WATCH: Trump holds Cabinet meeting as government shutdown deadline looms

President Donald Trump said Thursday he's working with Democrats to avert a government shutdown.

Trump is expected to host the meeting at 11 a.m. EST. Watch live in our video player above.

The president, as he kicked off his Cabinet meeting, said his administration is speaking with congressional Democrats.

"We're working on that right now," Trump said while declining to go into specifics. He added: "We don't want a shutdown."

Congress has to pass the remaining government funding by Jan. 31 to avoid a partial shutdown; the money for the Department of Homeland Security has been tied up in the aftermath of the shooting death of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis as Democrats demand changes to federal immigration enforcement tactics.

Trump's Cabinet meeting begins

Trump opened his Cabinet meeting by briefly highlighting improvements to the room, then moving on to his administration's successes.

He touched on his administration's efforts on crime before moving to Venezuela, where he thanked staff involved with the military operation to end the presidency of Nicolás Maduro.

Trump says he's opening U.S. air travel to Venezuela

Trump said he informed Venezuela's leader Delcy Rodríguez on Thursday that he's going to be opening up all commercial airspace over Venezuela and Americans will soon be able to visit.

Trump said he instructed U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and U.S. military leaders to open up the airspace by the end of the day Thursday.

WATCH: Trump says he's opening up all commercial airspace over Venezuela

"American citizens will be very shortly able to go to Venezuela and they'll be safe there," Trump said.

The U.S. suspended commercial travel to Venezuela in 2019.

Trump says his last Cabinet meeting was boring but insists he didn't fall asleep

The president said of his Cabinet meeting in December, "It was a little bit on the boring side."

Recalling being seen as struggling to keep his eyes open during that gathering, Trump insisted, "I didn't sleep. I just closed them because I wanted to get the hell out of there."

The comment drew laugher, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who has made a trademark of laughing loudest during Cabinet meetings.

Potentially less funny for those gathered during Thursday's meeting, Trump said not everyone would be allowed to speak to save time.

"We're not going to go through the whole table," the president said, after he opened the meeting by speaking for nearly 25 minutes straight.

Trump asked Putin not to fire on Kyiv because of extreme cold

President Donald Trump said Thursday he has asked Russian President Vladimir Putin not to target the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv for one week as the region experiences frigid temperatures.

The call for a pause in attacks on Ukraine's capital comes as Russia has been pounding the country's critical infrastructure, leaving many around the country without heat in the dead of winter.

WATCH: Trump says he personally asked Putin not to attack Kyiv amid brutal cold

"I personally asked President Putin not to fire on Kyiv and the cities and towns for a week during this ... extraordinary cold," Trump said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. Trump added that Putin has "agreed to that."

Trump says he's announcing Federal Reserve chair pick next week

Trump said at his cabinet meeting that "next week" he'll announce his choice to replace Jerome Powell as the chair of the Federal Reserve.

The president has criticized Powell for not slashing benchmark interest rates as low as Trump would like. Powell has insisted that the Fed stay independent of politics and make its choices based on inflation and job market data.

Even though Powell's term as chair ends in May, he could stay on the board of governors until 2028 and block Trump's ability to appoint someone new to the board as chair.

Trump said his pick will do a "good job" and that he wants the Fed to cut rates when there are signs of economic growth.

RFK Jr. says TrumpRx is coming 'probably in the next 10 days'

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave an update on TrumpRx, a government website in development that's intended to help people buy drugs directly from manufacturers.

The website is part of the administration's larger push to lower drug prices and give Americans options to buy medications at lower prices by cutting out middlemen.

Trump's administration had said TrumpRx was coming in January 2026, but Kennedy didn't commit to that timeline at a meeting of cabinet officials.

"That's going to be happening sometime probably in the next 10 days," Kennedy said.

Trump's team paints a misleading picture on housing

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner said that home sales in December "rose sharply to their strongest pace in three years" — but that's not quite what appears to be happening in the housing market that has been a persistent source of frustration for U.S. consumers.

The National Association of Realtors did report that the seasonally adjusted annual rate of home sales in December rose to 4.35 million units, "nearly" the highest in three years as the trade association noted. But the sum was just a 1.4% year over year increase.

More importantly, it could have been a monthly blip as the Realtors separately said that pending home sales in December had fallen 3% from a year ago.

Trump has said that he wants to keep home prices high to increase people's net worth, but doing so will likely keep construction levels low and price out possible first-time buyers.

Cabinet meeting ends with no comments from Noem, Bondi

Trump spoke for about a half hour and called on some of his agency heads, but he ended his Cabinet meeting without asking the Homeland Security or Justice Department chiefs to speak.

It seemed an opportunity to avoid commentary on the situation in Minnesota, where the recent deaths of two U.S. citizens at the hands of federal agents has put Homeland Security Kristi Noem in the hot seat, with some members of Congress calling for her resignation.

READ MORE: Homeland Security's Kristi Noem faces rising calls for her firing or impeachment

There were also no comments from Attorney General Pam Bondi, a day after the FBI searched the election office of a Georgia county that has been central to right-wing conspiracy theories over Trump's 2020 election loss.

Both Noem and Bondi were present at Thursday's meeting.