U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to talk with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Friday in a push to finalize a deal to allow the popular social media app TikTok to continue operating in the United States.

It would be the second call with Xi since Trump returned to the White House and launched sky-high tariffs on China, triggering back-and-forth trade restrictions that strained ties between the two nations. But Trump has expressed willingness to negotiate trade deals with Beijing, notably for TikTok, which faces a U.S. ban unless its Chinese parent company sells its controlling stake.

Trump, who has credited the app with helping him win another term, has extended a deadline several times for the app to be spun off from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance.

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The vote was 217-212 for the short-term spending bill to extend government funding for seven weeks and avoid a partial government shutdown on Oct. 1. Republicans would need 60 votes to pass it in the Senate, where the two show no signs of budging.

Democratic leaders are adamantly opposed to voting for the measure if Republicans don’t let them have a say.

“Every House Republican should UNIFY, and VOTE YES!” Trump said on his social media site.

Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said Democrats are working to protect the health care of the American people, and with the GOP controlling the White House and Congress, “Republicans will own a government shutdown. Period. Full stop.”

The House vote sends the bill to the Senate where Majority Leader John Thune said they’ll vote on it along with a dueling Democratic proposal. Neither is expected to advance.

Voters in southern Arizona will send a new representative to Congress after Tuesday’s special election to replace the late Democratic U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, who died in March of complications from cancer treatment.

The seat will not decide control of the U.S. House, but it is one of two remaining vacancies in heavily Democratic districts that could chip away at Republicans’ slender 219-213 majority in the chamber. A third vacancy in a heavily Republican Tennessee district won’t be filled until December.

The major contenders in the district where Democrats have a 2-1 voter registration advantage are former Democratic Pima County Supervisor Adelita Grijalva, daughter of the late congressman, and Republican nominee Daniel Butierez, a contractor and small business owner. Two third-party candidates are on the ballot.

Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell said Friday they are “a planning organization” and routinely review how they would respond to contingencies across the globe.

“We are always ready to execute any mission at the President’s direction,” Parnell’s statement said.

Zakir Jalaly, an official at the Taliban Foreign Ministry, dismissed the idea.

“Afghanistan and the U.S. need to interact with each other and can have economic and political relations based on mutual respect and common interests,” Jalaly said on X. “The Afghans have not accepted a military presence in history, and this possibility was completely rejected during the Doha talks and agreement, but the door is open for further interaction.”

The regulations proposed by the U.S. Treasury on Friday detail the occupations covered, who will qualify and what counts as a qualified tip:

1. The tip must be voluntarily given, so mandatory tips or auto-gratuities would not qualify for the “no tax on tips” benefit.

2. Tip pools and similar arrangements qualify, so long as they are reported to the IRS and voluntary.

3. The benefit is not available to married individuals who file their taxes separately.

4. The tip must be given in cash, check, debit card, gift card or any item exchangeable for a fixed amount of cash, unlike digital assets.

5. Any amount received for illegal activity, prostitution services, or pornographic activity does not qualify as a tip

A provision in the Republicans’ massive tax and spending law allows certain workers to deduct up to $25,000 in “qualified tips” from their federal income taxes each year from 2025 through 2028. The deduction phases out for taxpayers with a modified adjusted gross income over $150,000.

Access to COVID-19 shots is under debate as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine advisers reconvene Friday.

Many people have reported difficulty proving eligibility for updated shots, which were restricted by the FDA to those over 65 or at higher risk. CDC advisers must now decide who should get them, a move that shapes insurance coverage and pharmacy access.

The composition of Kennedy’s panel, which includes vaccine critics, has raised fears of further curbs.

On Friday, the group delayed a vote on a newborn vaccine for hepatitis B. They are poised to recommend that hepatitis B shots for newborns be postponed from the day of birth to age 1 month. That idea has drawn criticism from pediatric and infectious disease specialists.

Trump and Xi began their call at around 8 a.m. Friday Washington time, according to a White House official and China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Topics for discussion included efforts to finalize a deal to keep TikTok operating in the United States.

Readouts from the call may offer clues about whether the two leaders might meet in person to hash out a final agreement to end their trade war and provide clarity on where relations between the world’s two superpowers may be headed.

▶ Read more about the Trump-Xi call

Colleges around the United States are under intense pressure to police insensitive comments about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. This leaves them with no easy choices:

6. They can defy the Republican campaign and defend their employees’ speech rights, risking the kind of federal attention that has prompted billions of dollars in cuts at Harvard and other universities.

7. Or they can bow to the pressure and risk what some scholars see as a historic erosion of campus speech rights, as Clemson University just did, firing three employees after first saying it stands for free speech and was committed to protecting the Constitution.

“This could very much signal the end of free expression in the United States,” said Lara Schwartz, an American University scholar on constitutional law and campus speech. “People should be reading this not as like a little social media battle, but as a full-on constitutional crisis.”

▶ Read more on how colleges are responding

The AP-NORC poll showing Republicans souring on the country’s direction shows an even more glaring shift among Republican women and the party’s under-45 crowd.

8. Among Republicans younger than 45, 61% say it’s going the wrong way, a spike of 30 percentage points since June.

9. About three-quarters of Republican women say the country is going in the wrong direction, up from 27% in June.

10. By comparison, 56% of Republican men say the country is going the wrong way, up from 30% in June.

11. And overall, only about 1 in 4 Americans say things in the country are headed in the right direction, down from about 4 in 10 in June.

Republicans surveyed cited political violence and social discord, along with worries about jobs, household costs and crime.

▶ Read what the people surveyed said about their thoughts on the country’s direction

A new poll finds that most Americans don’t watch late-night talk shows as regularly as they once did, and those who do routinely are more likely to be Democrats.

Only about one-quarter of Americans say they have watched a late-night talk show or variety show at least monthly in the last year, according to the survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, conducted after the news that Stephen Colbert’s show was being canceled but before Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension.

More people say they catch late-night TV segments online, through recirculated clips.

The poll comes as Trump has celebrated Kimmel’s suspension and Colbert’s cancellation while calling for other late-night hosts to be fired and the head of the Federal Communications Commission has pushed to root out what he describes as liberal bias from networks.

Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon used their late-night shows Thursday to support Jimmy Kimmel after ABC suspended him under pressure from the Trump administration.

12. Stewart satirized the network for indefinitely suspending “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after Kimmel said “many in MAGA land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk.”

13. Colbert took a more serious approach, calling his suspension “blatant censorship.”

14. Meyers who jokingly directed a list of compliments at Trump, before illustrating the administration’s flip-flop on free speech.

15. Fallon praised Kimmel and vowed to keep doing his show as usual — before an announcer spoke over him, replacing his critical words with flattery about Trump.

Stewart asked Pulitzer Prize Winner Maria Ressa, author of “How to Stand Up to a Dictator,” for tips. “We just kept doing our jobs. We just kept putting one foot in front of the other,” Ressa said.

▶ Read more on the late-night reaction to Kimmel’s suspension

According to a new AP-NORC poll that was conducted shortly after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, only about half in the GOP see the nation on the right course, down from 70% in June.

It advised Thursday that children under 4 get separate vaccines for MMR and chickenpox, instead of the combination shot MMRV vaccine.

The panel, whose members were replaced by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earlier this year to include anti-vaccine voices, is expected to vote Friday on hepatitis B shots for infants and COVID-19 shots.

The House will take up a bill on Friday to avert a partial government shutdown in less than two weeks. The bill would generally continue existing funding levels through Nov. 21.

Democratic leaders say the GOP won't get their votes if they don't agree to prevent millions of Americans from losing their health care, by extending the tax credits needed to keep insurance affordable. Some Democratic support will be needed to pass the bill.