Gabriel Jesus is expected to miss the first few games of the season for Arsenal due to an injury. This has raised numerous questions regarding what Arteta’s attack will look like and who will replace him.

Eddie Nketiah has stated unequivocally that he is capable of spearheading the attack in Jesus’ absence. Of course, we expect Arteta to rely on Arsenal’s No. 14, with Folarin Balogun heavily linked with a move away, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other choices. Leandro Trossard, who shined in his preseason games as a Gunner playing the striker role, may also play there.

Other than Trossard, Kai Havertz could be an option, but could Arteta be tempted to use the German as the 9 when in the last few seasons he has failed to impress in a similar role in Chelsea’s colours? As per Darren Bent, Arteta shouldn’t think about unleashing Havertz in the No. 9 role, obviously suggesting that Arteta should use other options to fill the void Jesus’ absence leaves. “I hope he (Havertz) doesn’t play as a nine,” said Bent.

Bent, who discussed the Arsenal striker situation with Gabby Agbonlahor on talkSPORT, said so after Gabby claimed Arteta should just stick to his original plan to use Havertz as an attacking midfielder: “When I see Gabriel Jesus play, in certain games I see him play, and I think he should be finishing that. I think that was a problem last season, but you have goals from Saka, Martinelli, Trossard can score goals, and now you have Havertz who could play in that eight.”

Would you consider Havertz playing as Arsenal’s No. 9 in Jesus’ absence? or should Arteta stick with Nketiah?

Late on Friday, a judge in Texas issued an pre-trial injunction limiting the reach of the state’s recent anti-abortion measures.

While Texas law technically allows ending a pregnancy in emergency, medically necessary situations, patients seeking care under that provision have been denied, as doctors fear fines, imprisonment, or the loss of their license for being involved in any kind of abortion. The judge clarified that a doctor can decide when their patient needs an emergency abortion, and held that the women who brought the suit with the assistance of the Center for Reproductive Rights had had a legal right to an abortion in Texas. Under the law, one plaintiff in the suit was denied an abortion and developed sepsis; another was forced to give birth to a non-viable fetus. Others opted to travel out of state for care.

Travis County district judge Jessica Mangrum also held that SB8, the state law that encourages Texas citizens to investigate and turn in people who seek or help enable an abortion, is unconstitutional because it violates a provision in the state’s bill of rights banning unreasonable fines and cruel and unusual punishment. Mother Jones‘s Pema Levy wrote about the law last year:

It allows vigilantes to piggyback on any cases brought under the bans and win civil suits with ample bounties. Vigilantes can also go after anyone involved in a suspected abortion without a prosecutor’s involvement, meaning that even in the state’s liberal enclaves where elected prosecutors have promised not to prosecute abortion cases, SB8 will allow individuals to become the enforcers… [U]nder SB8, scrutiny has been expanded and weaponized: When the law took effect, a Texas anti-abortion group set up a website for people to submit tips about abortions performed in violation of SB8 and promised to “do the rest.” The portal didn’t last, but it also wasn’t needed for the law to have its intended effect.

According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, the case, Zurawski v. State of Texas, was the first brought on behalf of women denied abortions after the US Supreme Court’s 2022 decision ending the federal constitutional right to abortion.

How to watch Arsenal players vying for quarter-final place at Women’s World Cup by Michelle

The FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 kicked-off on 20th July and, I’m sure you’ll agree, we’ve been treated to some pretty outstanding football in that time. Now, there are 16 teams that have progressed to the Round of 16 knock-out stage of the tournament.

Unfortunately, 3 of our Arsenal players were knocked out of the competition today, but we still have 9 Arsenal players vying for those coveted quarter-final places – see full schedule and how to watch below, by date.

Saturday 5th August

Noelle Maritz and Lia Walti – Switzerland

Arsenal’s Swiss duo were today knocked out of the World Cup, after losing 5-1 to Spain, at Eden Park, Auckland

Former President Trump’s prosecution for alleged conspiracy wasn’t the only election meddling case this week.

Two Michigan Republicans were arraigned Tuesday on felony charges related to tampering with voting equipment in an effort to prove that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. Matt DePerno, a former Michigan Republican state attorney general candidate, was charged with conspiracy and undue possession of a voting machine, while former Michigan state representative Daire Rendon was charged with conspiracy to commit undue possession of a voting machine and false pretenses.

On Thursday, another Michigan attorney, Stefanie Lambert, was charged with improper possession of a voting machine, conspiracy to improperly possess a voting machine, conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to a computer system and willfully damaging a voting machine.

Perpetrators of the scheme allegedly brought five voting tabulators to a hotel room and performed “tests” on them. Some of the defendants claim that local election clerks willingly offered up the voting machines for testing.

The case bears some similarities to the one against Tina Peters, a Colorado county clerk who allegedly illegally obtained election information that wound up online. Peters unsuccessfully ran for Colorado secretary of state last year. DePerno’s Michigan attorney general campaign also failed, though not as spectacularly as Peters’. In Georgia, Trump attorney Sidney Powell—one of Trump’s alleged co-conspirators in the plot to overturn the 2020 election—reportedly oversaw a team that copied voter information from machines in Michigan and Georgia.

Vish is back and football is on its way back! The EFL returns and - Meg White drum roll please - there’s the Community Shield! The hottest Premier League-adjacent game of the summer.

Pete and Luke give Vish a summer’s-worth of ribbing and then get down to (some) football chat. Plus, why Ed Sheeran’s Iron Maiden covers have ruined Chelsea’s season and we ask the crucial question: are you Carlton Palmer?

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In 2007, Dr. Jake Kleinmahon left Westchester, New York, to move to New Orleans and attend medical school at Tulane University. Drawn by the opportunity to help rebuild the city’s medical system in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, he eventually became medical director of Ochsner Hospital for Children’s pediatric heart transplant, heart failure and ventricular assist device programs. He met and married his husband, Tom, a Michigan-born chemical engineer for Shell. They have two children, a 4- and a 6-year-old. But after years of building a life in New Orleans, the family is leaving the state at the end of the month over discriminatory anti-LGBTQ laws coming out of the Republican-controlled legislature. 

In early June, state lawmakers passed a series of bills, including so-called “Don’t Say Gay” legislation barring public school teachers from discussing gender identity and sexuality in the classroom; a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors; and a measure prohibiting school employees from using a student’s preferred pronoun without parental permission. Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards vetoed the bills, but the Republican supermajority legislature has since moved to override the veto and enact the ban trans youth health care. The legislation, the governor said, “needlessly harms a very small population of vulnerable children, their families, and their health care professionals.” 

Mother Jones spoke with Dr. Kleinmahon on Wednesday about his decision to leave Louisiana and the potential impact of a “brain drain” on the state: 

On becoming a doctor: I knew I wanted to be a pediatrician since I was 4 years old. There are no doctors in my family, but I had an amazing pediatrician and he was such an inspiring and kind man. I admired the amount of knowledge he had and the way he treated me and the rest of my family with such compassion. When I was a teenager, I began volunteering at our local ambulance corps. I became an emergency medical technician. And then, after college, I went off to medical school at Tulane.

On practicing in Louisiana: During medical school, I had the opportunity to work in volunteer clinics where medical students saw the patients, and then they discussed the patients with an attending physician and came up with a plan for the patients. There were so many opportunities to do this throughout the city because of the lack of medical homes and primary care centers that were online at this point. So we were really able to make an impact in the medical system by having these volunteer clinics that patients only had to pay a very nominal fee for. The other part was that there still weren’t a ton of medical professionals who came back to the city after Katrina, so when I was rotating in the emergency room, I was doing things that medical students at other institutions sometimes don’t get to do, such as being involved in the trauma team, suturing up facial lacerations, and really inserting yourself as part of the team. Sometimes they were so short-staffed that they needed extra hands to help out.

More than 1,000 people have been arrested in connection with the January 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol. Now, the man who allegedly fueled the attack is one of them.

Former President Donald Trump was arraigned in a DC courthouse Thursday afternoon and charged with four felonies related to his actions in the lead-up to January 6. Trump’s third arrest in four months involves the most serious case against him, with prosecutors accusing him of three conspiracy counts, including defrauding the United States. Trump pleaded not guilty to all four counts.

Many have commented on the collective fatigue that news consumers might feel about the constant drumbeat of accusations against the former president. Even CNN, the poster child of the 24-hour news cycle, referred to Trump’s arrests as “routine” in a broadcast this afternoon.

But it’s important to remember that the federal government has not gone easy on the hundreds of people charged in relation to January 6. Anti-vax doctor turned insurrectionist Simone Gold faced 60 days in prison for her conduct on January 6, though she was released early. In June, an international underwear model who stormed the Capitol was sentenced to 32 months in prison. And in May, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years for seditious conspiracy. Now, the ringleader of the entire operation—the man whom each of the convicted insurrectionists worshipped—is having his day in court.

Trump’s favorability ratings remain impressively high for someone with so many pending criminal cases, and Trump opponents fear that the latest charges could ironically bolster his popularity by creating the illusion that Trump is the victim of politically motivated prosecutions. Trump echoed this point in a statement after his arraignment. “This is the persecution of the person that’s leading by very, very substantial numbers in the Republican primary, and leading Biden by a lot,” he said, “so if you can’t beat him, you persecute him or you prosecute him.” (While Trump is leading in Republican primary polls, he is neck and neck with Biden.)

Donald Trump has been indicted three times in four months. He faces charges in New York, DC, and Florida, with Georgia expected to join the list soon. Those cases, in local and federal courts, include 78 separate counts for crimes he allegedly committed in 2016, 2020, 2021, and 2022.

The most likely explanation for this litany of alleged crimes is that the former president is a criminal—a guy who concluded that he was above the law, broke laws with abandon, and now, without the presidency to protect him, faces a backlog of criminal consequences. The courts—jurors and judges—will ultimately decide his guilt or innocence if the cases make it to trial.

But for Trump and many of his fans, the rising pile of charges against him seems to be reinforcing the view that he is the innocent victim of a conspiracy aimed at keeping him out of the White House.

Trump was hit Tuesday with a four-count indictment alleging that he mounted three criminal conspiracies to overturn his 2020 election defeat. Even before the indictment appeared, Trump claimed that Jack Smith—the special counsel overseeing both that case and the prosecution related to Trump’s hoarding of classified documents—timed the new charges “to put it right in the middle of my campaign.”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was even more specific, tweeting Tuesday that Smith released the indictment to “distract from” supposedly new allegations about Hunter Biden. McCarthy suggested that the timing of the charges was connected to a Monday poll showing that “President Trump is without a doubt Biden’s leading political opponent.”  

During a barbecue campaign event on Sunday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told New Hampshire voters that if he makes it to the White House, he will be “slitting throats on day one” in order to root out the so-called “deep state” lurking in the federal government.

“We’re going to have all of these deep state people, you know, we are going to start slitting throats on day one,” DeSantis said during a three-day trip to the Granite State. The event comes as the DeSantis campaign attempts a high-profile reset amid disappointing poll numbers and a major staff reduction. 

The promise to the slit throats of people who essentially don’t exist—that is, unless you’re a conspiracy-addled Republican—aligns with the strategy the DeSantis campaign recently outlined in a confidential memo, which reportedly includes more attacks on the “deep state,” to convince donors that the Florida governor can still win this game. Now will his latest comments do the trick? Or is this simply more evidence of the governor’s infamous lack of social skills?

Whatever the case, it’s safe to say that these remarks fall in line with DeSantis’ authoritarian approach to governing, using the state to punish his perceived enemies, from Disney to whatever new item he’s declared as “woke.” As Harvard professor Steven Levitsky told my colleague Pema Levy, “That’s authoritarianism at its core. That’s what authoritarians do.”  

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

Beverly Grimmett thought the kids magazines she saw stacked on a coworker’s desk this spring were perfectly innocent, until she picked one up. 

“My stomach turned,” Grimmett said. 

The guides were decorated in bright colors and cheerful cartoons, with titles like, The Kids Guide to Socialism, The Kids Guide to Our One Nation Under God, and, finally, The Kids Guide to the Truth About Climate Change.

Grimmett, who works in construction project management at a six-person office in Norfolk, Virginia, had happened upon one of former Gov. Mike Huckabee’s educational ventures, a series called The Kids Guide from Ever Bright Media, the children’s publishing company he founded.

Not long ago, I was one of 22 authors honored at a fundraising dinner for my local library. It was a swanky affair, with a multicourse meal, a pair of emcees, and a photographer to capture the rare sight of authors in cocktail attire rather than the sweatpants and baggy T-shirts we tend to favor. Midway through the meal, a waiter placed a full bottle of wine in front of me. “Thanks for giving ’em hell,” he said. “Keep up the good fight.”

An emcee had just announced that my Stonewall Award–winning New York Times bestseller, The 57 Bus, was the 10th most frequently challenged book in Texas and the 35th in the United States last year, a fact that caused the entire room to burst into applause. Bottles of wine are a rare response to such news, but high fives and congratulations are common. Having my book banned is a badge of honor, people often tell me.

I appreciate the sentiment, of course, but it does feel a bit like being congratulated for getting kicked in the teeth by the neighborhood bully. I’m not actually giving the book banners hell, much as I’d like to. I’m receiving hell. We all are: readers, writers, teachers—everyone who cares about the freedom to read.

The American Library Association reports that more than 2,500 books were challenged in 2022, a big uptick from the already astonishing 1,858 challenged in 2021, which was already five times the number challenged in 2019. Last year, some 41 percent of challenged books were by or about LGBTQ people, and 40 percent were by or about people of color. The 57 Bus, a nonfiction narrative about two teenagers on either side of a high-profile crime, is a twofer: One main character is Black, the other nonbinary. The Tennessean reported just last month that The 57 Bus is now one of that state’s top five most challenged books.

We know the history. Now, what about Luton Town’s future? 

In this episode, Kate Mason speaks to EFL experts, Luton’s CEO and manager, and fans to find out if Luton are ready for the next stage of their journey. Or has it come too soon?

Not listened to Episode 1 yet? Find it directly below this one in your podcast app!

Special thanks to the Luton Town Supporters’ Trust, the Oh When The Town Podcast, and everyone connected to Luton Town Football Club who helped us make this episode.

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Luton Town will be a Premier League club this season. But they’ll be a Premier League club like no other. Over the next two days on the Ramble feed, we’re going to tell the story of Luton’s extraordinary rise, fall and rise through the divisions.

Join Kate Mason as she speaks to fans, residents, and the people at the very heart of the club. 

Episode 2 is out tomorrow, right here on the Football Ramble feed!

Special thanks to the Luton Town Supporters’ Trust, the Oh When The Town Podcast, and everyone connected to Luton Town Football Club who helped us make this episode.

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Watch out! Mind you don’t get infected with Pete Donaldson-lookalike syndrome…

Pete, Luke and Jim round-up the latest as another Viking joins the Premier League, Harry Kane keeps looking for less spicy food, and John Terry sings at Ashley Cole’s wedding. It’s as bad as it sounds. Come join us!

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Miguel Delaney and Nicky Bandini join Dotun for the final OTC transfer special of the summer, as Man United finalise a deal for one of Europe’s most exciting young strikers in Rasmus Højlund. But will the gamble be worth it? And what will he bring to Old Trafford? We’ve got all you need to know.

Plus, the Kylian Mbappé saga rolls on as Liverpool and Chelsea throw their respective hats in the ring. We also get to plenty of your questions, as we highlight some of our favourite under the radar moves across Europe. 

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Whether its footballers kicking lumps out of each other in the States or Jordan Henderson heading to Saudi Arabia, there ain’t time for pre-season romance this summer! 

Pete, Luke and Jim chew the fat on all that and much more. Plus, Pete brings unexpected news about one of his favourite wrestlers lowballing plumbers in the Leigh-On-Sea area.

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Today, we’ve got something a little different on The Drop In! We’re joined by one of Britain’s most-celebrated writers for stage and screen: it’s James Graham!

James has recently written a play entirely about Gareth Southgate and the England national team. Kate chats to him about what’s it all about and they reflect on how Southgate’s team have changed the face of national identity.

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In our final special Patreon drop of the summer, we’re throwing it back to one of Pete’s personal favourites of the season! Listen on to find out more.

For more bonus content just like this, head to patreon.com/footballramble! 

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After Al-Hilal made a world-record transfer bid for Kylian Mbappé, Dotun is joined by Nicky Bandini and David Cartlidge to dissect what this means for Mbappé and the potential consequences for European football.

One player trying his best not to move to Saudi Arabia is Romelu Lukaku - but, now Inter have lost interest, does he have a choice? Plus, we asses the Shakespearian love triangle that is emerging between Atlético Madrid, João Félix and Barcelona.

Exciting news! From next season, On The Continent is moving to its own brand new feed with more episodes every week! Subscribe here!

We'll be back with another OTC Transfer Special next week. Got a question for us? Ask away! Find us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and email us here: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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In an absolutely seismic pre-season friendly, Man United beat up Arsenal on the pitch - while Arsenal fans in the stands beat up each other. Ahh, soccer.

Marcus, Jim and Pete thoroughly cover that, try to smuggle some Lionel Messi shirts out of Miami, book trials at JLingz FC and buy a hearse.

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