⚽ Spence and Toney in for England, Alexander-Arnold out
⚽ Premier League finale preview | Mail Michael your thoughts

Barney Ronay on social media makes a pertinent point: “Harry Maguire: anatomy of how NOT to make a case for being the perfect 7-week back-up squad member. No need for Tuchel to explain now. We all save five mins.”

The final man in the 26 is Djed Spence, the Tottenham full back. He can play on both flanks so offers versatility. There is no Trent Alexander-Arnold in the England squad.

Andy Burnham talks up his local credentials and says: ‘This is not business as usual, this is not more of the same’

On transport, Burnham says “I like my buses” (they were taken back under public control in Greater Manchester in 2023) but he was woeful about the cost of rail journeys.

£364 is the cost of an anytime return from Wigan North Western to London Euston. So how can people here connect with the capital and all of the opportunities it’s got, if they cannot afford those train fares? We need to use rail re-nationalisation to reduce those train fares and make them affordable to people again.

Change to the economy, change to education, change to housing, change to transport, change to care, and yes, to make it all possible. Change to politics.

Khanna says ‘blank check to Israel and Netanyahu when they committed genocide’ one of the reasons his party lost; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls omission ‘pretty unbelievable’

• Democrats belatedly publish 2024 election autopsy report: ‘It won’t meet your standards’

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Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and other Democrats spoke held a news conference, ahead of the vote-a-rama Thursday morning.

“The Republican agenda is one big broken promise,” said Schumer, criticizing the Republican budget bill. “We still haven’t seen the bill, because they are fighting with each other.”

Trump v Cook: Donald Trump’s case for firing Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, as he continues to exert greater control over the US central bank.

Trump v Slaughter: A case which examines the legality of Trump’s firing of a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) member, Rebecca Slaughter.

Trump v Barbara: In which the court will decide if the administration’s attempts to restrict birthright citizenship are unconstitutional.

Trump plays down need to end war; Meloni among leaders to criticise treatment of flotilla group in video shared online

The Jordanian military announced it had shot down a drone of unknown origin in its airspace on Wednesday, AFP reports.

No casualties were reported.

Arsenal fans flocked to the Emirates and players partied at the training ground after the club secured their fourth Premier League title

We’ll keep the focus here on Arsenal’s title win – so Gunners fans, drop me a line here wherever you are. I have to give a shoutout to my friends from uni, Andy and James. We watched the Invicibles’ parade on a beaten-up telly at our student digs in Cardiff, and it’s been a long, long wait for them to celebrate again. Congratulations, chaps.

Pep Guardiola has offered his congratulations to Arsenal and Arteta, his former assistant at Manchester City. “We were close. On behalf of everyone at Manchester City, we congratulate Mikel and all the staff, players and fans on winning the Premier League. They deserve it, for so much hard work and effort.

Trump said the US may need to hit Iran again and he was only an hour away from deciding on a strike before he postponed

Iran’s army has warned it would “open new fronts” against the US if it resumes attacks on the country amid reports that Donald Trump is weighing up restarting military operations in Iran amid an impasse in negotiations.

“If the enemy is foolish enough to fall into the Zionist trap again and launches new aggression against our beloved Iran, we will open new fronts against it, with new equipment and new methods,” army spokesperson Mohammad Akraminia said, according to Iran’s ISNA news agency.

Kentucky congressman who championed Epstein bill failed to fight off attacks from president in victory for Trump

• Trump critic Thomas Massie defeated in Kentucky Republican House primary

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Trump told reporters he is giving Iran until the weekend or early next week, to make a deal to end the war.

He said that yesterday he was within an hour of deciding to resume bombing Iran but that his negotiators had reported progress in talks.

I never tell anybody when. But they knew that we were very close. I would say we were. I was an hour away from making the decision to go today, and we would probably not be talking about a beautiful ballroom today. We’d be talking about that.

I had made the decision, so they called up. They had heard I made the decision. They said, sir, could you give us a couple of more days because we think they’re being reasonable.

Well, I mean, I’m saying 2 or 3 days, maybe Friday, Saturday, Sunday something. Maybe early next week, a limited period of time, because we can’t let them have a new nuclear weapon.

US president says there ‘won’t be anything left’ of country if it doesn’t come to an agreement

• UAE blames Iran or its proxies for drone strike fire near nuclear plant

Friedrich Merz has been embroiled in a row with Donald Trump over his war on Iran ever since the German chancellor suggested the Trump team was being outplayed in its negotiations with Tehran and said he would not advise his children to study or work in the US in the current climate.

The Guardian’s Berlin correspondent, Deborah Cole, has looked at the declining relationship between the two leaders in this story. Here is an extract:

Disputes over trade and military aid for Ukraine have fuelled tensions between the US and its European allies and tested the Nato alliance.

Merz is struggling to revive an anaemic German economy and has said the impact of the US-Israeli military action in Iran and the ensuing closure of the strait of Hormuz has been severely damaging to European interests.

We strongly condemn the renewed Iranian airstrikes against the United Arab Emirates and other partners. Attacks on nuclear facilities pose a threat to the safety of people throughout the entire region. There must be no further escalation of violence.

Iran must enter into serious negotiations with the USA, stop threatening its neighbours, and open the strait of Hormuz without restrictions.

️ Latest news from second round at Aronimink Golf Club
️ Official live leaderboard | Follow on Bluesky | Mail Matt

Scottie Scheffler’s third at 10, from 44 yards, is no good. It’s 20 feet shy of the flag. He can’t make the par saver, and that’s an immediate backwards step for the world number one and tournament favourite. Matt Fitzpatrick bogeys too, and it’s a double for Justin Rose. They’re -2, +1 and +2 respectively. Meanwhile on Sky, Laura Davies asks Wayne Riley what he thinks the leader will be on at the end of the day. Five under, he answers, without a beat of hesitation. In other words, good luck trying to go low, gentlemen. It’s going to be another hugely entertaining day!

Rose gathers himself and sends a decent wedge into 10, from 77 yards to 16 feet. He’ll have a look at a damage-limiting bogey. Meanwhile Scottie’s lie in the rough on the left isn’t great, and he’s forced to take his medicine, punching back out onto the fairway. Even the strongest hitters in the business aren’t of a mind to take liberties with this rough. To think everyone was talking about bringing Aronimink to its knees with some bomb and gouge at the start of the week! A textbook study in hubris, and that’s before we get around to the subjects of Rory and Bryson.

Trump says ‘a lot of good’ has come from summit and ‘we’ve made some fantastic trade deals for both countries’

• Xi warns Trump of ‘clashes and even conflicts’ with US over Taiwan

• Analysis: For anxious Taiwan, Trump’s silence after Xi talks is best possible outcome

Jamieson Greer also said US export controls on semiconductor chips were not a major topic of discussions with Chinese officials in Beijing.

The US trade representative’s comments to Bloomberg on Friday suggest a breakthrough on selling Nvidia’s advanced H200 chips to China remains far away, Reuters is reporting, despite Nvidia chief Jensen Huang’s last-minute invitation to Donald Trump’s Beijing trip this week.

This was not a major topic of discussion at the bilateral meeting. We did not talk about chip export controls at the meeting.”

First of all, it’s really important for China to have the strait of Hormuz open – no tolling, no military control. That was clear from the meeting, so we welcome that.

With respect to Chinese involvement with Iran, our view is the Chinese are being very pragmatic – they don’t want to be on the wrong side of this. They want to see peace in that area, President Trump wants to see peace in that area, so we have a lot of confidence that they will do what they can to limit any kind of material support for Iran.”

️ Updates from the first round at Aronimink Golf Club
️ Official live leaderboard | Follow us on Bluesky | Mail David

Bryson’s touch is all over the shop. He overcooks his downhill 30-foot putt from the fringe at the back of 11 … and the ball catches the slope of the green, rolling 60 feet past! So nearly off back down the fairway! That leads to an inevitable bogey. Also dropping a shot: Jon Rahm on 1. His approach disappears down a swale to the right of the green, and he can’t get his ball back up with his first chip. Rory also bogeys, the result of that errant drive and skulled wedge, and for a course supposedly there for the taking, Aronimink sure is baring its teeth.

It Can Happen To The Best Of Them dept. Rory McIlroy’s ball, having hit a tree down the right of 1, comes straight down and disappears into thick rough. He lashes at it with great force, but the ball only squirts out of the cabbage, a topper that dribbles 100 yards down the fairway. We’ve all done it, Rory on fewer occasions than most. But here he is. So much for his pre-tournament claim that “strategy off the tee is pretty non-existent”, huh. And there’s no blaming a blister on his pinky toe for that one.

California governor calls efforts to dismantle majority-Black districts ‘Jim Crow 2.0’; Louisiana moves forward to eliminate one of two such districts

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Donald Trump will drive through a Chinese capital that is smoggier than it was on his last visit in 2017, when the authorities launched emergency measures to clear the skies of pollution days before his first state visit to Beijing.

Factories were ordered to halt production and heavily polluting cars were banned from the roads in the days ahead of the US president’s trip nearly a decade ago, an era in which China had declared war on air pollution and made special efforts to clear the skies ahead of important political events such as visiting dignitaries and the Beijing Olympics.

Elizabeth Warren condemns confirmation of Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve; John Fetterman was lone Democrat to support the nomination

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Donald Trump touched down in Beijing at around 7:50pm local time/7:50am ET.

The president will be greeted by China’s vice-president, Han Zheng, along with David Perdue, US ambassador to a China.

A number of Streeting’s allies resigned from their ministerial posts on Tuesday and called for Keir Starmer to quit

• Starmer tells cabinet he will not quit without leadership challenge

Here are some pictures from No 10 this morning.

Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the PM, is now being interviewed on the Today programme. Nick Robinson, the presenter, is asking him if he knows whether Keir Starmer has decided how to respond to the pressure on him to resign. Jones is avoiding the question, as he did on Sky News earlier. (See 7.43am.)

Pete Hegseth and other officials appear before House to face grilling on Iran war expenditure and military operations

Iran has expanded its definition of the strait of Hormuz into a “vast operational area” far wider than before the war, according to a senior officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy in comments likely to anger the US.

The strait is no longer viewed as a narrow stretch around a handful of islands but instead has been greatly enlarged in scope and military significance, according to Mohammad Akbarzadeh, deputy political director of the IRGC Navy, the state-affiliated Fars news agency reported this morning.

Map designed to boost Democrats’ US House seats was thrown out by Virginia’s supreme court last week

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Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump reiterated that Iran’s peace proposal was “just unacceptable”.

The president went on to insist that he had a “very simple plan”, and maintained that Tehran could not have a nuclear weapon, without elaborating on the next negotiating steps.

US president said Iran’s response to the US peace proposal was ‘stupid’ and that the ceasefire is ‘unbelievable weak’

• Trump calls Iran’s response to peace plan ‘totally unacceptable’ as ceasefire frays

Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, will visit Qatar later today for talks on the war, its impact on the region and efforts to ensure navigational safety in the strait of Hormuz is resumed, a Turkish diplomatic source told the Reuters news agency.

Turkey, which neighbours Iran, has been in close contact with the US, Iran and mediator Pakistan since the start of the conflict. It condemnded the US and Israel for launching the war, widely seen to have been done illegally, but also criticised Iran’s counter strikes on Gulf states.

Home secretary Shabana Mahmood reported to be among those who have told the PM to consider his position.

Botterill says voters she spoke to during the campaign felt the country does not work for them. She is a working-class Yorkshire woman, she says. She knows that the opportunities she has enjoyed would not be there if if had not been for the achievements of Labour government.

She says Labour is one of the best vehicles for changing the lives of working people that this county has ever known.

⚽ News, discussion and buildup before day’s action
⚽ Premier League things link | Email us here

As always, feel free to email in with any thoughts, feelings, predictions, observations and all that jazz. What are your plans for the weekend? Where will you be watching the football? Let me know!

How the Premier League table looks as things stand…

Motion submitted by Virginia house speaker paves way for appeal to Friday’s ruling striking down recently passed redistricting referendum

• Virginia supreme court strikes down new congressional maps in win for Republicans

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A reminder that my colleagues are covering the latest on the conflict in the Middle East. Including secretary of state Marco Rubio’s visit to Rome, to mend strained relations with Italian leaders and the Vatican after Donald Trump chided Pope Leo XIV for his stance on the war in Iran.

Rubio told reporters in Rome that the US should get a response on Friday from Iran to its proposal to end the war.