President Donald Trump signs spending bill, taunts Democrats

President Donald Trump signed the spending bill to reopen the federal government at 10:24 p.m. during a lively ceremony in the Oval Office, surrounded by Republican lawmakers.

Trump, joined by Republican leaders, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, took aim at Democrats, accusing them of repeatedly failing to support a short-term spending bill "purely for political reasons."

"Today, we're sending a clear message that we will never give in to extortion, because that's what it was, they tried to extort — the Democrats tried to extort our country," Trump said.

The president repeated his calls for Senate Republicans to eliminate the 60-vote filibuster rule.

"I hope we can all agree that the government should never be shut down again," Trump said, before adding "Terminate the filibuster, it'll never happen again."

Trump, in his remarks, criticized last week's victory of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

"We actually elected a mayor of New York City who happens to be a communist," Trump said.

Mamdani is a democratic socialist, not a communist.

Trump later said he and Republicans will have more to say on reforming the nation’s health care system. Democrats had withheld their support from the short-term spending bill for weeks as they pressed for an extension for soon-to-expire health care subsidies.

"We'll work on something having to do with health care," Trump said. "We can do a lot better. We can do great."

By Laura Figueroa Hernandez

laura.figueroa@newsday.com@Laura_Figueroa

Laura Figueroa Hernandez is the White House correspondent and previously covered New York City politics and government. She joined Newsday in 2012 after covering state and local politics for The Miami Herald.