Trump says Hamas response to peace plan means ‘peace in the Middle East’ is ‘very close’ – as it happened

This concludes our lives coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, but we will be back soon. Here are the latest developments:

• Donald Trump enthusiastically welcomed what he called a positive Hamas response to the peace plan for Gaza he unveiled this week, saying that the Palestinian group is ready for peace. “Israel must immediately stop the bombing of Gaza,” Trump added.

• A group representing many families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza has released a statement supporting Donald Trump’s call for Israel to stop bombing Gaza immediately.

• The US supreme court on Friday allowed the Trump administration to strip legal protections from more than 300,000 Venezuelan immigrants.

• In a brief statement read from a teleprompter in the Oval Office that sounded at times like an acceptance speech for an award, Trump said the Hamas response means “peace in the Middle East” is “very close”.

• A senior national security prosecutor in the eastern district of Virginia said in a farewell note taped to his door that he was apparently fired this week because a January 6 conspiracy theorist denounced him on social media.

• A federal judge in Portland said at the end of a hearing on Friday that she will act quickly to decide whether or not to grant the state of Oregon’s request to block the deployment of 200 national guard troops to the city.

• Portland’s district attorney, Nathan Vasquez, told the court that “the deployment of federal personnel not trained in local policing to the streets of Portland risks creating, not mitigating, the very conditions it is alleged to target.”

A federal judge in Portland said at the end of a hearing on Friday that she will act quickly to decide whether or not to grant the state of Oregon’s request to block the deployment of 200 national guard troops to the city.

At a hearing in the federal courthouse in downtown Portland that was the scene of mass protests in 2020, but is now peaceful, US district Judge Karin Immergut said that she expects to issue a ruling late Friday or Saturday.

Oregon’s lawsuit argues that Donald Trump’s characterization of the city as “war ravaged” is “pure fiction”. Trump’s action, in asserting federal control of the state’s national guard troops, is clearly “unlawful”, Oregon’s attorney general, Dan Rayfield, said earlier this week, given that it was not taken in response to a foreign invasion or mass anarchy, but one small protest by dozens of activists outside a single Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Portland.

The judge, who was nominated by Trump during his first term, was assigned to the case just one day earlier after the Trump administration successfully pressured a previous judge to recuse himself since his wife, congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici, has been an outspoken opponent of the deployment.

As Taylor Griggs, a reporter for the Portland Mercury, points out, the state submitted testimony in the form of an email from a Portland Police Bureau sergeant, Andrew Braun, on 21 September in which he described the role that three right-wing “counter-protestors”, Rhein Amacher, Chelly Bouferrache and Katie Daviscourt, all conservative influencers, played in instigating conflict outside the Ice office.

“Despite repeated advice from officers to stay away from the ICE crowd, they constantly return and antagonize the protesters until they are assaulted or pepper-sprayed. They refuse or are reluctant to walk away from these confrontations,” Braun wrote. “They even engage in the same trespassing behavior on federal and trolly property as the main protesters. Aside from the confrontations between opposing protesters, there was no reported activity around ICE that would have otherwise generated a police response.”

Declarations submitted to the court in Oregon v Trump also included one from the city’s district attorney, Nathan Vasquez, a former Republican who defeated the progressive incumbent prosecutor last year. Vasquez, who has extensive experience in prosecuting crimes related to protests in the past, wrote: “I believe based on my personal experience on the ground in the 2020 unrest that the deployment of federal personnel not trained in local policing to the streets of Portland risks creating, not mitigating, the very conditions it is alleged to target.”

A senior national security prosecutor in the eastern district of Virginia said in a farewell note taped to his door on Friday that he was apparently fired this week because a January 6 conspiracy theorist denounced him on social media for having worked for the deputy attorney general in the Biden administration.

The veteran federal prosecutor, Michael Ben’Ary, was fired on Wednesday, the same day that Julie Kelly, a pro-Trump commentator who once called a Capitol police officer beaten by the pro-Trump mob on January 6 a “crisis actor”, suggested on social media that Ben’Ary was an ally of his former boss, Lisa Monaco, a senior justice department official who helped drive the investigation of Donald Trump’s role in the Capitol riot.

“It appears that my termination was based on little more than a single social media post containing false information,” Ben’Ary wrote to his colleagues. “The leadership is more concerned with punishing the President’s perceived enemies than they are with protecting our national security.”

“I am troubled that I was removed so abruptly in the middle of important work,” Ben’Ary wrote, making specific mention of his role in the prosecution of a suspected member of the Islamic State’s Afghan branch for planning the deadly suicide bombing at the Abbey Gate entrance to the Kabul airport during the US withdrawal in 2021 that killed 13 American service members and scores of Afghan civilians.

When charges against the suspected orchestrator of the attack were announced in March by then interim US attorney Erik Siebert, the two assistant US attorneys named to lead the prosecution were Ben’Ary and Troy Edwards. All three career prosecutors are now gone for political reasons.

Siebert was forced out by Donald Trump for declining to bring charges against James Comey, citing a lack of evidence that the former FBI director committed any crime. Edwards, a national security prosecutor and Comey’s son-in-law, resigned after the former Trump aide installed to take Siebert’s place brought charges against Comey anyway. On Wednesday, Ben’Ary was informed in writing that he had been terminated with immediate effect, shortly after Kelly made a conspiratorial post about him.

“Justice for Americans killed and injured by our enemies should not be contingent on what someone in the Department of Justice sees in their social media feed that day,” Ben’Ary wrote.

In January, the day after Trump returned to office and pardoned all of the Capitol rioters, including those who had attacked police officers, Charlie Kirk revealed on his podcast that Kelly had helped him convince Trump to issues those pardons in a phone call days before Trump’s second inauguration.

In a brief statement read from a teleprompter in the Oval Office that sounded at times like an acceptance speech for an award, Donald Trump said the Hamas response to the peace plan he put forward this week means “peace in the Middle East” is “very close”.

“I want to thank the countries that helped me put this together: Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and so many others,” Trump began, speaking with his hands clasped on the desk in front of him, covering the back of his right hand, which has been bruised for some time, with his left throughout the 70-second video.

“This is a big day, we’ll see how it all turns out,” the president said, mixing optimism and uncertainty. “We have to get the final… word… down, in concrete,” he added, enunciating awkwardly, before what appeared to be an edit to the video, as the president moved on abruptly to saying that he looks forward to “having the hostages come home.”

“I just want to let you know that this is a very special day, maybe unprecedented in many ways, it is unprecedented,” Trump continued.

He then returned to doling out thanks. “But thank you all, and thank you all to those great countries that helped. We were given a tremendous amount of help. Everybody was unified in wanting this war to end and seeing peace in the Middle East, and we’re very close to achieving that.”

“Thank you all,” he repeated, “and everybody will be treated fairly.”

The US supreme court on Friday allowed the Trump administration to to strip legal protections from more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants.

The justices issued an emergency order, which will last as long as the court case continues, putting on hold a lower-court ruling by US district judge Edward Chen in San Francisco that found the administration had wrongly ended temporary protected status (TPS) for the Venezuelans. The three justices nominated by Democratic presidents dissented.

The administration has moved to withdraw various protections that have allowed immigrants to remain in the United States and work legally, including ending TPS for a total of 600,000 Venezuelans and 500,000 Haitians who were granted protection under President Joe Biden, a Democrat. TPS is granted in 18-month increments.

In May, the supreme court reversed a preliminary order from Chen that affected another 350,000 Venezuelans whose protections expired in April. The high court provided no explanation at the time, which is common in emergency appeals.

“The same result that we reached in May is appropriate here,” the court wrote Friday in an unsigned order.

Some migrants have lost their jobs and homes while others have been detained and deported after the justices stepped in the first time, lawyers for the migrants told the court.

“I view today’s decision as yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket,” justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote. “Because, respectfully, I cannot abide our repeated, gratuitous and harmful interference with cases pending in the lower courts while lives hang in the balance, I dissent.”

Congress created TPS in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters, civil strife or other dangerous conditions. The designation can be granted by the homeland security secretary.

Related: US supreme court allows Trump to strip temporary status from Venezuelans

A group representing many families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza has released a statement supporting Donald Trump’s call for Israel to stop bombing Gaza immediately.

The group says:

The Hostages Families Forum stands firmly with President Trump in his commitment to bring home all the hostages and end the war. President Trump’s demand to stop the war immediately is essential to prevent serious and irreversible harm to the hostages. We call on Prime Minister Netanyahu to immediately begin efficient and swift negotiations to bring all our hostages home.

Amid reports from Israel that Donald Trump ignored objections from Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, when he decided to treat the conditional response from Hamas to his peace plan for Gaza as a yes, a Qatari government spokesman has framed the Hamas response the same way.

“The State of Qatar welcomes the announcement by Hamas of its agreement to President Trump’s plan, and its readiness to release all hostages as part of the exchange framework outlined in the plan,” the statement from Majed Al Ansari, an adviser to Qatar’s prime minister, begins.

It continues:

We also affirm our support for the statements made by the President calling for an immediate ceasefire to facilitate the safe and swift release of hostages, and to achieve rapid results that would put an end to the bloodshed of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. At the same time, the State of Qatar affirms that it has begun working with its partners in the mediation the Arab Republic of Egypt, in coordination with the United States of America, to continue discussions on the plan in order to ensure a path toward ending the war.

According to the Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, Netanyahu told Trump after the Hamas response was received, but before Trump welcomed it, that he sees it as a rejection of Trump’s plan, not an acceptance.

If Ravid’s reporting is accurate, Trump’s statement welcoming the Hamas response could be an attempt to box in the Israeli prime minister.

For decades, Netanyahu has managed to successfully resist that sort of pressure from American presidents. After his first meeting with Bill Clinton in 1996, Clinton reportedly raged to aides, “Who the fuck does he think he is? Who’s the fucking superpower here?”

Yair Lapid, the former television anchor who leads Israel’s main opposition party, says that he has informed the White House that his party will support the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to close a peace deal in Gaza. The opposition’s support would be necessary to keep Netanyahu in power should far-right ministers in the governing coalition who want to continue the war withdraw from the government.

“President Trump,” Lapid posted, “is right that there is a genuine opportunity to release the hostages and end the war. Israel should announce it is joining the discussions led by the president to finalize the details of the deal. I have told the US administration that Netanyahu has political backing at home to continue the process.”

“Obviously, Netanyahu needs Lapid’s support like a fish needs a bicycle,” observes Dimi Reider, a founder of the bi-national Israeli-Palestinian news site +972 and a fellow at the Othering and Belonging Institute at Berkeley. “Only way he takes it is under extremely direct duress from Trump,” Reider adds, of if a deal with Lapid is packaged with a preemptive pardon from Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, to let Netanyahu escape corruption charges.

In a statement posted on social media, the Egyptian government, which has played a central role in negotiations with Hamas, has welcomed the Palestinian movement’s response to the plan announced this week by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.

The statement thanks Trump for his vision to achieve peace and stability in the region, his “complete rejection” of the annexation of the Israeli-occupied West Bank by Israel or the displacement of the Palestinian people from their lands.

Donald Trump just welcomed the response from Hamas to his peace plan, without worrying about the parts of it that the Palestinian movement said need to be negotiated further, and urged Israel to stop bombing Gaza “immediately” in a social media post that was shared by the White House.

Trump, who is eager for a Nobel peace prize and appears ready to declare victory, wrote:

Based on the Statement just issued by Hamas, I believe they are ready for a lasting PEACE. Israel must immediately stop the bombing of Gaza, so that we can get the Hostages out safely and quickly! Right now, it’s far too dangerous to do that. We are already in discussions on details to be worked out. This is not about Gaza alone, this is about long sought PEACE in the Middle East.

Donald Trump has posted the full text of the Hamas statement in response to his proposed plan to end the war in Gaza on his social media platform.

The White House initially posted the text on X as well, but that post was removed without explanation, forcing anyone who wants to read it to visit the president’s own platform.

Gregg Carlstrom of the Economist kept a screenshot of the now-deleted White House post.

Guessing this is the first time ever the White House approvingly posted a statement from Hamas...

... and mistakenly attributed it to the president pic.twitter.com/MikRaaYhAc

— Gregg Carlstrom (@glcarlstrom) October 3, 2025

Donald Trump has just recorded an Oval Office video in response to what his White House press secretary calls “Hamas’ acceptance of his Peace Plan.”

Behind the Scenes in the Oval Office: President Trump responds to Hamas’ acceptance of his Peace Plan.

Stay tuned! pic.twitter.com/iw1fXIWyls

— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) October 3, 2025

As we get more from Hamas’s statement trickling in, the group has said it has accepted some elements of Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan, including handing over administration of Gaza and releasing all the remaining hostages, but that it would seek further negotiations over many of its other terms.

In parts of a statement coming through on the news wires, Hamas has agreed to release all Israeli hostages, dead and alive, under Trump’s Gaza proposal.

The group says it affirms its “readiness to immediately engage through negotiators to discuss the details of this matter”.

Hamas has handed over its response to Donald Trump’s Gaza plan to the mediators, Al Jazeera is reporting, citing a source familiar with the matter.

We’ll bring you more on this as soon as we get it.

As was referenced in this afternoon’s White House press briefing, the US treasury has shared the “first drafts” of a $1 commemorative coin that features Donald Trump, which the US Mint is preparing in honor of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Trump’s profile features on the heads side of the coin, while the tails side bears Trump’s call “Fight Fight Fight” with an image of the president raising a fist in front of the American flag.

US treasurer Brandon Beach said in a post on X: “Looking forward to sharing more soon, once the obstructionist shutdown of the United States government is over.”

No fake news here. These first drafts honoring America’s 250th Birthday and @POTUS are real.

Looking forward to sharing more soon, once the obstructionist shutdown of the United States government is over. https://t.co/c6HChM6ijG

— U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach (@TreasurerBeach) October 3, 2025

The Senate has now rejected the Republican stopgap funding bill as well, voting 54-44.

The chamber won’t convene again until Monday, so the government shutdown will continue for at least two more days.

The Democratic bill to temporarily fund the federal government and end the shutdown has, as expected, fallen short of the votes needed for passage in the Senate. It was defeated 46-52.

Senators will vote next on the Republican stopgap funding bill.

The Senate is voting now on the Democrats’ stopgap funding measure, which needs 60 votes to pass. It’s expected to fail.

Leavitt is asked about reports of Russian naval provocations after Denmark’s intelligence service earlier said Russian warships were taking repeated action in its straits connecting the Baltic Sea to the North Sea.

“It’s something the administration takes very seriously, and we are constantly monitoring it,” she says. “The National Security Council here at the White House is in constant correspondence with our Nato allies, and the president speaks to many of them as well.”

The consequences will be “unfortunately very tragic” should Hamas fail to accept Trump’s peace proposal for Gaza, Leavitt says.

Hamas “must accept or the consequences are going to be very grave for them”, she adds, reiterating the deadline of 6pm ET on Sunday he has given them to respond.

Asked if the “thousands” of layoffs would still be on the table if the government shutdown came to an end and funding was restored, Leavitt gives a vague answer about cuts and layoffs being “an unfortunate consequence” of the shutdown.

She adds

The Democrats have given the administration this opportunity, and we don’t like laying people off. Nobody wants to do that, but sometimes in government you have to make tough decisions.

Donald Trump has directed his team at the White House to begin reviewing aid that can potentially be cut in Portland, Oregon, Leavitt says.

“We will not fund states that allow anarchy,” Leavitt says. “There will also be an additional surge of federal resources to Portland immediately.”

Almost 8 in 10 Americans say they want Congress to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act premium subsidies, according to a poll published today by KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research group.

A staggering 78% of adults said the subsidies, which lower premiums for people buying coverage on ACA marketplaces, should be extended, compared with 22% who favor letting them lapse.

Support cuts across party lines, with 92% of Democrats, 82% of independents and 59% of Republicans - including 57% of those aligned with Donald Trump’s MAGA movement - backing an extension.

If Congress does not act, health insurance costs would increase sharply for many of the 24 million Americans who get their coverage through the ACA, according to KFF.

The impact would be most acute in Republican-controlled states that have not expanded the Medicaid health plan for the poor.

Democrats also want guardrails that would stop Donald Trump from unilaterally ignoring their ACA provisions or temporarily withholding funds.

“The poll was fielded just prior to the Oct. 1 federal government shutdown that was triggered in part by disagreements about whether, how and when to extend the expiring tax credits,” said the KFF.

Without action, premiums for subsidized enrollees could more than double next year, rising 114% on average to $1,904, according to the group.

Leavitt has arrived. She starts off blaming Democrats for the shutdown and repeating the same false claims about healthcare and undocumented immigrants.

Trump’s secretary of war (formerly of defense) Pete Hegseth has said the US has carried out a strike on an (alleged) “narco-trafficking” vessel in international waters off the coast of Venezuela, the fourth such attack in recent weeks.

Four men aboard the vessel were killed, Hegseth said in a post on X. “These strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people are over!!!!” he added.

In his post he included an “unclassified” clip that shows a strike on a boat. He didn’t say in his post where the boat had originated from.

Earlier this morning, on President Trump's orders, I directed a lethal, kinetic strike on a narco-trafficking vessel affiliated with Designated Terrorist Organizations in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility. Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the… pic.twitter.com/QpNPljFcGn

— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) October 3, 2025

Yesterday, in an attempt to justify strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats, Donald Trump declared that drug cartels operating in the Caribbean are unlawful combatants and said the US was now in a “non-international armed conflict”.

The US military last month carried out three deadly strikes against alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean, killing 17 people and triggering international outrage. At least two of those operations were carried out on vessels that originated from Venezuela.

“The White House will restore $187m in cuts to law enforcement funding that would have devastated New York’s intelligence and counterterrorism operations, following a bipartisan effort to reinstate the funds,” the New York Times (paywall) reports.

The state’s Democratic governor Kathy Hochul, as well as several of the state’s Republican House members, had been pushing for the cuts to be reversed since the Department for Homeland Security made the announcement – without giving any reasoning – last Friday.

In a post on X this morning, the governor said: “From the moment @Sec_Noem tried to defund our police and counterterrorism programs, we stood up and fought back. I’m glad that @POTUS heard our call to reverse these cuts. That means $187 million for the NYPD, FDNY & first responders across the state that keep New Yorkers safe.”

According to the NYT’s report: “The cuts, which represented the largest federal defunding of police operations in New York in decades, were made by the Department of Homeland Security, without the approval of President Trump, White House officials said. Mr. Trump was first told of the cuts by Ms. Hochul during a phone call on Sunday evening, according to three people with knowledge of the conversation.”

Hochul had slammed the cuts as “utterly shocking” and accused homeland security secretary Kristi Noem of making “all of America more vulnerable to terrorist attacks”.

The Senate has reconvened on day three of the government shutdown, and is expected to again take up spending bill proposals from Democrats and Republicans that have already failed three times in the last few weeks.

There hasn’t been much to suggest a huge deal of movement from either side, but we’ll be watching to see if any more Democrats cross party lines to vote with Republicans to move forward with the clean stopgap funding bill that the House has passed.

If the votes fail again the Senate isn’t expected to vote again over the weekend, meaning the shutdown would last for at least six days. We’ll bring you the latest on the votes when they come.

Mike Johnson also told Scripps News this morning that he is “right now” ruling out putting up any future bipartisan Senate compromise to reopen the government for a vote on the House floor.

I am right now because we said a clean continuing resolution. There’s no Republican priorities in the CR at all, it’s a very neutral simple straightforward status quo, which means I don’t have anything to negotiate.

He made similar comments yesterday, placing full blame on the Democrats for the ongoing shutdown.

On the airwaves this morning, House speaker Mike Johnson continues to blame Democrats for the government shutdown and says it’s up to them to end the impasse.

“We’ve done exactly what is always done, a very clean, very simple resolution to keep the government open so that we can negotiate all these other issues,” Johnson told NBC’s Today. “They’ve rejected it because they’re trying to make a political play,” he said.

The ball is in the courts [of] the Democrats, not the Republicans. The Republicans have done our job, done our work, and now Chuck Schumer and 43 of his colleagues have to decide to do the right thing.

The House speaker also dismissed multiple polls that found more Americans believe Republicans are responsible for the shutdown than Democrats. Asked if Republicans are losing the messaging battle, he said:

The Democrats are trying to make this about politics, and I’m not surprised by some of the polls, because the mainstream media is advancing their narrative.

Johnson is due to speak at a press conference shortly, we’ll bring you all the latest from that when it gets going.

As the world waits for Hamas’s response to Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, the US president has issued a new deadline for the militant group of 6pm ET on Sunday.

Trump, who on Monday gave Hamas “three or four days” to respond to his ultimatum, said they were being given “one last chance”. He wrote on his Truth Social platform this morning:

Every Country has signed on! If this LAST CHANCE agreement is not reached, all HELL, like no one has ever seen before, will break out against Hamas.

Trump previously said that if Hamas failed to back the deal, it would “pay in hell” and he would give Israel his full backing to “finish the job” in Gaza.

Egypt and Qatar have been working to convince Hamas to accept the deal to end Israel’s assault on Gaza as the group is reportedly split on its response. An official told Agence France-Presse on Friday that it needed more time to consider the proposal, under which it would have to agree to disarm, release all the remaining hostages, and play no role in the future governance of Gaza.

Apple said yesterday that it had removed ICEBlock, the most popular Ice-tracking app, and other similar apps from its App Store after it was contacted by the Trump administration, in a rare instance of an app being taken after a US federal government demand.

The app alerts users to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in their area, which the US justice department says could increase the risk of assault on agents.

Fox Business was first to report its removal, citing a statement by US attorney general Pam Bondi, who said the justice department contacted Apple to pull the app on Thursday, and that the company complied. Bondi said:

ICEBlock is designed to put ICE agents at risk just for doing their jobs, and violence against law enforcement is an intolerable red line that cannot be crossed.

Civilian surveillance of federal immigration agents has become more assertive since Trump returned to office, as activists say they are trying to protect their communities from aggressive enforcement. Legal experts have told Reuters that surveillance of Ice is largely protected under the constitution, as long as they do not try to obstruct law enforcement.

Since Trump took office, Ice has raided multiple facilities with people who are in the US illegally. The agency has also arrested visa holders and permanent US residents targeted by the Trump administration over pro-Palestinian advocacy.

“Based on information we’ve received from law enforcement about the safety risks associated with ICEBlock, we have removed it and similar apps from the App Store,” Apple said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

Apple removed more than 1,700 apps from its App Store in 2024 in response to government demands, but the vast majority - more than 1,300 - came from China, followed by Russia with 171 and South Korea with 79.

Over the last three years, the US does not appear as one of the countries where apps were removed due to government demands, according to company application transparency reports.

Apple’s actions may also lead to further scrutiny over the ties that tech firms have built with the Trump administration during his second term.

As today is the first Friday of the month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics would typically have published the previous month’s employment report at 8.30am ET sharp. But with the BLS shut amid the ongoing federal government shutdown and some 2,000 of its workers furloughed, September’s jobs figures won’t be released today and likely won’t be until the government reopens.

Yesterday, Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts sent a letter calling on the labor department to release the data despite the shutdown. “The BLS’ monthly jobs data is essential to the Federal Reserve’s decision-making process as it gets ready to meet this month to decide on interest rates that will impact every American household,” she wrote.

Warren cites former BLS commissioner Bill Beach, a Trump appointee, who wrote on Wednesday that “the September data … have been completely collected and processed. The jobs report is likely written in final draft and could be released on Friday”. The Trump administration, Warren wrote, “is choosing not to release Friday’s jobs report”.

The 17-day government shutdown in 2013 caused the September 2013 jobs report to be delayed by two weeks. The BLS released it four days after federal agencies reopened.

Three weeks after, Jeane Marrazzo, a leading scientist at the National Institutes of Health filed a whistle-blower complaint against the Trump administration, health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr fired her, the New York Times (paywall) reported on Thursday citing her lawyer and a copy of the termination letter.

“Her dismissal is the latest in a series of steps the Trump administration has taken against government scientists and environmental experts after they warned that administration policies were endangering public health and safety,” the NYT notes.

Marrazzo told the paper she received notice of her firing from Kennedy this week, in a letter dated 26 September, in which he wrote that he had the authority to appoint directors of NIH institutes. “Accordingly, in my capacity as secretary, I have decided to terminate your appointment as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease,” he wrote. The letter did not elaborate, and Marrazzo said she was given no further explanation.

Debra S Katz, a lawyer for Marrazzo, said in a statement that the firing was retaliatory. “The Trump Administration terminated Dr. Marrazzo for her advocacy on behalf of critical health research and for her support of the overwhelming body of evidence that shows vaccines are safe and effective,” Katz said.

In Russell Vought’s announcement that the White House is halting $2bn in funding for infrastructure projects for Chicago, he said the move was “to ensure funding is not flowing via race-based contracting”.

If follows a similar announcement earlier this week involving New York City, where Vought said $18m for infrastructure would be frozen, including funding for a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River, due to the Trump administration’s belief that the money was “based on unconstitutional DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] principles”.

Now a statement from the US transportation department echoes the sentiment, declaring a “review of Chicago’s discriminatory, unconstitutional processes”. Through an interim final rule issued this week, it notes that the US Department of Transportation is removing the use of the race- and sex-based presumptions of social and economic disadvantage in contracting requirements for federal grants.

“Illinois, like New York, is well known to promote race- and sex-based contracting and other racial preferences as a public policy,” the statement reads. It refers to the Chicago Transit Authority’s spending on DBE (Disadvantaged Business Enterprise) firms (where at least 51% of the business is owned and controlled by one or more socially and economically disadvantaged individuals) as “discriminatory, illegal and wasteful contracting practices”.

“The American people don’t care what race or gender construction workers, pipefitters , or electricians are,” the statement from the government department adds.

It marks the latest instance since the government shutdown began at midnight on Wednesday of the White House punishing Democrats by withholding money for projects in blue states and cities.

On the same day as the move targeting NYC, the energy department cancelled almost $8bn in funding for projects in 16 states won by Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

The federal government put $2.1bn earmarked for Chicago infrastructure projects on hold, office and management and budget director Russ Vought said on Friday, in another jab at a Democrat-led city during the US government shutdown.

Vought wrote on X that projects affected included the Red Line extension – which was set to break ground next year and extend public transport to underserved areas in the city – as well as modernization work to a number of transit lines.

Vought wrote on social media Friday that the money was “put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing via race-based contracting”.

He made a similar announcement earlier this week involving New York, where Vought said $18m for infrastructure would be paused, including funding for a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River.