Are House Republicans, if you’ll pardon the expression, peeing in their own Jacuzzi?

I raise this question because some of the spending cuts the House GOP and its quasi-leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, are demanding in exchange for raising the debt ceiling—a deal the Democrats have vowed to reject—are destined to hit Republican-led states hardest.

That’s likely true of the social programs such as food stamps that GOP members aim to further restrict. But it’s definitely the case for the host of clean-energy incentives (see page 2) of the Inflation Reduction Act Republicans just put on the chopping block. These federal perks have been flowing in spades to red states, notably Georgia, as Oliver Milman, a reporter for our Climate Desk partner the Guardian, pointed out in February. 

“Once known for its peaches and peanuts,” Milman wrote, Georgia “is rapidly becoming a crucible of US clean energy technology,” drawing billions in new solar, electric vehicle, and battery manufacturing subsidies, putting it at “the forefront of a swathe of southern states that are becoming a so-called ‘battery belt’ in the economic transition away from fossil fuels.”

Jack Conness, a transportation analyst at the University of Washington, helpfully put together a wonderful database depicting the jackpot that the IRA and the Chips and Science Act (CHIPS) represent for Republican-led local economies.

Concerning news: Marcus’ Harry Maguire merch is rapidly decreasing in value. Marcus, Luke and Andy look back on a chaotic night in Spain, as Manchester United get pressed like some fresh Seville oranges.

We also wonder whether Sean Bean will be in the crowd at Wembley, whether Diego Costa will do the decent thing and sacrifice himself to some crocodiles, and just how more bad news Spurs fans can take.

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See you at the San Siro! Dotun and Andy are joined by Jonathan Johnson to wonder what’s in store in the last four of the Champions League. We discuss who will have the edge in Milan and which of the rivals is best-equipped to go all the way – plus, we explain why Pep Guardiola is slowly turning into Carlo Ancelotti.

Jonathan also gives the latest on the racism allegations facing PSG’s coach, Christophe Galtier. As ever in Paris, it’s complicated.

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In separate games, sadly. But damn it all Marcus, Jim and Andy are here and armed with all the best bits from last night’s action nonetheless – from Man City and Inter’s progression in the Champions League, to a lil bit of Championship spice!

Featuring goalscoring goalkeepers, a very stubborn football curse, and more outrageously outdated references. Plus, Jim offers his theory that Tuchel is just a top-tier Nathan Jones. Yikes.

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After Chelsea at last bowed out of the Champions League last night, Marcus, Andy and Luke are left scratching their heads over Frank Lampard’s lineup and… quite a lot of things really. 

Including: is the club in SUCH a bad way that an old Blockbuster cardboard cutout of Jean-Claude Van Damme would be pretty much as able a manager as a sentient Luis Enrique? Stay tuned.

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What’s that? The Grim Reaper in the front row of Goodison Park? That can only mean one thing…

This Saturday will mark 9 years since David Moyes was sacked – not just as Manchester United boss, but as Sir Alex Ferguson’s not-so-carefully anointed successor. Marcus, Jim, Andy and Vish look back on a truly sensational 9 months in charge!

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Peter’s here! And he’s actually meant to be! On the downside, he’s developed an addiction to shoplifting.

He joins Marcus, Vish and Jim to look back on a weekend of some brilliant performances and quite delicious capitulations. Have Arsenal blown the title? Is Christian Stellini just Conte, but sh***er? And what did Todd Boehly get up to for an hour with the Chelsea players on Saturday?

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Ryan Gravenberch struggled to play at Bayern Munich when Julian Nagelsmann was their manager and the Dutchman was tipped to leave the club at the end of the season.

This alerted Arsenal and several other Premier League clubs who wanted to make him a member of their squad for the next campaign.

The Gunners wanted a top young midfielder in their squad in January and failed to land Moises Caicedo before moving for Jorginho.

The Italy international is considered a short-term fix to a problem area at the Emirates, so Arsenal is likely to sign another midfielder in the summer.

Gravenberch is one of their targets and the former Ajax man might want to leave, but Bayern has a new gaffer and it could all change.

Arsenal has reignited their interest in Aston Villa striker Ollie Watkins ahead of the summer transfer window.

Watkins was on their radar last season and they were expected to move for him at the end of the previous campaign, but that never happened.

The Gunners signed Gabriel Jesus instead and Watkins remained a key player at Villa Park.

He has been in fine form under Unai Emery in the last few weeks, which has caught Arsenal’s attention again.

A report on Football Insider reveals he is on their shopping list and they are keeping tabs on his development.

Arsenal has pursued an interest in Dusan Vlahovic for much of the last two seasons, as the Serbian perfectly fits the profile of the striker they want.

Vlahovic ignored their interest in moving Juventus at the start of last year, but the Gunners haven’t given up on the struggling striker.

At the end of this term, Arsenal has been tipped to add a new goalscorer to their group and DV9 is the player Mikel Arteta wants.

Juventus had previously said he was untouchable, but as he struggles for goals, they are now open to letting the 23-year-old leave them for the right price.

Having spent around €80m on his signature, a Calciomercato report reveals that any suitor paying €90m will get their man.

Burnley manager Vincent Kompany has admitted he follows Arsenal midfielder Albert Sambi Lokonga.

The Premier League legend has led Burnley back to the English top flight and fans will expect him to sign some players with Premier League experience to add to his squad.

Sambi Lokonga is struggling at Arsenal and was sent out on loan to Crystal Palace in the January transfer window.

The Eagles could keep him, but he might return to the Emirates. Will Kompany sign him for Burnley?

The Clarets boss admits he follows every player he worked with at Anderlecht, but that does not mean he will sign them.

Three unions representing 9,000 faculty members at Rutgers University are suspending their strike after reaching a tentative framework on Friday night with Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ) and his staff.

After more than nine months without a contract, faculty unions and the Rutgers administration worked out the deal in marathon negotiations in Trenton. The framework secures major pay increases for union members, along with improvements in job security, working conditions, and other areas. Classes will resume on Monday. 

Rutgers faculty had never before gone on strike in the university’s 257-year history. In a show of cross-faculty solidarity, unions prioritized improving conditions for the poorly paid adjunct faculty and graduate student workers that Rutgers relies on to teach many of its courses. Their success could serve as a model for faculty at universities across the country.

“This was a campaign…where those in our community at Rutgers who have the most on the faculty, who get paid the highest, who have the most job security, were in this fight not for themselves but those who have the least,” Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union President Amy Higer said during a virtual town hall meeting on Saturday. “That is really important and we should all know that.” 

Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway called the framework “fair and equitable.” Union leaders told members they “believe we have secured profound victories.” Among other wins, Rutgers AAUP-AFT President Rebecca Givan said during the town hall that graduate student workers would see their pay go from about $30,000 today to $40,000 starting in 2025.

Olympique Marseille has become the latest club to show an interest in Arsenal man Folarin Balogun.

The Englishman is spending this season on loan at Reims, where he is in double figures for goals scored.

Arsenal simply had no space for him in their squad this season and sent him out on loan, but he has exploded into life and is now one of the sought-after players in Europe.

The attacker will demand regular game time when he returns and Arsenal might struggle to offer that to him.

The Gunners have some top attackers who are helping them to challenge for the league title in England, so they might struggle to keep Balogun and several clubs are now looking to add him to their squad.

Arsenal Loanee Patten on Aston Villa beating Chelsea to get to Women’s FA Cup Final by Michelle

Aston Villa Women welcome Chelsea to the Poundland Bescot Stadium today, Sunday 16th April, with kick-off scheduled for 14:15 UK, for the Vitality Women’s FA Cup semi-final.

Anna Patten is on-loan to Aston Villa, from parent club Arsenal, and very much hopes to feature for Aston Villa today, having tasted success when she won two FA Youth Cups with Arsenal.

“The first final I played in with the under-17s, I had my Scottish family come down which was unusual. I had grandparents from both sides there,” Patten told BBC Sport.

“I remember they were all there with their phones out wanting me to pose for photos with the cup. It was a great feeling.

Gov. Ron DeSantis is on the verge of signing a bill that would allow people in Florida to be executed without a unanimous decision by a jury. Instead, an 8-4 vote would be enough for someone to be put to death in the state.

The bill passed the Florida Senate last month and passed the House on Thursday by an 80-30 margin. The bill has been a priority for DeSantis, who opposed the decision not to sentence to death the Parkland school shooter who killed 17 people in 2018. Three jurors voted against the death penalty in that case.

“I’m sorry, but if you murder 17 people in cold blood, the only appropriate punishment is capital punishment,” DeSantis said in October. “We need to reform some of these laws.”

According to the Washington Post, only three of the 27 states with capital punishment allow people to be executed when a jury is divided during the penalty phase. A unanimous decision would still be required in Florida to convict a defendant.

In 2016, the US Supreme Court struck down a Florida law that allowed judges to decide whether to sentence someone to death after receiving a recommendation from a jury. “The Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomyor. “A jury’s mere recommendation is not enough.”

In 2017, Matthew Kacsmaryk, then deputy general counsel at the right-wing First Liberty Institute, criticized protections for transgender people and those seeking abortions in a draft law review article. The Obama administration, he wrote, was ignoring doctors who, for religious reasons, “cannot use their scalpels to make female what God created male” and “cannot use their pens to prescribe or dispense abortifacient drugs designed to kill unborn children.”

What’s unusual is what happened next. The Washington Post reports that Kacsmaryk, now the federal judge issued who issued the temporarily-stayed decision to ban the abortion drug mifepristone across the country, asked an editor at the law journal a few months later to remove his name from the article because of “reasons I may discuss at a later date.” Instead, he asked the journal to put the names of two of his colleagues on the article. At the time, Kacsmaryk was being considered for a judgeship. As the Post explains:

As part of that process, he was required to list all of his published work on a questionnaire submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee, including “books, articles, reports, letters to the editor, editorial pieces, or other published material you have written or edited.”

The article, titled “The Jurisprudence of the Body,” was published in September 2017 by the Texas Review of Law and Politics, a right-leaning journal that Kacsmaryk had led as a law student at the University of Texas. But Kacsmaryk’s role in the article was not disclosed, nor did he list the article on the paperwork he submitted to the Senate in advance of confirmation hearings in which Kacsmaryk’s past statements on LGBT issues became a point of contention.

Kacsmaryk did not respond to requests for comment from the Post. A spokesman for First Liberty told the paper that Kacsmaryk’s name was “placeholder” on the article and that the now-judge did not make a “substantive contribution.” But a former editor at the journal said there was no sign that Kacsmaryk was being used as a “placeholder.” He had never seen the name of an author changed out before, according to the Post.

Arsenal v Wolfsburg Semi Final re-writing Women’s Champions League history in UK by Michelle

After beating Bayern Munich in the quarter-final of the UEFA Women’s Champions League, Arsenal Women progressed to the semi-finals where our Gunners will play VfL Wolfsburg.

Arsenal set a UK-record attendance of 21,307 for a Women’s Champions League match, when Bayern Munich travelled to Emirates Stadium, for the second leg of the quarter-final. Ticket sales for Arsenal Women’s UEFA Women’s Champions League Semi Final, second leg tie against VfL Wolfsburg have now exceeded 42,000!

Arsenal will be playing Away at the Volkswagen Arena for the first leg of the Semi Final on Sunday 23 April at 14:30 UK time, 15:30 local time. Click here to buy your tickets!

The second leg will be played at Emirates Stadium on 1st May bank holiday, kick-off 17:45 UK, and you can buy tickets here!

Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump’s former CIA Director and Secretary of State, was never going to be president. Now he’s admitted that he won’t be running in 2024. Few Republicans will think twice; a poll this month put him at 1 percent. 

Pompeo has long harbored presidential ambitions. The problem was that his base never extended much beyond Republican apparatchiks for whom bombs over Baghdad is a career milestone, not a song. Having ruled himself out, he can now return to pasture as a distinguished fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute. 

In another era, Pompeo might have been a plausible Republican nominee. After graduating first in his class in high school and at West Point, he served as a tank commander then left the military for Harvard Law. He later went into the defense industry with substantial financial backing from the Kochs. But as Susan Glasser reported in a 2019 New Yorker profile, he mostly failed in business anyway. 

Nevertheless, he positioned himself as something of a corporate guru while successfully running for Congress in 2014 in his adopted hometown of Wichita, Kansas. During the 2016 primary, he warned that Trump would follow Barack Obama in being “an authoritarian President who ignored our Constitution.” He later supported Trump anyway and used his ties to Mike Pence to become CIA Director. Trump bumped up Pompeo to Secretary of State after firing Rex Tillerson by tweet. 

As Glasser made clear in her profile, Pompeo’s singular talent was sucking up to the president. One formal official told her he was “among the most sycophantic and obsequious people around Trump.” Another, a former ambassador, said, “He’s like a heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass.” Trump, for his part, claimed, “I argue with everyone. Except Pompeo.”

Sorry Moyes, To Win The League, Arsenal Need A Big Fat W At The London Stadium

David Moyes hasn’t shied from admitting Arsenal are the team playing some of the best football, and they have been consistent, which puts them in an opportune position to lift the PL title. “I think they’ve got a great chance [to win the league], which is an obvious thing to say. Will they win the league? I don’t know, because they have got a huge opponent in Manchester City, and you never know, but they have got themselves in a great position, and to be fair, they’ve been playing some really good football throughout the season,” said Moyes, as quoted by Football London.

The West Ham boss made these claims in his press conference on Friday, ahead of the West Ham game. I bet deep down he would be hoping his team beats Arsenal this Sunday; however, he and his boys may be in for a bad day. He has spoken of Arsenal having a great chance to win the Premier League and hinted that they ought to beat Manchester City to it.

What he forgot to say is that the only way Arsenal is winning this league title is by winning every game they play, the West Ham vs. Arsenal clash included. Arsenal, having failed to win last weekend, will be hungry to go back to winning ways.

West Ham may be picking up their form, but if Arsenal can be as good as they were in the first half against Liverpool, there is only one outcome for the London derby this weekend: Arsenal winning.

Jude Bellingham would have thrived under Arteta at Arsenal, but does his price tag prevent him from having the opportunity.

As per speculation, Jude Bellingham is set to depart Borussia Dortmund this summer. Do you believe he is a midfielder who could come to Arsenal in the summer and change the club’s midfield into something special? Maybe then some people will agree that Arsenal already has the best midfield unit. Hold that thought but, with Liverpool out of the running for the English midfield sensation the race might be wide open.

At one point, it appeared that Bellingham would only move to Liverpool if he returned to play in England. We now know that there is no obvious favourite for him in England; we even asked why Arteta and Edu couldn’t take advantage of it.

According to the Express, that is something they would have done, but it is improbable. They claim Arsenal will not enter a transfer battle with Manchester City or Real Madrid (two clubs who are said to be willing to break the bank for the former Birmingham man), not because Bellingham isn’t the right fit for their midfield but because they aren’t the type of team that engages in transfer battles that only end up being a battle of who pays the most.

Arsenal’s refusal to entertain transfer battles in the cases of signing Dusan Vlahovic, Lisandro Martinez, and Mykhailo Mudryk are examples of when Arsenal had the opportunity to compete with other teams to sign them but chose not to. Arsenal’s philosophy of not participating in transfer battles may lead them, like Liverpool, to opt out of the competition for Bellingham.