appointment

Sherratt’s departure was confirmed on Monday, just six days before the URC opener against Lions.

Adams is confident that the loss of the head coach will not hit Cardiff’s hopes of improving on last season.

“He made a conscious effort to improve our training days and habits,” said Adams.

“It takes a while to break a bad habit and create a new one. What he has implemented is here to stay and there is a great group of senior players who hold everybody accountable to those standards.

“The foundations that he has laid are solid and I wouldn’t say that any hard work will be undone because he has moved on.”

Adams says forwards coach Van Zyl has stepped in “seamlessly” as Cardiff hunt a successful first block of the URC in which they face Lions, Connacht and Edinburgh at home and Munster and Dragons away.

They open up against a Lions side who finished 11th last season and were runners-up in South Africa’s Currie Cup.

“The Lions are a team that graft hard for each other, that’s evident when you watch them,” said Adams.

“They don’t have the superstars of the South African franchises but they are a tough side and we will have to be close to our best to get something from the game.”

ERIK TEN HAG was sacked by Bayer Leverkusen after just two matches due to FIVE major problems.

The former Manchester United was dumped by his new German side after failing to win either of his opening Bundesliga games.

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Ten Hag’s exit came as a shock, with some fans feeling the Dutchman was unfairly treated while following in Xabi Alonso’s footsteps.

Leverkusen bid farewell to numerous title-winning stars including Florian Wirtz, Jeremie Frimpong and Piero Hincapie, with all three now in the Premier League.

And Ten Hag was left to work with a new group of aces whose quality was arguably not as high.

However, Leverkusen bosses were eager to pull the plug after long-standing employees branded him the WORST coach in their club’s history.

BIZARRE APPROACH

Bild now claims there were five key reasons to sack Ten Hag as quickly as possible – with the Dutchman leaving with a DAILY earning of £86,000 thanks to his £5.2million salary and severance package.

First off, it’s claimed that Ten Hag failed to get along with any of his players OR staff – including the ones who arrived with him in July.

He refused to give a “rousing” speech before the first match against Hoffenheim, with the game ending in a 2-1 defeat.

And many of his staff and players were left questioning his bizarre decision to almost downplay the occasion.

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TRANSFER MADNESS

Secondly, the Dutchman was accused of “interfering” with Leverkusen’s transfer plans, including only proposing players from his own agency.

Ten Hag is represented by SEG Football, who represent Rasmus Hojlund and also allegedly batted for Andre Onana and Antony when they joined Man United for huge fees.

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Meanwhile, he publicly vetoed Granit Xhaka’s move to Sunderland, despite an internal agreement for the Swiss ace to move on.

And Leverkusen chiefs went directly against Ten Hag when they granted Xhaka his exit just days later.

Elsewhere, the late arrival of Lucas Vazquez from Real Madrid was made without Ten Hag knowing until AFTER the ace’s contract was signed – highlighting his lack of relationship with club transfer guru Simon Rolfes and ultimately indicating Leverkusen’s decision to move forward without him.

TRAINING PAIN

The third reason for Ten Hag’s exit was his insistence on players doing PUSH UPS during training, ranking it as important as working with the ball.

Stars were used to lots of tactical and technical work under predecessor Alonso, now at Real Madrid.

And Ten Hag’s “unusually long” training sessions, packed with dull physical work, left many unmotivated.

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NO CONNECTION

Fourthly, chiefs were left concerned by the “cold” atmosphere around the club, with Ten Hag’s lack of leadership resulting in a major disconnect at the training ground AND the stadium.

Staff ranging from coaches to nutritionists and physios quickly became disillusioned.

And the recent memories of Alonso’s title-winning reign only further compounded the misery.

TACTICAL DISASTERCLASS

Finally, the proof was in the pudding itself.

Leverkusen lost their first match to Hoffenheim, and then threw away a two-goal lead to draw with 10-men Werder Bremen.

Players were said to be baffled by the lack of ideas and general game plan – and it showed.

Individuals were expected to take decisive actions, but none seemed to work in a consistent tactical manner across the field.

And the only thing Leverkusen chiefs have been left to ponder is whether they should have sacked Ten Hag earlier.

Reports claim former Tottenham boss Ange Postecoglou is now being considered as his replacement.

While there is also interest in former Bundesliga managers Marco Rose and Edin Terzic, with a decision set to be made over the international break.

This column is the latest in a series on parenting children in the final years of high school, “Emptying the Nest.” Read the last installment, “A Mother’s Plea to Trump.”

My third and youngest child went off to college a week ago, and for the first time in 27 years, my husband and I are living in a house with no kids. It’s a strange and silent place, in which all the beds are neatly made, the floors around them no longer mulched with clothing, charge cords and snack wrappers. There are no discarded once-frozen coffee drinks sweating rings onto wooden tables; no empty Styrofoam takeout containers littering kitchen counters mere inches away from the trash can.

One can walk freely across the family room now, with no fear of tripping over abandoned shoes, balled-up socks or peanut-butter-smeared dishes, and the days remain unpierced by the maddening repetition of overheard TikTok memes and the escalating cries of “mom, Mom, MOM” to indicate an impending celebration or crisis.

My daughter very kindly left me a hamper full of dirty clothes upon her departure and a closet that was essentially an archaeological site of the months’ (years’?) worth of her particular method of tidying her room. My discovery therein of the perfume (in a plastic bag that also included her crumpled prom dress) she had been desperately searching for as she packed for college was sweet but short-lived. Yes, I did tell her to look in her closet and, yes, she did roll her eyes and swear that she did, but it doesn’t matter now.

She is gone, the last of the children who have been the light of so much of my adult life, and I miss her truly, madly, deeply. The sight of her luminous smile and her “nothing’s wrong” grimace; the smell of her floral shampoo and funky basketball shoes; the sound of her singing in the shower and yelling at the dogs to get off her bed.

Those dogs, I hasten to note, are doing the best they can to bridge the void. Sensing that a workday no longer interrupted by my daughter’s frantic search for her jersey/wallet/shoes is no workday at all, Harley has been nudging his toys under my sofa or chair and then whining for me to “find” them while Koda has taken on teenage-affection duty — randomly hurling himself onto my lap for attention only to pull away and vanish once I put my laptop aside and attempt to cuddle.

Still I am bereft and unmoored. The mad scramble to prepare and pack for college is finally over and in its place is … nothing. Well, there is my job, of course. But after 27 years of (often imperfectly) balancing work and motherhood, I feel like a professional juggler who is left with a single ball. For the first time in a very long time, I am the sole proprietor of my day, responsible only for myself.

Already I can see this is going to be a problem.

Not only do I miss my daughter for her own sweet, occasionally maddening self, I miss the structure she, and her siblings, imposed on my life. The school schedule, the after-school schedule, the weekend sports schedule. The doctor’s appointments, the dentist appointments, the haircuts and meal making, the playdates and sleepovers and trips to the playground/zoo/theme park/museum. The bedtimes, the dinner times, homework; the unexpected accommodations for illness, injury and very bad days. Parenthood is many things, but while your children are actual children, it is the clock and calendar.

Which are also now gone. I am still a working mother, but the “mother” part suddenly requires much less work. With juggling no longer required, my job should be so much easier. And yet it’s not. Facing a different sort of day, I find myself struggling to reset. And so I have created a list of Empty Nest/Labor Day resolutions. (And if they sound suspiciously like the advice I’ve given my kids over the years, well, I guess I am mothering myself.)

1. Popcorn and frozen yogurt are not dinner. After three decades of shopping for and preparing reasonably healthy evening meals, I confess I was looking forward to taking a break. But my post-college drop-off “dinner” is clearly not the answer. Eat some fruit and veggies, for heaven’s sake.
2. Put down the phone. Checking for texts or haunting my child’s Instagram is just sad, and perusing Facebook for friends also dropping kids off at college has thus far only led me to endless video feeds. Sure, watching border collies at work and the outtakes from “This Is 40” is great fun, but is it worth an hour of my one and only life? No.
3. Keep setting the alarm. I may no longer need to be up and dressed in time to take or see my kid off to school, but that alarm has been starting my day for five decades now.
4. Get up, stretch and walk around. Despite having a desk job, I never paid much attention to all those pesky ergonomics instructions. I had kids who regularly demanded that I interrupt my work to get up and do something else (which often required actual running). Now I don’t. So it’s up to me.

5. Go outside at least a few times a day. Even with the playground days in the distant past, it is amazing how often your teenage children require your presence outside — if only to walk across the Target parking lot for the third time in a week or examine the dent “someone” put in your car. Find a way to touch grass that doesn’t involve picking up dog poop.

6. Keep up with the calendar. I was certain that, without the presence of so many child-related appointments/events, I could keep track of my husband’s and my schedules in my head. Three missed appointments later, that’s a hard nope.
7. Plan things for the weekends. For years, our weekends were dominated by sports events. More recently, as the empty nest loomed, my husband and I kept them clear on the off chance that our daughter might want to do something with us. Now we are free to do those weekend things we enjoyed as a couple — and I’m sure we’ll remember what they were in time.

8. Carry tissues. I did not cry when I drove away from my daughter at her New York college — I was frankly too tired from the move-in and too worried about the traffic around JFK airport. But when I made my first trip to Ralphs a few days later and saw her favorite potato chips, I burst into tears. Right in the snack aisle.
9. Bite back the wistful advice. When I was deep in the maelstrom of life with young kids, nothing pushed me closer to the edge of insanity than some older mom telling me to “treasure these moments” because “time moves so fast.” “Not fast enough,” I would think grimly as I balanced a crying baby with an exploding diaper and a whiny toddler with an exploding juice box. Now I am that older mom who can’t believe how quickly time passed. But I’ll try to keep it to myself.
10. Be patient. When the last child goes, it’s as big a life change as when the first child arrives (albeit with less spit-up and more sleep). Everything is different and it will take time to adjust. And just when I get used to my calm, quiet house, my daughter will be home for the holidays, leaving shoes and trash and dirty clothes all over the place. No doubt it will drive me nuts. At the moment, I cannot wait.

The parade of Trump terribles is a long one, starting in Washington and stretching clear across this beleaguered nation.

A bumbling Defense secretary who lacks the competence to organize a two-car military procession.

A screw-loose Health secretary who seems not to care if measles and other plagues descend on America.

A director of national intelligence who’s shown no great abundance of that quality but, rather, an eagerness to twist and bend facts like a coat hanger, serving whatever cockamamie claim the president burps up.

Because, after all, obeisance and lay-down-your-life loyalty are the main prerequisites for service in the Trump administration, along with the all-important consideration of how one comes across on television.

How else to explain the chief federal prosecutor he’s imposed on Nevada, Sigal Chattah?

Chattah, 50, devoted years to a not-particularly-noteworthy legal career, practicing domestic and international law at her Las Vegas firm and teaching political science for a time at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In 2022, Chattah was the Republican nominee for state attorney general, losing rather handily to incumbent Democrat Aaron Ford.

But not before distinguishing herself as a notably reprehensible candidate.

Among other things, Chattah compared Ford to the leader of Hamas and said that her opponent, who happens to be Black, “should be hanging from a f— crane.” (The Israeli-born Chattah told the Las Vegas Review Journal the “smart-ass comment” was a tongue-in-cheek expression derived from her Middle East background.)

A pugnacious poster on social media — another perceived asset in Trump World — Chattah called a Black member of Congress a “hood rat,” a Black female prosecutor “ghetto” and a Black “Saturday Night Live” cast member a “monkey.”

She suggested immigrants — make that “invaders” — and college protesters should be shot and transgenderism should be treated with “meds or commitment to an in-patient facility.”

But what might have particularly endeared her to Trump is her embrace of his ego-salving Big Lie about the 2020 election being stolen from under him. Chattah even served as legal counsel to one of the fake electors who tried to overturn Joe Biden’s clear-cut victory and swipe Nevada for Trump.

It’s hardly unusual for a president to pick a member of his party to serve as U.S. attorney, replacing the choice of a previous administration. In fact, even though justice is supposed to be blind and thus, theoretically above political considerations, that’s how the selection process usually works.

But Trump has broken new and treacherous ground by installing not just partisans as federal prosecutors but lackeys — starting with Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi — who’ve shown their allegiance not to fair-minded application of the law but rather delivering on the feral impulses of their White House patron.

Trump’s pick for top prosecutor in the Los Angeles area is Bill Essayli, a former state assemblyman from Riverside County whose main qualification seemed to be his loud, performative approach to serving in Sacramento’s GOP minority.

Bondi appointed Essayli on an interim basis in early April. His appointment was limited to 120 days; normally within that time he would have been formally nominated and faced confirmation by the U.S. Senate. Knowing the latter was unlikely, the Trump administration executed an end run and named Essayli “acting U.S. attorney,” which gives him an additional 210 days in the job before he faces formal confirmation.

As it happened, the very same day that maneuvering took place, prosecutors moved to dismiss charges in a criminal case involving one of Trump’s political donors.

Coincidence?

The same sleight-of-hand — interim appointment, designation as “acting U.S. attorney” — was used to extend the tenure of Trump sycophants as chief federal prosecutors in New Jersey, New Mexico, upstate New York and, in Chattah’s case, Nevada.

(In a setback for Trump, a federal judge ruled last week that his former personal attorney, Alina Habba, was unlawfully serving as New Jersey’s top prosecutor, though the order was put on hold pending appeal.)

Chattah’s partisanship is plain as a desert squall. In a remarkable breach of protocol and ethics — not to mention the federal law forbidding employees from mixing work and politics — she kept her position as Nevada’s representative on the Republican National Committee even as she served as interim U.S. attorney.

Chattah abandoned the post only after the Nevada Independent reported on the obvious conflict of interest.

Last month, in the final days before Chattah’s interim appointment ended, more than 100 retired state and federal judges wrote Nevada’s chief federal district judge to object to her continued service. The group said Chattah’s history of “racially charged, violence-tinged, and inflammatory public statements” was disqualifying.

The Trump administration extended her tenure nonetheless.

As part of their unavailing effort, the judges quoted a 1940 speech then-U.S. Atty. Gen. Robert H. Jackson delivered, citing the immense power and responsibility that rests with a U.S. attorney.

“The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America. His discretion is tremendous,” said Jackson, who went on to serve as one of the Supreme Court’s most distinguished justices. “… The prosecutor can order arrests, present cases to the grand jury in secret session, and on the basis of his one-sided presentation of the facts, can cause the citizen to be indicted and held for trial.

“While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.”

Obviously, Jackson never knew Chattah or other Trump appointees besmirching the halls of justice. But the late justice, buried at Maple Grove Cemetery in Frewsburg, N.Y., is doubtless turning somersaults in his grave.

July 27 (UPI) — A second whistleblower has come forward in the appointment of Emil Bove to a lifetime appellate court judgeship, saying Bove directed attorneys to give false information and defy court orders.

Bove, a former member of President Donald Trump‘s criminal defense team in his fraud case in New York, is the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States. Trump nominated him for Third Circuit Court of Appeals judge in Philadelphia.

The second whistleblower, who is not named, is a career Department of Justice attorney and is represented by Whistleblower Aid, a non-profit legal organization that helps public- and private-sector workers report and expose wrongdoing. They disclosed evidence to the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General that corroborates the first whistleblower’s claims that Bove and other senior DOJ officials were “actively and deliberately undermining the rule of law,” Whistleblower Aid said.

“What we’re seeing here is something I never thought would be possible on such a wide scale: federal prosecutors appointed by the Trump Administration intentionally presenting dubious if not outright false evidence to a court of jurisdiction in cases that impact a person’s fundamental rights not only under our Constitution, but their natural rights as humans,” Whistleblower Aid Chief Legal Counsel Andrew Bakaj said in a statement.

“What this means is that federal career attorneys who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution are now being pressured to abdicate that promise in favor of fealty to a single person, specifically Donald Trump. Loyalty to one individual must never outweigh supporting and protecting the fundamental rights of those living in the United States,” he said.

The DOJ defended Bove.

“Emil Bove is a highly qualified judicial nominee who has done incredible work at the Department of Justice to help protect civil rights, dismantle Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and Make America Safe Again,” spokesperson Gates McGavick told CNN. “He will make an excellent judge — the Department’s loss will be the Third Circuit’s gain.”

Bove has contradicted the complaints.

“I don’t think there’s any validity to the suggestion that that whistleblower complaint filed … calls into question my qualifications to serve as a circuit judge,” Bove told the Senate the committee during his confirmation hearing.

“I have never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order,” Bove said.

As Trump’s personal attorney, Bove defended him in his federal criminal cases, which were dismissed after his reelection. He also represented Trump in his New York hush-money case. In that case, he was found guilty of all 34 charges.

The previous whistleblower Erez Reuveni provided documents earlier this month saying that Bove is the person who gave the Trump administration the directive to ignore a court order to stop flights taking migrants to a Salvadoran prison. Bove allegedly said to prepare to tell the courts “f- you.” Bove told Congress he doesn’t remember using the F-word and sidestepped other questions about the incident.

Reuveni was fired from his job as the acting deputy director for the Office of Immigration Litigation after he disclosed that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported in error. He worked for the DOJ for 15 years.

The Senate gave its preliminary approval for Bove’s appointment.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said “Even if you accept most of the claims as true, there’s no scandal here. Government lawyers aggressively litigating and interpreting court orders isn’t misconduct – it’s what lawyers do.”

A senior State Department official who was fired as a speechwriter during President Trump’s first term and has a history of racially charged, incendiary statements has been appointed to lead the embattled U.S. Institute of Peace.

The move to install Darren Beattie as the institute’s new acting president is seen as the latest step in the administration’s efforts to dismantle the organization, which was founded as an independent, nonprofit think tank. It is funded by Congress to promote peace and prevent and end conflicts across the globe. The battle is currently being played out in court.

Beattie, who currently serves as the undersecretary for public diplomacy at the State Department and will continue in that role, was fired during Trump’s first term after CNN reported that he had spoken at a 2016 conference attended by white nationalists. He defended the speech he delivered as containing nothing objectionable.

A former academic who taught at Duke University, Beattie also founded a right-wing website that shared conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, and he has a long history of posting inflammatory statements on social media.

“Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work,” he wrote in October 2024. “Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.”

A State Department official confirmed Beattie’s appointment by the Institute of Peace board of directors, which includes Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. “We look forward to seeing him advance President Trump’s America First agenda in this new role,” they said in a statement.

The institute has been embroiled in turmoil since Trump moved to dismantle it shortly after taking office as part of his broader effort to shrink the size of the federal government and eliminate independent agencies.

Trump issued an executive order in February that targeted the organization and three other agencies for closure. The first attempt by the White House team known as the Department of Government Efficiency, formerly under the command of tech billionaire Elon Musk, to take over its headquarters led to a dramatic standoff.

Members of Musk’s group returned days later with the FBI and Washington Metropolitan Police to help them gain entry.

The administration fired most of the institute’s board, followed by the mass firing of nearly all of its 300 employees, in what they called “the Friday night massacre.”

The institute and many of its board members sued the Trump administration in March, seeking to prevent their removal and to prevent DOGE from taking over the institute’s operations. DOGE transferred administrative oversight of the organization’s headquarters and assets to the General Services Administration that weekend.

District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell overturned those actions in May, concluding that Trump was outside his authority in firing the board and its acting president and that, therefore, all subsequent actions were also moot.

Her ruling allowed the institute to regain control of its headquarters in a rare victory for the agencies and organizations that have been caught up in the Trump administration’s downsizing. The employees were rehired, although many did not return to work because of the complexity of restarting operations.

They received termination orders — for the second time — after an appeals court stayed Howell’s order.

Most recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied the U.S. Institute of Peace’s request for a hearing of the full court to lift the stay of a three-judge panel in June. That stay led to the organization turning its headquarters back over to the Trump administration.

In a statement, George Foote, former counsel for the institute, said Beattie’s appointment “flies in the face of the values at the core of USIP’s work and America’s commitment to working respectfully with international partners.” He also called it “illegal under Judge Howell’s May 19 decision.”

“We are committed to defending that decision against the government’s appeal. We are confident that we will succeed on the merits of our case, and we look forward to USIP resuming its essential work in Washington, D.C., and in conflict zones around the world,” he said.

Fields and Colvin write for the Associated Press.