US government shutdown: Donald Trump promises firings and cuts to ‘Democrats’ favorite projects’ if shutdown continues – live

Any California universities that sign the Trump administration’s proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” will “instantly” lose their state funding, California governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement.

“If any California University signs this radical agreement, they’ll lose billions in state funding—including Cal Grants—instantly. California will not bankroll schools that sell out their students, professors, researchers, and surrender academic freedom,” Newsom said in a statement.

Trump offered nine prominent universities, including the University of Southern California, the chance to sign his “compact” yesterday, which asked that the universities close academic departments that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas,” limit the proportion of international undergraduate students to 15% , and ban the consideration of race or sex in hiring and admissions, in exchange for “substantial and meaningful federal grants”.

Newsom’s office said Trump’s offer to universities “ties access to federal funding to radical conservative ideological restrictions on colleges and universities.”

Donald Trump on Thursday said firings of federal workers and cuts to projects could occur if a government shutdown that began Wednesday continues, Reuters reports.

“There could be firings, and that’s their fault,” Trump said of Democrats in Congress, when asked during an interview with OAN television network about a recent memo from the Office of Management and Budget that raised prospects of firings.

“We could cut projects that they wanted, favorite projects, and they’d be permanently cut,” he said, adding: “I am allowed to cut things that should have never been approved in the first place and I will probably do that.”

The government shutdown will likely go into next week, with Senate Majority Leader John Thune telling Politico that it is “unlikely” senators will be in the Capitol voting this weekend.

“They’ll have a fourth chance tomorrow to vote to open up the government, and if that fails, we’ll give them the weekend to think about it, and then we’ll come back and vote on Monday,” the Republican senator said.

Thune also reiterated he will not negotiate the Affordable Care Act tax credits, which has been the point of contention leading to the government shutdown.

Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer previously said that Republicans need to work with Democrats “to reach an agreement to reopen the government and lower healthcare costs.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused the Trump administration and Republicans of desiring a government shutdown.

“They want to inflict on the American people, they continue to engage in their retribution efforts,” Jeffries said. “And they have zero interest in providing high-quality, affordable and accessible care to everyday Americans.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said “Republicans have shown zero interest in even having a conversation” to come to a government funding agreement.

Jeffries added Democrats are willing to meet with Republicans, including Trump and vice-president JD Vance, to come to an agreement.

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries blamed Republicans for the government shutdown during a press conference.

“This is day two of Donald Trump’s shutdown, but it’s day 256 of the chaos that the Trump presidency has unleashed on the American people,” Jeffries said. “Republicans have shut the government down because they don’t want to provide healthcare to working class Americans.”

Hamas will demand key revisions to Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire proposal but is likely to accept the plan in coming days as a basis for renewed negotiations, analysts and sources close to the group have told my colleague and Guardian international security correspondent Jason Burke.

Trump imposed a deadline of “three or four days” from Tuesday for Hamas to give its response to his 20-point plan, which aims to bring the two-year war in Gaza to a close and allow an apparently indefinite international administration of the devastated territory, or “pay in hell”.

Mkhaimar Abusada, a political scientist from Gaza based in Cairo, said Hamas now had to “choose between the bad and the worst”. “If they say ‘no’, as Trump has made clear, that will not be good and will allow Israel to do whatever it takes to finish this. They will say “yes, but we need this and that”, Abusada said.

Hamas leaders are divided between Istanbul, Doha and Gaza, which complicates discussions on the group’s response. Turkey and Qatar are putting pressure on Hamas to make concessions.

One sticking point is the plan’s demand that Hamas disarm, a source close to the organisation said. The surrender of all weapons would be very difficult for Hamas to accept, especially without any political process or substantial progress towards a two-state solution.

Another concern for Hamas is the vague promise of Israeli withdrawals, though the clear statement that there will be no annexation or occupation of Gaza by Israel was welcomed by one source close to Hamas.

Hugh Lovatt, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said it would be very difficult for Hamas to accept the terms unconditionally. “That is understandable. The text lacks details. But then anything other than total and final acceptance will be used against Hamas by Israel, the Trump administration and possibly the Europeans,” he said.

You can read Jason’s full piece here:

Related: Hamas to demand key revisions to Trump Gaza plan before accepting, sources say

Trump has declared drug cartels operating in the Caribbean are unlawful combatants and says the US is now in a “non-international armed conflict,” according to a Trump administration memo obtained by the Associated Press on Thursday.

A US official familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly told the AP that Congress was notified about the designation by Pentagon officials on Wednesday.

The move comes after the US military last month carried out three deadly strikes against alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean. At least two of those operations were carried out on vessels that originated from Venezuela.

Related: Trump declares that drug cartels operating in the Caribbean are ‘unlawful combatants’

Senate majority leader John Thune says that the Senate will come back on Friday to vote once again on reopening the government, but adds that weekend votes to reopen the government are unlikely.

“If that fails, then we’ll give them the weekend to think about it. We’ll come back and we’ll go again on Monday,” the South Dakota Republican said.

An immigration judge in Baltimore has denied Kilmar Ábrego García’s bid for asylum, but he has 30 days to appeal.

Related: Judge denies Kilmar Ábrego García’s bid for asylum in the US

Ábrego’s case has drawn national attention since the 30-year-old was wrongfully deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador in March. The Salvadorian national has an American wife and children and has lived in Maryland for years, but he originally immigrated to the US illegally as a teenager. According to court documents, he was fleeing gang violence.

Following widespread pressure, the Trump administration returned him to the US in June. Upon his return, however, he immediately faced criminal charges related to human smuggling, allegations that his lawyers have rejected.

Ábrego was released from criminal custody in Tennessee on Friday while awaiting trial. But the Trump administration announced new plans to deport him to Uganda and then Eswatini.

Then Ábrego was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) during a scheduled immigration check-in in Baltimore, which was one of the conditions of his release.

Trump administration officials have waged a relentless public relations campaign against Ábrego, repeatedly referring to him as a member of the MS-13 gang, among other things, despite the fact that he has not been convicted of any crimes.

Speaking to reporters this morning, House speaker Mike Johnson has indicated that lawmakers are no closer to a deal on government funding and, standing at a podium emblazoned with the words, “The Democrat shutdown”, continued to lay blame for the shutdown squarely on the opposition.

He continued to insist that the Republicans had nothing to negotiate over because they’re pushing for a “clean” continuing resolution, which doesn’t include any new GOP provisions and would just maintain government funding at the current levels.

Johnson reiterated his point yesterday that Chuck Schumer had “handed the keys to the kingdom” to the executive. The White House said today that federal layoffs will probably be “in the thousands”. Johnson said:

The president takes no pleasure in this … When Congress turns off the funding and the funding runs out, it is up to the commander in chief, the president of the United States, to determine how these resources will be spent … He doesn’t want to do it.

Johnson also claimed the White House’s budget director, Russell Vought, is making cuts to the federal government “reluctantly”. (A reminder that Trump said earlier this morning that he couldn’t believe the Democrats had given him ‘this unprecedented opportunity’ to – with Vought – cut ‘many Democrat agencies’ perhaps permanently). Back to Johnson, who said:

Russ does this reluctantly … He takes no pleasure in this, because he has to sit down and decide, because he’s in charge of that office, which policies, personnel, and which programs are essential and which are not. That’s not a fun task and he’s not enjoying that responsibility.

He added this warning regarding the longer the government stays shut down:

It’s going to get more and more painful. Because the resources run out and more and more things have to be reduced and eliminated.

The Trump administration has revived the practice of separating families in order to coerce immigrants and asylum seekers to leave the US, attorneys and former immigration officials allege.

In several cases, officials have retaliated against immigrants who challenged deportation orders by forcibly separating them from their children, a Guardian investigation found. The officials misclassified the children as “unaccompanied minors” before placing them in government-run shelters or foster care.

The new practice has taken effect as the administration has also issued stringent new limits on who can take custody of unaccompanied minors – which advocates say keep thousands of children away from their relatives.

“This is a tactic to punish people for not acquiescing,” said Faisal Al-Juburi, head of external affairs at the legal aid group Raíces.

It’s a tactic to get immigrants to relent, to agree to self-deport.

The recent separations echo the “zero tolerance” policy of the first Trump administration, when the US systematically separated more than 5,600 children from their parents and caregivers at the US-Mexico border. Images of agents pulling children from their parents’ arms and placing them in overcrowded metal cages sparked domestic and international outrage, and Donald Trump ended the policy.

But seven years later, hundreds of parents have still been unable to reunify with their children; the administration lost track of many of the families it tore apart. Though the new separations so far appear less pervasive than the original policy, experts and attorneys said that it could result in another crisis of prolonged, permanent separations.

“I would say that the main difference is just that the separations are now happening all over the country, as opposed to at the border, concentrated in areas where you could visibly go see it,” said Michelle Brané, a former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official who served under the Biden administration. “But the rest of it is not that different. The objective is still to be cruel and send a message that people should not come to the US – that they should leave.”

You can read Maanvi’s full, harrowing piece here:

Related: Trump revives family separations amid drive to deport millions: ‘A tactic to punish’

The White House has asked nine top universities to sign a 10-point agreement, aligning with the administration’s priorities, to gain preferential access to federal funds, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Key measures outlined in the memo, dubbed the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education”, include commitments to make create a “more welcoming environment for conservatives” on campus, cap international enrollment, accept the government’s definition of gender and apply it to campus bathrooms, locker rooms and women’s sports teams, and to end “the use of race or sex in hiring and admissions”.

Signing on would give universities priority access to some federal grants, but government money would not be limited solely to those schools, a White House official told the Associated Press. Colleges that agree would also have priority access to White House events and discussions with officials.

The 10-page proposed agreement was sent yesterday to some of the country’s most selective public and private universities: Vanderbilt, the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, the University of Southern California, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas, the University of Arizona, Brown University and the University of Virginia. It was not clear how these schools were selected or why, and whether similar offers might go out to other colleges.

The administration has used its control of federal funding as leverage at several other colleges, cutting off research money at schools including Harvard and Columbia as it has sought changes to the schools’ governance and policies.

US government layoffs could be in the thousands, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has said, as the federal government entered the second day of the shutdown. She did not provide details.

Look, it’s likely going to be in the thousands. And that’s something that the Office of Management and Budget and the entire team at the White House here, again, is unfortunately having to work on today.

Speaking to reporters outside the White House and as the bipartisan blame game rages on, she added:

These discussions and these conversations, these meetings would not be happening if the Democrats had voted to keep the government open.

Asked specifically which agencies would be targeted, Leavitt said: “We’re looking at agencies that don’t align with the president’s values” and “that we feel are a waste of the taxpayer dollar”.

The Trump administration hopes and expects Hamas to approve its plan for Gaza and Donald Trump will draw a red line for any response from the group, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt has said.

“It’s a red line that the president of the United States is going to have to draw, and I’m confident that he will,” Leavitt said in an interview with Fox News when asked about Hamas potentially walking away from the plan.

Trump gave Hamas “three or four days” on Tuesday to accept his peace plan for Gaza. Should they reject the plan, Trump has said Israel has his full backing to “finish the job” in Gaza, where Israel’s assault has already killed well over 66,000 Palestinian people.

AFP has reported that some Hamas officials want amendments, including on the plan’s requirement for the group to disarm, while others want to accept the deal because, as one source tells the agency, “the important thing is to have a ceasefire guaranteed by Trump”.

Treasury secretary Scott Bessent has been speaking on CNBC this morning, and said that US GDP could take a hit from the government shutdown, which is one day two with no end in sight. He told CNBC Squawk Box:

This isn’t the way to have a discussion, shutting down the government and lowering the GDP. We could see a hit to the GDP, a hit to growth and a hit to working America.

Government shutdowns usually have little economic impact, but many commentators have pointed out that this one could be different due to Donald Trump’s threats to make some federal government furloughs permanent. Asked by CNBC about whether Trump was considering that, Bessent called it a “talking point” (though Trump has confirmed that himself).

Facing repeated questions about the timing and extent of the layoffs that the administration could carry out in the coming days, Bessent said only, “I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the president to use all the levers” available to him.

Donald Trump is up and truthing as the White House presses on with seizing the opportunity provided by the shutdown to axe federal jobs and Democratic spending priorities. “I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity,” Trump writes this morning.

He said he has a meeting today with Russell Vought, “of Project 2025 fame” who is now the head of the office for management and budget, “to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent”.

Vought was central to the Project 2025 blueprint - which Trump sought to distance himself from during his campaign - and has been on a years-long quest to dismantle the federal workforce and consolidate power for the president. Since Trump took office in January, he has worked alongside the so-called “department of government efficiency” to implement many aspects of the plan including slashing through the federal government.

As we reported yesterday – day one of the shutdown – he’s already started slashing blue state infrastructure spending, cancelling $8bn in climate-related funding to 16 blue states and freezing $18bn for two huge New York City construction projects. And he told a call with House Republicans that mass firings would begin either today or tomorrow and would target agencies that don’t align with the president’s priorities.

Here’s Trump’s Truth Social post:

I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent. I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity. They are not stupid people, so maybe this is their way of wanting to, quietly and quickly, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DJT

As congressional Democrats hold out for healthcare subsidies, the Trump administration has repeatedly stated that federal workers will face layoffs while the government is shut down.

Late last night, president Donald Trump posted on Truth Social:

Republicans must use this opportunity of Democrat forced closure to clear out dead wood, waste, and fraud. Billions of Dollars can be saved. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. We will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.

We start with news that a vote to end the government shutdown hours after it began failed on Wednesday, as Democrats in the Senate held firm to the party’s demands to fund healthcare subsidies that president Donald Trump and Republicans refuse to extend.

The tally showed cracks in the Democrats’ resolve, but the outcome also left no breakthrough, AP reported. Blame was being cast on all sides on the first day of the shutdown.

The White House and Congress failed to strike an agreement to keep programs and services open, throwing the country into a new cycle of uncertainty.

At the heart of the issue are tax credits that have made health insurance through the Affordable Care Act more affordable for millions of people since the coronavirus pandemic.

The credits are set to expire at the end of the year if Congress doesn’t extend them, which would more than double what subsidized enrollees currently pay for health insurance premiums, according to analysis.

Meanwhile, as the Trump administration insists it is serious about negotiating an end to the government shutdown, a pair of racist deepfake videos mocking Democratic leaders played on a loop in the White House briefing room for hours on Wednesday.

The videos, posted by Trump on his social media platform on Monday, use fabricated audio to make it seem as if the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, called Democrats “woke pieces of shit”, and showed the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, with a fake mustache and sombrero.

JD Vance, the US vice-president, made light of the tactic during a rare appearance in the briefing room. “I think it’s funny. The president’s joking and we’re having a good time. You can negotiate in good faith while also making a little bit of fun at some of the absurdities of the Democrats’ positions, and even poking some fun at the absurdity of themselves.

“I’ll tell Hakeem Jeffries right now, I make the solemn promise to you that if you help us reopen the government, the sombrero memes will stop. I’ve talked to the president of the United States about that.”

Jeffries has denounced the memes as racist. Vance retorted: “I honestly don’t even know what that means. Like, is he a Mexican American that is offended by having a sombrero meme?”

Read the full story here:

Related: White House plays racist deepfake video of Democratic leaders on loop

In other developments:

• JD Vance, the vice-president, used false claims to blame Democrats for the government shutdown as the White House warned that worker layoffs were imminent.

• Donald Trump quietly signed an executive order on Monday in which he promised that the United States will defend the nation of Qatar by treating “any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure” of the energy-rich Persian Gulf monarchy “as a threat to the peace and security of the United States”.

• Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, the top Democrats in the House of Representatives and Senate, respectively, and both New Yorkers, accused the Trump administration of retaliating against their constituents by putting billions of dollars to revamp transportation infrastructure on hold.

• Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, said in a statement on Wednesday that “Donald Trump’s unlawful federalization of members of the Oregon National Guard could cost taxpayers up to $10m”.

• The Trump administration said that it was putting a hold on roughly $18bn to fund a new rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River between New York City and New Jersey and the city’s expanded Second Avenue subway project – because of the government shutdown.

• Donald Trump once again shared misinformation about Portland, Oregon, on social media on Wednesday, when he announced that the national guard troops he called up in response to a small protest outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) office in the otherwise tranquil city are “now in place”.

• Lisa Cook, the US Federal Reserve governor, will keep her job for now, despite Donald Trump’s extraordinary bid to remove her from the central bank’s board with immediate effect.