Dude can coach.

Here we go……..

SC 45 ASU 14

Take it easy on the poor sundevils. They are decimated.

Fight on, but not too hard.

Alabama can STILL play some defense (even if their offense sucks)….

and Lane’s ole miss is overrated AGAIN……

Prognostications?

Trump Refused to Wear a Mask Because It Ruined His Bronzer, Ex-Aide Says​

‘VANITY’

Isabella Ramirez​

Breaking News Intern
Updated Sep. 22, 2023 4:53PM EDT / Published Sep. 22, 2023 12:33PM EDT



It seems like Donald Trump will go to great lengths to keep his makeup in pristine condition. In an extract from her upcoming memoir Enough, obtained this week by The Guardian, ex-aide Cassidy Hutchinson claimed the president snapped during the pandemic when she told him his classic orange shade got all over the straps of his white face mask.

“I slowly shook my head,” she wrote, recounting an episode from Trump’s 2020 visit to a Honeywell factory that produced masks. “The president pulled the mask off and asked why I thought he should not wear it. I pointed at the straps of the N95 I was holding. When he looked at the straps of his mask, he saw they were covered in bronzer.”

According to Hutchinson’s account, Trump sharply responded, “Why did no one else tell me that” and swore “I’m not wearing this thing.” “The press would criticize him for not wearing a mask not knowing that the depth of his vanity had caused him to reject masks – and then millions of his fans followed suit,” Hutchinson wrote.

GREAT game shaping up at Clemson…..

the Tigers (and their fans) have def come to play today.
we‘ll see how the Noles respond to the challenge.

America’s New Battlefront​

Republicans in North Carolina and Wisconsin are injecting ugly politics into their state’s courts.

By David A. Graham



SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

Even as U.S. politics became more contentious and polarized over the past quarter century, a few pockets of the government remained comparatively above the fray, including the courts, which sought to position themselves apart from politics, and state capitols, where pragmatism trumped partisanship.

But those redoubts have fallen in recent years. The Supreme Court has become more ideologically aligned with the Republican Party, and state legislatures host pitched ideological battles. Now institutions that sit at their intersection—state courts, especially state supreme courts—have emerged as a site of bitter fights.

This fall, Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature are mulling plans to impeach Janet Protasiewicz, a recently elected liberal justice on the state supreme court, before she has even heard a case—by all appearances for the crime of having been elected as an outspoken liberal. In North Carolina, Anita Earls, a liberal justice on the state supreme court, has sued the state’s Judicial Standards Commission over an investigation it began into fairly anodyne comments she made about implicit racial bias in a press interview.

For complete story, click on this:

A little gameday feature:

Trump, who led the longest government shutdown in US history, calls on Republicans to let it happen again in 9 days so they can 'defund these political prosecutions against me'​

Ayelet Sheffey
Updated Thu, September 21, 2023 at 11:59 AM GMT-7·3 min read

Americans are nine days away from experiencing yet another government shutdown. Former President Donald Trump, who led a 35-day shutdown in 2019, is suggesting Republicans should let it happen again.

On Wednesday night, Trump took to his social media site Truth Social to offer advice to Republican lawmakers. If Congress doesn't reach an agreement on funding before September 30, the federal government will shut down — and with that deadline just nine days away, the GOP has yet to find a viable solution to keep the government funded.

Trump, who was responsible for the longest government shutdown in US history, urged Republicans to make the most of the "very important deadline" to keep the government funded.

"Republicans in Congress can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden's weaponized Government that refuses to close the Border, and treats half the Country as Enemies of the State," Trump posted on his site. "This is also the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots. They failed on the debt limit, but they must not fail now. Use the power of the purse and defend the Country!"

With regards to the debt limit, Trump is referring to the concessions Republicans had to make with Democrats in order to raise the limit and ensure the government could continue covering its spending obligations. They did not get the spending cuts they had hoped to achieve within that bill, which is why Trump is urging them to hold the line on government funding.

However, Republicans cannot agree amongst themselves on what those spending cuts should look like. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday had to pull a vote on a group of conservative lawmakers' continuing resolution that would keep the government funded through October 31 because not enough members of his party supported the legislation.

After failing to corral his party around the conservatives' resolution, McCarthy is reportedly seeking to pass a funding bill that would include deeper spending cuts alongside an immigration package that Democrats are likely to vote against — meaning he would need conservative holdouts to hop on board. If they don't, McCarthy would have to appease some Democratic lawmakers to avoid a government shutdown — and GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz said that could cost McCarthy his title as Speaker.

"If Speaker McCarthy relies on Democrats to pass a continuing resolution, I would call the Capitol moving truck to his office pretty soon because my expectation would be he'd be out of the speaker's office quite promptly," Gaetz told CNN.

These party squabbles are having lawmakers on both sides of the aisle frustrated. "It's yet another reminder that in both houses, a small group of hard-right Republicans are dead set to grind the gears of government to a halt," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said.

A government shutdown would mean thousands of government employees furloughed, which could lead to processing delays for programs Americans rely on like Social Security and SNAP. The clock is ticking to see if Congress can avoid that outcome — and things aren't looking good.

Correction: September 21, 2023 — This story has been updated to clarify a shutdown will occur if Congress does not reach an agreement by September 30.

Disabled veterans seem to get respect from everybody but Donald Trump​

Gen. Mark Milley provides an unsurprising anecdote in which the former president was annoyed by the sight of a disabled veteran.



Sept. 22, 2023, 4:46 PM CDT
By Eric Garcia, MSNBC Columnist

In The Atlantic’s profile of Gen. Mark Milley, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the general shared an anecdote that serves as a shocking reminder of former President Donald Trump’s disdain for disabled people, even people whose disabilities are the result of their military service.

Trump, Milley said, didn’t appreciate Milley’s choice of veteran Luis Avila to sing “God Bless America" during Milley’s welcoming ceremony as chairman. In the course of five combat tours, Avila had lost a leg and suffered brain damage, two heart attacks and two strokes.

In a report that has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, at that ceremony, Avila’s wheelchair almost toppled over on the rain-softened ground, Milley said, and multiple people intervened to keep him from falling. Trump congratulated Avila after he sang, Milley told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, but then, he said, Trump said loud enough for multiple people to hear, “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.” According to Milley, Trump told the general to never again let Avila appear in public.

In a 2020 report for The Atlantic, Goldberg quoted sources who said that, while planning a 2018 military parade, Trump wanted wounded veterans excluded because “Nobody wants to see that.” Goldberg also reported that Trump’s decision not to visit American military interred in a French cemetery in 2018 wasn’t because the rain made it unsafe to fly, as Trump claimed, but because the cemetery was “filled with losers,” a claim Trump vehemently denied.

But there’s enough evidence of Trump deriding military heroes and deriding people who are disabled to believe he has little regard for people who are disabled military heroes. For example, in what counts as one of the most deplorable displays by a candidate for U.S. president, in 2015 Trump mocked Pulitzer-Prize winning New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, a congenital joint condition that limits movement in his arms.

During that same presidential campaign, Trump said the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who became disabled while a prisoner of war in Vietnam, was “not a war hero” because “he was captured.” And The Wall Street Journal reported in 2019, before Trump’s visit Japan that year, that a U.S. Indo-Pacific Command official sent U.S. Navy and Air Force officials an email including the directive that while Trump was there, the “USS John McCain needs to be out of sight.”

Trump denied having made a request that the ship be kept out of sight but described whoever made the request as “well meaning” “because they thought I didn’t like” McCain.

In one of the most deplorable displays by a candidate for president, Trump mocked reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, a congenital joint condition that limits movement in his arms.

Military veterans are the subset of people with disabilities who tend to earn the most empathy from the American public and from American presidents. Americans elect the leaders who send them to war, that is, on the missions that left them disabled. The thinking is that because America asked these men and women to embark upon missions that left them disabled, America should show them the utmost respect. But, according to Milley, after making a phony show of respect to the wounded Avila, Trump revealed to others the disdain he really has for wounded vets.

Real respect for disabled veterans would come with a commitment to making the country more accessible for them, which would make things more accessible for disabled people with no military service. But the record shows that Trump has some backward ideas about accessibility.



When then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton released an ad that criticized Trump for mocking Kovaleski, Trump responded by saying, “I spend millions a year or millions of dollars on ramps and get rid of the stairs and different kinds of elevators.” He acted as if he were doing some kind of favor for people with disabilities and not simply complying with federal law.

Even before he’d mocked Kovaleski, Trump engaged in blatant ableism. During the second Republican primary debate in 2015, he said “autism has become an epidemic” and said the condition hadn’t been as widespread “25 years ago, 35 years ago” and repeated the debunked claim that vaccinations are to blame. Such ableism has been an enduring feature.

During one of the 2020 presidential debates with President Joe Biden, Trump said that his administration had to shut down the economy “because we didn’t know anything about the disease [Covid-19]." But, he said, they "found that elderly people with heart problems and diabetes and different problems are very, very vulnerable.” The implication was that it was fine to return to normal if vulnerable people were most likely to get sick and die.

Those words showed utter callousness from the then- president who was unwilling to take the measures to protect the most vulnerable Americans from the pandemic.

Trump’s ableism should not surprise anyone, especially given his fetishization of strength. But it also reveals something much more pernicious: It shows that in his eyes, being disabled makes a person less worthy and undeserving of being integrated into the larger public. Hence, the report from Milley that Trump wanted Avila kept out of the public.

But, as The Atlantic reports, Milley has invited Avila to sing at his retirement ceremony.

Humiliated Kevin McCarthy throws in the towel, sends the House home after losing another major vote

Republicans are reaching unheard-of levels of Being-in-Disarray after GOP hardliners refused to bring a Pentagon funding bill up for a vote, increasing the likelihood of a government shutdown on Oct. 1.

"This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down. It doesn't work!" whined McCarthy to the media, while other members of the party texted reporters to say that the GOP caucus is in "f*cking chaos" and a "total sh*t show."

Republicans are entirely incapable of governing. Let's hope voters will remember this abject failure to fulfill the most basic requirement of their jobs come next November.

Blow for Putin as Russia’s Black Sea Fleet HQ Goes up in Flames​

DIRECT HIT

The strike was confirmed by the Russian-appointed governor of Sevastopol.

Philippe Naughton​

Published Sep. 22, 2023 9:12AM EDT

The headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in the Crimean city of Sevastopol was in flames Friday after being hit by a Ukrainian missile.

The latest Ukrainian success against Russian naval targets in the occupied peninsula was confirmed by the city's Russian-appointed governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev, who urged locals to avoid the city center in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Videos posted on social media showed the naval HQ in flames and reports suggested a large number of ambulances had been sent to the scene.

The hit on what should be the best-protected building in Crimea was further proof of Ukraine’s recent progress in degrading Russia’s air defense capability over the Black Sea—ending Russian air dominance not just over the sea itself but much of southern Ukraine. It came as a ship carrying more than 17,000 tonnes of grain left the Ukraine port of Chornomorsk as part of Kyiv’s campaign to reopen trade routes despite a Russian blockade.

President Volodymyr Zelensky was in Washington, D.C. Thursday pressing Congress to approve billions more in military and financial support to continue to defend his country from Russia.

Ukraine is thought to have used British Storm Shadow cruise missiles and naval drones to attack a Sevastopol shipyard last week, destroying a Kilo-class submarine and a landing ship in the most significant strike against a Russian naval target since the sinking of the cruiser Moskva—flagship of the Black Sea Fleet—in April 2022.

But the attack on the Black Sea Fleet HQ, also thought to have involved a Storm Shadow, will have a symbolic importance likely to exceed its purely military significance. Founded by the Russian nobleman and military leader Prince Potemkin in the late 18th century, the fleet became the lynchpin of Russian military power in the Black Sea and Mediterranean over the following decades.

Defeat in the Russo-Japanese war in 1905 saw a sailors’ revolt on the battleship Potemkin later credited with encouraging the spirit of rebellion that led to the Russian revolution of 1917.

Most importantly, however, it was the historic presence of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol that was used a pretext by Vladimir Putin when he ordered the annexation of Ukraine in 2014 and brought the fleet under direct Russian control. Friday’s attack will help weaken Putin's grip on the Crimea.

I'll have my weekly matchup breakdown today as well, but here's insight from Devils Digest publisher Hod Rabino:

reason being:
the CFP room is gonna get awfully crowded this time around….

a loss here will (eventually) remove the Buckeyes, as they wont run the table from here.

we don’t have to worry as much about ND, becuz we get a shot at them ourselves.

While the Democratic Mayor of Dallas says the city has thrived, Eric Johnson writes in a very frank WSJ op-ed that, elsewhere, Democratic policies have exacerbated crime and homelessness.

"The future of America’s great urban centers depends on the willingness of the nation’s mayors to champion law and order and practice fiscal conservatism.

Click to expand...

Our cities desperately need the genuine commitment to these principles (as opposed to the inconsistent, poll-driven commitment of many Democrats) that has long been a defining characteristic of the GOP."

Click to expand...

As we have written in detail previously, cities governed by Democrat mayors have seen the largest increases in homicide rates over the past year as well as registered the highest homicide rate per capita in Q1 out of 45 cities, according to a new report.

Polls Show More Than Half of Americans Want COVID Vaccine​

Two new polls show the U.S. is still divided, with more Democrats than Republicans interested in getting the vaccine.

Decca Muldowney​

https://www.thedailybeast.com/author/decca-muldowney
Updated Sep. 15, 2023 5:12PM EDT / Published Sep. 15, 2023 3:29PM EDT

The majority of Americans say they want to get the new COVID vaccine, despite a resurgence of fearmongering over the safety of the jab, according to two new polls released Friday.

At least 57 percent of registered U.S. voters are planning to get the newly authorized shot sometime this year, according to a poll from Politico and Morning Consult, with 37 percent saying they “definitely” plan to receive it. A second poll from Reuters/Ipsos found similar results, with 53 percent of those surveyed expressing interest in receiving the new vaccine.

However, both polls found sharp ideological divides among those surveyed, with interest in the vaccine broadly split along party lines. Of the 53 percent of people interested in receiving the new vaccine, 77 percent identified as Democrats, the Reuters/Ipsos poll found, while only 34 percent were Republicans.

Chris Jackson, head of public affairs at Ipsos, told The Daily Beast that political affiliation is still the “biggest driver these days of vaccine reluctance.”

“It’s almost divorced from any scientific or health-related conversations,” Jackson said, describing the public debate over COVID-19 as a “culture war issue.”

Despite overall enthusiasm for the new vaccine, a sizable minority—about 18 percent of those surveyed—believe the shots are dangerous, Jackson told The Daily Beast.

The Food and Drug Administration approved new COVID vaccines from both Pfizer and Moderna on Monday, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is recommending every American over the age of six months receive the shot.

The approval comes as an uptick in COVID cases across the country has led to a steady increase in hospitalizations over the last two months, CDC data shows. Several new variants of the virus, including the highly mutated BA.2.86, are continuing to circulate.

Just are surely as COVID cases have increased, so too has political rhetoric around the “dangers” of the new vaccine, as well as the potential for new mask mandates or restrictions.

In Florida, presidential hopeful Gov. Ron DeSantis stoked unfounded fears around vaccine safety, saying in a statement on Wednesday that he would not let the federal government, “use healthy Floridians as guinea pigs for new booster shots that have not been proven to be safe or effective.”

In direct opposition to the CDC’s advice, Florida’s surgeon general Dr. Joseph Ladapo also advised under-65s in the state not to get the new vaccine.

A number of Republican lawmakers and governors have also publicly vowed in recent weeks to fight any new COVID restrictions, as have presidential hopefuls DeSantis and Nikki Haley.

Both former President Donald Trump and DeSantis have made COVID part of their campaigns for the Republican nomination. DeSantis has used Trump’s pandemic legacy as a wedge issue, attempting to peel off a base of vaccine-skeptical voters still angry over lockdowns and mandates.

Trump, meanwhile, has boosted conspiracy theories that the Democrats will use the new COVID surge to reinstate restrictions and steal the next election and lashed out at criticisms of his own record on the virus.

This week, the former pandemic allies publicly criticized each other’s handling of the virus, with Trump claiming DeSantis had “shut down Florida” and obeyed the instructions of Dr. Anthony Fauci during the pandemic. DeSantis hit back, calling Trump’s comments “pathetic” and “false.”

Meanwhile, longtime anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination has given him a platform to share his bizarre theories. In July, Kennedy was criticized by the White House after he suggested COVID was engineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.

“It is vile, and they put our fellow Americans in danger,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said of his comments.

Clarence Thomas secretly participated in swanky Koch network donor events

The radical right-wing justice willingly put himself in the extraordinary — and extraordinarily unethical — position of serving as a fundraising draw for a deep-pocketed, ultraconservative network that regularly brings cases before the Supreme Court, including one of the most closely watched of the upcoming term.

Thomas belongs nowhere near the nation's high court, a point he's proven time and time and time again. Enough already. Democrats should initiate impeachment proceedings the moment they retake the gavel in the House.

This is going to get a lot of unwanted national attention.

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The LBs are at full strength for the first time all season, the WR rotation is going to remain deep, ASU's offense is a mess, the Solomon Byrd story keeps gaining momentum and Tyrone Taleni could make his season debut.

All the key takeaways from the week in another long Five Takeaways column ...

Why Milley’s story about Trump and an injured vet is so easy to believe​

Retiring Gen. Mark Milley has a brutal perspective on Donald Trump. The outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s claims are very easy to believe.


Sept. 22, 2023, 8:23 AM CDT
By Steve Benen

There’s an enormous amount to unpack in Jeffrey Goldberg’s new report in The Atlantic on retiring Gen. Mark Milley, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but one anecdote in particular struck me as provocative — and very easy to believe.

Goldberg described an event that was held soon after Milley became chairman of the Joint Chiefs, when he gained an insight into Donald Trump’s perspective.

Milley had chosen a severely wounded Army captain, Luis Avila, to sing “God Bless America.” Avila, who had completed five combat tours, had lost a leg in an IED attack in Afghanistan, and had suffered two heart attacks, two strokes, and brain damage as a result of his injuries. To Milley, and to four-star generals across the Army, Avila and his wife, Claudia, represented the heroism, sacrifice, and dignity of wounded soldiers.

Click to expand...

As the report in The Atlantic, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, went on to explain, it had rained that day, softening the ground. As a result, Avila’s wheelchair nearly toppled, at which point Milley’s wife and then-Vice President Mike Pence rushed to his aid.

Soon after, Trump said to Milley, within earshot of several witnesses, “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.” The then-president reportedly told the general that he didn’t want Avila to appear in public again.

Goldberg went on to write, “These sorts of moments, which would grow in intensity and velocity, were disturbing to Milley. ... Milley’s family venerated the military, and Trump’s attitude toward the uniformed services seemed superficial, callous, and, at the deepest human level, repugnant.”

If recent history is any guide, the former president will deny the accuracy of this story and come up with new juvenile taunts for the retiring Army general. But Milley’s version of events is nevertheless easy to believe because of everything else we know about Trump.

Indeed, as ugly as the story is, nothing about it is surprising. I’m reminded of this Washington Post report published three years ago this month:

A former senior administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, confirmed to The Washington Post that the president frequently made disparaging comments about veterans and soldiers missing in action, referring to them at times as “losers.” In one account, the president told senior advisers that he didn’t understand why the U.S. government placed such value on finding soldiers missing in action because they had performed poorly and gotten caught and deserved what they got, according to a person familiar with the discussion.

Click to expand...

The same week, The Atlantic reported that Trump asked his staff in 2018 not to include wounded veterans in military parades, “on grounds that spectators would feel uncomfortable in the presence of amputees.” (The Republican reportedly said, “Nobody wants to see that.”)

The public has also heard Trump disparage American servicemen and women who are captured during combat, while launching an ugly feud with a Gold Star family.

We’ve also seen the president insult Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s service — putting his military rank in scare quotes, as if Vindman hadn’t earned it — blame military leaders for failed missions he approved, and deride the former commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command for the speed with which the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden was carried out.

Trump has also reportedly lashed out at generals as “a bunch of dopes and babies,” while publicly going on the offensive against his own former defense secretary, retired Gen. James Mattis — whom he accused of acting like a “Democrat” for questioning the White House’s less-defensible national security moves.

In 2020, Trump even downplayed the importance of troops with traumatic brain injuries, which prompted a request for an apology from the Veterans of Foreign Wars — an appeal he ignored.
Keep these details in mind when the former president pushes back against the latest reporting.

Republicans confront new questions about whether they can govern​

Taking stock of several GOP fiascos this week, one observer put it this way: “At this moment, House Republicans can’t govern. This isn’t just an opinion.”


Sept. 22, 2023, 11:55 AM CDT / Updated Sept. 22, 2023, 3:21 PM CDT
By Steve Benen

Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was feeling optimistic. His party was likely to take control of the chamber, and the California Republican expected to serve as speaker.

NBC News asked McCarthy whether was concerned about Republican divisions and infighting. “No,” the GOP leader replied. “We’re going to be quite fine.”

That was in December 2021. Congressional Republicans are many things now, but “quite fine” they are not. In the aftermath of the latest embarrassing failure for the House GOP leadership team, Punchbowl News summarized the landscape nicely:

At this moment, House Republicans can’t govern. This isn’t just an opinion, at this point. It’s a fact that’s been borne out in the Capitol all week. ... The House Republican Conference, as currently constructed, doesn’t have the ability to move legislation.

Click to expand...

As the guy who wrote a book about Republicans abandoning their role as a governing party, it’s heartening to see so many GOP officials go out of their way to validate the thesis.

McCarthy’s inability to advance a defense spending bill that’s doomed in the Senate helped capture a low point for the party, but it was part of a larger mosaic. This was, after all, a week in which congressional Republicans:

• announced plans for a hearing related to an impeachment inquiry that doesn’t make any sense;
• held a mind-numbing Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General Merrick Garland in which GOP members kept saying “everyone knows” because they couldn’t produce actual evidence of wrongdoing;
• admonished Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin because he urged Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., to end a blockade that’s undermining his own country’s military;
• blocked a vote on federal prosecutors as part of a pointless partisan stunt;
• moved the United States closer to another Republican-imposed government shutdown; and
• snubbed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

I can think of ways to describe such a weeklong fiasco, but “quite fine” isn’t the phrase that comes to mind.

CORRECTION (Sept. 21, 2023, 4:21 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated when then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had said House Republicans were “going to be quite fine.” He said it in December 2021, not December 2022.

The news would be that Mason Cobb is not limited at all and they're trying to sort out the linebacker rotation, and Tyrone Taleni should be back this week.


What went into deciding to accept the early kickoff for Colorado?

"Yeah, we thought about it, we definitely had a little bit of conversation back and forth. In an ideal world, it probably wouldn’t have hit right after the late away game. That was honestly, to me, really the only potential drawback of it. So we were able to put out kind of a mock schedule and have a minute to scratch through it on our end of what that would look like. Obviously when you play that early, it moves some things up in the week. I think one of the big things for us was coming off a bye week, didn’t feel like it was going to be that much of a big deal, our guys are going to be pretty rested, I think we might have felt maybe a little different if we were maybe in the middle of a six or seven game stretch. You play that one a little bit earlier, but there’s a little bit more – you can get home at a pretty good time and you can get a chance for the guys to rest and recover with the stretch obviously coming up ahead of that game and so in the end, I know that’s a good window from a TV standpoint and so yeah, in the end, we really didn’t have anything to complain about with it and we’re good to go."

What is Mason Cobb's availability Saturday and what's the ideal rotation at linebacker?

"Yeah, Mason’s definitely taken advantage of the bye week, he’s going to be available to play, don’t think we’re going to have any restrictions or limitations there, which that’s a really positive thing. It’ll be great to get him back. Yeah, in the meantime, guys like Raesjon and Eric and Tackett, those guys, Shane of course, all of those guys have taken advantage of some of that time on the practice field and in games and done some really good things. So we’ll – I would imagine we’ll play a few different guys there, a few different lineups, and then of course if we settle in and guys are performing well, we may ride the hot hand a little bit but I would expect to see some or all of those guys. And again, certainly the linebackers have got to play in sync. There’s playing your job and doing well yourself, but then there’s obviously a lot of communication that goes on with those guys and really working well together, so I think we’re excited to find alright, is there that ideal combination of guys that really perform at a high level together? And that group has probably been more disjointed than most just because Eric and Mason both missing time. Shane missing basically all of fall camp. Tackett being new, Raesjon had an injury during fall camp, so that group has been a little bit disjointed so we’re hoping to find some continuity and I think we’re able to start building that some a little bit during the bye week and certainly during this week during practice."

What have you seen from Caleb Williams' improvement on the intermediate and deep passing game?

"Yeah, I think he’s bought in a lot that every deep throw doesn’t have to be a perfect shot. I mean, at some point, this thing becomes a little bit – a little bit of science to math to this. The further you gotta throw something, you’re going to miss more, right? Throwing a slant or throwing a shorter route perfect is not really that difficult, throwing something 20, 30, 40, 50 yards down the field and throwing it perfect, it’s obviously, those are much tougher throws and I think there’s just been a realization that he doesn’t always have to be perfect because sometimes when you are, you might have that guy wide open down the field or in the intermediate part of the field and you miss him by a foot. And we had a lot of those last year – I say a lot, we had more of those than we wanted to have, so I think we’ve made some adjustments and he’s made some adjustments in terms of just kind of mindset on those throws which has been good to see. He’s given our guys consistently and I think right now, through three games, our receivers have done a nice job of coming down with those. So I think it’s some of the trust that’s been built in, how we want to attack people down the field and in the intermediate part and the guys really buying into it and taking it from meeting room to practice field to game field and I think that’s shown up so far. So yeah, we definitely wanted to be more efficient in those areas and I think we’re off to a good start."

Is Tyrone Taleni progressing toward a return?

"He is, yeah, good news: we expect to have him available this week. The bye week was another one that came at a good time for him. He probably wouldn’t have been ready had we had a game last week, but was able to start to build in the practice and he’s doing much better. He had kind of a plantar fascia injury, which is just kind of a – it’s a unique deal, it’s kind of a pain for a couple of weeks and it starts to come back pretty fast. Really at the end of the bye week, he started to like, really accelerate and get better fast and this week, he’s been able to go with no limitations, has handled the entire workload. So we’ll be excited to have him back, another big body in there and another guy I think kind of along the lines with Stanley and Benton, a few of those guys we really feel like from what we’ve seen behind the scenes that have really improved. And talking about some of those interior defensive linemen that played some snaps for us last year that we feel like have taken some steps, they’re better players right now so excited to have him back."

Hunter Biden case assured to hang over Joe Biden's 2024 campaign with special counsel​

Joey Garrison and Miles J. Herszenhorn, USA TODAY
Updated Sun, August 13, 2023 at 11:58 AM PDT·6 min read

WASHINGTON − For President Joe Biden, the legal troubles of his son appeared to be going away last month when Hunter Biden's attorneys reached terms with prosecutors to resolve tax evasion and gun charges.

Then the deal fell apart.

Now, with Attorney General Merrick Garland appointing a special counsel Friday to investigate the criminal case, the legal drama over Hunter Biden is sure to hang over the entirety of Joe Biden's 2024 reelection bid.

Not only does the special counsel designation of David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware who has overseen the case for five years, signal a wider inquiry, the Justice Department also said in a motion Friday that it expects a trial over the charges already filed against Hunter Biden. The motion all but ensures a circus of television cameras outside a federal courthouse following the president's son just as the 2024 campaign will be in full swing.

"This is not good for the president," said Richard Painter, a law professor at University of Minnesota who was chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush. He said Republicans will stay fixated on Hunter Biden's legal problems even more so if former President Donald Trump, the GOP primary front-runner, becomes their nominee.

"Obviously, this is going to be made into a big issue in the campaign," Painter said. "Given the fact that Trump has been indicted three times and may be indicted a fourth time, the Republicans are going to grab for whatever they can."

A federal judge in Delaware refused last month to accept a plea deal between Hunter Biden and prosecutors after the judge raised concerns about the terms of the agreement, including assurances Hunter Biden's legal team sought for immunity from any future criminal charges.

Had the judge accepted the plea agreement, it wasn't going to quiet Republicans who called the arrangement a "sweetheart deal" and accused Garland of politicizing the Justice Department. But it would have at least put Hunter Biden's legal ramifications to rest as Joe Biden, 80, seeks a second term while already facing questions about his age and lingering anxieties about the economy.

"It's not something any candidate would wish to have happen," said Todd Belt, professor and political management program director at George Washington University.

Still, Belt said, voters typically "disentangle" misbehavior of family from the candidate. And he said the appointment of a special counsel − in a possible matchup with Trump − may burnish Joe Biden's image as the candidate who adheres to the law even when his son is the target.

"In a weird way, it is actually beneficial in terms of how he would wage his campaign against Trump − the return to the Trump chaos versus normal function of government under Biden," Belt said.

Even before the special counsel elevation, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee had accelerated its investigation into Hunter Biden as they seek to tie actions from then-Vice President Joe Biden to his son's business activities as chairman of the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.

Republicans have seized on testimony from Devon Archer, a business associate of Hunter Biden's, who said the president's son put his father on the speakerphone 20 times with his business partners present. But Archer said business was never discussed, and Republicans have yet to present evidence supporting their claims that Joe Biden accepted bribery payments.

Nevertheless, House Republicans have increasingly started talking about an impeachment inquiry.

"It clearly means that it's going to hang over the entire remainder of the election cycle," veteran Democratic campaign strategist Joe Trippi said. "But I think that was clearly going to happen in any case."

Biden allies point to polling that suggests most Americans are far less concerned with Hunter Biden than House Republicans. A majority of Americans, 58%, including 63% of independent voters, said Hunter Biden's legal problems won't influence their decision whether to vote for Joe Biden in 2024, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll in June.

Democrats are bullish on abortion access as a major driver for their base as well as suburban independent voters after last year's Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Voters in Ohio, which voted Republican in the past two presidential elections, overwhelmingly rejected a measure Tuesday that would have made it more difficult for voters to protect abortion rights via referendum.

Democrats also reject any conflation between the legal problems for Trump, the frontrunner to win the Republican nomination who faces three indictments, and those of the president's son.

"The reality is, Trump is a former president who is running for president. Hunter Biden isn't on the ballot," said Trippi, a senior adviser for The Lincoln Project, a political group formed before the 2020 election to help defeat Trump. "And thus far, there's been no evidence tying (his business dealings) to Joe Biden."

Where Hunter Biden's case goes from here​

House Republicans indicated the special counsel designation will not affect their congressional investigations into the overseas business dealings of Biden family members.

"This action by Biden’s DOJ cannot be used to obstruct congressional investigations or whitewash the Biden family corruption," House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said in a statement. "House Republicans will continue to pursue the facts for the American people."

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the House Oversight Committee, slammed Garland's appointment of Weiss as special counsel, saying it is "part of the Justice Department’s efforts to attempt a Biden family cover-up" after his committee's "mounting evidence" he says has implicated Joe Biden.

"The Biden Justice Department is trying to stonewall congressional oversight as we have presented evidence to the American people about the Biden family’s corruption," Comer said.

Garland, as he announced Weiss' appointment from the Justice Department headquarters, made clear the Hunter Biden investigation remains open.

After the terms of his plea agreement unraveled in court, Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty last month to failing to pay more than $100,000 in taxes on $1.5 million in taxable income he made in 2017 and 2018. He faces a separate charge for possessing a firearm in 2018 as a drug user.

Prosecutors filed a motion Friday saying that the two sides are at an "impasse" and that the government expects the Hunter Biden case to go to trial. The Justice Department is seeking to move the case to either a federal court in Washington or California, which prosecutors argue would be the appropriate venues for the charges.

As special counsel, Weiss will have the authority to bring charges in any federal court he chooses.

For his part, Joe Biden has made no effort to distance himself from his son. “I’m very proud of my son,” he told reporters in June after Hunter Biden initially struck the plea agreement on the tax evasion charges.

Hunter Biden traveled with his father to Ireland in the spring. He has attended state dinners and sometimes joins his father and other family members for weekends at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.

But it seems a good bet Hunter Biden, who made several appearances on the 2020 campaign trail for his father, will be less visible in 2024.

Painter said that he does not expect to see the president's son making campaign stops during his father's reelection bid. "I doubt it," Painter said. "I very much doubt it."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hunter Biden controversy set to hang over Joe Biden's 2024 campaign