President Donald Trump on Monday evening slammed Democratic lawmakers for shutting down the government amid one of ‘the most successful economies,’ calling on them to reopen the government tonight.

‘Democrats have SHUT DOWN the United States Government right in the midst of one of the most successful Economies, including a Record Stock Market, that our Country has ever had,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social. ‘This has sadly affected so many programs, services, and other elements of Society that Americans rely on — And it should not have happened.

‘I am happy to work with the Democrats on their Failed Healthcare Policies, or anything else, but first they must allow our Government to re-open,’ he added. ‘In fact, they should open our Government tonight!’

Trump made the post after Senate Democrats, again, blocked Republican efforts to reopen the government, ensuring the shutdown will last at least a week.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and most Democrats say they won’t support funding the government unless Congress agrees to extend expiring ObamaCare subsidies.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., needs at least eight Democrats to back the GOP bill, which would reopen the government through Nov. 21. So far, only Sens. John Fetterman, D-Pa., Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., and Angus King, I-Maine, have broken ranks to end the shutdown, while Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., remains the only Republican holdout.

Democrats warn that without a deal to extend the subsidies expiring this year, millions could face soaring premiums. Both sides say they want an agreement but remain split over when to address the issue.

Schumer also wants assurance that Trump will sign any deal, pointing to expected resistance from House Republicans.

‘We need the president involved,’ Schumer said. ‘[House Speaker Mike] Johnson and a whole lot of his caucus don’t like the ACA, don’t want to do the extensions. A lot of Republican senators in the Senate do, but they’re not enough. Good is not enough. You need Johnson and you need Trump to get it done. So that’s the bottom line.’

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, ‘we’re talking to Democrats.’ When asked if he’d work with them on a deal to reopen the government, he said, ‘Yeah.’

‘I’d like to see a deal made for great healthcare,’ Trump said. ‘I want to see great healthcare. I’m a Republican, but I want to see healthcare much more so than the Democrats.’

Schumer fired back, saying Trump’s ‘claim isn’t true — but if he’s finally ready to work with Democrats, we’ll be at the table.’

Fox News Digital’s Alex Miller contributed to this report.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., tore into Special Counsel Jack Smith, accusing him of ‘spying on political opponents’ during the Jan. 6 probe and calling the alleged surveillance ‘an abuse of power beyond Watergate.’

The FBI, working under Smith’s direction, obtained call logs and metadata tied to nearly a dozen GOP senators, including Hawley, as part of its investigation into the Capitol riot, Fox News reported. The tracking involved call records and timestamps, not the content of the conversations.

Hawley told Fox News Digital on Monday that the newly released documents suggest that Biden’s administration was ‘spying on the president’s political opponents,’ which he called ‘a profound violation of the separation of powers.’

He said the activity fits what he views as part of a broader pattern of executive overreach under Biden, citing alleged surveillance of Catholic churches, parents at school board meetings and social media censorship.

‘The truth comes out. Biden’s Stasi who claimed to be saving ‘our sacred democracy’ in fact worked overtime to destroy it — all for power. They spied on Catholic churches, prosecuted pro-lifers, deployed the FBI against parents at school board meetings — and tried to tap the phones of their political enemies. Including mine,’ Hawley wrote on X.

‘This is an abuse of power beyond Watergate, beyond J. Edgar Hoover, one that directly strikes at the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the First Amendment,’ he continued. ‘We need a full investigation of all involved: who knew about it, who ordered it, and who approved it. Anyone and everyone who violated the law must be prosecuted. The way to save the country is to restore the rule of law.’

Hawley said he was targeted because he is a conservative Republican who vocally opposed Biden and ‘his lawlessness.’

‘It’s obviously totally partisan,’ the senator said, adding that he’s proud to have called out what he described as the abuse of power by the FBI. He also said the alleged conduct was ‘dangerous, very, very dangerous’ for the country.

Hawley said the scope of the alleged surveillance was even greater than Watergate.

‘This is worse than Watergate,’ he said, arguing that Biden ‘activated the entire government to go after anybody who dared to oppose him.’ He accused the administration of using agencies such as the FBI, DOJ and DHS to silence critics and monitor private citizens.

Hawley called for a full Justice Department investigation and said appointing a special counsel ‘who will devote their full attention to it’ would be appropriate.

‘We’ve got to have a total accountability, total transparency and a full accounting of everybody who was involved in this — everybody who knew about it, signed off on it, and had any part in it, and I just can’t imagine that this is legal… and anybody who committed legal violations needs to be prosecuted,’ he said.

Hawley has framed the controversy as a test of constitutional limits, saying the government must be held accountable when power is used to pursue political opponents instead of upholding the rule of law.

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

A weekend away from Washington did little to soften Senate Democrats’ resolve as they again blocked Republicans’ effort to reopen the government, ensuring the shutdown will last at least a week.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and most of his caucus are adamant that unless a deal is struck on expiring Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits, commonly known as ObamaCare subsidies, they will not provide the votes needed to fund the government.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., needs at least eight Democrats to cross the aisle and support the GOP’s bill, which would reopen the government until Nov. 21.

However, only Sens. John Fetterman, D-Pa., Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., and Angus King, I-Maine, have broken with their caucus to end the shutdown. Meanwhile, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., remains the lone Republican to buck his party.

Senate Democrats have remained steadfast in their demand that a deal must be reached to extend expiring ObamaCare subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of the year. They argue that unless Congress acts, Americans who rely on the tax credits will see their healthcare premiums skyrocket.

Both Senate leaders are encouraging talks among rank-and-file members to find a solution, but neither side can agree on when exactly the subsidies should be dealt with.

When asked what the appetite for tackling the expiring subsidies was within the Senate GOP, Thune said it was ‘a mixed bag.’ 

‘But like I said, you know, there may be a path forward,’ he said. ‘I think a lot of it would come down to what the White House lands on that, but certainly not without reforms. And we all know the program is broken, it needs to be fixed, so that would be certainly a starting place.’

Schumer wants an additional bulwark added to a deal: President Donald Trump has to sign off on it, given that there may be resistance among House Republicans to extending the Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies.

‘Look, the bottom line on that is we need the president to be involved. [House Speaker Mike] Johnson and a whole lot of his caucus don’t like the ACA, don’t want to do the extensions,’ he said. ‘A lot of Republican senators in the Senate do, but they’re not enough. Good is not enough.’

‘You need Johnson and you need Trump to get it done,’ he continued. ‘So that’s the bottom line.’

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that ‘we’re talking to the Democrats.’ When asked if he would work to make a deal with them on ObamaCare subsidies to reopen the government, he said ‘Yeah.’ 

‘I’d like to see a deal made for great healthcare,’ Trump said. Ii want to see great healthcare, I’m a republican but I want to see healthcare much more so than the Democrats.’ 

Schumer fired back in a statement that Trump’s ‘claim isn’t true — but if he’s finally ready to work with Democrats, we’ll be at the table.’

And Fetterman, who has routinely voted against shutting the government down regardless of which party controlled the Senate, recognized that without Trump’s greenlight, a deal would go nowhere.

He gave the example of a bipartisan border deal negotiated between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate in 2023 that was sidelined under orders from Trump.

‘It got tanked. Trump tanked that, and he wasn’t the president, and he didn’t have to sign that thing,’ Fetterman said. ‘So what I’m saying, where’s the leverage? Because ultimately, doesn’t he have to sign off on any of it anyway?’

A Senate Republican argued that Senate Democrats are demanding tens of millions of dollars in foreign aid for LGBT projects, pastry cooking classes, electric buses and more in exchange for reopening the government.

Senate Democrats, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have remained steadfast in their position that unless a deal is struck to extend expiring Obamacare tax credits, they will not provide the votes needed to reopen the government.

But Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., charged on the Senate floor on Friday that his colleagues’ demands go beyond their healthcare push, and is being driven by the ‘socialist wing’ of the Democratic Party, and more specifically, by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

‘I don’t think Senator Schumer was the person in charge, because Senator Schumer is not the leader of the Socialist wing of his party, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez is,’ Kennedy said. ‘She’s running the show.’

When reached for comment, Ocasio-Cortez’s office pointed Fox News Digital to an interview she did with NBC News on Republicans’ claims that she was driving Democrats’ position. 

Ocasio-Cortez called the claims that she was running the show ‘ridiculous,’ and charged that Republicans were the ones that had shut down the government. 

‘It is so important to understand that these people are all talk, they are all talk, they are negotiating with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and Democratic leadership, and Democrats are united to that end,’ she said. 

He argued that congressional Democrats, driven by the far-left, wanted to unlock funding that Republicans and the White House had canceled earlier this year in the $9 billion rescissions package. 

The lawmaker listed out nearly $20 million in foreign aid funding that he alleged Democrats had their eyes on, including, $4.2 million for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex people in the Western Balkans and Uganda, $3.6 million for pastry cooking classes and dance focus groups for male prostitutes in Haiti, $6 million dollars for media organizations for the Palestinians and $3 million for circumcisions and vasectomies in Zambia.

He also accused congressional Democrats of seeking hundreds of thousands for electric buses in Rwanda, transgender people in Nepal, a pride parade in Lesotho and for social media and mentorship in Serbia.

‘I could spend the rest of the afternoon here,’ Kennedy said. ‘We took all that out.’

Kennedy’s office did not provide details to Fox News Digital when asked specifically where the funding he referred to could be found. 

And Democrats’ goal in their counter-proposal to Republicans’ continuing resolution (CR) did not include a repeal of the rescissions’ package, which saw billions in foreign aid canceled earlier this year. 

Their plan demanded a permanent extension to the expiring healthcare premium subsidies, nearly $200 million for beefed up security for lawmakers, a repeal of the healthcare title in the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act,’ a clawback of canceled funding for NPR and PBS, and stiffer guardrails on President Donald Trump’s rescission powers.

However, their CR does not include a provision that would undo the broader rescissions package passed earlier this year that canceled billions in foreign aid funding.

And Senate Democrats have remained bullish in their demand that Senate Republicans must negotiate with them on a deal for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies to earn their votes to reopen the government.

‘We have asked Republican leaders for months to sit down and talk to us, talk with us. They’ve refused and barreled us into a shutdown,’ Schumer said. ‘They thought they could bludgeon us and threaten us and scare us. It ain’t working, because my caucus and Democrats are adamant that we must protect the healthcare of the American people.’

Fox News reached out for comment from Schumer’s office but did not hear back immediately.

The Vatican’s top diplomat on Monday condemned both Hamas’ ‘inhuman and indefensible’ Oct. 7 attacks and Israel’s ‘ongoing massacre’ in Gaza, warning that even legitimate self-defense cannot justify the destruction of a ‘largely defenseless population.’

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state and one of Pope Leo XIV’s advisers, spoke in an interview marking the second anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel — a raid that killed about 1,200 people and saw 251 people taken hostage.

Parolin said Israel’s military response has stretched far beyond the bounds of proportionality, turning Gaza’s crowded neighborhoods into ruins.

‘The war waged by the Israeli army to eliminate Hamas militants disregards the fact that it is targeting a largely defenseless population, already pushed to the brink, in an area where buildings and homes are reduced to rubble,’ he told Vatican media.

‘Those who are attacked have a right to defend themselves,’ he said, ‘but even legitimate defense must respect the principle of proportionality.’

Reuters reported that Hamas-run Gaza health authorities claim Israel’s campaign has resulted in over 67,000 deaths in Gaza, mostly civilians.

The remarks rank among the Church’s sharpest rebukes of the war. They also mark a shift toward a more forceful Vatican voice under Leo, who succeeded Pope Francis in May.

Parolin also faulted global powers for their paralysis.

‘It is… clear that the international community is, unfortunately, powerless and that the countries truly capable of exerting influence have so far failed to act to stop the ongoing massacre,’ he said.

‘I can only repeat the very clear words spoken by Pope Leo on July 20: ‘I renew my appeal to the international community to observe humanitarian law and to respect the obligation to protect civilians, as well as the prohibition of collective punishment, the indiscriminate use of force and the forced displacement of the population.’’

Parolin went further, questioning the morality of arms sales to parties in the conflict.

‘It’s not enough to say that what is happening is unacceptable and then continue to allow it to happen,’ he said.

‘We must seriously ask ourselves about the legitimacy… of continuing to supply weapons that are being used against civilians.’

In July, Pope Leo XIV expressed sadness and called for a ceasefire after Gaza’s only Catholic Church was hit in an apparent Israeli strike, leaving at least two dead and several injured. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later said ‘stray ammunition’ hit the church.

Parolin’s warning lands as European leaders face growing pressure to do more than issue statements of concern. His use of ‘massacre’ echoed humanitarian groups that say Gaza’s civilian infrastructure has collapsed.

At the same time, he reiterated the Church’s demand that Hamas free all remaining hostages.

‘Those attacks were inhuman and indefensible,’ he said, underscoring that neither side’s suffering diminishes the other’s.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the Vatican on the matter.

Reuters contributed to this report.