A few hours before President Joe Biden delivered his fiery speech calling former President Donald Trump and “MAGA Republicans” representatives of “an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic,” Trump went on a conservative radio show and seemingly did his best to prove Biden’s point.

Speaking to Wendy Bell, an independent talk-radio host, Trump insisted, as usual, that he won the 2020 election—the strategic “Big Lie” his advisors planned even before voting took place. He said that if he runs again and wins the presidency, he would look “very, very favorably” at full pardons, plus a government apology, for the rioters who stormed the US Capitol and attacked police officers on January 6 in their attempt to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election results.

In a new development, Trump added that he was financially supporting some of the people prosecuted for their involvement in the mayhem.  “They were in my office actually two days ago. It’s very much on my mind. It’s a disgrace what they’ve done to them,” Trump said. 

Later that night, in a speech reportedly motivated by lingering claims of election fraud ahead of this fall’s midterm elections, Biden condemned the Capitol rioters in scorching, abstract language, calling on listeners to defend democracy against the threat posed by Trump and his millions of supporters. “We can’t be pro-insurrectionist and pro-American. They’re incompatible,” Biden said in his prime-time address. “We can’t allow violence to be normalized in this country. It’s wrong. We each have to reject political violence with all the moral clarity and conviction this nation can muster now.”

Ten times during his speech, Biden singled out Trump’s supporters as “MAGA Republicans,” a group he said was “not the majority of Republicans” but a more extreme faction that threatened US democratic traditions. “MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution,” he said. “They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election…They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fanned the flames of political violence.” 

Deadline day is over! Aubameyang returned, Nottingham Forest dug up some grubs, and Louis van Gaal got involved for some reason. And don’t mind Gary, he’ll stop bothering you soon.

Marcus, Luke, Andy and Jim discuss all that, while Brendan Rodgers got the claws out last night. Plus, there’s the small matter of Arsenal’s visit to Old Trafford and a Merseyside derby! Hold on to your sons.

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After Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered state officials in February to launch child abuse investigations targeting parents who helped their transgender kids get gender-affirming health care, a 14-year-old trans girl became so anxious about the prospect of losing access to her medications that she was pulled out of school and hospitalized for days. Some doctors and pharmacies around the state stopped offering teenagers life-saving puberty blockers and hormone treatments. A mental health provider in Austin abruptly withdrew care from a suicidal trans boy, leaving his parents to sleep on his bedroom floor night after night to ensure he didn’t kill himself. Many families fled the state.

Those are just some of the stories in a legal brief submitted to a state court last week on behalf of two LGBTQ-focused nonprofits and 13 Texas families with transgender kids. The families are begging the court to make permanent a prior temporary injunction prohibiting state officials from investigating parents under Abbott’s order. Although Texas’ Department of Family and Protective Services hasn’t yet ripped any trans children in Texas from their homes and sent them to foster care, the families argue its investigations have already had tragic consequences.

Since Abbott’s directive took effect, the Transgender Education Network of Texas (TENT), one of the nonprofits cited in the brief, has received at least 60 reports from families struggling to obtain health care for trans children. Some doctors reportedly denied prescriptions for kids at the onset of puberty, hoping that it might be legally safer to offer them treatment at a later point. The nonprofit is working with 27 families in two metro areas who could not obtain puberty blockers, reversible prescriptions that give trans kids a chance to explore their gender identity as they grow older while temporarily delaying the puberty changes in their body that could make their gender dysphoria worse. Equality Texas, the other nonprofit in the brief, says kids have been turned away by doctors or denied prescriptions at pharmacies in Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and the city of Garland.

Families say they’re also afraid to get their trans children other types of health care, worried that the kids’ gender identity and medical history might become known to the hospital and be shared with state authorities. According to the brief, when one trans kid went to a hospital for emergency psychiatric treatment, hospital staffers reported the mother to state officials, who accused her of child abuse. In another case, a trans child almost slept in a hallway at a mental health facility because the facility, citing legal risks, didn’t want to admit the kid to a ward. TENT intervened.

“As a result of losing healthcare,” the families in the brief saw their kids experience “a variety of debilitating symptoms, including anxiety, depression, and thoughts of self-harm.” The 14-year-old girl I mentioned, identified as A.P., was so “paralyzed with anxiety” that she was pulled out of eighth grade and had to finish the academic year at home. A nonbinary teen identified as C was devastated when their school cited the governor’s order as a reason to rescind approval of a learning unit about nonbinary gender identities, which the teen had hoped would help bullies at school become more understanding. A 9-year-old started crying when their parents told them to no longer talk publicly about being trans. “The child has since expressed fear of being…put up for adoption, sharing the heartbreaking worry that ‘nobody would adopt me because I am trans,'” the brief says.

Donald Trump’s plan to exact revenge on Big Tech—and make billions by launching his own social media empire and taking it public—was always going to be a long shot. And while it’s not yet dead, the obstacles are mounting.

For starters, Trump Media & Technology Group is reportedly not making payments to vendors. Last week, Fox Business reported that RightForge, an internet hosting company that markets itself as friendly to conservative customers who can’t find hosting elsewhere, has not been paid since March. That’s no small matter; RightForge is reportedly providing much of the technical underpinning of the TruthSocial platform—and the company is apparently owed as much as $1.6 million. A representative for TMTG did not respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones, but it would not be altogether surprising if TruthSocial is facing a cash crunch. Making money running a social media business is, at best, a dicey proposition. Twitter, which has more than 230 million users, managed to lose $270 million last quarter. TruthSocial has perhaps 2 million active users (Trump himself has 3.9 million total followers).

But the plan was never to have TruthSocial pull itself up by its bootstraps, making its way on whatever revenue it could scrape together. From the beginning—the nascent media business was announced last September—Trump’s goal has been to take the whole operation to the stock market, where (theoretically) huge sums of money can be raised from investors. But Trump’s toxic post-January 6 reputation has made that more difficult; in the wake of the insurrection, a number of financial institutions cut ties with him, closing his bank accounts and swearing off any more lending. With no big banks to back an IPO, Trump turned to something called a SPAC—a special purpose acquisition company, or a blank-check company—to take TMTG public. The idea is to merge his company with a company that is already public, but has no business to speak of. That would short-circuit the need to have a lengthy IPO. But it also offers a lot of opportunities for the deal to run into trouble, which is what appears to be happening now.

Last September, Trump announced TMTG would merge with Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC), a SPAC company that had gone public and was looking for a partner. After the proposed deal was revealed, DWAC’s share price rocketed above $97. It has since fallen below $30, where it currently sits. The deal, which caused such excitement initially, was supposed to happen quickly. Like most SPACs, DWAC has rules in its organizing charter that make it clear that the company’s founders have to find a merger partner expeditiously, or else give back the money they raised from investors. The deadline for DWAC to make its merger with TMTG happen is Sept. 8. 

DWAC”s founders have asked investors to approve an extension of that deadline—and on Sept. 6, shareholders will be able to vote to give the company another year to complete the deal. There is no guarantee that investors will approve the deadline extension—although most would likely lose money if the company was forced to shutter itself and return the funds it had raised in its IPO.

On this deadline day edition, Dotun and Andy are joined by Miguel Delaney to discuss the bigger picture of this summer transfer window: Nottingham Forest have spent more than the Eredivisie. 

How has the financial inequality between Europe and the Premier League reached this point? We also discuss what Antony and Lucas Paquetá will bring to English shores, PSG’s dropped points at the weekend, and there’s the small matter of the Champions League draw! Plus, a truly heinous food pick from Dotun…

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Representative-elect Mary Peltola just made history. With a 51-49 upset victory over ex-governor Sarah Palin, confirmed Wednesday by the state’s Division of Elections, Peltola has won Alaska’s sole seat in the House of Representatives—making the former state legislator and fisheries manager the first Alaska Native person elected to Congress. She succeeds longtime GOP Rep. Don Young, a family friend whose death in office earlier this year triggered a special election. In March, when Young died, Peltola was a fairly obscure ex-politician vying with more than 50 challengers to finish his term. By August, polls pegged her as a clear favorite over the Trump-endorsed Palin, whose celebrity kept her at the top of early polls.

Peltola’s win was more than one kind of first. She also becomes the first Alaskan to win a ranked-choice election, a system that sends votes to second-choice candidates when voters’ favorites are knocked out. She joins a tiny club: Alaska is just the second state to adopt the system, which supporters call a “bulwark against extremism,” and this race was the state’s first to use it.

That change came into play when prominent independent Al Gross withdrew from the race unexpectedly—after landing one of four spots in the general election. Gross, Democrats’ favorite in Alaska’s 2020 Senate race, wouldn’t commit to caucusing with the Democratic Party. But his largely centrist voters broke for Peltola, and his withdrawal left a lopsided ballot, splitting conservative voters between two Republican candidates.

Peltola’s biggest challenge might have been Palin’s unmatched celebrity. Although Palin hasn’t held office in Alaska since 2009, when she abruptly resigned her governorship, she’s still Alaska’s best-known politician on the national stage. And Palin’s been a vocal player in the Trump movement, winning the ex-president’s consistent backing—Trump went as far as campaigning for her hours after the FBI’s August raid of his Mar-a-Lago home.

Alaskans, in any case, were keen to participate. State officials announced that they’d counted nearly 200,000 ballots in the open primary, the third-highest primary turnout in state history. There’s any number of reasons that could be: Palin’s notoriety likely drew both supporters and opponents, and the governorship is also on the ballot, with Republican incumbent Mike Dunleavy facing strong Democratic and independent challengers. GOP senior Sen. Lisa Murkowski is up for re-election as well—after landing a place on Trump’s enemies list by voting to convict him for his role in the January 6th attacks on the US Capitol. (Murkowski and her Trump-backed primary opponent, Kelly Tshibaka, both advanced to November’s general election.) The state has also kept the process remarkably accessible, with many voters able to vote early both by mail and in person, a key consideration for Alaskans in distant and rural areas.

We know what Donald Trump did: He absconded from the White House with classified and top secret documents that belonged to the US government; he mishandled these highly sensitive records in his Mar-a-Largo lair (see this photo); he resisted the efforts of the government to retrieve these records; he employed a legal team that falsely certified that all classified material had been returned; and his actions prompted the Justice Department to investigate whether he and his crew obstructed justice or violated other federal laws, including the Espionage Act. 

The big question is why. Why did FPOTUS, as he has been dubbed in Justice of Department court filings, run off with the most classified of documents, including records based on confidential human sources? It seems clear that this was no accident. Had it been inadvertent, Trump and his aides would have quickly responded to requests from the National Archives to return the goods, and they would have sent back all the requested material, not merely a portion. And if they had errantly not returned the full complement of super-secret papers, they presumably would have snapped-to and FedExed the rest back once informed by the Archives and the FBI that the former guy still improperly possessed hush-hush documents from his reign. 

Though one can never discount incompetence in the course of such matters, the known evidence suggests Trump really, really wanted to keep these papers. In its legal filings following the FBI raid on Trump’s club, though, the Justice Department has not presented its view of Trump’s motives. But that hasn’t stopped a frenzy of speculation on the internet. Nor should it. Given that Trump ran for president in 2016 charging that Hillary Clinton had harmed national security by using a personal server for her email when she was secretary of state and vowing that he would “enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information,” this scandal is yet the latest sign of the brazen hypocrisy and blatant corruption at the root of his MAGA demagoguery and its embrace by the Republican Party. This affair warrants full examination, and that includes the reasons for Trump’s apparent flouting of the law. So let’s look at a few possible explanations. 

The Double-Agent Theory. The most outlandish notion is that Trump hung on to these papers because he wanted to sell or give these secrets to another government. The Russians? The Saudis? He’s either an operative in cahoots with a foreign power or an operator who wants to cash in. Though Trump has a record of slipping classified information to Moscow, it’s difficult to imagine him plotting to sell secrets. That would entail a fair bit of organizing and hard work. It’s not easy being a spy. And there are less troubling ways for FPOTUS to make a bundle these days. Trump has been pocketing money from the Saudis for hosting golf tournaments. (Jared Kushner’s private equity fund banked a whopping $2 billion from a fund controlled by Mohammad bin Salman, the murderous Saudi leader). Trump may want to share top US government secrets with certain overseas governments because he feels an affinity for them or their leaders. (See Vladimir Putin.) But assuming he read these documents—or was briefed on them and paid attention—he could pass along the information without having to possess the records themselves. 

They’re Mine! Throughout his presidency, Trump demonstrated that he’s a big believer in that old French saying, l’etat est moi. He was not the custodian of the US government and the servant of the national interest; he was the government and his interests were the government’s interests. In this warped view, all these records belong to him and exist for his benefit. He has exclusivity and can control how they are used. Maybe he believes some of these records could help him prove one of the scads of untrue conspiracy theories he has promoted over the years. Perhaps he wants to use them for a memoir. Or to show them off to his pals in the Mar-a-Lago buffet line? Or one day place them in an exhibit in his presidential museum? (Will he charge his MAGA followers an entrance fee?) Why should anyone else possess his love letters with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un? Spite is a large part of Trump’s psychological algorithm. It’s not a stretch to envision Trump, scorned by the voters and fired from the presidency, defiantly hanging on to documents he was not allowed to keep and shooting the bird at the (Deep State!) bureaucrats and intelligence community he despised. Mine, mine, mine.

Most Americans are unfamiliar with the unique experience of hoarding classified documents. But thanks to Donald Trump’s apparent habit of doing exactly that, we now have photographic evidence of what that looks like—or at least how the former president did it at his Mar-a-Lago residence.

The Justice Department, in a late-night filing on Tuesday, included a photo of just some of the documents seized at Trump’s Palm Beach club. The image—described in the filing as a “redacted FBI photograph of certain documents and classified cover sheets recovered from a container in the “45 office”— shows several documents clearly and boldly labeled “Top Secret SCI.” Other documents appear to be obscured in order to conceal their content. To the right is a box these items were apparently stored in; it also included a framed Time magazine cover featuring Trump. All of this rests upon what this writer finds to be ugly, embarrassingly outdated carpeting. Meanwhile, Trump seems upset that the photo makes him look messy.

But beyond the photo, the most damning allegation in the DOJ’s filing is the assertion that government documents had “likely” been concealed and that federal investigators had “multiple sources of evidence” indicating that Trump aides had failed to turn over all the requested documents. The filing was a response to Trump’s latest demand to appoint an independent special master to review the seized material. The DOJ opposes that request, arguing that it would be inappropriate and significantly harmful to “important governmental interests, including national security interests.”

This is not a good look. Alas, the same Republicans who spent years screaming about some emails have registered the following shoulder shrug:

That TIME Magazine cover was huge threat to national security. https://t.co/yy0AOmxMEh

When Albert Diaz, then 41, took his seat in the Social Security Administration’s hearing room in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in October 2011, he had to lower himself onto his left buttock to avoid stabbing pain in his right leg. His dominant arm, the right one, was locked in a brace to keep it from curling in toward his body. He shook uncontrollably, a side effect of an electrical stimulation device implanted in his spinal cord to manage relentless pain. Three years earlier, Diaz had fallen backward three stories down an elevator shaft while working as a maintenance director in a luxury apartment building. Since the accident, his family of nine had relied largely on his wife’s teaching salary. His application for federal disability benefits was denied, and after waiting a year for a hearing, he’d come to appeal that decision before an administrative law judge (ALJ).

During the half-hour hearing, the judge asked him whether he attended church or belonged to any clubs, what TV shows he liked, and if he had any hobbies. They talked about his pain and how his family has to help him bathe, get dressed, and shave. Following his testimony, a vocational expert spent a few minutes testifying about what someone in Diaz’s condition could do for work. The conversation went like this: First, the judge asked the expert to imagine a hypothetical person of Diaz’s age, education, and work experience. Now, she said, imagine that this person can do light work, but the light work is limited. “There would be a bilateral lower extremity push/pull limitation,” she clarified, “occasional climbing, balancing and stooping but never on ladders, never kneeling, crouching or crawling. There would be a bilateral, overhead reach limitation, a need to avoid vibration and hazards.”

The judge then asked the vocational expert whether there were any jobs, anywhere in the economy, suited to such a person. Considering only the factors the judge had described, the expert answered that the person could be a “greeter/host,” and indicated that there were about two or three hundred such jobs in northeastern Pennsylvania. Or maybe a “price marker”—who attaches price labels to merchandise—1,100 to 1,200 jobs.

Two months later, the judge denied the claim, citing her belief that Diaz was able to do things like “perform occasional climbing, balancing, and stooping”—which is to say, she thought he could still work. In the nearly eight years it would take him to successfully appeal that denial, Diaz lost his house.

With a bite out of every paycheck, workers pay into the federal system of Social Security Disability Insurance just in case something happens that makes them unemployable. (A parallel program, Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, provides payments to low-income people with disabilities). Of the roughly two million disability claims the SSA receives each year, two-thirds are initially denied. Those who appeal get their claims reconsidered, and if they’re denied again, which most are, they go before an ALJ. It’s the claimant’s best chance for a reversal—last year, slightly more than half of such claims were approved.

On Deadline Day eve - otherwise known as the day Jim White was born - Marcus, Pete, Andy and Jim are here with your definitive guide to all the odd stories and trends associated with this unique day down the years!

Was September 1st 2008 the most dramatic deadline day ever? Why did clubs use dodgy fax machines for so long? And how are these multi-billion pound institutions just so wonderfully disorganised? Join us!

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The weekend may now be closed but Marcus, Luke, Jim and Pete are on hand to preview a plethora of blockbuster mid-week action. Once they have finished discussing Ravishing Rick Rude and "Macho Man" Randy Savage, obviously. 

Don't worry, we do still delve into the weeks' biggest football stories, including Man United's £100m move for Antony, Phil Collins' son signing for Hannover and the West Brom striker who washed his clothes with dishwasher tablets. For 8 months…

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A taste of some of our favourite moments across the Ramble this month!

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There’s grumpy fans all over the gaff in the Premier League this weekend! Leicester City head to Chelsea under pressure, while David Moyes tries to inspire optimism among the fanbase.

Marcus, Andy, Pete and Jim also discuss the Champions League draw and sweat over the future of Callum Wilson. Well, Marcus does.

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It’s a huge weekend in Serie A! Dotun, Andy and Nicky Bandini chew over Roma's trip to Juventus and wonder just why Romelu Lukaku and Lautaro Martínez fit so perfectly together ahead of Inter's inevitably feisty clash with Lazio.

Elsewhere, there’s an extraordinary capitulation in Dortmund thanks to last-minute goals from unlikely British sources. And are Atlético Madrid *really* keeping Antoine Griezmann on the bench to save money?!

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Earlier this summer, Andy travelled to Sweden to explore the increasingly strained relationship between Zlatan Ibrahimović and his hometown of Malmö - especially after his statue was unceremoniously torn down two months after its grand unveiling.

On today's special episode, Andy speaks to journalists and fans across Sweden about Ibrahimović's journey from hometown hero to football's ultimate pantomime villain. We also hear from Lars Sivertsen about the legacy that remains, after investing in rivals Hammarby and seemingly turning his back on the club where it all started.

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At last, welcome to the most important episode in the Ramble’s history. Jim, Pete and Luke provide a definitive lowdown of that most glorious of football phenomena: animal pitch invasions!

From Anfield’s plague of cats, to a dog being interviewed pitchside in Argentina and the time a pigeon had a poo in Ashley Young’s mouth, we relive all of football’s weird and wonderful meetings with the animal kingdom!

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Welcome to our very first Ramble Reacts! We kept Marcus, Andy and Luke up late to relive an astonishing Manchester United win.

Lisandro Martinez defied his critics and his height, while Marcus Rashford got back on the scoresheet ahead of his World Cup-winning goal in December. But what on earth has happened to Liverpool? Elsewhere, Graeme Souness fights Casemiro at a wedding and we uncover shocking revelations that Andy’s godfather is in fact Louis van Gaal.

Join us for Ramble Reacts episodes throughout the season, where we’ll bring you our takes on the biggest games! Get involved @FootballRamble on Twitter, or email us This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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Jules, Vish and Luke fan the flames of a whole load of barn-burners across the Premier League this weekend!

Miguel Almirón silenced his doubters at Man City with a vintage crotch-first finish yesterday, while Jesse Marsch’s men took advantage of Chelsea’s London-Leeds jet lag.

Elsewhere, the Ferryman takes to the waters once more and when he’s not smashing teammate’s windshields, Aleksandar Mitrović is *still* smashing in the goals! Also, why everyone’s going to be top at Christmas.

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Gabriel Martinelli is claimed to have opened talks with Arsenal over a new deal after a bright start to the new season.

The forward arrived in north London from the fourth tier in Brazilian football, and surprisingly made an instant impact. He scored a memorable goal against Chelsea amidst an eye-opening debut campaign, and earned plaudits from a number of pundits as well as coming in for huge acclaim by Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp also.

Martinelli was setback by an injury however, but in the last nine months he has once again showed just how much of a threat he can be to even the best of defences.

He started the new season in top form also with two goals from two games, and the club have now decided to open talks with the 21 year-old as we look to tie him down to a new long–term deal, despite having a fair amount of time left on his current terms.

Understand that contract talks with Gabriel Martinelli have recently opened.

I know most Arsenal fans won’t believe this video clip but it really happened tonight on TalkSport after Jamie O’Hara watched the the Gunners totally dominate in tonight’s Bournemouth v Arsenal EPL game.

The totally anti-Arsenal pundit even likened Arsenal to playing like Man City, where Mikel Arteta used to be the assistant manager to Pep, and of course who Arsenal bought Zinchenko and Jesus from this summer.

Watch and believe!

“Arsenal are looking a bit special.”

“They look like Man City…”