France without injured Dupont takes over Six Nations lead after crushing Ireland

DUBLIN (AP) — France's hand replaced Ireland's on the Six Nations rugby trophy after a momentous 42-27 win at Aviva Stadium on Saturday.

France decisively took over the lead of the championship with a bonus-point victory and can clinch its first title since 2022 in the final round at home next Saturday when it hosts Scotland.

Meanwhile, Ireland's Grand Slam hopes were destroyed in the fourth round for a second straight year, and its hopes of a third successive outright title, unprecedented in the tournament's 142-year history, were probably sunk.

England was also in the title picture, barring an upset at home against Italy on Sunday, but France's other big advantage was an extremely healthy points differential of +106, which is 93 points better than Ireland.

The breadth of France's win by five tries to three, running up its highest score in Ireland, was even more impressive in the absence for the last 50 minutes of injured captain Antoine Dupont.

A serious-looking right knee injury to the talismanic scrumhalf prompted France coach Fabien Galthie to cite Ireland's Tadhg Beirne and Andrew Porter.

"Antoine is suffering and we are suffering with him," Galthie said. “We are angry.”

As to the result, however, the French were overjoyed.

“When great moments like this happen, we can thank each other, players and staff," Galthie said. "We weren't given anything, we earned everything. At halftime in our dressing room there were good vibes, a mix between real ambition and real anger.”

When Dupont limped off, France was leading 5-0 and the momentum was swinging their way.

France was on the ropes for the first 15 minutes, absorbing waves of Irish attacks. But when lock Joe McCarthy was sin-binned for a cynical foul, Dupont set up wing Louis Bielle-Biarrey for the first of his two tries against the run of play.

Ireland, trailing by two at halftime, led 13-8 soon after, but for only four minutes.

Flanker Paul Boudehent crashed over after offloads by prop Jean-Baptiste Gros and Maxime Lucu, Dupont's replacement.

In a double blow to Ireland, winger Calvin Nash was yellow-carded for a head-on-head tackle and France pulled away from there thanks to unleashing the seven reserves forwards off the bench.

Ireland couldn't withstand the injection of fresh power.

A France counter-ruck in its own half led to Damian Penaud freeing his fellow wing Bielle-Biarrey, who grubbered ahead and beat Lucu to ground the ball. The try was Bielle-Biarrey's tournament-leading seventh, and 17th in 18 tests.

Replacement lock Oscar Jegou scored his first test try and, while Gros was in the sin-bin, Thomas Ramos intercepted Ireland's Sam Prendergast 10 meters out from his own try-line and let Penaud finish between the posts for his 38th test try, tying the France record of Serge Blanco.

Ramos, as ever, was unerring by nailing his last seven goalkicks.

With victory long secure at 42-13, France took its foot off the pedal, and Ireland scored the last two tries, one of them to caps record-holder Cian Healy, who was playing his last test at home along with Conor Murray and Peter O'Mahony.

“It was a bit of a roller-coaster,” Ireland captain Caelan Doris said.

"We weren't clinical enough early on. We thought we were in contention at halftime, we felt confident. We started well and thought we could go on but that 25-minute period in the middle of the second half was where we just weren't good enough — our collisions, our discipline.

“They can create something from nothing with go-forward ball, and that's what happened two or three times in a row.”

Ireland was dealt a major blow moments before kickoff when wing James Lowe suffered a back spasm in the warmup and had to withdraw.

But the way Ireland started suggested France was in for a long afternoon. The Irish camped in the French 22 but breached an equally fierce defense only once, and Doris was held up over the line by opposite Gregory Alldritt.

After McCarthy's yellow card, his heft was missed when France mauled a lineout infield, shortened the defense and Bielle-Biarrey scored in a seventh straight test, eclipsing Penaud's France record.

Dupont then exited, exposing France's risk of a 7-1 bench with only one back reserve. But the gamble paid off handsomely. Lucu was outstanding and the “bomb squad,” notably Emmanuel Meafou and Julien Marchand, overpowered a tiring Ireland in the third quarter.

AP rugby: https://apnews.com/hub/rugby

France's Damian Penaud runs to score a try during the Six Nations rugby union match between Ireland and France, at Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, March 8, 2025. (Niall Carson/PA via AP)

France's Oscar Jegou, bottom, scores a try during the Six Nations rugby union match between Ireland and France, at Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, March 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

Ireland's Jack Conan dejected after a try was scored during the Six Nations rugby union match between Ireland and France, at Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, March 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

France's Damian Penaud reacts after scoring a try during the Six Nations rugby union match between Ireland and France, at Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, March 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

France's Damian Penaud runs to score a try during the Six Nations rugby union match between Ireland and France, at Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, March 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

France's Damian Penaud, left, breaks away from Ireland's Sam Prendergast, to score a try during the Six Nations rugby union match between Ireland and France, at Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, March 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

France's Oscar Jegou, centre, celebrates with his teammate Thibaud Flament, after scoring a try during the Six Nations rugby union match between Ireland and France, at Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, March 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

France's Louis Bielle-Biarrey, centre, celebrates with his teammate Maxime Lucu, after scoring a try during the Six Nations rugby union match between Ireland and France, at Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, March 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

WASHINGTON (AP) — When acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed off on a nearly $1.8 billion fund meant to compensate President Donald Trump's allies for alleged political prosecution, he may have pleased his boss.

But the eyebrow-raising move — the latest in his push to prove his loyalty to Trump — has agitated the same Republican lawmakers if he is nominated for the permanent job.

Blanche insists he’s not auditioning for the job of attorney general. But a succession of splashy steps the Justice Department has taken under his watch since he took the position on an acting basis last month, including an indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, has left no doubt about the impression he’s hoping to make on the president who appointed him.

The fund in particular has put Blanche at the center of a Republican firestorm at a time when he aims to establish himself as the perfect person for the job for the remainder of Trump’s term. And it sharpened concerns from Democrats and other Blanche critics that he has not shed his mantle as the president’s personal attorney.

“So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong — Take your pick,” Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former majority leader, said in a statement.

A former federal prosecutor in New York, Blanche came to public prominence for his lead role on Trump's defense team, including during the Republican's hush money trial in New York. That perch afforded him, he has said, a firsthand look at what he contends was the weaponization of the criminal justice system against Trump.

He was brought into the Justice Department as deputy attorney general, the No. 2 job, then was elevated last month after Trump ousted Pam Bondi.

Now he finds himself the latest Trump-appointed attorney general to simultaneously confront expectations from subordinates to uphold institutional norms and demands from the president to do his bidding.

Trump's first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was forced out after the 2018 midterms after infuriating the president over his recusal from an investigation into ties between Russia and the 2016 presidential campaign. Another, William Barr, resigned after their relationship fizzled over Barr's refusal to back Trump's baseless claims of massive election fraud. Bondi was removed after struggling to bring successful prosecutions against Trump's political opponents.

Two weeks after becoming acting attorney general, Blanche announced the appointment of Joseph diGenova, an 81-year-old former Justice Department prosecutor from the Reagan administration, to a special position inside the department. He'll oversee a Florida-based investigation into whether former law enforcement and intelligence officials conspired over the last decade to undermine Trump.

“At some point, at the right time, that will be made public and the American people will see exactly what happened to this administration and President Trump over the past decade," Blanche told Fox News.

Prior government reviews of the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation, a centerpiece of the current conspiracy investigation, have failed to produce criminal charges against senior officials or evidence of criminal conduct by them. It's not clear what, if any, new information the continuing investigation has developed.

The Justice Department also last month obtained an indictment charging Comey, a Trump foe whose prosecution the president has long called for, with threatening Trump through a social media photo of seashells in the numerical arrangement of “86 47" — a case legal experts say will be challenging for prosecutors. Comey has said he wouldn't be surprised if the Justice Department pursues additional indictments.

In other moves, Blanche announced an indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that has been the target of conservative outrage, with misleading donors about its activities, and has publicly defended a Justice Department crackdown on leaks to the news media, including subpoenas to reporters.

Arguably the most audacious demonstration of loyalty to Trump came this week when the Justice Department announced the creation of a $1.776 billion fund to compensate people who feel they've been unjustly investigated and prosecuted, coupled with a guarantee of immunity from tax audits for Trump and his eldest sons.

As Republican concerns grew, Blanche held a tense meeting with GOP lawmakers Thursday. Shortly afterward, Senate Republicans abruptly left Washington without voting on a roughly $70 billion bill to fund immigration enforcement agencies.

Blanche, who defended the fund at a congressional hearing this week, has said anyone who believes they've been persecuted can apply for compensation regardless of political affiliation. But the fund has been widely understood as a boon to Trump allies investigated during the Biden administration.

“It’s pretty clear that he’s not the attorney general for the United States as much as he's the attorney general for President Trump,” said Stephen Saltzburg, a George Washington University law professor and senior Justice Department official in the 1980s. He said Blanche would get an A+ if report cards were issued for fealty to Trump.

David Laufman, a former chief of staff to the deputy attorney general in President George W. Bush's administration, said that rather than protecting the Justice Department's independence, Blanche has been a “willing and ardent accomplice for carrying out any partisan or corrupt scheme the White House may devise.”

Blanche’s supporters dismiss the suggestion he is trying to curry favor with Trump to secure the permanent job.

“What he is doing is he is seeking justice based on facts and the law,” said Jay Town, who served as a U.S. attorney in Alabama during the first Trump administration. “And I don’t think that will ever change about him, whether he is the attorney general going forward or doesn’t spend another day in the administration. He is an honorable man and anybody that knows him knows that to be true.”

Blanche also says he is not angling to keep his job or feeling pressure to placate Trump.

He has told reporters he would be honored to be nominated but, "if he chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I will say, ‘Thank you very much. I love you, sir.’ I don’t have any goals or aspirations beyond that.”

In recent days, he's functioned as the fund's public face and most visible defender, a role consistent with his comfort in the spotlight. He sometimes holds multiple press conferences a week and grants interviews to a variety of news outlets, a contrast to Bondi, who largely stuck to Fox News appearances.

His defenders say his experience as a federal prosecutor has made him a more sophisticated communicator for the department than Bondi, but his statements have at times invited backlash, including his refusal to rule out that violent Jan. 6 rioters could be eligible for payouts.

Though Blanche will appoint the five commissioners tasked with processing claims, his precise role in the fund’s implementation is unclear. He told CNN it was developed through negotiations with Trump’s private lawyers, not him.

For some Democrats, that's a difference without a distinction.

“Mr. Attorney General, you are acting today like the president's personal attorney," Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, told Blanche during a combative exchange in the Senate hearing, "and that's the whole problem."

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche arrives for a closed-door meeting with Republican senators who are expected to abandon a proposal for $1 billion in security money for the White House complex and President Donald Trump's ballroom after it has failed to win enough party support, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche arrives for a closed-door meeting with Republican senators who are expected to abandon a proposal for $1 billion in security money for the White House complex and President Donald Trump's ballroom after it has failed to win enough party support, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)