Arsenal made a late attempt to sign Ollie Watkins in this transfer window, but their approach came too late to have any real chance of success.

Watkins, a lifelong Arsenal fan, has long been linked with a move to the Emirates, and many believed he could be the ideal addition to Mikel Arteta’s squad. However, despite Arsenal’s interest, the timing of their approach all but ended any possibility of a deal materialising.

Aston Villa had initially been open to selling one of their strikers in this window, with Jhon Durán attracting interest from multiple clubs. Once the Colombian sealed a lucrative transfer to Al Nassr, Villa no longer had a financial need to offload another forward. This significantly reduced Arsenal’s hopes of securing Watkins, and they have now been advised to forget about any potential move this month.

Unai Emery, naturally, was questioned about Arsenal’s reported interest and whether Villa would consider selling Watkins. Speaking to the Daily Mail, the Spaniard made it clear that the striker is not available.

“Yes, yes. We talked with him, and he is very focused on the message we have,” Emery said.

Arsenal and Manchester City have developed a fierce rivalry in recent seasons, and it could influence how their players interact both on and off the pitch.

While football is ultimately played within the confines of the pitch, and most professionals understand that it is just a game, emotions can sometimes spill over, particularly in high-stakes encounters. Not every player can separate the intensity of competition from personal relationships, especially when fighting for the biggest prizes in English football.

Over the past two seasons, Arsenal has emerged as the main challenger to Manchester City, a side that has dominated the Premier League in recent years. The Gunners have been working tirelessly to dethrone Pep Guardiola’s team, but City’s consistency has made them a formidable force. This season, Liverpool has also entered the title race, leading the way in both the Premier League and Europe, making the competition even fiercer.

Arsenal will face City in the Premier League this weekend in a match they simply must win. Memories of their last meeting remain fresh, as tensions flared in a heated encounter. That game ended 2-2, with City scoring a late equaliser against a ten-man Arsenal side. The full-time whistle did little to cool tempers, as Erling Haaland appeared visibly fired up, seemingly ready to confront several Arsenal players in the aftermath.

Ahead of this highly anticipated clash, Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard was asked whether the growing rivalry between the two clubs would affect his relationship with his friend and international teammate, Haaland, he responded as quoted by the Daily Mail.

In a sweeping move, President Donald Trump ousted at least a dozen inspectors general on Friday night, purging major federal agencies of independent watchdogs tasked with identifying fraud and abuse. A federal law enacted in 2022 stipulates that the president must give Congress at least 30 days notice before firing an inspector general, as well as reasons for the firing—none of which occurred.

“It’s a purge of independent watchdogs in the middle of the night,” posted Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on X. “Inspectors general are charged with rooting out government waste, fraud, abuse, and preventing misconduct. President Trump is dismantling checks on his power and paving the way for widespread corruption.”

The inspectors general received an email from the White House saying their positions had been terminated “due to changing priorities.” The number of ousted inspectors is yet unclear, with reports ranging from at least 12 to about 17. The Washington Post and New York Times report that agencies whose watchdogs were removed include the departments of defense, state, transportation, labor, health, commerce, interior, and veterans affairs, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Small Business Administration. Some of those ousted include Trump appointees from the president’s first term.

The system of inspectors general dates back to 1978, after the Watergate scandal, when Congress enacted legislation to install independent watchdogs within federal agencies to conduct investigations and audits and report their findings to the public. Today, there are 74 inspectors general, 36 of whom are presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed.

Pete Hegseth was sworn in as defense secretary on Saturday morning after a confirmation process mired in allegations of sexual assault, public drunkenness, and the financial mismanagement of two veterans’ advocacy groups.

Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate on Friday night after three Republicans—former GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—voted against the nomination. It was the second time in history that the vice president has cast the tie-breaking vote for a Cabinet nominee.

Hegseth, a former Fox News host and military veteran, promised to overhaul the “woke” policies of the department and restore a “warrior culture.” The Department of Defense operates an $850 billion budget and employs more than 3 million military and civilian personnel.

In a blistering statement, McConnell said, “The restoration of ‘warrior culture’ will not come from trading one set of culture warriors for another.” He added, “By all accounts, brave young men and women join the military with the understanding that it is a meritocracy. This precious trust endures only as long as lawful civilian leadership upholds what must be a firewall between service members and politics.” His vote marks one of the first times since the January 6 insurrection that the former majority leader has been so outspoken in his opposition to Trump’s agenda.

In 2020, Blossom Old Bull was raising three teenagers on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana. Her youngest son, Braven Glenn, was 17, a good student, dedicated to his basketball team.

That November, Old Bull got a call saying Glenn was killed in a police car chase that resulted in a head-on collision with a train. Desperate for details about the accident, she went to the police station, only to find it had shut down without any notice.  

“The doors were locked. It looked like it wasn’t in operation anymore—like they just upped and left,” Old Bull said. “It’s, like, there was a life taken, and you guys just closed everything down without giving the family any answers?”

This kicks off a yearslong search to find out what happened to Glenn and how a police force could disappear overnight without explanation. This week on Reveal, Mother Jones reporter Samantha Michaels’ investigation into the crash is at once an examination of a mother’s journey to uncover the details of her son’s final moments and a sweeping look at a broken system of tribal policing. 

This story was originally published by Vox.com and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
As President Donald Trump’s first week in office comes to a close, his biggest accomplishments are things many of us anticipated: chaos and confusion.

Some of the many executive orders the president has signed do threaten democracy and others endanger the planet. But others simply endorse hypothetical policies with more spectacle than is necessary, like printing out tweets on paper, signing them with a black Sharpie, and holding them up for the world to see.

The challenge there, of course, is that only legal scholars know at first glance which of Trump’s executive orders will affect policy — and which will get stuck in court for years to come. Nevertheless, the pieces of paper scare and confuse people. And that confusion will hang around, holding up actual progress for a meaningful amount of time. Trump’s first assault on the fictional electric vehicle “mandate” serves as a perfect example of this strategy.

Hours after taking the oath of office, Trump signed an executive order with the cinematic title “Unleashing American Energy.” In it, he outlines several new policies to, as the title implies, “unleash America’s affordable and reliable energy and natural resources.” This is code for: Promote fossil fuel and hobble the renewable energy transition.

Pop culture is full of lovable orphans. There’s Annie, of course, and Harry Potter, and the Boxcar Children, and James (with the Giant Peach), and Cinderella—the list goes on and on. They have familiar stories: The protagonist loses parents and finds themselves in dire straits, typically under the supervision of evil caretakers. But through grit, wit, and, often, the help of a wealthy, generous benefactor—think Daddy Warbucks—they’re able to succeed.

When author Kristen Martin lost her own parents to cancer as a child, her experience as an orphan was nothing like that. There were no evil stepparents to outsmart before going on epic adventures. Relatives stepped in; the grief was consuming. The “utter disconnect,” she says, between her experience and those of pop culture protagonists was part of the inspiration for her book, The Sun Won’t Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of American Orphanhood. 

Martin explores the history of orphanhood in America since the 1800s and its harsh reality today, coming to a striking conclusion: It is poverty—rather than the death of both parents—that has often led children to be deemed orphans. “The fact is,” Martin writes, “most of the children we’re talking about when we’re talking about orphans had one or two living parents but were separated from them, either voluntarily or involuntarily,” she writes. 

Despite the narrative that “we are a nation that values the nuclear family, rallies around children in need, and believes all young people have promising future,” in reality, “only some are deserving of strong familial ties.”

Chrystal Starbird, a cancer researcher at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, had been preparing to serve on her first National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant review panel at the end of January. On Wednesday, to her surprise, that meeting was abruptly canceled.

These NIH panels, or “study sections,” typically involve a group of about 20 to 30 scientists who meet to assess research grant proposals within their areas of expertise. Most of the grants, Starbird says, range from about $2 million to $10 million. Once the group reviews and scores the projects, a separate NIH “advisory council” decides which ones to fund.

The email Starbird received was vague. It came from her study section contact at NIH, within the Trump administration, and it said the multiday meeting, set for January 30 and 31, would not take place as planned. The message instructed her to save her files about the projects for the time being and thanked her for her service to the NIH. “I’ve never seen a complete pause like this as part of a transition,” she told me.

The “pause” goes beyond grant reviews. It appears to be part of a larger blackout on research at NIH and across the federal government. On Tuesday, as the Washington Post first reported, the Trump administration paused all external communications—”health advisories, weekly scientific reports, updates to websites and social media posts” at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which includes the NIH, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

This story was originally published on Judd Legum’s Substack, Popular Information, to which you can subscribe here.

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was a top White House official during Trump’s first term. After exiting the White House in 2021, Kushner launched a new private equity firm, Affinity Partners, and announced he was seeking to raise $7 billion. Kushner had no experience in private equity, and his most significant business experience was nearly bankrupting his family’s real estate company.

Who would be interested in giving Kushner billions of dollars? Kushner raised $2 billion from the government of Saudi Arabia through its Public Investment Fund (PIF). The PIF committee that screens investments recommended rejecting Kushner’s proposal, citing “the inexperience of the Affinity Fund management” and “excessive” fees.

The committee’s recommendation, however, was overruled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), with whom Kushner formed a friendship during his time in the White House. Kushner helped MBS manage the fallout after United States intelligence agencies determined that MBS had ordered the brutal murder of the US-based journalist and Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. To date, Kushner has raised $4.6 billion, including additional funds from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

The Trump administration has snuffed out a plan to ban menthol cigarettes, handing a victory to the tobacco industry after it waged a massive and at times deceptive lobbying campaign.

The FDA proposed banning menthol cigarettes in 2022, amid pressure from groups including the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the American Lung Association, and the NAACP, which noted that menthol cigarettes, long aggressively marketed to Black Americans, have a disproportionate and deadly effect on their health.

Tobacco allies argued banning menthol would be racist.

To fight the proposal, tobacco companies—in particular Reynolds American, which earns a big chunk of revenue from its mentholated Newport cigarette brand—turned that argument on its head, asserting that banning menthols would be racist because Black people tend to smoke them.

The anti-abortion movement has launched a pressure campaign urging President Donald Trump’s administration to take steps toward a nationwide ban on medication abortion, the method used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions nationwide.

On Wednesday, 30 leading anti-abortion activists sent a pair of letters to the acting heads of the Department of Justice and FDA, urging a multifaceted crackdown on abortion pills.

The letter to the Department of Justice takes aim at the distribution of mifepristone by mail. The FDA has allowed providers to mail mifepristone to patients since 2021, and the mail, of course, has been an important part of the supply chain for the medication for decades. But the letter, addressed to acting Attorney General James McHenry, asks him to take “immediate action” to implement the Comstock Act, the 19th-century anti-obscenity law that made it a crime to mail “every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion.” The Biden administration interpreted the law to apply only to illegal abortions. And the Comstock Act has not been enforced for many decades, as I reported in 2023, when lawyers in the anti-abortion movement were increasingly raising the act in proposed local laws and legal filings:

In the past, the act was enforced by an army of postal inspectors who regularly peeked into people’s mail, screening letters and packages en masse for mentions of sex and contraception, [historian Lauren MacIvor] Thompson says. Today, though the statute is still on the books, a century of court decisions about privacy, freedom, and the First Amendment have rendered it dormant.

On Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aiming to restrict immigration, titled “Protecting the United States From Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats.” It has been described as a revival of his first-term Muslim “travel ban,” making good on a campaign promise to bring back the controversial rule.

Buried in the executive order is the fulfillment of another vow from the campaign: an attempt to find a way to easily deport pro-Palestine demonstrators. 

While much of the new order mimics the old Muslim “travel ban” Trump signed on the first day of his first term in 2017, this order is more neutral on its face. This time, Trump is not explicitly naming specific countries to target, but asking agencies to submit a report within 60 days outlining countries from which to suspend immigration. 

“Students are afraid of being labeled as terrorists, and now there’s more ammunition from this executive order to actually carry that out.” 

Gabriel Martinelli has voiced his disappointment after Arsenal surrendered a two-goal lead to draw 2-2 against Aston Villa, further denting their chances in the Premier League title race.

The Gunners were fully aware of the importance of this match, especially after Liverpool secured a late win against Brentford earlier in the day. With that result in mind, Arsenal knew they needed all three points to keep pace in the title race.

The match carried added significance as Unai Emery’s Aston Villa had dealt a crushing blow to Arsenal’s title hopes last season by winning at the Emirates. Determined to avoid a repeat, Arsenal set out to complete the double over Villa, having already beaten them at Villa Park earlier this campaign.

By the hour mark, it seemed Arsenal were cruising, leading 2-0 and in control of the game. However, Villa proved why they are such a dangerous side, storming back with two quick goals to level the score. Arsenal pushed hard in the closing stages, but their relentless pressure failed to yield a legitimate winner, leaving the home fans frustrated.

Reflecting on the match, Martinelli acknowledged the disappointment of the result but urged his teammates to keep their focus on the challenges ahead. Speaking to Premier League Productions, he said:

Ian Wright has expressed his frustration with Arsenal’s inability to secure victory in their 2-2 draw against Aston Villa this evening, criticising the Gunners for underestimating their opponents’ ability to mount a comeback.

Mikel Arteta’s side faced a strong Villa team that has consistently caused them problems in recent seasons. Under Unai Emery’s management, the Villans notably derailed Arsenal’s Premier League title challenge last season with a shocking win at the Emirates. Although Arsenal triumphed at Villa Park earlier in this campaign, tonight’s draw was another reminder of how dangerous Villa can be.

The Gunners started the match brightly, storming into a 2-0 lead, and it appeared they were on course for an important victory. However, in a dramatic turn of events, Villa clawed their way back into the game, equalising to secure a 2-2 draw and leaving the Emirates crowd stunned.

Speaking on Premier League Productions, Wright lamented Arsenal’s inability to see the game through, highlighting the need to respect Villa’s quality. He said:

“It was so comfortable at 2-0, but at the back of your mind you knew Aston Villa were capable of coming back. Arsenal couldn’t break through Villa as they’re a quality side in that respect. You have to be able to see them off.”

Arsenal Women’s midfielder Kathrine Kuhl is at the center of transfer speculation as the January window unfolds. The Danish international, who joined the Gunners in January 2023, is reportedly in talks with Serie A club Roma over a potential move.

This development comes after a challenging period for Kuhl at Arsenal, where she has struggled for playing time this season, managing only seven minutes in the Women’s Super League. Kuhl’s journey at Arsenal has been a mix of promise and setbacks. Initially hailed as one of Europe’s brightest prospects, she made 18 appearances for the club in her first half-season. However, the 2023/24 campaign has seen her opportunities limited, leading to speculation about her future.

The potential move to Roma is significant, with reports suggesting it could be an Italian record transfer at around 100,000 Euros.  This valuation underscores Kuhl’s potential, despite her recent lack of playing time. Roma, owned by the same group as Everton, appears to have edged ahead in the race for her signature, according to the BBC’s Emma Saunders.

Have heard similar re: Roma’s pursuit of Kathrine Kuhl.

Interestingly, the owners Friedkin Group, also own Everton, who have also been pursuing Kuhl and have made an approach.

Arsenal played out a 2–2 draw against Aston Villa this evening after going two goals up. Here are our player ratings:

David Raya – 5.5
Raya made some important saves but looked shaky and lacked confidence, which unsettled his defence.

Thomas Partey – 4.5
A poor performance from Partey, who almost gifted Watkins a goal with a disastrous throw-in and allowed the striker to score later on.

Myles Lewis-Skelly – 6.5
Another assured and composed showing from the youngster, who continues to impress.

Gabriel Magalhães – 7.0
Despite the absence of his regular defensive partner, Gabriel handled Watkins well and put in a strong display.

Arsenal dropped more Premier League points in a 2–2 draw against Aston Villa this evening, despite being two goals ahead at one stage.

Fully aware of Villa’s threat, Arsenal started the game by dominating possession, seeking openings in Unai Emery’s well-organised team.

Villa defended resolutely and looked dangerous on the counter-attack whenever the opportunity arose. Ian Maatsen came close to giving Villa the lead, forcing a solid save from David Raya.

Moments later, Leandro Trossard tested Emi Martínez at the other end, with both sides creating chances in a lively opening spell.

Arsenal knew it would take more to break down Villa’s stubborn defence, and Gabriel Martinelli eventually opened the scoring despite Martínez’s best efforts.