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      Why Trump’s White House is using video game memes to recruit for ICE

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      Just days after Microsoft announced Halo: Campaign Evolved, the next game in its famous science-fiction series, the White House shared an interesting picture on X. The image, which appears to be AI-generated, shows President Donald Trump wearing the armour of Halo’s iconic protagonist, Master Chief, standing in salute in front of an American flag that’s missing several stars. In his left hand is an energy sword, a weapon used by the alien enemies in the Halo games. Posted in response to a tweet from US game retailer GameStop, the text accompanying the image reads “Power to the Players” in reference to the store’s slogan.GameStop and the White House exchanged another Halo meme or two, and then, on 27 October, the official Department of Homeland Security X account joined in – using Halo imagery of a futuristic soldier in an alien world to encourage people to join its increasingly militaristic Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Stop the Flood, this one reads, equating the US’s immigrant population with the parasitic aliens that Master Chief eliminates.“Yet another war ended under President Trump’s watch – only one leader is fully committed to giving power to the players, and that leader is Donald J Trump,” said White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai over email, when I asked for the official line on this post. “That’s why he’s hugely popular with the American people and American gamers.” (Microsoft has not replied to any requests for comment.)View image in fullscreenThis spate of sharing video game imagery may seem odd, but Trump and his various allies have been leaning into gamer culture for nearly a decade. Trump has courted gamers – a demographic that includes a significant subsection of disaffected young men – since his first presidential campaign. Media executive Steve Bannon joined that campaign as chief strategist and senior counsellor in August 2016, bringing with him a wealth of knowledge of video game culture and the online behaviour of its biggest fans.Bannon had previously worked with and secured funding for Internet Gaming Entertainment, a Hong Kong company that paid Chinese workers low wages to farm gold in the multiplayer game World of Warcraft. According to Joshua Green’s book on Bannon (Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency), it was during this time that Bannon learned that “these guys, these rootless white males, had monster power”. In 2014, Bannon watched as Gamergate, an amorphous online army massing in the darker corners of the web, routinely targeted women and other people marginalised in the video game industry. He saw how the movement’s behaviour led to real-world actions, such as organised harassment and doxing (the sharing of private information with the public).Once Bannon joined the Trump campaign, he leveraged his understanding of gamer culture to push Trump’s presidential campaign to previously untouched places. “You can activate that army. They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned on to politics and Trump,” Bannon told Green.That army was ready to engage in memetic warfare at any given moment, and it did. Throughout the campaign, Trump’s meme army monitored then candidate Hillary Clinton’s every move, sharing fabricated allegations of health problems with the hashtag #HillaryHealth. It regularly produced memes supporting Trump based on internet in-jokes and nerdy pop culture references. Arguably, Trump defeated Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign with the help of this army.When Trump failed to beat Joe Biden in the 2020 election, he turned to his own social media platform, Truth Social, to regularly lambast Biden and the Democrats throughout Biden’s four-year term. He continued to court gamers and the online reactionary right, before winning the presidency again. The second Trump administration still utilises the tactics and frameworks of online agitators (or trolls), but there’s one major difference this time around: Elon Musk.View image in fullscreenThe South African entrepreneur bought Twitter in October 2022 and quickly reinstated Trump’s account and a host of others that had been banned. Musk, who regularly invokes gamer culture and posts memes on his own X account, and spent a few weeks earlier this year embroiled in a ridiculous fight over whether he was faking his gamer credentials (he was), loosened the restrictions on hate speech on the platform and boosted the exact kind of toxic gamer culture that the White House is now courting.Since Trump’s January inauguration, the White House and various federal institutions have taken up meme posting. Last month, the Department of Homeland Security’s official X account and the White House’s official TikTok account shared a video of ICE raids set to the Pokémon theme music, interspersing imagery from the animated show with clips of agents arresting people and using the “Gotta catch’em all” slogan from the franchise. The Pokémon Company International told the BBC that “permission was not granted for the use of our intellectual property”. The video is still up at the time of writing.The video game industry at large has long remained silent when it comes to the reactionary politics and ideologies spreading among its communities. For millions of Americans who play games, but are massively embarrassed by an administration that is warning pregnant women against taking Tylenol, or pushing the narrative that immigrants are parasites, or that diversity, equity and inclusivity movements result in unqualified workers, watching this unfold is incredibly frustrating. The more the administration leans into video game iconography and internet memes, the more video game companies find themselves associated with the divisive and reactionary politics of the right – whether they want it or not. More

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      Too bad I can’t run, but we’ll see what happens, says Trump on unconstitutional third term

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      Donald Trump said “it’s too bad” he is not allowed to run for a third term, conceding the constitutional reality even as he expressed interest in continuing to serve.“If you read it, it’s pretty clear,” Trump told reporters on board Air Force One from Japan to South Korea on Wednesday. “I’m not allowed to run. It’s too bad.”The president’s comments, which continue his on-again, off-again musings about a third term, came a day after the House speaker, Mike Johnson, said it would be impossible for Trump to stay in the White House. “I don’t see a path for that,” the Republican told reporters at the US Capitol on Tuesday.Johnson, who has built his career by drawing closer to Trump, said he discussed the issue with the president and thought he understood. “He and I have talked about the constrictions of the constitution,” he said.The speaker described how the constitution’s 22nd amendment does not allow for a third presidential term, and changing that with a new amendment would be a cumbersome, years-long process of winning over both states and members of Congress.Johnson dismissed worries about a potential third term as “hair on fire” by the president’s critics. “He has a good time with that, trolling the Democrats,” Johnson said.Trump stopped short of characterizing his conversation with Johnson, and his description of the prohibition on third terms was somewhat less definitive.“Based on what I read, I guess I’m not allowed to run,” he said on Wednesday. “So we’ll see what happens.”Trump has repeatedly raised the idea of trying to stay in power. Hats saying “Trump 2028” are passed out as keepsakes to lawmakers and others visiting the White House, and Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, the podcaster Steve Bannon, has revived the idea of a third Trump term.Trump told reporters on Monday on Air Force One that “I would love to do it”.He went on to say the Republican party had “a great group of people” for the next presidential election in Marco Rubio, the secretary of state who was travelling with him, and JD Vance, the vice-president who visited with senators at the Capitol on Tuesday.Asked about a strategy where he could run as vice-president, which would be allowed, and then work himself into the presidency, he dismissed the idea as “too cute”.“You’d be allowed to do that, but I wouldn’t do that,” he said. More

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      Court to reconsider ruling that allowed Trump to send troops to Portland

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      The Trump administration remains barred from deploying the national guard in Portland, Oregon, following a federal appeals court ruling.The ninth circuit court of appeals agreed on Tuesday that it would rehear a case over the president’s authority with a broader court of 11 judges. The appeals court also vacated a ruling from a three-judge panel last week that sided with the Trump administration.The order is the latest development in a long legal saga over whether Donald Trump has the authority and justification to deploy national guard forces in Portland. The Oregon city has had about 200 federalized guard members in limbo since late September when Trump attempted to mobilize in response to months of protests there.The federal government has argued that federal officials working at the ICE facility in south Portland were under attack, while city and state officials argue that local officers have control of the situation.In defiance of Trump’s characterization of Portland as “war ravaged”, locals have been sharing videos of the city’s lush hiking trails and thriving food scene, and drawing up plans for Emergency Naked Bike Ride against “the militarization of our city”.The appeals court decision on Tuesday came after US district judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee in Portland, issued two temporary restraining orders this month – one that blocked the president from federalizing the Oregon national guard, and another stopping him from deploying any national guard troops in Oregon, after Trump tried to evade the first order by calling up troops from California.On Monday, the ninth circuit panel put the first ruling on hold – allowing Trump to take command of 200 Oregon national guard – but the second ruling remained in place, blocking Trump from actually deploying the troops.The Tuesday decision means that the issue will be heard “en banc” – with both rulings under consideration together – by a panel of 11 judges.“This ruling shows the truth matters and that the courts are working to hold this administration accountable. The constitution limits the president’s power, and Oregon’s communities cannot be treated as a training ground for unchecked federal authority,” said Oregon attorney general Dan Rayfield wrote in a statement.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The court is sending a clear message: the president cannot send the military into US cities unnecessarily. We will continue defending Oregon’s laws, values, and sovereignty as this case moves forward and our fight continues in the courts.” More

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      Trump news at a glance: senators pass measure that would scrap Brazil tariffs in rare fightback against trade war

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      The Republican-led US Senate has passed a measure that would terminate Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on Brazilian imports, including coffee, beef and other products, in a rare bipartisan show of opposition to the president’s trade war.The vote passed 52-48. The resolution was led by Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat of Virginia, and seeks to overturn the national emergency that Trump has declared to justify the levies.“Tariffs are a tax on American consumers. Tariffs are a tax on American businesses. And they are a tax that is imposed by a single person: Donald J Trump,” Kaine said in a floor speech.Senators pass vote to block Brazil tariffs The US Senate has approved a bipartisan effort to stop Donald Trump’s tariffs on imports from Brazil. In a rare show of working together, senators passed the measure on Tuesday night. But it is certain to stall in the US House – and if the measure were to reach the president’s desk, it would likely meet Trump’s veto.Read the full storyBorder patrol leader told to go to court every weekday to report on Chicago enforcementA federal judge has ordered Gregory Bovino, a senior border patrol official leading the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Chicago, to appear in federal court each weekday to report on the day’s incidents in an exceptional bid to impose oversight over the government’s militarized raids in the city.The order came after a terse hearing on Tuesday morning.Read the full storyTrump-appointed acting US attorney disqualified from cases for ‘unlawfully serving’A federal judge disqualified acting US attorney Bill Essayli in Southern California from several cases after concluding Tuesday that the Trump appointee has stayed in the temporary job longer than allowed by law.US district judge J Michael Seabright disqualified Essayli from supervising the criminal prosecutions in three cases, siding with defense lawyers who argued that his authority expired in July.Read the full storyShutdown stretches into 28th day with no end in sightThe US government shutdown stretched into its 28th day with no resolution in sight on Tuesday, as the Senate remained deadlocked over spending legislation even as a crucial food aid program teeters on the brink of exhausting its funding.Read the full storyICE leadership to be revamped to intensify deportationsThe Trump administration is planning to revamp the leadership of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to reports, as the government seeks to intensify its mass deportation efforts.Multiple news outlets have reported that the government intends to reassign multiple directors of ICE field offices in the coming days, potentially replacing them with border patrol officials.Read the full storyWhite House sued over food stamps suspensionA coalition of more than two dozen states on Tuesday sued the Trump administration over its decision to suspend food stamps during the government shutdown.The lawsuit, co-led by New York, California and Massachusetts, asks a federal judge to force the US Department of Agriculture to tap into emergency reserve funds to distribute food benefits to the nearly 42 million families and children who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap). The USDA has said no benefits will be issued on 1 November.Read the full storyBiden ‘autopen’ claims revived in new reportUS House Republicans on Tuesday unveiled their long-promised report on Joe Biden’s use of the autopen during his presidency, largely rehashing public information while criticizing his time in office and making sweeping accusations about the workings of his White House.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Immigration officials have deported a father living in Alabama to Laos despite a federal court order blocking his removal from the US on the grounds he has a claim to citizenship, the man’s attorneys said on Tuesday.

      Nearly 11,000 air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration employees received a $0 paycheck on Tuesday, as the federal government shutdown rolls through its fourth week. They remain required to work.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened 27 October 2025. More

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      Border patrol leader told to go to court every weekday to report on Chicago enforcement

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      A federal judge has ordered Gregory Bovino, a senior border patrol official leading the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Chicago, to appear in federal court each weekday to report on the day’s incidents in an exceptional bid to impose oversight over the government’s militarized raids in the city.The order came following a terse hearing on Tuesday morning.“Kids dressed in Halloween costumes walking to a parade do not pose an immediate threat to the safety of a law enforcement officer,” US district judge Sara Ellis told Bovino. “They just don’t. And you can’t use riot control weapons against them.”Ellis was referring to an incident over the weekend, when federal agents deployed chemical irritants against residents, including in a neighborhood where dozens of children were planning to march in a Halloween parade.The order today is the latest of several attempts to maintain oversight over Bovino and his agents, who have appeared to repeatedly violate court orders to curb their use of force amid a heavily militarized immigration crackdown in Chicago. The administration has dubbed the movement in Chicago as “Operation Midway Blitz” and it’s resulted in at least 3,000 arrests since September.The use of force by federal agents in Chicago first came before Ellis after media organizations, protestors and clergy members filed a lawsuit accusing agents of “extreme brutality” in an attempt to “silence the press and civilians”. She ordered agents to avoid using tear gas in a crowd without first issuing two warnings.When agents repeatedly deployed pepper balls, smoke grenades and tear gas against protesters and local police despite the order, Ellis ordered agents to wear body cameras. During the hearing on Tuesday, she told Bovino that he must personally get a body camera and complete training on the use of a body camera by Friday.Bovino – who appeared in his green fatigues with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) insignia – agreed to each request, responding: “Yes, ma’am.”“My role is not to tell you that you can or cannot enforce validly passed laws by Congress … My role is simply to see that in the enforcement of those laws, the agents are acting in a manner that is consistent with the constitution,” Ellis said.Bovino, chief of the border patrol sector in El Centro, California, along the US-Mexico border, has become the face of Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement in cities including Chicago and Los Angeles.In LA, agents smashed car windows and blew open a door to a house while a woman and her two young children were inside. Immigration advocates and lawyers have raised concerns about border patrol agents flooding US cities, as the agents are trained to block illegal entries, drug smugglers and human traffickers at the country’s borders, and not to conduct civil immigration enforcement in urban communities.The Department of Homeland Security, which encompasses the CBP, did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for a comment on Ellis’s latest order.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn hearings, federal officials have said that they used riot control gear and tear gas in response to threats. They have not offered proof that these were valid threats.Ellis questioned Bovino’s own use of tear gas, after he was captured on video throwing a canister of gas into a group of residents of Little Village, a largely immigrant and Mexican American neighborhood on the city’s Southwest Side.She also questioned his agents’ use of force in the Old Irving Park neighborhood, which she described as “a fairly quiet neighborhood [with] a lot of families, a lot of single-family homes”.“These kids, you can imagine, their sense of safety was shattered on Saturday,” she said. “And it’s going to take a long time for that to come back, if ever.” More

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      Wole Soyinka, Nigerian Nobel laureate and Trump critic, says US visa revoked

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      The Trump administration has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been critical of Trump since his first presidency, Soyinka revealed on Tuesday.“I want to assure the consulate … that I’m very content with the revocation of my visa,” Soyinka, who won the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, told a news conference.Soyinka previously held permanent residency in the United States, though he destroyed his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.Soyinka speculated that his recent comments comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have struck a nerve and contributed to the US consulate’s decision.Soyinka said earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had called him in for an interview to reassess his visa, which he said he would not attend.According to a letter from the consulate addressed to Soyinka, seen by Agence France-Presse, officials have cancelled his visa, citing US state department regulations that allow “a consular officer, the secretary, or a department official to whom the secretary has delegated this authority … to revoke a nonimmigrant visa at any time, in his or her discretion”.Reading the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic centre, he jokingly called it a “rather curious love letter from an embassy”, while telling any organisations hoping to invite him to the United States “not to waste their time”.“I have no visa. I am banned,” Soyinka said.The US embassy in Abuja, the capital, said it could not comment on individual cases, citing confidentiality rules.The Trump administration has made visa revocations a hallmark of its wider crackdown on immigration, notably targeting university students who were outspoken about Palestinian rights.Soyinka said he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he said Trump “should be proud of”.“Idi Amin was a man of international stature, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was paying him a compliment,” Soyinka said. “He’s been behaving like a dictator.”The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has taught at and been awarded honours from top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.His latest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a satire about corruption in Nigeria, was published in 2021. Soyinka described the book as his “gift to Nigeria” in an interiview with the Guardian.In February, the Crucible theatre in Sheffield staged Death and the King’s Horseman.Soyinka left the door open to accepting an invitation to the United States should circumstances change, but added: “I wouldn’t take the initiative myself because there’s nothing I’m looking for there. Nothing.”He went on to criticise the ramped-up arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.“This is not about me,” Soyinka said. “When we see people being picked off the street – people being hauled up and they disappear for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what concerns me.”Trump’s crackdown has seen national guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens temporarily detained as part of aggressive raids, as well as the curtailing of legal means of entry. More

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      Man deported to Laos despite US court order blocking his removal, attorneys say

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      Immigration officials have deported a father living in Alabama to Laos despite a federal court order blocking his removal from the US on the grounds he has a claim to citizenship, the man’s attorneys said on Tuesday.US district judge Shelly Dick last week ordered US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to keep Chanthila “Shawn” Souvannarath, 44, in the United States while he presented what the judge called his “substantial claim of US citizenship”, court records show. He was born in a refugee camp in Thailand but was granted lawful permanent residence in the US before his first birthday, according to court filings.But Souvannarath on Sunday messaged his wife on WhatsApp and told her he was in Dongmakkhai, Laos, according to a screenshot she shared with the Associated Press. The message ends with “love y’all”.“It is very unfortunate, especially for the children that we have together,” Beatrice Souvannarath told AP.Emails, phone calls and text messages sent to ICE and the US Department of Homeland Security were not immediately returned.The ACLU of Louisiana, which is representing Souvannarath, called the deportation a “stunning violation of a federal court order”. Before his deportation, Souvannarath had been detained at a newly opened ICE facility at the Louisiana state penitentiary at Angola.“ICE just ignored a federal court order and tore yet another family apart,” said Alanah Odoms, executive director for the ACLU of Louisiana, in a statement. “This administration has shown it will ignore the courts, ignore the Constitution and ignore the law to pursue its mass deportation agenda, even if it means destroying the lives of American citizens.”The deportation comes as Trump administration officials have repeatedly clashed with the courts over their attempts to deport large numbers of immigrants. There have been previous cases of US citizens being deported, including US-born children.Chanthila Souvannarath was taken into ICE custody in June following an annual check-in with immigration authorities in Alabama, where he had been living, his wife said.“When he went to check in, they detained him. And our two younger kids were with him,” Beatrice Souvannarath told AP. “It was the hardest two months of my life.”He spent much of his childhood living with one or both of his parents in Hawaii, Washington state and California. His father, a native of Laos, is a naturalized US citizen, and Souvannarath claims his citizenship derives from that status.“I continuously lived in the United States since infancy,” Souvannarath wrote in a letter from immigration detention, “and I have always considered myself an American citizen.”Souvannarath filed an emergency motion seeking to delay his deportation. Dick, the federal judge based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, issued a temporary restraining order on Thursday, citing the “irreparable harm that would be caused by immediate deportation”.“Though the government has an interest in the enforcement of its immigration laws, the potential removal of a US citizen weighs heavily against the public interest,” wrote Dick, who was appointed to the federal bench by president Barack Obama. Souvannarath would be “unable to effectively litigate his case from Laos”, she added.The court docket shows no changes in Souvannarath’s case since the judge issued the temporary restraining order, which was scheduled to expire on 6 November. Through her office, Dick declined to comment. More

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      Shutdown stretches into 28th day as Senate again fails to pass spending legislation

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      The US government shutdown stretched into its 28th day with no resolution in sight on Tuesday, as the Senate remained deadlocked over spending legislation even as a crucial food aid program teeters on the brink of exhausting its funding.For the 13th time, Senate Democrats blocked a Republican-backed bill that would have funded federal agencies through 21 November. The minority party has refused to provide the necessary support for the bill to clear the 60-vote threshold for advancement in the Senate because it does not include funding for healthcare programs, or curbs on Donald Trump’s cuts to congressionally approved funding.The quagmire continued even after the president of the largest federal workers union called on Congress to pass the Republican proposal, citing the economic pain caused to government workers.“Both political parties have made their point, and still there is no clear end in sight. Today I’m making mine: it’s time to pass a clean continuing resolution and end this shutdown today. No half measures, and no gamesmanship. Put every single federal worker back on the job with full back pay – today,” Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), said in a statement released on Monday.But the top Senate Democrat, Chuck Schumer, signaled no change in his party’s strategy of holding out for concession from the Republicans, citing the imminent rise of premiums for Affordable Care Act health plans. Though tax credits that lower their costs expire at the end of the year, many enrollees in the plans have received notices of steep premium increases ahead of Saturday’s beginning of the open enrollment period.“Families are going to be in panic this weekend all across America, millions of them. How are they going to pay this bill? How are they going to live without healthcare? It’s tragic, and of course, it didn’t have to be, but Republicans are doing nothing,” Schumer told reporters at the US Capitol.The Republican Senate majority leader, John Thune, seized on the AFGE’s statement to argue that Democrats were being irresponsible for refusing to back the bill, which Republicans in the House of Representatives approved on a near party line vote last month before the speaker, Mike Johnson, ordered the chamber into a recess that has yet to end.View image in fullscreen“It’s not very often that I get a chance to say this, but I agree with the AFGE,” Thune said.He reiterated that he would negotiate with Democrats over the expiring tax credits, but not with “a gun to our heads”.“I sincerely hope, in the best interest of every American who is impacted by this shutdown, and particularly those who are going to be really adversely impacted come this weekend, that the enough Democrats will come to their senses and deliver the five votes that are necessary to get this bill on the president’s desk,” Thune said, adding that he planned to hold further votes on the spending legislation.Both parties traded blame for the imminent expiration of funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), also known as food stamps. The Department of Agriculture has announced that it does not have the money to continue providing the benefit after 1 November, though on Tuesday, more than two dozen states sued the Trump administration, arguing that funds are available for Snap benefits to continue.North Dakota senator Kevin Cramer said Democrats should either support a proposal from fellow Republican senator Josh Hawley to allow Snap to continue during the shutdown, “or they could just reopen the damn government, which is what they should be doing and should have been doing for the last month”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSouth Dakota senator Mike Rounds said the tax credits should be addressed by bipartisan action, but criticized the affordability of Affordable Care Act health plans. “The Obamacare product itself is fatally flawed. It continues to create a death spiral coming down with regard to the increasing costs. There are people out there, real people, that are going to get hurt because Obamacare is not working,” he said.In an interview, Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren signaled no change in the party’s strategy for the shutdown, which began at the start of the month after Congress failed to pass legislation to continue funding that expired at the end of September.“Millions of people across this country are receiving their health insurance premium notices, and telling Democrats and Republicans, lower those costs,” Warren said. “Democrats are in there fighting to lower healthcare costs for millions of Americans. Donald Trump would rather shut down the government than help out these families.”Susan Collins, the Republican senator from Maine who has repeatedly broken with Trump as she faces what is expected to be a tough re-election contest next year, said she did not buy that the agriculture department lacked funding to continue Snap, but noted the money it had on hand was not enough to cover the program’s costs.However, Collins expressed concerns about the readiness of air traffic controllers, who did not receive a fully paycheck on Tuesday due to the shutdown. She noted that on two recent flights to Ronald Reagan Washington National airport, her plane had to divert at the last second.“I can’t help but think that reflects the strain on air traffic controllers,” she said. More