During the final leg of his Asia trip en route to South Korea, President Donald Trump spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One, expressing confidence in his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping ahead of their meeting at an economic summit. 

When asked about U.S. efforts to curb fentanyl trafficking, Trump said the issue would be central to his discussions with Xi.

Ahead of his meeting with the Chinese leader, Trump said he hoped for progress on “a lot of problems,” including fentanyl trafficking, trade and tariffs.

“China is going to be working with me, okay,” Trump told reporters. “They’re going to be working with me, and we’re going to do something, I believe.”

TRUMP PREDICTS ‘VERY HAPPY’ OUTCOME AHEAD OF FACE-TO-FACE WITH CHINA’S XI AFTER TARIFF THREATS

Trump said the issue would be a major topic of discussion in his upcoming meeting. 

“We have to have the meeting — a meeting tomorrow. That’s a big meeting,” he said. “And fentanyl will be one of the things that we’re discussing. The farmers will be discussing a lot of things, but fentanyl will be one of the things we discuss.”

Trump stated that the fentanyl crisis and drug trafficking across the southern border are directly related, calling them “tremendous amounts of death.”

“We took in tremendous amounts of death. I call them the boats of death,” he said. “Under Biden and open borders, stuff was flowing. I think they killed 300,000 people last year — fentanyl drugs coming through the southern border. And now nobody gets through this. We’re very tough on the border.”

Border patrol agents and a special operations group member from the Texas Ranger Division seize 297 pounds of marijuana following a drug bust by the Mexico-U.S. border in the Rio Grande Valley sector, near McAllen, Texas, (Loren Elliott/Reuters)

TRUMP AND KIM JONG UN SHOULD MAKE ‘BOLD DECISION’ TO MEET DURING HIS ASIA TRIP, SOUTH KOREAN OFFICIAL SAYS

Trump credited his policies with a sharp reduction in illegal drug trafficking by sea, saying it was “down about 80% by water.”

He also praised U.S. law enforcement and border officials for their efforts, saying, “Our border agents, our Border Patrol agents, they’ve been amazing. ICE — these people do such a great job with what they’re doing.”

Attendees applaud as U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks during the APEC CEOs Luncheon at the Gyeongju Arts Center on October 29, 2025 in Gyeongju, South Korea.  (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

During his visit, Trump also commented on international security issues, including the Israel-Hamas conflict and North Korea’s recent missile launches. He said he expects his meeting with Xi to be productive, adding, “I think we’ll get a great meeting with President Xi of China. And a lot of problems are going to be solved.”

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Trump’s comments underscored his push to link border security and international cooperation as key priorities ahead of his meeting with Xi.

A federal judge Tuesday ruled that Acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli is “not lawfully serving” in his position, but declined to dismiss criminal indictments that were challenged by defense attorneys over his status.

Senior U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright of Hawaii was brought in to oversee motions seeking to disqualify Essayli after federal judges in Los Angeles recused themselves. In his ruling, Seabright said Essayli “unlawfully assumed the role of Acting United States Attorney” in July but can nevertheless remain in charge under a different title.

Seabright said Essayli “remains the First Assistant United States Attorney” and can “perform the functions and duties of that office” even if he is forced to shed his “acting” designation.

Essayli, a former Riverside County assemblyman, was appointed as the region’s interim top federal prosecutor by U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi in April.

The top prosecutors in charge of U.S. attorney’s offices are supposed to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate or a panel of federal judges, but the Trump administration has circumvented the normal process in order to allow Essayli and others to remain on the job without ever facing a vote.

Essayli’s temporary appointment was set to expire in late July, but the White House never moved to nominate him to a permanent role, instead opting to use an unprecedented legal maneuver to shift his title to “acting,” extending his term for an additional nine months.

Challenges to Essayli’s appointment were brought in at least three criminal cases, with defense lawyers arguing that charges brought under his watch are invalid. The federal public defender’s office in Los Angeles asked the judge to disqualify Essayli from participating in and supervising criminal prosecutions in the district.

In his decision, Seabright said he shared the concerns of federal public defenders that a ruling not to dismiss indictments and allow Essayli to retain his authority would “be little remedy at all.”

But Seabright said there had been no showing that Essayli’s supervision in the acting role had “improperly interfered with the grand jury process or led to any other specific actions that prejudiced Defendants.”

He said that although Essayli could not continue to be the acting U.S. attorney, “including prosecuting or supervising these cases in that role,” the court “has no basis to preclude Essayli from performing the lawful duties” of first assistant U.S. attorney.

“And in that capacity, he could supervise these prosecutions,” Seabright wrote.

The Department of Justice declined to comment on any of the rulings, citing ongoing litigation.

Seabright’s ruling comes amid similar challenges across the country to the Trump administration’s tactics for installing loyalists who wield the power to bring criminal charges and sue on the government’s behalf.

A federal judge in August determined Alina Habba has been illegally occupying the U.S. attorney post in New Jersey, although that order was put on hold pending appeal. Last month, a federal judge disqualified Nevada’s top federal prosecutor, Sigal Chattah, from several cases, concluding she “is not validly serving as acting U.S. attorney.” Chattah’s disqualification is also paused while the Department of Justice appeals the decision.

James Comey, the former FBI director charged with lying to Congress, cited the Nevada and New Jersey cases in a recent filing, and is now challenging the legality of Trump’s appointment of Lindsey Halligan as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Halligan was appointed after his predecessor, also a Trump appointee, refused to seek charges against Comey.

Seabright referenced the similar cases elsewhere, but said that when Essayli assumed the role “no court had disapproved of the practice.” Neither of the decisions in Nevada or New Jersey, he said, “is binding on this district court.”

“No other court — and significantly, no circuit court — has yet ruled,” he wrote.

Since taking office, Essayli has doggedly pursued President Trump’s agenda, championing hard-line immigration enforcement in Southern California, often using the president’s language verbatim at news conferences. Essayli’s tenure has sparked discord in the office, with dozens of career DOJ prosecutors quitting.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Alexander P. Robbins previously told the judge the government believes Essayli’s term will end on Feb. 24 and that afterward the role of acting U.S. attorney will remain vacant.

Robbins argued in a court filing that the court shouldn’t order Essayli “to remove the prosecutorial and supervisory hats that many others in this Office wear, sowing chaos and confusion into the internal workings of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the largest district in the country.”

When asked by a Times reporter last month about the motion to disqualify him, Essayli said “the president won the election.”

“The American people provided him a mandate to run the executive branch, including the U.S. attorney’s office and I look forward to serving at the pleasure of the president,” he said during a news conference.

FIRST ON FOX: Following several high-profile, deadly auto accidents involving illegal alien truck drivers, a commercial trucking industry leader is blowing the whistle on the devastating “shockwave” illegal drivers carrying sanctuary state licenses have had on the industry.

Mike Kucharski, co-owner and vice president of JKC Trucking, which is based in Illinois, told Fox News Digital that in addition to endangering American roads, illegal alien commercial drivers have been “killing the trucking business.”

He said that though the problem has only recently been brought to the forefront of the public consciousness in recent months, drivers and trucking businesses have been feeling the impacts for years.

“We knew there was an issue right after COVID because the rates dropped down, and we just thought, ‘Okay, look, it’s just inflation … the wars, etcetera, all these aspects causing the volumes to be down. We’re thinking, ‘Okay. In the long run, these volumes will go back up to what they were pre-COVID conditions or just go back to regular volumes, and we’ll be back in business.’ But what happened? The complete opposite happened,” he said. “They went down and stayed down, and we never knew, as truckers, what was the problem.”

WHITE HOUSE SAYS CALIFORNIA GRANTED LICENSE TO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT TRUCKER CHARGED IN FATAL DUI CRASH

Now, with recent revelations from the Trump Department of Transportation and Secretary Sean Duffy about rampant illegal alien truckers on American roads, Kucharski said the truth is finally out.

Duffy issued a bombshell report on Thursday accusing California of violating federal law by issuing a commercial driver’s license to a foreign asylum seeker whose semi-truck crash killed three people last week.

The report alleges that Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration ignored a federal order to halt noncompliant licenses and revoke improperly issued credentials, a failure that, according to Duffy, cost “three innocent souls.”

Federal regulators uncovered flaws in how California licenses were obtained by certain commercial truck drivers. The 2025 Annual Program Review and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) concluded that the state’s commercial driver’s license (CDL) system suffered from “systemic policy, procedural, and programming errors” when it came to handling non-domiciled licenses.

In an audit letter dated Sept. 26, 2025, investigators also discovered that California had issued CDLs to non-domiciled drivers that were valid even after their federal work authorization expired.

BLUE STATE INVESTIGATES HOW ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT TRUCKER GOT LICENSE BEFORE DEADLY FLORIDA CRASH

A split image showing a fiery truck crash and the suspected driver, Jashanpreet Singh, 21. Singh is accused of being high on drugs at the time of the crash. (Obtained by Fox News, ICE)

Kucharski explained further that, though a heavily regulated industry, illegal alien truck drivers can exploit a “loophole” in the system by obtaining non-domiciled commercial drivers’ licenses from states such as California and New York. They are then able to outcompete legitimate trucking businesses by charging lower prices, leading to the demise of many American small businesses in the industry.

“As a business owner, I was thinking, ‘Well, who is taking all these loads?’ Now I could figure it out that this is another shockwave that’s hitting the truck industry after COVID and violent volatility, these [non-domiciled] drivers are coming in and doing it for cheaper because they don’t care, and … they don’t have social security numbers, and I assume they’re probably not filing for taxes. So, if you’re not going to pay all your bills, of course, you can do it cheaper and keep on trucking.”

“All our truckers are fighting for the same load, and it goes to the lowest bidder,” he went on. “If you have these drivers coming in that are non-domiciled, they have no family here, they have no home, they live in their truck … They’re saying, ‘Okay, look, all the market’s doing for $2,000, we’ll do it for $1,700.’ So, it’s putting small trucking businesses out of business every day.”

“We’re over-regulated, honestly, in the trucking industry. And if you’re overregulated, you think, ‘Well, there’s no way that this could happen, and it is happening, right now as we speak,” he said. “It’s eye-opening, disturbing and jaw-dropping.”

Kucharski called on Duffy as well as other industry leaders to take action.

Along with the report last week, the U.S. Department of Transportation issued an emergency interim final rule that tightened standards for non-domiciled CDLs nationwide. In the rule, stipulations changed and limited eligibility to applicants holding certain employment-based visas. It requires every state to verify their legal status through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database.

Under the new rule, any non-domiciled commercial learner’s permit or CDL must expire no later than the end date on the driver’s federal immigration record or after one year, whichever comes first. It also maintains that states must keep proof of their lawful presence on file for at least two years.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT TRUCK DRIVER IN FATAL CALIFORNIA CRASH SHOULD NEVER HAVE HAD LICENSE: DOT REPORT

Sean Duffy, US secretary of transportation, speaks during a news conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2025.  (Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

In response to Kucharski’s criticisms, a spokesperson for Newsom told Fox News Digital that “California continues to follow federal rules regarding CDLs.”

“Lost in the immigrant-bashing is the fact that drivers holding a California-issued CDL are involved in fatal crashes at a rate far lower than the national average.  If the focus were on safety, California should be a poster child, not a scapegoat,” the spokesperson said.

“Consistent with federal law, California issued commercial driver’s licenses only to drivers if the federal government confirmed their legal presence,” the spokesperson went on, adding, “The Trump administration didn’t like these federal rules and just recently changed them to restrict refugees, DACA holders, and others from being able to apply for a CDL.”

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

“This is a very serious crisis issue,” Kucharski said. “The trucking industry depends on trust. That means ensuring every driver on the road is properly licensed, well-trained, and mentally and physically fit to operate heavy equipment.”

“All I can say is strategies like this remind us that reform isn’t just about policies, [its] about human lives. And it’s on all of us, from the regulators to the fleet owners, to the driver trainers, to ensure the system works the way it should.”

Fox News Digital also reached out to Hochul’s office for comment but did not immediately receive a response. 

Fox News Digital’s Jasmine Baehr and Christina Shaw contributed to this report.