will remain in custody until his June 5 sentencing. He faces up to 20 years behind bars and up to $250,000 in fines. 

The guilty plea comes after the Trump administration has moved to crack down on the vetting of refugees. For example, President Donald Trump signed executive orders in January suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and ramping up vetting of refugees ‘to the maximum degree possible,’ particularly those ‘from regions or nations with identified security risks.’

One of the orders, known as the Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program, instructs Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to admit refugees to the U.S. on a ‘case by case basis’ if the alien does not pose a national security threat to the U.S.

Additionally, Vice President JD Vance voiced concerns about the vetting process for refugees in January, and said in an interview with CBS anchor Margaret Brennan that the U.S. shouldn’t ‘unleash thousands of unvetted people into our country.’ 

Specifically, Vance pointed to an Afghan national arrested in October 2024 on charges of conspiring to conduct a terrorist attack on Election Day on behalf of ISIS, according to the Justice Department. 

‘I don’t agree that all these immigrants, or all these refugees have been properly vetted,’ Vance told Brennan. ‘In fact, we know that there are cases of people who allegedly were properly vetted and then were literally planning terrorist attacks in our country. That happened during the campaign, if you may remember. So, clearly, not all of these foreign nationals have been properly vetted.’

A spokesperson for Vance did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital about Alqaysi’s guilty plea. 

Fox News’ Julia Johnson and Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report. 

On the eve of his 50th day back in office, President Donald Trump is touting that America is ‘back.’

Trump, seven weeks into his second tour of duty in the White House, highlighted in an interview this weekend on Fox News’ ‘Sunday Morning Futures’ that he and his administration were moving ‘at a very rapid pace.’

’50 WINS IN 50 DAYS: President Trump Delivers for Americans,’ the White House touted in an email release on Monday, as it touted Trump’s accomplishments some of them controversial — since his Jan. 20 inauguration.

But the most recent national polls indicate Americans don’t have such a rosy view of the Trump presidency, and are divided on the job he’s done so far.

Trump’s approval ratings were underwater in three surveys – from Reuters/Ipsos, CNN and NPR/PBS/Marist – which were conducted ahead of the president’s address last week to a joint-session of Congress. It was the first major primetime speech of his second administration.

But Trump’s approval ratings were in positive territory in other new polls.

And Trump, who has long kept a close eye on public opinion polling, took to social media on Monday to showcase his ‘Highest Approval Ratings Since Inauguration.’

While Americans are split on Trump’s performance, the approval ratings for his second term are an improvement from his first tour of duty, when he started 2017 in negative territory and remained underwater throughout his four-year tenure in the White House.

But there’s been a bit of slippage.

An average of all the most recent national polls indicates that Trump’s approval ratings are just above water. However, Trump has seen his numbers edge down slightly since returning to the White House in late January, when an average of his polls indicated the president’s approval rating in the low 50s and his disapproval in the mid 40s.

‘Keep these numbers in perspective. The numbers he’s averaging right now are still higher than he was at any point during his first presidency,’ veteran Republican pollster Neil Newhouse told Fox News.

And Newhouse emphasized that Trump’s Republican ‘base is still strongly behind him.’

Daron Shaw, a politics professor and chair at the University of Texas, also pointed to Trump’s rock-solid GOP support.

‘He never had support among Democrats in the first administration, but he also had some trouble with Republicans,’ Shaw, who serves as a member of the Fox News Decision Team and is the Republican partner on the Fox News Poll, spotlighted. ‘That’s one acute difference between 2017 and 2025. The party’s completely solidified behind him.’

The president has been moving at warp speed during his opening seven weeks back in the White House with a flurry of executive orders and actions. His moves not only fulfilled some of his major campaign promises, but also allowed the returning president to flex his executive muscles, quickly putting his stamp on the federal government, making major cuts to the federal workforce and also settling some long-standing grievances.

Trump as of Monday had signed 89 executive orders since his inauguration, according to a count from Fox News, which far surpasses the rate of any recent presidential predecessors during their first weeks in office.

Those moves include a high-profile crackdown on immigration, slapping steep tariffs on major trading partners, including Canada and Mexico, and upending the nation’s foreign policy by freezing aid to Ukraine and clashing with that country’s president in the Oval Office.

‘He has flooded the zone with his policies and he’s thrown Democrats into disarray,’ Newhouse said.

And pointing to lackluster favorable ratings for the Democratic Party, Newhouse highlighted that Trump’s ‘numbers may be slightly slipping, but it sure as heck hasn’t gone to the Democrats.’

While he’s in a better polling position than during his first term, Trump’s approval ratings are lower seven weeks into his presidency than any of his recent predecessors in the White House.

Shaw noted that neither Trump nor former President Joe Biden ‘started out with overwhelming approval. This is not like the honeymoon period that we historically expect presidents to enjoy…. Historically, the other side gives you a little bit of leeway when you first come in. That just doesn’t happen anymore.’

Biden’s approval rating hovered in the low- to mid-50s during the first six months of his single term as president, with his disapproval in the upper 30s to the low- to-mid-40s. 

However, Biden’s numbers sank into negative territory in the late summer and autumn of 2021, in the wake of his much-criticized handling of the turbulent U.S. exit from Afghanistan, and amid soaring inflation and a surge of migrants crossing into the U.S. along the nation’s southern border with Mexico.

Biden’s approval ratings stayed underwater throughout the rest of his presidency.

‘He just got crippled and never recovered,’ Shaw said of Biden.

There are some warning signs for Trump.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll indicated that just one in three Americans gave the president a thumbs-up on his handling of the cost of living.

Shaw emphasized that inflation, the issue that helped propel Trump back into the White House, remains critical to the president’s political fortunes.

‘If prices remain high, he’s going to have trouble,’ Shaw warned.

CALGARY, Alberta – The Calgary Petroleum Club is exactly what you would expect: dark wooden walls, fine decor, and rugged-looking wealthy men in jackets with no ties who can probably buy the whole West Virginia town where I live. This is where I met up with Gary Mar, a businessman and former government official, to see how President Donald Trump’s tariffs are impacting Canadian politics.

Mar served from 2007-2011 as minister-counselor of the Province of Alberta to the United States of America, and still has a hand in national politics.

I wanted to know about the surge in support that the Liberal Party, which chose Mark Carney as its new leader this week, has experienced since President Trump began launching tariffs, and how Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre can respond as the Canadian election heats up. 

‘There are two ballot issues,’ Mar said. ‘First, who is best able to deal with President Trump, and second, who is best able to run the economy?’ Obviously, the tariff situation, or as Canada calls it, the trade war, colors both of these issues.

Mar said the key is ‘to understand Trump’s motives for the tariffs,’ and he offered four possibilities: Increase U.S. manufacturing, generate revenue for tax cuts, balance the trade deficit, and/or create leverage for non-trade issues, in this case fentanyl coming over the Canadian border.

As a former diplomat, Gary found the fourth use of tariffs most objectionable, but what he was really asking was, what does Trump want or need from Canada to make this stop? In the absence of an answer to this question, Poilievre is in a dicey situation.

Ever since Conservative Party leader offered support to the anti-vaccine-mandate trucker protest in Ottawa in 2022, he has been viewed in Canada as aligned with Trump. But today, Trump is public enemy No. 1, and Poilievre’s party has bled 20 points in the polls in two months.

Carney and Liberals are already showering the Canadian airwaves with ads tying Poilievre to the U.S. president.

I asked Mar if Poilievre would be better off politically today if Trump were to praise or insult him. He didn’t even hesitate, saying ‘it would be better if Trump insulted him.’

Somehow, this Conservative leader and would-be prime minister has to find a way to be frenemies with Trump, like the younger brother who doesn’t take any guff from the older, to show he can work with Trump while also defending Canadian honor against a U.S. president threatening his proud nation’s sovereignty.

This is because everyone in Calgary, including Mar, has told me that Canadian nationalism, until recently almost an anachronism, is at levels they have never seen before. Trump’s constant trolling about making Canada the ’51st state’ is undoubtedly another factor.

The election, at soonest, will take place sometime in April. If the tariff issue is resolved quickly, it will free Poilievre up to campaign on the issues he wants to focus on, and I ran smack into one of them accidentally in Calgary on Sunday.

As I turned the corner amid a morning constitutional, I saw about 40 or 50 mostly women, with signs demanding Canada no longer allow biological men in women’s prisons. There I spoke with Heather Mason, who was incarcerated when the policy allowing men was introduced. 

Mason, and all of the other women there, had a clear message: ‘It has to stop.’ Poilievre agrees, and has publicly stated he will ban men from women’s prisons. 

These are the kinds of issues that conservatives in Canada, like their cousins to the south, want to focus on. But with tariffs sucking all the news oxygen out of the media, they can’t.

To be sure, Trump’s job is not to win elections for conservatives in Canada, it is to do what is in the best interest of the American people. But surely, on some level, America’s interest is tied to a good, functioning relationship with our closest trading partner to the north.

The scuttlebutt in the Great White North is that Liberals want a new election ASAP. They feel like they have the mojo, so the sooner, the better. Politically they want this trade war, as they put it, raging as Canadians cast their ballots.

‘There are two things that increase Canadian nationalism, war and sports, and we have both,’ Mar quipped, referring to the ‘trade war,’ and the USA vs Canada hockey rivalry’s revival.

In that kind of environment, Poilievre may need to punch back at Trump, but in a friendly way, the way brothers do. But that is a very fine line to walk. How he manages that challenge could define U.S. Canadian relations for a very long time to come.