Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, having dominated the past several news cycles by flying Venezuelan migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard without notice—a move his critics depict as a particularly cruel attempt to “own the libs” for political gain—has announced that he’s doubling down.

“We’ve got an infrastructure in place now. There’s going to be a lot more that’s happening,” DeSantis said Friday, according to CNN.

He noted that he plans to use “every penny” of the $12 million that Florida legislators had allocated to relocate migrants. Further flights are “likely,” and he is considering sending migrant buses like those Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey have used to shuttle thousands of asylum seekers to DC, New York City, and other urban Democratic strongholds, leaving officials and nonprofit workers scrambling to accommodate the newcomers.

He might even try and collaborate with Abbott, DeSantis said.

He denied reports, however, that some migrants had been misled about where they were headed and/or what awaited them on the other end—reports that have sparked Twitter accusations of “human trafficking.”

Noel Whelan believes Emile Smith Rowe will now struggle to break into the current Arsenal team after suffering another injury.

The midfielder has become injury-prone after becoming a key member of the Gunners squad.

Arsenal bolstered the squad in the last transfer window, and in his absence, the senior team is thriving.

This means anyone that wants to break into it has their work cut out, and Smith Rowe is in that category.

If he stays fit, he can build momentum and push the other players above him on the pecking order for a place on the team.

Granit Xhaka is reborn in this campaign, and he has become one of Arsenal’s key men.

The midfielder has previously played in a more defensive role alongside Thomas Partey.

They help protect the defence while the likes of Martin Odegaard and Emile Smith Rowe play further and closer to the opposition goal.

However, in this campaign, Xhaka has now been playing further forward and in a freer role.

This has improved his attacking output as revealed by a new report on Whoscored.

Former Arsenal forward Kevin Campbell insists Eddie Nketiah is not the answer to the club’s need for more firepower.

The striker wanted to leave at the end of last season, but the Gunners convinced him to sign a new long-term contract and he is now its second choice.

The arrival and performance of Gabriel Jesus mean he has only had a few minutes of action in the Premier League.

But he started and scored in the club’s Europa League first game against FC Zurich.

He is taking the few chances that come his way to make an impression, but that doesn’t make him good enough to be a reliable goal outlet for Arsenal, reckons Campbell.

Jamie O’Hara has asked Gabby Agbonlahor to stop drinking after he said Harry Maguire and Tyrone Mings are better than Ben White.

White has been the subject of criticism from the former Aston Villa man who is working as a pundit.

The former attacker has been very outspoken and even Jurgen Klopp responded to his criticism of teams and players.

Agbonlahor has consistently said Arsenal overpaid for White, and the defender is overrated.

The Gunners broke their transfer record for a defender to add him to their squad in the last campaign and he helped them to almost win a place in the top four again.

William Saliba has continued his fine start to life at the Emirates after winning the club’s Goal of the Month for August.

Arsenal signed the Frenchman in 2019, but he only finally started playing for them this season after loan spells away from the Emirates.

He has been one of their standout performers so far, and the club has been delighted by his input.

He scored his first goal for the team last month in their 3-0 win against Bournemouth.

The strike came after the Cherries had defended an Arsenal free-kick, and it was so good that Oleksandr Zinchenko was in disbelief.

On May 22, 1962, Victoria Bell and her 11 children, ranging in age from two to 14, arrived in Hyannis, Massachusetts, after a days-long bus ride to Cape Cod from Little Rock, Arkansas. Amis Guthridge, an attorney and the leader of the southern segregationist group, the Capital Citizens’ Council, gave Bell $60 and paid for the family’s one-way tickets north. Bell was forced to care for her children with little support after her husband left and the local government cut off her welfare. In a photo from that time, she and her sons and daughters can be seen waving in front of a sign for the Cape Cod Community College, which had been turned into temporary housing for her and other families. “I hope my children get a better chance here,” Bell told the Boston Globe. The following day, Lela Mae Williams, a mother of nine from Huttig, Arkansas, disembarked from a Greyhound bus at a stop near President John F. Kennedy’s summer home in Hyannis. She had heard about “free rides” on a Louisiana radio station and been lured by promises of housing, job prospects, and a presidential welcome at their final destination.

It was all a cruel hoax.

Bell and Williams were among almost 100 people to be shipped under false pretenses to the resort town over the spring and summer of 1962 as part of a white supremacist campaign to send Black people from the South to northern cities. Overall, some 200 people were bused to Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Los Angeles, and other cities in Indiana, Idaho, and New Hampshire. The political ploy was a retaliation for the Freedom Rides from the previous year, when a group of 13 Black and white civil rights activists with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) embarked on southbound buses from Washington, DC, to protest continued segregation in interstate transportation despite the Supreme Court having ruled that it was unconstitutional. What became known as the “Reverse Freedom Rides” was meant to embarrass liberal politicians fighting for civil rights and presumably expose their hypocrisy by confronting them with the demand to live up to their values and assist the Black southerners. “We want to see if Northern politicians really love the Negro or whether they love his vote,” Guthridge said. He framed the unapologetically racist campaign as being beneficent and humanitarian and then underscored its basic intent: “And we want to acquaint the North, which has been making the South a whipping boy with some Southern problems.”

To embarrass Northern liberals and humiliate Black people, southern White Citizens Councils started their so-called "Reverse Freedom Rides," giving Black people one-way tickets to northern cities with false promises of jobs, housing, and better lives.https://t.co/xLpTjxG0PD pic.twitter.com/voiPBbwRuN

— JFK Library (@JFKLibrary) September 15, 2022

Mikel Arteta has responded to Arsene Wenger’s comments that his team rarely has a weak spot.

Arsenal is one of the strongest clubs in the Premier League now and they have started this season brightly.

The Gunners are top of the league standings after six matches and they have been tipped to finish inside the top four this season.

They alongside, Manchester City have been the most consistent in the division so far and Wenger’s words seem to be true because almost everyone on the team plays their role very well.

However, Arteta believes there is so much more to come from his side and he told reporters, as quoted by Metro Sport:

Arsenal summer signing Marquinhos has been named in the top 40 of the Golden Boy 2022 awards, alongside Tottenham, Manchester United and Liverpool players.

It has been some time since neither Chelsea or Manchester City had players on the list at this stage, with their academies usually producing highly sought-after future stars, but it is now Jurgen Klopp’s side holding the most cards. Both of Fabio Carvalho and Harvey Elliot represent the Reds in the list, and the are accompanied by Manchester United’s Anthony Elanga.

Tottenham’s only entry comes in summer signing Destiny Udogie, who has been sent back to Udinese to see out the season on loan, while we also signed Marquinhos who completed the list from the Premier League.

The Brazilian was initially signed with the intention of sending him out on loan, but he quickly adapted himself within his new squad, and has since been called up to make his senior appearance, impressing once again with a goal and an assist.

The 19 year-old came in for rave reviews following that outing, and rightly so, showing composure and aggression to run at players and get forward, proving a real nuisance to the rival defence.

For too long we've all been asking the same question - when will England replace the irreplaceable menace to opposition fans that is Jamie Vardy? Is Ivan Toney the answer?

On today's Preview Show Jim, Vish and Lars are on hand to mull over Gareth Southgate's latest England squad and marvel at Todd Boehly's bright idea of a Premier League All-Star game. Elsewhere, Diego Costa is most definitely a wolf and Alan Pardew embarks on the next leg of his inter-railing trip around Europe!

Tweet us @FootballRamble and email us here: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Sign up for our Patreon for exclusive live events, ad-free Rambles, full video episodes and loads more: patreon.com/footballramble.

***Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your pods. It means a great deal to the show and will make it easier for other potential listeners to find us. Thanks!***

Back in 2018, Mother Jones reported that payments made by a shell company to an American lobbyist for an Albanian political party might have originated in Russia. Over the next four-and-a-half years, we didn’t learn much more. But in a newly declassified assessment publicized on Tuesday, US intelligence weighed in. An administration official suggested the intelligence community believes the payments we reported on were part of a vast international effort in which the Kremlin dispensed at least $300 million to politicians and parties in two dozen countries.

In 2017 Lulzim Basha, then the head of Albania’s center-right opposition party, was running for prime minister. In a pro-Western country seeking European Union membership, Basha was a relative skeptic, criticizing the anti-corruption measures the crime-plagued country would have to adopt in order to join the EU. He was also ardently pro-Trump, calling to “Make Albania Great Again” and seeking access to the new US administration.

Basha’s party, the Democratic Party of Albania, or DPA, hired a lobbyist—a former Ted Cruz aide named Nick Muzin—to help him court Trump and Republicans in Washington. Muzin got Basha meetings with a few GOP lawmakers, a Breitbart interview, and entry to a June 2017 GOP fundraiser where Basha took a picture with Trump that he quickly disseminated in Albania as evidence of his access to the US president.

Around the same time, Muzin received a $500,000 payment connected to his Albanian lobbying. The origins of that money were opaque and disputed. Muzin and Basha gave differing explanations. But evidence suggested the money came via Biniatta Trade LP, a shell company registered in Scotland by two other shell companies, which were based in Belize. Biniatta, despite efforts to obscure its origins, appeared to have Russian roots, with ties to a series of other shell companies controlled by Russian citizens, we reported. Biniatta made payments supporting Basha’s party at the same time he had a controversial meeting with Russia’s ambassador to Albania and signaled he was more amendable to Russia’s anti-western aims than was the incumbent prime minister he was challenging.

Mother Jones’ report drew attention in Albania. Critics accused Basha of working for the Russians. In 2019, Albanian prosecutors charged him with money laundering and falsifying documents in connection with the matter. The case was later suspended under murky circumstances. Basha denied accepting Russian money. And his party has insisted it paid Muzin only $25,000, offering no explanation of why someone else would pay a US lobbyist hundreds of thousands of dollars to help the DPA. (Through a spokesman, Muzin said at the time he believed Biniatta Trade was a private company owned by supporters of the DPA.)

On Thursday morning, rail companies and union leaders reached a tentative deal that will avert a strike or lockout that could have begun as soon as Friday. The question now is whether union members will accept the deal when it is put to a vote.

As I reported yesterday, the sticking point in negotiations has not been pay. Instead, workers have been fighting for sick days and increased freedom from punitive attendance policies adopted by rail companies. Engineer Ross Grooters described it to me as a fight “for the basic right to be able to be people outside of the railroad.”

In a joint statement, the leaders of the SMART Transportation Division and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, which together represent about half the workforce, said the tentative agreement would provide workers with “voluntary assigned days off,” as well the ability to take unpaid time off for medical care. In another win for workers, union leaders said healthcare costs would remain unchanged under the plan. Workers would still receive $5,000 of bonus payments and a 24 percent pay increase over five years under the most recent deal.

The tentative deal will now be voted on by union members. There are no guarantees it will be approved. Members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers rejected an earlier agreement on Wednesday, and authorized a strike later this month. On social media, the reaction from workers to the most recent deal has been mixed with some expressing cautious optimism and others a sense that union leaders failed them. 

It’s baffling how many pundits and politicos want to weight in on this railroad deal before the rank-and-file have been able to see the details and decide if it’s acceptable.

It’s an Italian feast this week! Dotun and Andy – live from Warsaw – are joined by Nicky Bandini to discuss Juventus’ woes after a shock defeat to Benfica.

Plus, we discuss if the Milan clubs bring the glory days back in Europe, Robert Lewandowski’s Bayern homecoming, and why all is not as it seems with Kylian Mbappé’s contract at PSG!

Got a question? Tweet us @FootballRamble and email us here: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Sign up for our Patreon for exclusive live events, ad-free Rambles, full video episodes and loads more: patreon.com/footballramble.

***Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your pods. It means a great deal to the show and will make it easier for other potential listeners to find us. Thanks!***

Just hours after federal agents entered Mar-a-Lago on August 8 to seize highly classified national security documents, Rep. Paul Gosar urged a fight to the finish. “The FBI raid on Trump’s home tells us one thing,” the far-right Arizona congressman tweeted. “Failure is not an option. We must destroy the FBI.”

Three days later, an Ohio man named Ricky Shiffer donned tactical gear, armed himself with an AR-15, and went to the FBI field office in Cincinnati. After failing to breach the facility, he fled and later died in a shootout with law enforcement. Shiffer was a frequent user of Trump’s Truth Social site, where the ex-president has kept up steady attacks on political opponents and the Justice Department and FBI. Shiffer had posted about imminent violence, telling fellow Trump supporters to be ready “to jump into civil war.”

“People, this is it,” Shiffer wrote shortly after the Mar-a-Lago news broke. A Navy veteran who claimed he was also at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, he called for stocking up at gun stores with “whatever you need to be ready for combat.” He also said “patriots are heading to Palm Beach” and should kill any federal agents who try to stop them.

Was Shiffer spurred to attack the FBI by the statements from Trump and Gosar? It’s hard to know, and that’s no accident. Shiffer’s actions point to a rhetorical method experts call “stochastic terrorism,” whereby a leader vilifies a person or group in ways likely to instigate random supporters to attack those targets, while the instigator maintains a veneer of plausible deniability. Trump made this form of incitement a hallmark of his presidency, galvanizing extremists by railing against and dehumanizing his “enemies.” The country saw the devastating consequences when his supporters stormed Congress to obstruct certification of the presidential election. And now a growing number of Republicans are emulating Trump’s technique.

“While these attacks may defy specific predictability,” threat assessment experts Molly Amman and Reid Meloy wrote in a 2021 study in the journal Perspectives on Terrorism, “their likelihood is greatly increased by the public demon­ization process.” Repetition and saturation through social media and news coverage further amplifies the effect, they observed.

Union Berlin sit top of the Bundesliga and last week, Andy travelled there to witness European football history in their first Europa League game against Belgium's history-makers, Union Saint-Gilloise. 

After UEFA announced a trial for safe standing, Union Berlin were at last able to bring European football home – just three years after securing their first ever promotion to the Bundesliga.

Andy takes in Union’s legendary atmosphere and speaks to fans on both sides on what was a truly special night for two clubs championing the little guy.

Where should Andy head to next? Tweet us @FootballRamble and email us here: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. 

Sign up for our Patreon for exclusive live events, ad-free Rambles, full video episodes and loads more: patreon.com/footballramble.

In a letter sent to the president on Wednesday, nearly half of American governors—all Republican—voiced their opposition to Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, announced last month.

“We fundamentally oppose your plan to force American taxpayers to pay off the student loan debt of an elite few,” they write in the letter.

The main argument is that Biden’s student debt forgiveness will harm lower-income families by forcing their hard-earned dollars to go to repaying the debts of America’s wealthiest, including high-salary lawyers and doctors who hold debt from graduate degrees.

“The top 20 percent of earning households hold $3 in student debt for every $1 held by the bottom quintile, generating a lopsided reality where the wealthy benefit at the expense of the working,” the governors write in their letter. “Simply put, your plan rewards the rich and punishes the poor.”

But this argument misses the fact that Biden’s debt forgiveness project includes two different elements aimed specifically at preventing America’s wealthiest from obtaining debt forgiveness, instead restricting the program to middle- and lower-income families.

Rail workers across the country may be on the verge of going on strike for the first time in three decades—a decision that would immediately cripple supply chains and cause billions in economic losses per day. Workers could walk off the job, or companies could lock them out, as soon as Friday if a deal isn’t reached. 

The dispute is not about pay, but the day-to-day indignities of working in the industry. Rail workers often don’t have weekends, get no sick days, and say that taking the time to care for themselves and their families can lead to being fired. As engineer Ross Grooters puts it, workers are “just fighting for the basic right to be able to be people outside of the railroad.”

The White House has been scrambling to try to avoid a strike that would upend the country’s economy in the lead-up to the midterm elections, and President Joe Biden has been in touch with unions and railroad companies, Politico reports. A shutdown could disrupt shipments of everything from coal and lumber to food and the chlorine used to treat wastewater. Amtrak trains that rely on freight carriers’ tracks are already being canceled.  

Failing to reach a deal by Friday does not guarantee a strike, since both sides could agree to extend negotiations. But administration officials are developing contingency plans to try to keep essential goods moving in the event of a shutdown, an outcome that White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has said is “not acceptable.”

Unionized workers and rail companies have been in contract negotiations for more than two years. In July, Biden established a Presidential Emergency Board tasked with providing recommendations on how to end the dispute. Last month, the board proposed pay increases of 24 percent over five years, additional bonuses, and one extra personal day a year. It also called for lifting a cap on workers’ health care premiums, and did not back workers’ calls for sick days and less-punitive attendance policies.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Republican-led legislatures have passed anti-protest laws drafted by an extreme right corporate lobbying group in a third of all American states since 2018, as part of a backlash against Indigenous communities and environmentalists opposing fossil fuel projects, new research has found.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) helped draft legislation criminalizing grassroots protests against pipelines, gas terminals, and other oil and gas expansion projects in 24 states under the guise of protecting critical infrastructure.

ALEC, which is funded by rightwing state lawmakers, corporate sponsors and trade groups, and wealthy ideologues, creates model legislation on a whole range of conservative issues such as gun control, abortion, education funding and environmental regulations.

The laws were passed in 17 Republican-controlled states, including Oklahoma, North and South Dakota, Kansas, West Virginia and Indiana, where protesters now face up to 10 years in prison and million-dollar fines, according to a new report from the nonprofit Climate Cabinet.

This story was published in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity.

As she opened her $1,600 property tax bill in February, Edith Baltazar suddenly lost her appetite for the eggs she’d prepared for lunch with her daughter. Her thoughts raced: Would their home be taken away if she couldn’t pay it?

Baltazar’s daughter wept. The family would have to make a difficult decision: the property tax or $2,000 for diabetes medication.

The taxes won.

“Sometimes you have to choose—pay your property taxes instead of paying your water bill and everything else,” said Baltazar, recalling the stressful experience in a July interview.

Marcus, Jim and Vish convene after Liverpool battle past Ajax (and our favourite-named player) to snatch three points and Spurs collapse in the Eric Dier Derby!

Plus, can another Marcus make it into the England squad? Will Atlético mug off Barcelona further still? And while Jurgen Klopp is dishing out truths, we’re firing mistruths out about Marcus’ TV taste. He loves Gervais, really.

Tweet us @FootballRamble and email us here: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Sign up for our Patreon for exclusive live events, ad-free Rambles, full video episodes and loads more: patreon.com/footballramble.

***Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your pods. It means a great deal to the show and will make it easier for other potential listeners to find us. Thanks!***