Donald Trump’s cabinet picks have been eclectic and often controversial but a unifying theme is emerging, experts say, with the US president-elect’s nominees offering staunch support to fossil fuels and either downplaying or denying the climate crisis caused by the burning of these fuels.

Trump ran on promises to eviscerate “green new scam” climate policies and to “drill, baby, drill” for more oil and gas, and his choices to run the major organs of the US government echo such sentiments, particularly his picks relating to the environment, with Lee Zeldin chosen as the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Chris Wright as energy secretary and Doug Burgum as interior secretary.

“With these choices it looks like Project 2025 is back with full force, and it will be the blueprint for the Trump administration 2.0,” said Daniel Esty, an environmental policy expert at Yale University, in reference to the rightwing manifesto that calls for the deletion of environmental and climate protections.

“Some people didn’t think Trump would actually try to execute this but it looks like he really is going to pull back on climate change commitments, against the tide of history.”

A standout nomination is that of Wright, chief executive of the Colorado-based gas drilling company Liberty Energy, who has no government experience but was a major donor to Trump’s campaign and has frequently appeared on Fox News, and various podcasts, to extol the use of fossil fuels.

“There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either,” Wright said in a video posted online last year. He has denied that extreme weather is worsened by rising global temperatures and said that any impacts are “clearly overwhelmed by the benefits of increasing energy consumption”. Wright has opined that “carbon pollution” and even “clean energy” are “nonsense terms” that have been “made up by alarmists”.

Trump has said in a statement that his team will slash “totally unnecessary regulation” and “drive US Energy Dominance, which will drive down Inflation, win the AI arms race with China (and others), and expand American Diplomatic Power to end Wars all across the World”. The statement did not mention the climate crisis or the need to move away from fossil fuels.

Scientists are clear that the human and economic costs of the climate crisis are real, and far outstrip the action required to shift to clean energy. This energy transformation is already under way, with investment in renewables outpacing fossil fuels globally for the first time last year, with solar being installed at three times the capacity rate of gas in the US in 2023.

“He’s the most worrisome of these folks,” Esty said of Wright. “He’s the closest thing there is to a climate denier, which sets him apart from policymakers across the world.” Sean Casten, a Democratic member of Congress, was more pointed: “Chris Wright is a science-denying, self-serving, sanctimonious fracker who consistently puts the wants of energy producers over the needs of American energy consumers.”

Wright’s views will be at home within the Trump administration, however, with several other cabinet picks expressing doubts over established climate science and actions to cut planet-heating emissions. Zeldin, the putative EPA head, said in 2014 he was “not sold yet on the whole argument that we have as serious a problem as other people are” with global heating, adding in 2018 he did not support the Paris climate agreement, which Trump is again expected to withdraw the US from.

Marco Rubio, nominee for secretary of state at a time when the international community is struggling to avert disastrous global heating, previously said he did not accept the climate is changing and while he has modified this view more recently he has criticized policies to lower emissions and “the left’s climate change alarmism”.

Meanwhile, Pete Hesgeth, lined up to be head of the Department of Defense, itself one of the largest polluting entities in the world, has said climate change has become a “religion”. He said in 2019 “it’s all about control for them”, while appearing on Fox News. “That’s why climate change is the perfect enemy. They get to control your life to deal with it no matter what’s happening.”

Another Fox personality, the former Republican congressman Sean Duffy, is primed to be secretary of transportation, despite having no prior experience in an arena that produces more emissions than any other in the US.

Duffy, who in the 1990s appeared in MTV reality shows including The Real World: Boston, pondered this month on Fox: “If you say the climate’s changing, is it coming from CO2 or is it coming from the sun? Why is the climate changing?” The world is heating up because of combusted fossil fuels and deforestation, not the sun.

Even Robert F Kennedy Jr, once a hero to the environmental movement and an advocate for climate action, has shifted his views, attacking “this fixation upon carbon” and endorsing Trump, who has called the climate crisis “a big hoax”. Kennedy, a fierce opponent of vaccines and wind farms, has been nominated to be health secretary.

Burgum, the potential interior secretary, is a moderate compared to these other picks, having accepted that the climate crisis is real and even, as governor of North Dakota, setting a target for the state to be carbon neutral, albeit via unproven carbon-capture technology rather than emissions cuts. He is set to be Trump’s overall energy czar, tasked with driving up fossil fuel production, as well as managing a fifth of the US landmass in his interior role.

“North Dakota governor Doug Burgum is a proven leader and values an all-of-the-above energy approach,” said Heather Reams, president of the center-right Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions group. “Republicans recognize current federal processes are too bureaucratic and oftentimes prevent new energy projects from ever breaking ground.”

Reams added that speeded up permitting under Burgum promises “the opportunity to lessen our reliance on adversarial supply chains, reinvigorate our manufacturing sector, encourage investments and reduce global emissions”.

But Burgum is still a vocal supporter of oil and gas drilling, with his family leasing 200 acres of farmland in North Dakota to energy company Continental Resources, run by another major Trump backer in Harold Hamm. Burgum, along with Hamm, helped set up a Mar-a-Lago dinner between Trump and oil executives in which the president-elect asked for $1bn in campaign donations while vowing to gut environmental regulations if elected.

“I think under his own agenda Burgum would do a fine job, but I think he’s been brought in because of his allegiance to the Project 2025 blueprint,” said Esty.

“Overall, I think we will see a significant pullback in the breathability of air and drinkability of water, in the protections Americans have come to expect. I don’t think Trump will dramatically shift US energy production because we are already producing a lot of oil and gas but he certainly won’t be phasing them out. It’s an administration that will cause damage.”

Lidia Thorpe has been suspended from the Senate under an archaic and little-used rule of the chamber for making “inappropriate and sometimes abusive comments”, after she appeared to throw paper at Pauline Hanson during a tense parliamentary debate on Wednesday.

Government Senate leader Penny Wong moved for Thorpe to be suspended from the Senate from Wednesday night until the end of Thursday – the last scheduled sitting day of the year. The vote passed 46-11, with only the Greens opposing the motion, which was supported by Labor, the Coalition, One Nation, Ralph Babet, Jacqui Lambie and David Pocock.

Wong said there had been “multiple instances” where Thorpe had made “inappropriate, sometimes abusive comments” towards other senators and then disrupted proceedings by refusing to withdraw her comments. The suspension came just hours after Thorpe angrily interjected during a debate sparked by Hanson unsuccessfully attempting to have former Labor senator Fatima Payman investigated for an alleged section 44 citizenship issue

The Senate president, Sue Lines, said Thorpe’s behaviour was “not acceptable” and that such behaviour “will not be tolerated”.

“Despite attempts to work with Senator Thorpe, she’s increasingly engaged in such behaviour in the Senate,” Wong said.

“This fortnight alone, the senator has been censured by the Senate, sworn in the chamber, repeatedly made offensive gestures when leaving the chamber and made comments, resulting in First Nation senators from across this chamber feeling functionally unsafe, and all of that was prior to today’s incident.

“This behaviour would not be tolerated in any workplace, and we cannot tolerate it in our workplace.”

Coalition Senate leader Simon Birmingham called the motion to suspend Thorpe a “line in the sand” moment, claiming the independent senator had “crossed a line” in her actions on Wednesday.

Birmingham accused the Greens of a “shameful double standard” in opposing the suspension motion for Thorpe, claiming the minor party members would not tolerate similar behaviour from other senators.

The Greens senator Larissa Waters said the minor party did not think the behaviour was appropriate but believed Thorpe’s suspension was not “an appropriate and proportionate response to that action”.

“Let us all reflect on how we behave, but let those of us who live with white privilege remember that institutionalised racism doesn’t affect us as it does people of colour,” Waters said.

“I’m sure anyone who was in the chamber would realise that the behaviours that were undertaken this morning came following an attempt by another senator to exclude a different senator of colour, and it was in the context of the debate that had racially charged overtones.”

Hanson earlier on Wednesday attempted to have the now independent senator Payman, who was born in Afghanistan, investigated for an alleged section 44 citizenship issue. Hanson alleged Payman had not provided enough documents to prove she had revoked that citizenship, and on Wednesday morning attempted to table her own documents relating to her attempt to refer the issue for investigation.

In response, Thorpe appeared to rip up a paper copy of Hanson’s motion and threw it in Hanson’s direction. Some pieces of the paper appeared to hit Hanson.

Shortly after, Thorpe walked out of the chamber, holding up her middle finger.

Hanson said she was “pleased” to see Thorpe suspended from the Senate, claiming she had experienced a number of “barbs” and “jabs” while sitting near her in the upper house.

“Each and every one of you know that since Senator Thorpe has been in this place, it has been the downfall of this chamber because of her aggression towards calling each and every one of us, who is white, that we are colonialists, that we have stolen the land,” Hanson said.

“That’s not what this place is about, and that’s why I’m pleased to see … something had to be done to rein it in.”

Guardian Australia has contacted Thorpe for a response.

Joseph Darville has fond memories of swimming with his young son off the south coast of Grand Bahama island, and watching together as scores of dolphins frolicked offshore. A lifelong environmentalist now aged 82, Darville has always valued the rich marine habitat and turquoise blue seas of the Bahamas, which have lured locals and tourists alike for generations.

The dolphins are now mostly gone, he says, as human encroachment proliferated and the environment deteriorated. “You don’t see them now; the jetskis go by and frighten them off.

“There’s a lot going on. It’s a tragedy – and continues to be a tragedy,” says Darville.

Now, he fears further acceleration of the decline, with the scheduled opening next year of Carnival Cruise Line’s vast Celebration Key resort, now under construction on the island’s south coast.

The sprawling entertainment complex across a mile-long beach, already stripped of its protective mangroves, will ultimately bring up to an additional 4 million people a year to the island, Carnival says, with four of its ships able to dock simultaneously.

Concerns about giant cruise ships bringing multitudes of tourists, and pollution, to the ecologically fragile Bahamas are nothing new. Neither is the concept of foreign-owned cruise companies buying land to build private retreats exclusively for their passengers: Disney’s Castaway Cay, a private island near Great Abaco, last year celebrated its 25th birthday.

But if only for their scale alone, Celebration Key and two other expansive developments just like it, either recently opened or being built elsewhere in the 700-island archipelago, represent a worrisome new threat, campaigners say.

Cruise companies have spent at least $1.5bn (£1.1bn) since 2019 buying or leasing land in the Caribbean, according to a Bloomberg analysis in May, and Darville wonders what that means for the future of his beloved islands.

As executive chair of the environmental group Save the Bays, he was part of an alliance that fought against the Grand Bahama development, as well as Disney’s Lookout Cay at Lighthouse Point, which opened on Eleuthera island in June, and Royal Caribbean’s Royal Beach Club at Paradise Island, which broke ground in April.

“It has to stop somewhere; we have to preserve something for our future generations, for our own native Bahamians,” Darville says. “We cannot always be seduced by these cruise lines and other developers who come in and eat what’s left of our country.”

The “seductions” he sees are the cruise lines touting the supposed economic advantages to the Bahamas of being allowed to buy and develop land, promoting what he claims are questionable environmental credentials, and pledging community investments for locals in terms of jobs and grants for small businesses and education.

Such messaging has been well received in a country still struggling to recover from Hurricane Dorian in 2019, the worst natural disaster in its history, which prompted the near-collapse of the tourism industry.

An unemployment rate that reached almost 20% after the storm and subsequent Covid-19 pandemic has finally dropped back into single figures, but a stroll around once-bustling Freeport, the largest town, cruise port and commercial hub of Grand Bahama, provides plenty of evidence of the island’s decline.

The waterfront 542-room Grand Lucayan resort, formerly the grande dame of Grand Bahamian tourism, sits mostly empty, abandoned and awaiting a buyer, with only a small portion of the development still open.

The adjacent straw market, once a thriving hub of souvenir stalls, entertainment and refreshment, is largely bereft of customers, even when a cruise ship is in town. And taxi drivers can spend a day or more waiting at the airport or cruise terminal without earning a fare.

It is hardly surprising, then, that the cruise companies, amplified by the Bahamian government, honed their pitches for land deals to receptive ears, focused on the jobs they would create and the dollars they would bring in.

Carnival, for example, says all but two of the 31 construction companies working on Celebration Key are owned by Bahamians. Job fairs over the summer, offering employment with perks including medical insurance and paid time-off, were swamped.

Disney says it created more than 200 “high-quality” jobs for locals at Lookout Cay, has invested more than $1m into the local economy since it opened, and has promised almost as much again for playgrounds, sports fields and infrastructure for the island’s students.

On Paradise Island, Royal Caribbean’s deal for the 7-hectare (17-acre) site included a promise that Bahamians “will be invited” to own up to 49% of the venture.

The websites of all three projects are also heavy with words and phrases such as “environmental commitment”, “sustainability” and “responsibility”.

Meanwhile, Isaac Chester Cooper, the Bahamas’ tourism minister, continues to cite a Tourism Economics study, prepared for Carnival in 2019, stating that the “development, construction and ongoing operation of Celebration Key” would create thousands of Bahamian jobs and generate a $1.5bn boost for the Bahama’s GDP.

By contrast, Carnival Corporation recorded an all-time high $21.6bn annual revenue in 2023; Royal Caribbean’s revenue increased 57% year-on-year to $13.9bn; and that of Disney’s Magical Cruise Company, while smaller at $2.2bn, still represented a rise of almost 91%.

Cooper did not return a request for comment from the Guardian.

Darville concedes it is harder to push an environmental message in such circumstances. “Whenever there’s word there’s going to be cruise ship development coming to the Bahamas, the first thing the government looks at, and the people generally, is how many people will be employed, what economic benefits we’re going to derive,” he says

He says that ignores the environmental impact and damage caused by developments on previously pristine Bahamas beaches. Mangrove destruction is a particular concern, given the protection the trees provide against storm surge from hurricanes.

But campaigners say the projects are also significantly detrimental to wildlife, in water and on land, as well as precious coral reefs already imperilled by rising sea temperatures.

At Lookout Cay, Disney built a half mile-long pier to allow cruise liners to dock, driving countless support posts deep into the seabed. The company insisted that “viable individual corals within the pier’s footprint were expertly relocated to improve the health of struggling coral reefs in the area”.

Darville is sceptical and worries about the effect on coral reefs and fish populations of thousands of people in the water slathered in chemical-based sunscreens. “When Disney was putting out its proposal, no matter what they said or how they did it, there was going to be a catastrophic impact,” he says.

Gail Woon, executive director of the educational non-profit group Earthcare, and partner of the Global Cruise Activist Network, an alliance of industry critics, says previous developments in the islands that were touted as environmentally friendly turned out to be anything but.

She cites a private golf resort where residences can cost tens of millions of dollars, but construction and operations destroyed coral just offshore.

“We had coral reef biologists testify that if you put a golf course on the beach and fertilise the grass, the run-off will go into the ocean and kill the coral because they can’t take large amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus,” she says.

“They went ahead and did it anyway, then where there should have been pristine sand and clear water they have these big clumps of green and brown macro-algae that smothers the corals. They were destroying the product they were trying to promote.”

Through projects such as Earthcare’s EcoKids, Woon and others around the Bahamas are working to educate the next generation about environmental challenges facing the country and the world.

It’s a message reinforced at Conservation Cove, a small but thriving living laboratory east of Freeport where cruise ship tourists and pupils on school field trips learn the importance of coral reefs and mangrove restoration.

Javan Hunt, mangrove nursery coordinator at Conservation Cove, says: “If you make decisions based on ignorance you allow people to run over you, or sell you something that’s not in your best interest.

“So for me the most important thing is to educate those coming up, so that in five years, 10 years and beyond, they can make informed decisions – and won’t just smile when someone is presenting shit to them and telling them it’s treasure.”

An alleged would-be drug smuggler soaked a cow onesie in methamphetamine, part of a whole suitcase full of clothes he tried to sneak aboard a plane, US justice officials have said.

Raj Matharu allegedly checked in two bags at Los Angeles international airport on a flight to Sydney, Australia, the US Department of Justice said on Tuesday.

As the cases passed through X-ray machines, customs officers became suspicious and opened them up for a closer look.

There they found more than a dozen items of clothing – including the cow onesie – that were dried stiff and covered in a white residue, the department alleged.

Tests revealed the clothes had been soaked in a meth solution and allowed to dry, with more than 1kg (2.2 pounds) of the drug concealed among the fabrics, it further alleged.

“Drug dealers are continually inventing creative ways of smuggling dangerous narcotics in pursuit of illicit profit,” the US attorney Martin Estrada said.

“In the process, they are poisoning communities throughout the world.”

Matharu, 31, of Northridge, California, has been charged with one count of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine.

Spray paint and protest banners cover the walls and pavements of Dongduk women’s university in Seoul. “We’d rather perish than open our doors,” reads one slogan. Since 11 November, students have staged a sit-in, initially occupying the main building and blocking access to classroom buildings across campus, forcing classes to move online and a planned job fair to be cancelled.

The outcry was sparked by plans for some departments to admit male students but have since spiralled into a wider clash over the future of women-only spaces in a country that is grappling with the issue of gender equality.

“The university’s unilateral decision, made without any input from the students who actually study and live here, left us with no choice but to raise our voices,” one member of Dongduk’s student council says, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In South Korea, women’s universities were established in the early 20th century as one of the only paths to higher education for women in a strictly patriarchal society.

Today, they are seen by some as vital institutions for nurturing female talent in a country that remains deeply male-dominated. South Korea ranks 94th out of 146 countries in gender equality, according to the World Economic Forum. Women hold just 20% of parliamentary seats and make up only 7.3% of executives at the country’s 500 largest companies.

Yoonkyeong Nah, a professor of cultural anthropology at Yonsei University, says that, more broadly: “The protests reflect how young Korean women feel unsafe in public spaces”, citing the prevalence of illegal filming, stalking, and digital sex crimes, including the latest deepfake pornography epidemic.

“While providing safe spaces isn’t the primary purpose of women’s universities, students are protesting to maintain what they see as a secure environment for learning – it reveals broader problems in Korean society,” Nah says.

The backlash

The outcry began after students discovered the university administration had been discussing plans to convert its design and performing arts departments to become co-educational.

Administrators insist co-education was only one proposal being discussed – citing practical needs for male actors in performing arts and long-term competitiveness concerns.

On Thursday, a partial agreement saw classes resume after the university agreed to temporarily suspend co-education discussions, but on Monday, a meeting between student leaders and university administrators reportedly ended without resolution, with students refusing to end their occupation of the main building until the complete withdrawal of the co-education plans.

In a statement afterwards, university president Kim Myung-ae warned of “resolute action” against what she described as illegal protests that had violated educational rights.

As the weeks have gone by, the dispute has increasingly become a political battleground.

Han Dong-hoon, leader of the ruling conservative party, declared that “instigators of violent incidents” must be held accountable for property damage, while Lee Jun-seok, another prominent lawmaker who has frequently clashed with women’s groups, criticised the protests as “uncivilised”.

The head of a state-run human resources agency suggested “weeding out” the university’s graduates during hiring rounds and declared he “would never accept” a daughter-in-law from the institution.

In response, opposition politicians have accused conservatives of weaponising the protests to deflect from their own political troubles, including allegations of election nomination interference. Former lawmaker Jang Hye-young condemned what she called “women bashing” tactics and warned they only “make life more difficult for all women in South Korea”.

“Stop using us”, said Choi Hyun-ah, president of Dongduk’s student council, in a recent interview with local daily Kyunghyang Shinmun. “Those who frame this as a gender conflict are simply using students to justify their own views.”

In a later statement, the council said politicians and other officials “fail to see the essence and context of the situation, dismissing us simply as ‘rioters’.”

The protests have also sparked a strong anti-feminist backlash online.

The “male rights” anti-feminist group New Men’s Solidarity has weighed in. The group’s leader, recently convicted for defaming a feminist activist, has threatened to expose the personal information of the “rioters” online, prompting safety concerns.

One female YouTuber with over 60,000 followers who voiced support for the protesters was forced to shut down her account after allegedly facing sexual harassment and impersonation attempts.

In the background, a demographic crisis

The dispute also reflects deeper structural challenges posed by South Korea’s changing demographics, says Kyuseok Kim, a higher education expert and scholar.

Student enrolment in higher education has plunged 18% to 3 million students over the past decade as the country’s already low birthrate continues to slide, forcing some institutions to potentially shutter departments or close entirely.

“Universities face a precarious balancing act: preserving their identity while implementing the changes necessary to secure their future,” Kim says. “Even legacy institutions are being forced to reconsider their identities amid unprecedented demographic pressures”.

After students overwhelmingly voted last week in favour of the protests, Choi Hyun-ah, the student council president said: “We have made history today in our fight for a democratic Dongduk.

“The existence of women’s universities is about advancing women’s educational rights; transitioning to co-education would mean there’s no reason for us to exist at all.”

Manchester City’s losing sequence is over – just. But they remain a listing ship that can go down at any moment. “Fragile” was Pep Guardiola’s summation of his team’s state, and a clue to the manager’s own mood was the cut to his nose that he stated was self‑inflicted, by a finger, due to the ­contest’s travails.

City were 3-0 up after 75 minutes but a late horror show ceded the advantage as Feyenoord preyed on home nerves via Anis Hadj Moussa, Santiago Giménez and David Hancko, who drew ­Feyenoord level to secure a well-fought point.

After five consecutive defeats, on the cards was a canter of a victory that would have made Guardiola and his players feel far brighter before the champions’ next challenge: the game at Liverpool on Sunday. After the shaky finish, however, the trip to Arne Slot’s leaders is the last one City would want.

Feyenoord, who arrived as the Eredivisie’s fourth-placed side, appeared beaten by two Erling Haaland goals and one from Ilkay Gündogan. The second and third goals came shortly after the interval as Guardiola discarded the narrow 4-3-3 that proved toothless against Ange Postecoglu’s Tottenham on Satur­day for a 4-2-3-1 that, in the opening 45 minutes, still allowed gaps and was profligate.

The bigger picture, here, is that Rodri remains badly missed – for his steady head and cool control. Hadj Moussa’s and Giménez’s 75th‑ and 82nd-minute strikes each came because of Josko Gvardiol losing his calm and playing sloppy passes, while ­Ederson was at fault for rushing out for the visitors’ equaliser.

City are 15th, with eight points and nine to play for, so finishing in the top-eight berth that takes a side straight into the last 16 is no gimme, particularly as Juventus and Paris Saint-­Germain are two of their final three foes, Club Brugge the other. City conceded at least twice for a sixth successive game for the first time since 1963. Guardiola was calm afterwards, while acknowledging none of Feyenoord’s “three episodes” should have been allowed.

City began as relaxed as they ended haunted, Haaland and Phil Foden sharing a joke before kick-off then taking part in a fluid move: the ­latter crossed, the ball was turned back by Manuel Akanji, and the Norwegian headed but Timon Wellenreuther saved with a frantic dive low to the right.

Wellenreuther was then at fault. A misdirected pass was mopped up by City and suddenly a Jack ­Grealish volley rocketed goalwards before Foden’s back deflected it away.

But now we saw the clumsiness that has troubled Guardiola’s side as a sluggish Gündogan was robbed, City turned, and ­Gvardiol’s muscle was required to stymie ­Feyenoord along the right.

Cutting edge is another element City have lacked and while Foden’s pivot-and-shot made Wellenreuther save it was an emblem of this. Another issue has been the midfield gaps and the way Feyenoord punched down the left was one of many examples, causing the ever-more frustrated Guardiola to direct his ire at Bernardo Silva for not patrolling his flank.

City’s famed press malfunctioned, too. Brian Priske’s men stroked possession about in the manner their hosts wanted to. Feyenoord kept slipping through – as when the ball went tap-tap-tap-tap forward, and Igor Paixão hit the ball straight to Ederson.

Defending, City looked like a goal ­waiting to happen. Attack was far easier: a swashbuckling Foden surge that ­culminated in a blocked attempt took his team to the end in which they wanted to operate. After a Hwang In-beom rocket was repelled, City moved upfield again. But the same lack of precision meant Haaland hit a leg instead of kissing the back of Wellenreuther’s net.

But then a break. Quinten Timber caught Haaland and Radu Petrescu pointed to the spot. Feyenoord’s captain lost the argument with the referee and, after a delay, Haaland rammed the penalty into the bottom right corner, the relief among City enthusiasts tangible.

Could City grow from here and swagger through the second half before the weekend test? The answer was yes – up to 75 minutes. Gvardiol zipped the ball to Haaland at the fast pace required but the No 9 turned into traffic. Matheus Nunes, more direct, shot; a corner was claimed, and City were about to score a second for the first time since blasting Sparta Prague 5-0 here on 23 October. The ball was flighted in from the right quadrant, it popped out to Gündogan, and his left-foot volley pinged into the net off Hancko, wrongfooting Wellenreuther, and those wearing blue breathed calmer.

City moved on to easy street seconds later via the kind of back-to-front foray that had seemed extinct recently. Akanji fed Gündogan whose pirouette presaged a pass to the marauding Nunes down the right. He skated forward and skimmed over a cross that had Haaland, ever the arch predator, sliding home for 3-0.

Guardiola, as he likes to, pointed a celebration towards the posh seats in the gods behind him, and his players cruised. Grealish, Gvardiol and Foden all went close. City approached their usual imperiousness, so when Akanji sprayed the ball straight to Hancko he was relieved the Feyenoord defender steered wide. But his side’s worrying crumble was about to begin.

Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s hardline incoming border czar, has threatened to put the mayor of Denver in jail after the latter said he was willing to risk incarceration to resist the president-elect’s migrant mass deportation plan.

The threat was issued against Mike Johnston, a Democrat, who said he was not afraid of being jailed and encouraged people to protest against mass round-ups of immigrants in their cities and communities.

Johnston’s remarks came after Trump focused during the presidential election campaign on the Denver suburb of Aurora, which he said had become “a war zone” where apartment buildings had been taken over by Venezuelan gang members.

Asked to respond by Fox News’s Sean Hannity, Homan said: “Me and the Denver mayor, we agree on one thing; he’s willing to go to jail. I’m willing to put him in jail.”

Johnston had originally been asked by a local Denver television station to respond to Homan’s previous vows to arrest local leaders and politicians who stood in the way of deportation efforts.

He said he was not willing to go to jail, though he is “not afraid of that” in a Friday interview with 9 News.

“I think the goal is we want to be able to negotiate with reasonable people how to solve hard problems,” he told the outlet.

He said previously, in a separate interview, that he would send Denver police to the city line to confront federal agents – an action he likened to Tiananmen Square. He later withdrew the comments.

Speaking to Hannity, Homan insisted that he was willing to put Johnston “in jail because there’s a statute”.

“What it says is that it’s a felony if you knowingly harbour and conceal an illegal alien from immigration authorities. It’s also a felony to impede a federal law enforcement officer. So if he don’t help, that’s fine. He can get the hell out of the way, but we’re going to go do the job,” he said, before adding: “I find it hard to believe that any mayor or governor would say they don’t want public safety threats removed from their neighbourhoods.

“I don’t know what the hell is going on in Denver, but we’re going to go in and we’re going to go and we’re going to fix it. If you don’t want to fix it, if you don’t want to protect his communities, President Trump and Ice [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] will.”

Homan, who was deputy director of Ice in Trump’s first administration, said the president-elect had a “mandate from the American people … to save American lives”.

He has taken a similarly unbending stance against other local and state Democratic politicians who have declared their local fiefdoms “sanctuary cities” safe from Trump’s deportation plans.

Gavin Newsom, the California governor, and the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, have both vowed opposition. Pritzker recently told journalists: “If you come for my people, you come through me.”

In a separate Fox News interview at the weekend, Homan said the incoming administration would respond to blocking tactics by withholding federal funding from non-compliant cities and states.

“That’s going to happen, I guarantee you,” he told the network’s Mark Levin.

Justin Trudeau has called an emergency meeting with provincial premiers across Canada after the US president-elect, Donald Trump, threatened a 25% tariff on the United States’ northern neighbour.

Trump posted on social media that he would “sign all necessary documents” to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% tariff on all goods products coming into the United States, adding the levy would remain in place until “such time as drugs, in particular fentanyl, and all illegal aliens stop this invasion of our country!”

The Canadian prime minister said on Tuesday he had held a “good” conversation with Trump shortly after the social media post, working to tamp down fears of an immense economic hit to Canada. He did not say if Canada would impose retaliatory tariffs, as it did during a previous round of trade hostilities during Trump’s first presidency.

“We talked about how the intense and effective connections between our two countries flow back and forth,” he told reporters. “We talked about some of the challenges that we can work on together.”

Given the United States, Canada and Mexico renegotiated a trade pact in 2018 and have deeply intertwined supply chains, a levy of 25% would prove devastating to Canada’s economy. The United States remains Canada’s biggest trading partner, with nearly C$600bn in goods exported to the US last year.

Canadian ministers reacted with measured skepticism over the key claims made by Trump on immigration and drug trafficking.

While a small but growing number of migrants are using Canada as a way into the US, far more people enter through Mexico. Canada’s immigration minister, Marc Miller, likened the 23,000 interceptions by US officials at the northern border last year to a “significant weekend at the Mexico border”, where 1,530,523 “encounters” were recorded last year.

When it comes to the movement of fentanyl across the continent, so little enters the US through its northern border that the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) does not even mention Canada in a report from 2020, instead citing Mexico, China and India.

“The amount of fentanyl that crosses the US-Canadian border is basically homeopathic!” wrote Toronto-based journalist John Michael McGrath on X, critiquing people who “sanewash” Trump’s demands. “This isn’t a serious demand! You don’t have to be stupid in public!”

But the rightwing premier of the oil-rich province of Alberta said Trump had valid concerns over illegal activities at the shared border.

“We are calling on the federal government to work with the incoming administration to resolve these issues immediately, thereby avoiding any unnecessary tariffs on Canadian exports to the US,” Danielle Smith said in a social media post.

“The vast majority of Alberta’s energy exports to the US are delivered through secure and safe pipelines which do not in any way contribute to these illegal activities at the border,” said Smith, whose relations with Trudeau are icy.

For Trudeau, the tariff saga is likely to revive bitter memories of the trade feud with the US during Trump’s first term, when Canadian officials worked to minimize damage to the prized relationship with the US. At one point, Trump said he was “very unhappy” with the negotiations, singling out Canada’s chief negotiator, the then foreign minister Chrystia Freeland, who now serves as finance minister and deputy prime minister.

The threat of Trump’s tariffs pushed Canada’s main stock exchange down on Tuesday and Candace Laing, the head of Canada’s chamber of commerce, warned that “being America’s ‘nice neighbour’ won’t get us anywhere” in a sign of the potential shift in relations between the longtime allies.

“To [Trump], it’s about winners and losers – with Canada on the losing end,” said Laing in a statement on Tuesday. “Canada’s signature approach needs to evolve: we must be prepared to take a couple of punches if we’re going to stake out our position. It’s time to trade ‘sorry’ for ‘sorry, not sorry.’”

Trevor Tombe, an economist who authored a report on the consequences of US tariffs on Canada’s economy, warned a recession was likely if Trump followed through on the 25% tax.

Canada’s premiers have also warned a trade war would cause immense damage to their respective economies. Trudeau said provincial leaders will meet on Wednesday in an emergency meeting, calling for a “Team Canada” approach.

The Ontario premier, Doug Ford, who oversees Canada’s largest provincial economy, called Trump’s threats “unfair” and said it was “insulting” to compare Canada to Mexico when it came to immigration and potent drugs.

“It’s like a family member stabbing you right in the heart,” Ford told reporters Tuesday. He also warned that if the president makes good on his promise, Canada might have little choice: “We have to retaliate.”

Grants promised to farmers in England for planting hedges and cleaning up waterways have been frozen by the government.

The capital grants scheme, which was opened by the government to allow farmers to invest in infrastructure such as slurry storage so animal excrement does not go into rivers, has been abruptly paused. Farmers have said this will make it difficult for them to run their businesses in an environmentally friendly way.

The grants offer funding for specific environmental measures on farms such as tree-planting and maintenance, badger gates so the animals can get through fences without causing damage and wildlife boxes for creatures to nest in.

Lake district cattle farmer Andrea Meanwell said: “We have made changes to our grazing, management and breeds to plan for the agricultural transition but this is all very challenging.”

Joe Stanley, head of sustainable farming at the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust’s Allerton Project, added: “What a situation; the government changes the entire social contract with farmers to make them deliver for the environment, then cuts the funding off when farmers rise to the challenge.”

Government sources said the funding had been halted due to budget constraints.

This comes as the government faces protest from farmers over changes to inheritance tax that would lead to those who inherit the family farm paying a 20% levy on the value of the business above £1m. As farm income is low and falling, particularly compared with the value of land, farmers have argued the repayments will be impossible to make.

The prime minister, Keir Starmer, met the president of the National Farmers’ Union, Tom Bradshaw, on Monday to discuss changes to the tax regime to make it fairer to elderly farmers, including changing the rules over gifts so farm owners over a certain age do not have to live for seven years after they pass it down to their children.

A spokesperson for Defra confirmed the capital grants scheme review: “We will simplify and rationalise our grant funding, ensuring that grants are targeted towards those who need them most and where they can deliver the most benefit for food security and nature.”

The news comes after Rachel Reeves’s cuts to farming subsidies were larger than expected. Data from the Agricultural Industries Confederation (AIC) shows cuts to government payments have fallen far more sharply than expected. After Brexit, ministers pledged to slowly phase out the land area-based payments that the EU gave out under the common agricultural policy. This was to allow farmers to transition to a new system of being paid for action on nature – such as planting hedgerows and looking after the soil – without a huge financial shock and potentially going bust.

However, the chancellor announced a cut of 79% to these payments. Farmers were expecting a more tapered cut: the AIC data shows that, at the top end of the scale, a farmer receiving £62,000 last year was expecting £38,000 this year but would now be getting £7,200. For farmers on tight margins, this change could wipe out profits.