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      Democratic contender for Congress indicted over Chicago ICE protests

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      Kat Abughazaleh, a progressive candidate for Congress, has been indicted on federal charges related to her participation in protests outside an ICE processing facility near Chicago in September.The indictment, filed last week, alleges that the 26-year old Palestinian American candidate and five other individuals “physically hindered and impeded” a federal agent who was “forced to drive at an extremely slow rate of speed to avoid injuring any of the conspirators”.Abughazaleh, who is running for Illinois’s ninth congressional district to replace the outgoing Democrat Jan Schakowsky, was charged with conspiracy to forcibly impede or injure a federal agent, and assaulting or impeding the agent while they were performing official duties.According to the indictment, the group “conspired with one another and others, known and unknown, to prevent by force, intimidation, and threat, Agent A, a United States law enforcement officer, from discharging the duties of his office”.It alleged that Abughazaleh, along with the other individuals, “banged aggressively” on the agent’s vehicle, “crowded together in the front and side” of the vehicle and “pushed against the vehicle to hinder and impede its movement”.According to the indictment, the group etched the word “pig” on to the vehicle and broke a side mirror and a rear windshield wiper. It also alleged that Abughazaleh specifically “joined the crowd at the front of the government vehicle, and with her hands on the hood braced her body and hands against the vehicle while remaining directly in the path of the vehicle, hindering and impeding” the agent.Following the indictment, Abughazaleh, who is known for her large social media platform on which she frequently criticizes Donald Trump’s immigration crackdowns, called the indictment “political prosecution”.“This is a … gross attempt at silencing dissent, a right protected under the first amendment. This case is yet another attempt by the Trump administration to criminalize protest and punish those who dare to speak up. That’s why I’m going to fight these unjust charges,” she said.Abughazaleh added: “As I and others exercised our first amendment rights, ICE has hit, dragged, thrown, shot with pepper balls, and teargassed hundreds of protesters, myself included. Simply because we had the gall to say masked men abducting our neighbors and terrorizing our community cannot be the new normal.“This case targets our rights to protest, speak freely, and associate with anyone who disagrees with this government … I’ve spent my career fighting America’s backwards slide towards fascism and I’m not going to give up now,” she continued.The indictment comes as the Trump administration ramps up federal immigration raids across numerous progressive cities including Chicago – a move which has been harshly criticized by local and state leaders.The raids have drawn widespread opposition from the public, congressional Democratic lawmakers and civil rights groups, with the ACLU describing them as a “build out of a national paramilitary policing force that could be used to … consolidate President Donald Trump’s power”. More

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      DeSantis urges Florida universities to stop hiring foreign visa workers

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      Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is urging the state’s universities to stop hiring international employees through the H-1B visa program.DeSantis said he wants the Florida board of governors “to pull the plug” on the practice. Nearly 400 foreign nationals are currently employed at Florida’s public universities under the H-1B visa program, reported the Orlando Sentinel.“Universities across the country are importing foreign workers on H-1B visas instead of hiring Americans who are qualified and available to do the job,” said DeSantis in a statement. “We will not tolerate H-1B abuse in Florida institutions. That’s why I have directed the Florida Board of Governors to end this practice.”However, it’s unclear how such a move could be carried out. States do not have authority to revoke federal visas, and US Citizenship and Immigration Services regulations prohibit firing employees based on immigration status.Last month, Donald Trump raised the H-1B visa fee from $215 to $100,000, a decision likely to face legal challenges. He also issued a proclamation alleging “systematic abuse” of the program.The H-1B program permits employers to hire skilled foreign professionals for specialized positions that are difficult to fill with US workers. Across Florida, more than 7,200 people hold H-1B visas.The program has caused friction among Trump supporters. Some, such as Elon Musk, argue it’s essential for US innovation, while others, including DeSantis, contend it enables companies to replace Americans with lower-paid foreign labor.DeSantis cited positions filled by workers from China, Argentina and Canada, arguing these roles were taken from qualified Floridians in favor of “cheap labor”.The University of Florida is one of the state’s largest users of the H-1B program, employing more than 150 staff members under the visa, according to an Orlando Sentinel review of federal data. Other universities also rely heavily on the program, including the University of South Florida with 72 employees and Florida State University with 69, according to the Tampa Bay Times.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEducators note that most H-1B visa holders at these institutions work in departments such as computer science, engineering, physics and chemistry. About 60% of people who earned PhDs in computer science from US universities in 2023 were temporary visa holders, not citizens or permanent residents, reported the Sentinel.Donald Landry, the University of Florida’s interim president, said during the news conference that the university will embrace DeSantis’s review of H-1B visas. “Occasionally, some bright light might be good enough for the faculty, and then we will try and retain the person into whom we’ve invested so much,” Landry said, according to the Tampa Bay Times. “But that’s the exception that proves the rule.” More

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      US could lose between $7bn and $14bn during shutdown, budget office says

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      The US is set to lose between $7bn and $14bn as a result of the ongoing federal government shutdown, according to the congressional budget office.On Wednesday, the nonpartisan federal agency released its estimates in a new report to the House budget committee as the government shutdown reaches four weeks.According to the report, the shutdown will also reduce the US’s GDP by one to two percentage points in the fourth quarter of 2025.In his report, Phillip Swagel, the CBO director, said: “In CBO’s assessment, the shutdown will delay federal spending and have a negative effect on the economy that will mostly, but not entirely, reverse once the shutdown ends.”“The effects of the shutdown on the economy are uncertain. Those effects depend on decisions made by the administration throughout the shutdown. In addition, how federal employees and contractors respond to the delay in compensation is uncertain,” Swagel added.The US government shutdown stretched into its 29th day on Wednesday with no sign of an end to the crisis. The Senate remained deadlocked over spending legislation and on Tuesday Senate Democrats blocked a Republican-backed bill that would have funded federal agencies through 21 November.Democrats have refused to support 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.According to the CBO report, economic activity at the end of 2025 will be lower as a result of the shutdown, with the decline being driven by three factors: fewer services will be provided by federal workers, federal spending on goods, services and food benefits will be temporarily lower and a drop in overall demand will temporarily decrease production from the private sector.The report laid out three loss estimates amid the government shutdown. If the government opens this week, a total GDP loss by the end of 2026 would be $7bn. If the shutdown lifts after six weeks, or around 12 November, the total GDP loss would be $11bn. The estimated losses after the eight-week shutdown scenario were projected to be $14bn.The CBO added that although a government shutdown lasting four weeks would not affect federal spending for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) benefits, how a longer shutdown would affect Snap benefits is uncertain.The report comes as more than two dozen states – led by New York, California and Massachusetts – sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over its decision to suspend food stamps amid the shutdown.Meanwhile, nearly 11,000 air traffic controllers, who are deemed essential workers, missed their first paycheck on Tuesday.With two weeks of unpaid work, as well as staffing issues being reported across major cities including Chicago, Dallas and Nashville, Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, has warned that another missed paycheck would be financially “harder [for employees] … as expenses continue to roll [in]”. More

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      Jared Kushner is back – and so are big questions about his financial ties | Mohamad Bazzi

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      In Donald Trump’s first term, his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner was omnipresent. He worked on criminal justice reform, Covid-19 vaccine development and modernizing technology across federal agencies. His portfolio extended to foreign policy, as he brokered a new North American trade agreement and negotiated peace deals in the Middle East. But when Trump returned to the White House in January, Kushner stayed out of the limelight and declined to take a formal role in the administration.A few weeks ago, Kushner re-emerged as a central player behind Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, which so far has achieved a ceasefire, an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners and a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territory. Kushner took a victory lap, as Trump and others in the US administration gave him significant credit for helping negotiate a ceasefire after two years of Israel’s brutal war on Gaza. Kushner is being hailed as the consummate deal-maker, a private citizen whose business acumen succeeded where career diplomats failed.But as in Trump’s first term, Kushner’s diplomatic work often overlapped with his business dealings, raising questions about financial conflicts. In fact, his potential conflicts are even more conspicuous today. Kushner’s key role in brokering the Gaza deal, which includes a framework for the territory’s postwar redevelopment, cannot be separated from the investment firm he owns, Affinity Partners, which is overwhelmingly financed by the very Arab petrostates critical to the agreement and potential reconstruction – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Together, these three states provided crucial support to Kushner after he left the White House in January 2021, investing billions of dollars that allowed him to launch and expand his private equity firm.Six months after the end of the first Trump administration, Kushner’s newly created company secured a $2bn investment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. It was an unusually large stake, considering that Kushner and his firm had little experience or track record in private equity. In fact, the kingdom’s crown prince and de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, overruled a group of advisers who had objected to investing in Kushner’s new project. The advisers warned that due diligence conducted on behalf of the Saudi Public Investment Fund had found the firm’s early operations “unsatisfactory in all aspects”. But leaked internal documents published by the New York Times showed that Prince Mohammed dismissed those concerns, and he was more focused on using the infusion of Saudi cash to cultivate a “strategic relationship” with Kushner.It’s no surprise that the prince would want to reward Kushner for his steadfast support during Trump’s first term – and hedge the kingdom’s bets in case Trump returned to power. Throughout his first term, Trump tried to shield Prince Mohammed from blame for the 2018 assassination of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was ambushed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a 15-member hit team. Despite a CIA assessment that concluded, with “high confidence,” that the prince had ordered the killing, Trump and Kushner offered the Saudi regime continued political support and billions of dollars in US weapons sales.The scale and timing of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund’s commitment to Kushner suggests its $2bn in funding wasn’t driven by market forces, but rather a bet by the crown prince on continued goodwill from a future Trump administration. A subsequent congressional investigation revealed that the Saudi leader did not earn a traditional return on his investment.In September 2024, as Trump was running for president, a US Senate committee found that Kushner’s firm had been paid $157m in management fees from foreign clients since 2021 without returning any profit to its investors. The Senate investigation, which was launched by Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator from Oregon who chaired the finance committee at the time, showed that Affinity Partners had collected $87m in fees from the Saudi wealth fund. In a letter to Kushner’s company, Wyden questioned why the firm had not generated any profit for its investors, despite charging hefty management fees – and he raised concerns that the entire venture was a way for foreign powers to buy influence in anticipation of Trump returning to power. “Affinity’s investors may not be motivated by commercial considerations, but rather the opportunity to funnel foreign government money to members of President Trump’s family,” Wyden wrote.In December 2024, Kushner revealed that he had raised an additional $1.5bn for Affinity Partners from investment funds controlled by Qatari and UAE government officials. In a podcast interview, Kushner said he had “pre-emptively tried to avoid any conflict” by securing new funding from his existing investors before Trump won the presidential election. The added funds brought the firm’s total assets to $4.8bn by the end of last year, nearly 99% of it from foreign sources. The increase in management fees raked in by Affinity has also boosted Kushner’s personal wealth, and turned him into a billionaire, according to Forbes.After Republicans regained control of the Senate in January, Wyden lost the finance committee chair position and his investigation into Kushner’s company foundered. With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, and a supreme court ruling last year that gave Trump broad immunity for official acts, Trump and his family are facing little scrutiny in Washington for exploiting the presidency to promote their business interests.Aside from being the primary funders of Kushner’s firm, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE also have deals at various stages of development with Trump’s family business. Those Trump-branded real estate projects, hotels and golf resorts are worth billions of dollars. And like most foreign deals negotiated by the Trump Organization, the company won’t put up any capital but will earn millions of dollars in branding and management fees once projects are operational. As he’s done throughout his career, Trump continues to sell his name to make easy money.The Trump administration insists that Kushner’s diplomatic work in the Middle East – while he manages an investment firm funded by three Arab monarchies – poses no conflict of interest. When a reporter asked about the appearance of self-dealing at a press conference on 1 October, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, snapped back: “I think it’s frankly despicable that you’re trying to suggest that it’s inappropriate for Jared Kushner” to help Trump negotiate the Gaza ceasefire deal. She added: “Jared is donating his energy and his time to our government, to the president of the United States, to secure world peace, and that is a very noble thing.”Trump also praised his son-in-law’s diplomatic skills, telling a cabinet meeting on 9 October: “I put Jared there because he’s a very smart person and he knows the region, knows the people, knows a lot of the players.”It’s true that Kushner leveraged his relationship with Arab leaders, along with a family friendship with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to finalize Trump’s 20-point peace plan. And Kushner helped persuade both the Israeli government and Hamas to accept a ceasefire and hostage-prisoner swap, while delaying thornier questions to later negotiations.But even as he brokered the fragile ceasefire agreement, Kushner continued to negotiate business deals that benefit his firm and foreign partners – including Saudi Arabia, which the Trump administration was consulting as part of its emerging Gaza deal. On 29 September, the same day that Trump and Netanyahu revealed their Gaza agreement at the White House, Kushner and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund announced that they had reached a $55bn deal to acquire the video game publisher Electronic Arts. The game maker is dominant in sports gaming, and Saudi Arabia has made a push in recent years to buy soccer teams and other sports franchises.The Electronic Arts deal will require approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, a panel of federal regulators that evaluates large foreign deals which could raise national security concerns. In 2023, members of Congress launched an investigation into the Saudi fund’s investments in US sports, especially the Saudi-backed LIV Golf, a rival to the PGA Tour.Will the Saudi interest in Electronic Arts face similar scrutiny by the Committee on Foreign Investment under the Trump administration? That’s highly unlikely, considering that the president’s son-in-law will be one of the deal’s beneficiaries. The Financial Times reported last month that Kushner’s involvement could ease the sale’s path with US regulators.Unlike his central role during Trump’s first term, Kushner now seems to prefer serving as a powerful deal-maker behind the scenes in the Middle East. And with no formal job in the current administration, Kushner has avoided most previous criticism of his business dealings. He has no White House title, and far less oversight this time around.But he will probably remain at the center of negotiations about rebuilding Gaza, and reviving a potential diplomatic agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, a longtime goal of the Trump administration. And with little resistance from Congress, Kushner and the rest of Trump’s family will continue to reap the financial benefits of dominating the US government.Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University More

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      JD Vance did nothing as Trump cuts cost his Ohio home town millions. Will it reshape the city council?

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      When the Middletown high school marching band performed at the presidential inauguration in Washington DC in January, they did so having called on parents, relatives and friends to empty their pockets to help pay for the trip.Despite his apparent nous and wealth, built from a former career in venture capital, Middletown native JD Vance declined to help the students and their supporters get to the capital on the day that honored and marked him as one of the most powerful people in the country.And in May, when the community learned that Donald Trump’s Department of Education was taking back a $5.6m grant that Middletown’s schools had been awarded, school representatives and local politicians, many of them Republicans, wrote to Vance, begging him to reinstate the funding.“To a public school district, $5.6m, that’s not just some easy figure to come up with to complete the project,” the Middletown schools superintendent, Deborah Houser, told WVXU.But all they heard back from Number One Observatory Circle, the vice-president’s Washington DC residence, were crickets.It’s for these and other reasons that progressives Scotty Robertson and Larri Silas decided to run for two seats on Middletown’s non-partisan city council in next month’s election.View image in fullscreenWith national midterm elections still a year out, the Middletown city council election could represent one of the first political temperature checks following nine months of upheaval fueled by White House policies that have targeted working-class Americans like many in Middletown.Although the Middletown city council is officially non-partisan, its current makeup leans 3-1 in favor of Republican members, with the fifth member, the mayor, being regarded as a centrist. The two council seats up for election are now occupied by Republicans.If both – or either – Robertson and Silas win, the swing would send shock waves all the way to Washington.“Middletown is a city that has communities with some very vulnerable populations. The [Trump administration] policies are designed to help billionaires, and there are not a lot of his billionaire friends that exist in Middletown,” says Robertson, a West Virginia native and pastor who moved to Middletown eight years ago.“Peter Thiel doesn’t live in Middletown.” Tech billionaire Thiel is thought to have played a major role in financing Vance’s political rise.Despite Vance being Middletown’s most famous son and Ohio broadly safe ground for Republican politicians for at least a decade, tellingly, nearly four in 10 of voters in the city of 50,000 people chose not to back Vance and Trump in last year’s presidential election.As a young Black woman in a city where 27% of the population is non-white, Silas’s candidacy could prompt residents not normally politically motivated to get out and vote in light of the wider political climate in the country.“I think a lot of people in Middletown want change, and that people see youth as change,” says the 22-year-old nursing home staffer and third-generation Middletown resident.“A lot of people say they want to see the youth get involved [in politics]. But when you do, you’re often criticized for not having experience.”Silas was jolted into politics after longtime Democrat Sherrod Brown lost his Ohio Senate seat to Bernie Moreno, a Republican endorsed by Trump, last November.“I thought: ‘What can I do? I can’t change national politics, but I can get involved someway,’ she says.National polls show Vance’s unfavorability rising since becoming vice-president. Those describing themselves as independents, a crucial voting bloc, have recorded their unfavorable view of Vance increasing from 48% around inauguration day in late January to a record 57% in early October. A similar increase has been recorded among African Americans and Hispanic voters, who make up a considerable number of Middletown residents.Vance has been criticized locally for not stepping in to save a Biden-era grant worth hundreds of millions to a local steel plant that would have created hundreds of clean energy jobs. In December, his mother admonished Middletown’s city council for not doing enough to recognize his achievements.Silas and Robertson claim Vance’s policies and lack of support are damaging Middletown’s prospects.“I’m confused [by Vance]. He says he wants to govern for the working person, for the average person, yet the policies that he supports are policies that hurt poor, working people disproportionately,” says Robertson.Last month, Vance posted on X, saying: “Democrats are about to shutdown the government because they demand that we fund healthcare for illegal aliens,” a claim that has no basis in reality.“Middletown has families that are disproportionately in the socioeconomic class that these policies are hurting. That’s why these policies are having a much more disproportionate impact on Middletown.” The US Census Bureau recorded that child poverty in Middletown is 29%, 13% above the national average.Meanwhile, one of Silas and Robertson’s city council opponents, incumbent Paul Lolli, courted controversy last year when receiving a $135,981 payout after retiring from his job as Middletown city manager “due to personal circumstances”. While more than $43,000 of that was attributed to accrued paid time off, the remainder accounted for six months of salary and insurance benefits premiums. Emails and voicemails left by the Guardian with Lolli were not responded to.Lolli and his right-leaning co-runner, a former city council member, have claimed it isn’t Vance’s job to lift up his home town.Past vice-presidents, however, have ensured their own communities were recognized.Kamala Harris helped bring millions of dollars in funding and grants into Oakland, California, her home town, during her vice-presidency.Still, the challenges facing Robertson and Silas are significant, chief among them the gap in experience between them and their opponents, who have collectively worked in city administrative positions for decades.Calling out Vance, a hometown hero for many Middletown residents, could also be costly.Experts say that Vance’s unpopularity – and that of vice-presidents in general – is largely down to how people see the president.“It’s hard to know how seriously to take a rating of JD Vance as an individual, as an office holder, because I think mostly what I think people are doing is transferring their opinion of Donald Trump as a president to JD Vance,” says Christopher Devine, associate professor of political science at the University of Dayton, who has written two books on vice-presidents.He says many people who turn out for a presidential election do not take part in local polls such as city council elections.“The more localized and less visible in terms of the office, the lower the turnout’s going to be,” says Devine.“Those folks who came out in force to vote for Trump and Vance in Middletown in 2024, that’s not going to be the same for people who are voting for city council in the fall of 2025.”Silas, whose family members were part of the Great Migration of job-seeking African Americans who moved from the south to the midwest more than a century ago, says she first heard of Vance when she voted against him in a Senate election he ultimately won in 2022. Vance secured Trump’s endorsement for the race, which was funded by millions of dollars from billionaires such as Thiel.For Robertson, countering the White House-fueled movement against working Americans starts in Middletown.“I think that our country in general is at a pivotal moment,” he says.“If good, decent people with the right motives don’t stand up and run for office and participate in the political process, then that leaves it ripe for picking for the bad actors.” More

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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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      From CBS to TikTok, US media are falling to Trump’s allies. This is how democracy crumbles | Owen Jones

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      Democracy may be dying in the US. Whether the patient receives emergency treatment in time will determine whether the condition becomes terminal. Before Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, I warned of “Orbánisation” – in reference to Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán. There, democracy was not extinguished by firing squads or the mass imprisonment of dissidents, but by slow attrition. The electoral system was warped, civil society was targeted and pro-Orbán moguls quietly absorbed the media.Nine months on, and Orbánisation is in full bloom across the Atlantic. Billionaire Larry Ellison, the Oracle co-founder, and his filmmaker son, David, have become blunt instruments in this process. Trump boasts they are “friends of mine – they’re big supporters of mine”. Larry Ellison, second only to Elon Musk as the world’s richest man, has poured tens of millions into Republican coffers. Shortly after the 2020 election, he joined a call that discussed challenging the legitimacy of the vote. His son, David, has a history of backing Democrats – but at one time, so did Trump, his daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.In August, David Ellison’s Skydance Media acquired Paramount Global with financial support from his father, leaving him as chair and CEO of the new entity. Beyond a vast slice of Hollywood, this acquisition brought control of CBS News – one of the US’s “big three” networks. During the last election, Trump demanded CBS lose its broadcasting licence over alleged political bias and even sued the network over what he called a flattering edit of Kamala Harris’s 60 Minutes interview. His mood has since improved. Ellison is “going to do the right thing” with the network, Trump crowed when its ownership shifted. His optimism was swiftly vindicated: a Trump appointee was installed as CBS’s ombudsman to monitor “bias”, and Bari Weiss – a former Democrat turned anti-woke crusader – was made editor-in-chief.Now, Trump officials are briefing that they are also in favour of Paramount Skydance buying Warner Bros Discovery, the parent company of HBO and CNN. “Who owns Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) is very important to the administration,” a senior Trump official told the conservative New York Post. The pro-Trump newspaper states that rival bidders will face “regulatory hurdles”, with WBD’s CEO forced to consider the Trump administration’s willingness to crack down on what it sees as rampant leftwing bias across the mainstream media.Larry Ellison, meanwhile, also leads a group of investors set to take over TikTok’s US operations, with other partners reportedly including Rupert Murdoch and Abu Dhabi’s government-owned investment company. Although much of Trump’s own criticism of TikTok has focused on China, key Maga figures such as Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio have called for the app to be banned over “anti-Israel” bias, and for shifting younger Americans’ sympathies towards Palestinians. Ellison is a fervent supporter of Israel, and has previously donated millions to its military through the non-profit Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. They will be pleased to have him in charge.In 2015, Safra Catz, Oracle’s Israeli-American executive chair, and former CEO, reportedly told former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak in an email that: “We believe that we have to embed the love and respect for Israel in the American culture.” Oracle will have oversight of the TikTok algorithm.But this goes much further than the Ellisons’ acquisitions. Trump threatened Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he crossed him. The social media mogul has little to worry about now, having done his best to ingratiate himself with the administration. He abandoned third-party factchecking in the US, dropped restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender, and appointed Trump supporters as head of global affairs and to the executive board. At the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, columnist Karen Attiah says she was fired for “speaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns” after Charlie Kirk’s assassination.Liberal comedian Jimmy Kimmel had his ABC show suspended after the pro-Trump chair of the Federal Communications Commission demanded action. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting – long deemed hostile by Trump – has been defunded and shut down. The administration took control over which media organisations have access to the White House, ejecting the Associated Press. US media outlets were stripped of their Pentagon credentials after refusing to only report officially authorised information issued by the Department of Defense. Trump’s lawsuits against media organisations have further cowed them.It goes far beyond media control. Witness Trump deploying the national guard to Democratic strongholds and centralising control over elections. Republicans have launched new gerrymandering offensives, while demanding the denaturalisation and deportation of socialist New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, as Trump threatens to defund the city if he wins. In Hungary, too, Orbán slashed funding for opposition mayoralties. Opponents are threatened with arrest: the arch warmonger John Bolton may be politically loathsome, but the charges filed against him are the harbinger of worse to come. Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon claims there is a plan to circumvent the constitution to allow his former boss to take a third term. We could go on.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUS democracy has always been heavily flawed. It is so rigged in favour of wealthy elites that a detailed academic study back in 2014 found that the political system is rigged in favour of what the economic elites want. Yet because, unlike Hungary, the US has no history of dictatorship, with a system of supposed checks and balances, some felt it could never succumb to tyranny. Such complacency has collided with brutal reality. In just nine months, the US has been dragged towards an authoritarian abyss. A warning: Trump has 39 months left in office.

      Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist 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