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.

By now you will be aware of the petition demanding another general election. Finally, an answer to what would happen if Maga had sex with the People’s Vote. I assume we don’t use the phrase “bastard offspring” any longer, but in this case I’ll be making an exception. To see the obnoxious essence of not one but two excruciating political movements hook up and push out a screaming signature-baby is not a pretty sight. I have immediately launched a petition to forcibly sterilise all political movements.

To recap, this is the petition started by a Shropshire publican after he’d Googled “how to change the prime minister” and it told him to start a petition. Not a great ad for Google’s search accuracy, let’s face it, but I guess we already knew that was ageing like an unsealed bag-in-box of Phillip Schofield wine. Anyway, the resultant petition has now garnered two and a half million digital signatures, probably many more by the time you read this, and been pushed by public figures ranging from Elon Musk to Michael Caine. Fine. The Jaws film where the shark genuinely follows the Brody family all the way to the Bahamas is no longer the stupidest thing Michael’s done.

We’ll come to the perfectly reasonable complaints about the way Keir Starmer’s government has been doing business shortly – and to the degree to which it has brought this on itself. But first, I think we do have to consider the unfortunate fact that the UK has once again caught the eye of the man soon to be found affixing stickers reading “Elon’s room – keep out!!!!!!!” on the door of the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House.

The Space X/Tesla/United States of America boss keeps pushing the petition on his X platform, with one word prompts like “Interesting” or “Wow”. I mean, not really? Big wows, more like. And it’s hard to believe Elon’s attempts to play dumbly impressed. He must know that in the UK and beyond, you can basically Petition McPetitionface any old poll thanks to platforms like his. But if he doesn’t, can someone trick Vice-President Moobs McMoobsface into agreeing that this campaign to re-run a vote we honestly had 10 minutes ago should be called “The People’s Vote”? I can see Elon gullibly liking the phrasing – even though it’s a title which has always implied that yeah, you do realise some alleged “people” already voted, but the result was something you didn’t like, so were they ever even people at all? Time for the actual humans to vote.

Regrettably, Musk hasn’t limited himself to wading into merely one aspect of British affairs, also opting to repost a picture of far-right Tommy Robinson self-swaddling in a prison-issue blanket, with Elon inquiring: “Why is he in prison for 18 months?” Oh. Normally I would respond to a particularly obtuse online inquiry with a cordial: “Do you have the internet? If so, you could Google it!” But given Elon owns part of the internet, there must be something that keeps him from carrying out this basic task – possibly a growing distrust of Google’s search accuracy.

In which case, happy to oblige. Robinson is in prison for contempt of court, because he wouldn’t stop repeating false claims about a refugee teenager. And it’s not even the first time he’s been in prison for contempt of court. He went before for trying to collapse a grooming trial, which would have put multiple female victims through the horror of having to testify twice. It’s almost as if he doesn’t give a toss about the women, repeatedly indulges in behaviour that in effect makes him their groomers’ and rapists’ friend, and does the entire thing for clicks – and the ready cash that follows. As a man who recently caught a space rocket with some chopsticks, Elon should surely be the person to grasp that the Robinson grift is not exactly rocket science.

Anyway, back to this petition. About 487 leaps down the food chain, Elon is ably supported by Richard Tice, the mid-90s knitwear catalogue model beta-ed out of the Reform leadership by Nigel Farage. Tice is another one that seems to have gone full crybaby about a vote result. Richard once called the People’s Vote campaign a “losers’ vote”, but is now pushing daily for the petition to become “the biggest petition ever” in the UK. Can he have it both ways? Can the QAnon shaman and Steve Bray make a spiritual baby? I wouldn’t have thought so, but the internet is once again refusing to be constrained by facts. As indeed is Richard.

However. Having said all that, what did Labour expect? We live in chaotic times where conventions and norms are disintegrating by the day. As many, many people said at the time, Labour not being straight with the electorate about money during the election campaign always threatened to go tits up sooner rather than later. Making silly obfuscations about “opening up the books” was warned against by everyone from the heights of the Institute for Fiscal Studies to the depths of this column. Promising revolution via trivial cuts to taxes or services was always putting Starmer’s would-be administration on a hiding to nothing. So here we all are. If populism is claiming there are simple answers to complex problems, then Labour’s manifesto at the recent general election was squarely populist. And if you don’t treat the people like adults, you can hardly complain when they go in for juvenile petitions.

• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

• A Year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar. On Tuesday 3 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back at a political year like no other, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live

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My ability to orgasm from penetrative sex seems to come and go. With some partners, I never climaxed; with others, I was able to climax at the beginning of the relationship and then became unable to; and then there are those with whom I had no issues climaxing. Now, I have suddenly become unable to orgasm from penetration with a partner that I previously had no problem climaxing with. I know people chalk it up to being a mental thing, or stress, but the relationship was great, the sex was great and out of nowhere I just became unable to feel anything during penetrative sex. We have been trying to solve this for 11 months.

Is achieving orgasm through penetrative sex really so important to you? Many people see this as an ideal and even (erroneously) consider that there is something wrong with a woman who cannot climax during vaginal intercourse. For most women, though, the main physiological pleasure centre is the clitoris, which is located outside the vagina. So, in order for a woman to have an orgasm during penetration, areas related to the clitoris have to be stimulated; very often, direct clitoral stimulation has to be employed. So, in worrying about the elusiveness of one type of orgasm, you are expecting a great deal of yourself and of your physical sexual response.

It is normal to have times when orgasm does not occur for one reason or another. Sometimes, a change in position will help the connection with clitoral nerve endings, or with an area sometimes referred to as the G-spot. Experiment, but avoid being goal-oriented during lovemaking, as that will set unrealistic expectations, increase anxiety and reduce the likelihood of reaching orgasm. Instead, try to simply focus on giving and receiving pleasure.

Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders.

Donald Trump’s transition team is planning for all cabinet picks to receive sweeping security clearances from the president-elect and only face FBI background checks after the incoming administration takes over the bureau and its own officials are installed in key positions, according to people familiar with the matter.

The move appears to mean that Trump’s team will continue to skirt FBI vetting and may not receive classified briefings until Trump is sworn in on 20 January and unilaterally grant sweeping security clearances across the administration.

Trump’s team has regarded the FBI background check process with contempt for months, a product of their deep distrust of the bureau ever since officials turned over transition records to the Russia investigation during the first Trump presidency, the people said.

But delaying FBI vetting could also bring ancillary PR benefits for the Trump team if some political appointees run into problems during a background check, which could upend their Senate confirmation process, or if they struggle to obtain security clearances once in the White House.

The putative process for obtaining a clearance in the first Trump administration involved the White House’s personnel security office relying on an FBI background check to decide whether to grant one. The background check initially looked for untrustworthiness or red flags that could be exploited by adversaries.

If the initial checks against law enforcement databases uncovered no issues, applicants were granted an interim clearance while deeper investigations continued until it was advanced to a permanent clearance. The current Trump plan appears set to bypass that initial stage.

“The Trump-Vance transition lawyers continue to constructively engage with the Biden-Harris administration lawyers regarding all agreements contemplated by the Presidential Transition Act. We will update you once a decision is made,” Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes said in a statement.

Trump’s team have long viewed the process with suspicion, arguing that it was pointless to have government employees have the ability to recommend against granting a security clearance given Trump has the power, as president, to ultimately give clearances to whomever he likes.

Trump himself has repeatedly railed against the FBI of being part of the “deep state” conspiracy to undermine his agenda.

During the first Trump presidency, multiple advisers faced delays and hurdles in obtaining top level clearances, including Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn and the controversial former Trump White House national security aide Sebastian Gorka.

Kushner, who played a number of roles in the first administration and was involved in drawing up a Middle East peace plan, received his clearance only after Trump personally intervened and ordered it, according to a memo written by then White House chief of staff John Kelly.

In Kushner’s case, officials in the White House personnel security office were reportedly divided about whether to grant him a top-secret clearance based on the results of his FBI background check.

In 2018, after the matter had dragged on for more than a year, the then White House counsel Don McGahn recommended to Trump that Kushner should not be granted a security clearance at that level. But Trump ordered Kelly to disregard that advice and grant it to Kushner anyway.

The precise details of the concerns about Kushner are not known, although it was reported at the time that it resulted in part from concerns at the FBI and the CIA about Kushner’s foreign and business contacts, including with Israel, Russia and the United Arab Emirates.

In 2019, a manager in the personnel security office told a House committee that 25 people, including two senior Trump White House officials, had been denied clearances by career employees for “disqualifying issues”. The New York Times reported that Kushner appeared to be among that group.

Epshteyn left the Trump White House before he received a permanent clearance. While the Trump team has said his situation was “resolved”, it remains unclear what the resolution of his background check was. Epshteyn has been floated for a senior role in the incoming administration.

Gorka failed to obtain a national security council clearance when he was part of the first Trump administration in 2017, after he was charged with carrying a gun at Ronald Reagan Washington national airport, according to the AP. Gorka was named on Friday as a deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counter-terrorism.