There has been a noticeable shift in the Senate over the last week, with lawmakers on either side of the aisle talking more about how to get out of the government shutdown.

But it’s not blanket optimism and neither side is ready to announce that an off-ramp to the 31-day shutdown has been finalized. And ultimately, how well the bipartisan talks are going depends on who you ask.

Republican and Democrat rank-and-file members, particularly members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, have started talking more as the week has progressed. There are talks of extending the House-passed continuing resolution (CR) to allow time to finish appropriations bills, and Senate Democrats are socializing a package of funding bills among their members.

However, the reality is that Senate Democrats again blocked the GOP’s CR for a 13th time, and lawmakers only got one chance to vote on the bill before leaving Washington, D.C., on Thursday.

And Senate Democrats are still largely entrenched in their position that expiring Obamacare subsidies must be dealt with before the government reopens, even with the offer of a vote on the matter after the CR is passed.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., was encouraged by Senate Democrats socializing spending bills on their side of the aisle, but he still contended that given the amount of time it takes to process funding bills on the floor, the best option was to reopen the government.

‘Unfortunately, doing all that takes a while,’ Thune said. ‘Even if you got consent, it still, it’d take a while to move those bills across the floor. So we’ve got to reopen the government.’

Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said that his Democratic counterparts were beginning to realize that time was running out to actually fund the government through the appropriations process, which is a generally bipartisan affair in the upper chamber given the 60-vote filibuster threshold.

When asked if he felt closer to an end to the shutdown now than a month ago, he said, ‘Yes.’

‘I was hoping we’d break the logjam this week, and if we don’t get it done this week,’ Hoeven said, ‘I’m sure hoping it gets done next week.’

However, the conversations have not yet evolved into high-level talks with Republican and Democratic leadership, nor have they made their way into the Oval Office.

Thune noted earlier in the week that President Donald Trump offered to speak with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., next week — only after the government reopens.

‘They always say, ‘Do it later, do it later,’’ Schumer said. ‘Later, to quote Martin Luther King Jr., and his letter from the Birmingham Jail, means never.’

And Trump, for many Senate Democrats, will be a key player in how the shutdown ends. They argue that his input is inevitably the end-all-be-all for an agreement Republicans might concoct on the Hill.

‘Ultimately, you need him,’ Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said. ‘I mean, this is — they’re not going to move until Trump tells them to move. So until you hear something real from Donald Trump, it doesn’t feel like anything is real.’

And Republicans view that the only true way that the shutdown ends is if Schumer unlocks the votes needed to break the filibuster threshold in the Senate, or if a handful of Senate Democrats defect.

‘Well, I don’t know what else to do,’ Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said. ‘I voted 13 times to open the government up. Most of my colleagues have, I think probably the shutdown is not going to end until my friend, Senator Schumer, takes his ego out back and shoots it.’

Still, lawmakers believe that talks are good and need to continue in order for the off-ramp out of the shutdown to be finished.

That, plus the added pressure of food benefits running dry for millions, federal workers going without pay and flights getting delayed or canceled, could see both sides move closer toward the middle.

‘There’s talks about talks,’ Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said. ‘But we need talks to yield results, right?’

When asked if there had been any progress, Murkowski said, ‘I’ll go check,’ before the senators-only elevator door slid shut. Lawmakers left town for the weekend shortly after.

Speaker Mike Johnson is hiking pressure on Senate Democrats by keeping the House out of session for a sixth straight week.

The ongoing government shutdown is the second-longest in history and less than a week out from shattering another record, with the 2018-2019 shutdown lasting nearly 35 days.

Senate Democrats have shot down the GOP’s short-term federal funding plan 13 times, and while some glimmers of hope for compromise are beginning to show, leaders on both sides of the aisle have not signaled any wiggle room from their positions.

Meanwhile, funding for critical programs that millions of American families rely on is expected to run dry this weekend, with the Senate leaving Washington until Monday after failing to pass the funding bill yet again.

Federal dollars for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are expected to run dry starting Saturday, meaning some 42 million Americans who depend on food stamps may begin to see their benefits temporarily disappear.

Funding for the Women, Infants, and Children program (WIC), which provides support for pregnant mothers and children under age 5, is also in danger of running dry even despite the Trump administration moving funding around to accommodate it earlier this month.

The Head Start program, which funds childcare for low-income families with young children, is also likely to run out of money this weekend.

Republicans’ measure, called a continuing resolution (CR), is a mostly flat seven-week extension of current federal funding levels. It also includes $88 million in security funding for lawmakers, the White House and the judicial branch — which has bipartisan support.

But Democrats in the House and Senate were infuriated by being sidelined in federal funding talks. 

They have been pushing for an extension of Obamacare subsidies enhanced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those enhancements would expire by the end of 2025 without congressional action.

Republican leaders have signaled openness to discussions about reforming and enhancing those healthcare credits but are rejecting Democrats’ demand to include them in the CR.

Democrats have been hoping that the looming open enrollment start date, also coming Saturday, could pressure Republicans into making concessions. 

Johnson has kept the House out of session since passing the bill on Sept. 19. Democrats have criticized the move almost daily, accusing the GOP leader of keeping Republicans ‘on vacation’ while the government is shut down.

But Johnson has maintained that the House cannot resume its work until Democrats end the shutdown. He’s instead directed Republicans to remain in their districts to communicate the effects of the shutdown and help their constituents better navigate it.

The vast majority of House Republicans have remained united on the strategy, but cracks have started to show as the shutdown drags on.

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., and Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, all heaped doubt on the plan with varying degrees of frustration during a House GOP lawmaker-only call on Tuesday, Fox News Digital was told.

Greene and Kiley have been making their criticisms of Johnson’s strategy clear for weeks, but Crenshaw appears to be the newest GOP lawmaker to express doubts.

‘I’m no longer convinced that staying out of session has benefits that outweigh the costs,’ Crenshaw said, Fox News Digital was told.

A new report revealed that five foreign charities have donated just shy of $2 billion into various American nonprofits and policy advocacy groups focused on climate change and political activism.

Americans for Public Trust released a detailed, 31-page report with receipts tracking money from foreign charities to U.S. groups. It notes that while contributing directly to political candidates is not permitted under federal law, election-related activities like ‘get-out-and-vote’ campaigns, some lobbying efforts, issue advertising and other politically-charged activities, are in play for foreign dollars.

‘There’s not a question about where it’s going and where it is coming from,’ Americans for Public Trust executive director Caitlin Sutherland told Fox News Digital. ‘We know that it’s foreign money coming into our U.S. policy fights, climate litigation, research, protests, lobbying, you name it.’

‘Foreign money is coming in, and it’s trying to erode our democracy,’ Sutherland added.

The groups that contributed to the near $2 billion in foreign money include the Quadrature Climate Foundation (U.K.), the KR Foundation (Denmark), the Oak Foundation (Switzerland), the Laudes Foundation (Switzerland/Netherlands), and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (U.K.).

The most sizable, the Quadrature Climate Foundation, has awarded roughly $520 million to 41 U.S. groups since 2020, according to the report.

‘The most surprising place that the foreign money has ended up is into a group called the Environmental Law Institute [ELI],’ Sutherland explained to Fox News Digital. ‘They are well known for running a group called the Climate Judiciary Project. They work to educate judges on climate litigation.’

‘So the fact that a group that is so-called educating judges on climate is the beneficiary of foreign money is a huge problem,’ Sutherland added.

ELI received a grant of $650,000 from the Oak Foundation, based out of Switzerland, in separate grants since 2018.

‘The Environmental Law Institute received a $300,000 grant from the Oak Foundation in 2018 to support the drafting of a toolkit for sustainable small-scale fisheries,’ ELI spokesperson Nick Collins told Fox News Digital. ‘Building on successful examples from around the world, the toolkit offers guidance on how to strengthen small scale fisheries through law.’

‘ELI is an independent, nonpartisan organization, and any grant funding we receive is contingent on protecting this independence,’ Collins continued. ‘No funder dictates our work, and our grants are administered in compliance with IRS rules and regulations.’

The Environmental Law Institute has also received federal grants from the U.S. government in the past, most recently under the Biden administration’s EPA and State Department in 2022.

In August of this year, 23 state attorneys general sent a letter to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin that called for the halting of federal funding.

Zeldin and President Donald Trump’s EPA subsequently axed funding to ELI.

Fox News Digital reached out to ELI for comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication.

‘We were also able to trace that $1.6 million in foreign money has come from the Oak Foundation into a group called Community Change,’ Sutherland continued. ‘They are the front group that has led the charge against Trump’s crackdown on crime. So again, we’re seeing where foreign money coming in to protest, litigation, training is ending up.’

According to the report, $1.6 million from the Oak Foundation has been funneled into Community Change, the organization recognized as the ‘fiscal sponsor’ behind Free DC, which was responsible for the anti-Trump protests in Washington D.C.

Fox News Digital sent inquiries to the various foreign charities about the potential reasoning behind funneling money into American organizations that lobby and campaign for specific policy issues, but did not receive responses.

Sutherland surmised that, based on the report, implementing an extreme European agenda into the U.S. is the most likely driving factor for the multi-billion dollar grants and donations.

‘It seems clear to me that this foreign money is coming into the United States because they want to implement their extremist European vision for America,’ Sutherland concluded. ‘A lot of these groups want to ban gas stoves, very, very extremist positions. And it seems to me that when you take a look at the money, they just want to have a more extreme United States that is radicalized and further left than what we want.’

Fox News Digital reached out to the Quadrature Climate Foundation, the KR Foundation, the Oak Foundation, the Laudes Foundation, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, and Community Change, but did not receive responses by the time of publication.

Preston Mizell is a writer with Fox News Digital covering breaking news. Story tips can be sent to Preston.Mizell@fox.com and on X @MizellPreston

When President Donald Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, the two leaders talked about trade and drug trafficking — but avoided the one issue that could most likely draw their nations into war: Taiwan.

Both sides have reasons to keep tensions low. Trump’s administration is seeking Chinese cooperation on border enforcement and drug trafficking, while Xi faces growing economic pressures at home. Yet even as diplomacy aims for calm, U.S. defense planners have long prepared for potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific.

Tensions have only deepened in recent years. Washington has approved high-profile arms sales to Taiwan, U.S. lawmakers such as then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have made high-profile visits, and former President Joe Biden repeatedly pledged to defend the island — only for aides to later clarify that the United States still adheres to its long-standing ‘One China’ policy.

Meanwhile, China has dramatically increased military pressure on Taiwan through large-scale drills that simulate a blockade and invasion. The People’s Liberation Army now conducts near-constant air and naval operations encircling the island — exercises that have become larger, more complex, and more frequent. What once served as symbolic shows of force now resemble rehearsals for cutting off Taiwan’s access to the outside world.

The silence from Trump and Xi contrasted sharply with the noise of those military preparations on both sides of the Pacific.

Taiwan watchers have been left guessing about just how much the United States would come to the island’s defense if China invaded — an intentional policy known as strategic ambiguity that Trump has taken to a new level.

The president earlier this month predicted optimistically that China would not invade Taiwan.

‘I think we’ll be just fine with China. China doesn’t want to do that,’ he said. ‘As it pertains to Taiwan — and that doesn’t mean it’s not the apple of his eye, because probably it is — but I don’t see anything happening.’

Compared with other conflict zones, Trump has said little about the prospect of war in the Indo-Pacific, leaving allies and adversaries alike uncertain about how far he would go to defend Taiwan.

Some analysts who favor strong U.S. support for Taiwan were relieved the issue didn’t surface, given concerns Trump might trade the island’s interests for economic concessions — such as looser Chinese mineral export restrictions, larger agricultural purchases or cooperation on curbing the precursor chemicals fueling America’s fentanyl crisis.

‘I think it’s a good thing that Taiwan didn’t come up,’ said Raymond Kuo, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. ‘There’s been a lot of concern in Taiwan, especially recently, that it would be sold out for some kind of U.S.–China grand bargain.’

Matthew Kroenig, vice president of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, said he viewed the omission as ‘neutral,’ though he would have preferred the president restate the ‘One China’ policy while warning Beijing to ‘knock off its almost daily military coercion and gray-zone activities against Taiwan.’

Kuo noted that Taiwan has sharply increased its defense spending as tensions rise, boosting its budget by roughly 75% in the past two years and now allocating a greater share of government funds to defense than the U.S. does proportionally. Still, he warned that production delays in U.S. weapons deliveries — including a backlog that exceeded $20 billion at the start of this year — could weaken Taiwan’s ability to keep pace with China’s military modernization.

Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, said she wasn’t surprised Taiwan stayed off the formal agenda. ‘There were so many trade issues that were really top of mind for both sides,’ she said. ‘Concerns about a ‘grand bargain’ over Taiwan always seemed far-fetched.’

But Kavanagh cautioned that the United States and China cannot indefinitely avoid the subject. ‘Things have escalated significantly in recent years, and the long-time understandings around the ‘One China’ policy and strategic ambiguity have started to erode,’ she said. ‘It’s important for both sides to reaffirm their commitment to peaceful means of resolving their differences.’

She added that the military balance in the region has shifted ‘rather quickly in China’s favor,’ making U.S. deterrence less credible if tensions continue to climb. ‘The time to pivot to Asia has probably passed,’ Kavanagh said, suggesting Washington must now focus on managing competition rather than reversing it.

Inside Trump’s administration, analysts say those competing instincts are visible. ‘There are really two China policies,’ Kroenig said. ‘The trade folks are looking for deals, while the defense and national-security professionals are focused on the China threat — especially the threat to Taiwan.’ That divide mirrors Washington’s broader struggle to reconcile economic engagement with military deterrence.

Kroenig added that Trump’s unpredictability may itself be part of his deterrent strategy. ‘It keeps our adversaries guessing and worried,’ he said. ‘It may be unlikely that China would attack Taiwan under his watch.’

Still, Trump’s meeting with Xi offered little clarity on where the president ultimately stands on Taiwan — or how he would respond if Beijing tested the limits of U.S. commitment to the island’s security. For now, both leaders appear content to keep the most volatile issue in their relationship unspoken. The quiet may help avert confrontation in the short term — but it leaves one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints lingering just beneath the surface.

The White House pushed back on media reports suggesting that President Donald Trump’s administration had identified, and was imminently poised to strike, military targets within Venezuela. 

Although Trump has signaled for weeks he’s prepared to launch land operations against Venezuela, the White House cast doubt on the new media reports.

‘Unnamed sources don’t know what they’re talking about,’ White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a Friday statement to Fox News Digital. ‘Any announcements regarding Venezuela policy would come directly from the President.’

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the Trump administration had identified military targets within Venezuela that are being used to transport drugs, although the news outlet said that Trump hadn’t formalized a decision on whether he would launch land strikes against these targets.

Trump told reporters Friday on Air Force One a decision hadn’t been made about whether he would strike military targets within Venezuela, Bloomberg News reported. 

Additionally, the Miami Herald reported Friday that the administration had decided to conduct strikes against these military installations within Venezuela that could come ‘in a matter of days or even hours.’

Both the Journal and the Miami Herald cited anonymous sources familiar with the plans. 

The Herald reported that the pending strikes were part of a larger effort the Trump administration is initiating to crack down on the Cartel de los Soles, which Attorney General Pam Bondi has said Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro heads up.

The Trump administration does not recognize Maduro as a legitimate head of state, and the administration beefed up the reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to $50 million, claiming he is ‘one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world.’

Meanwhile, the U.S. military has ramped up its attacks against alleged drug boats in Latin America — totaling at least 14 strikes since the beginning of September. Additionally, Trump has instructed the U.S. Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, to head to the region.

Brent Sadler, a senior fellow for naval warfare and advanced technology at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, said that the carrier’s presence means Trump has additional resources to conduct more strikes against cartels. Meanwhile, Trump has routinely said for weeks he may move ahead with land operations against Venezuela next, in addition to his sea strikes.

‘The Ford’s arrival in SOUTHCOM area is not unprecedented but given the ongoing attacks on Cartel boats significant. I see this move as intended to deter Venezuela from escalating the crisis and providing the President extra options should he want to increase the attacks on the Cartels,’ Sadler said in an email to Fox News Digital Monday. ‘That said, I would anticipate the Ford’s air wing being very active in air surveillance and defense.’

After news broke that the Ford would head to the region, Maduro accused Trump of ‘fabricating a new eternal war.’

‘They promised they would never again get involved in a war, and they are fabricating a war,’ Maduro said in a national broadcast on Friday.

Even so, not all lawmakers are on board with Trump’s strikes in Latin America. Sens. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Tim Kaine, D-Va., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., introduced a war powers resolution in October to bar U.S. armed forces from engaging in ‘hostilities’ against Venezuela.

‘The Trump administration has made it clear they may launch military action inside Venezuela’s borders and won’t stop at boat strikes in the Caribbean,’ Schiff said in an Oct. 17 statement.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Department of War and has not yet received a response. 

This is a breaking news story and will be updated. 

Former Vice President Kamala Harris advocated for decreasing the minimum voting age to 16.

In an interview posted on ‘The Diary Of A CEO’ YouTube channel, Harris declared that she thought ‘we should reduce voting age to 16.’

‘I’ll tell you why. So, Gen Z, they’re age about 13 through 27, they’ve only known the climate crisis,’ she said.

‘If they’re in high school or college, especially in college, it is very likely that whatever they’ve chosen as their major for study may not result in an affordable wage. They’ve coined the term climate anxiety…’ she said.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis responded to Harris’ comments by rejecting her proposal.

‘No. Also, suffering from ‘climate anxiety’ is not exactly an argument *for* lowering the voting age,’ he asserted in a post on X.

While Harris wants to let younger Americans vote, she has previously advocated for raising the minimum age to purchase a gun to 21 years old.

‘We can’t fail the American people on gun violence anymore. It’s time for the Senate to do something. Ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Raise the age to purchase guns from 18 to 21. Strengthen background checks. Let’s get this done,’ a 2022 post on the ‘Vice President Kamala Harris Archived’ X account reads.