
| News | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Ivy League is silently complicit in Trump’s war on international students. | |
Submitted at 04-14-2025, 05:41 PM by sleeppoor | |
0 Comments | |
The currency’s dominance enables very high debts and deficits, meaning a plunge might spell disaster | |
Submitted at 04-14-2025, 02:13 AM by Nibbles | |
Submitted at 04-14-2025, 02:10 AM by Nibbles | |
: Hallucinated package names fuel 'slopsquatting' | |
Submitted at 04-13-2025, 06:51 PM by sleeppoor | |
“By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic, and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures,” Kennedy subsequently said.
Marks, in his conversation with Brennan, cited past research that established that the broad spectrum of neurodevelopmental conditions referred to as autism involve genetic and environmental factors. He said the higher number of autism cases that have been reported over the years almost certainly results from improved diagnosis rather than an increase in prevalence.
Nonetheless, appearing on the Trump administration-friendly Fox News network, Kennedy asserted that increasing autism rates were the product of “an environmental toxin”. He said vaccines were one of the factors the administration would explore, though more than two dozen studies have refuted claims that they may be a possible cause for autism. | |
Submitted at 04-13-2025, 05:29 PM by Nibbles | |
The president weighs 224lb (101kg) and stands 6ft 2.5in tall, according to the records from Dr Barbabella. Trump has shed some pounds since February 2019, when he weighed 243lb. | |
Submitted at 04-13-2025, 03:49 PM by Nibbles | |
A Customs notice reported a glitch in a system shippers use to exempt freight from tariffs. Logistics experts say it is a bad sign for the supply chain. | |
Submitted at 04-12-2025, 06:42 AM by sleeppoor | |
Former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince and a team of defense contractors are pitching the White House on a plan to vastly expand deportations to El Salvador — transporting thousands of immigrants from U.S. holding facilities to a sprawling maximum security prison in Central America.
The proposal, exclusively obtained by POLITICO, says it would target “criminal illegal aliens” and would attempt to avoid legal challenges by designating part of the prison — which has drawn accusations of violence and overcrowding from human rights groups — as American territory. | |
Submitted at 04-12-2025, 02:15 AM by sleeppoor | |
President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking to end nearly all of the climate research conducted by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA), one of the country’s premier climate science agencies, according to an internal budget document seen by Science. The document indicates the White House is ready to ask Congress to eliminate NOAA’s climate research centers and cut hundreds of federal and academic climate scientists who track and study human-driven global warming.
The administration is also preparing to ask for deep cuts to NASA’s science programs, according to media reports today.
The proposed NOAA cuts—which could be altered before the administration sends its 2026 budget request to Congress in the coming weeks—would cut funding for the agency’s research arm, the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), to just over $171 million, a drop of $485 million. Any remaining research funding from previously authorized budgets would be moved to other programs. “At this funding level, OAR is eliminated as a line office,” the document states. | |
Submitted at 04-12-2025, 02:42 AM by sleeppoor | |
This week, as part of the process to develop a budget for fiscal-year 2026, the Trump White House shared the draft version of its budget request for NASA with the space agency.
This initial version of the administration's budget request calls for an approximately 20 percent overall cut to the agency's budget across the board, effectively $5 billion from an overall topline of about $25 billion. However, the majority of the cuts are concentrated within the agency's Science Mission Directorate, which oversees all planetary science, Earth science, astrophysics research, and more.
According to the "passback" documents given to NASA officials on Thursday, the space agency's science programs would receive nearly a 50 percent cut in funding. After the agency received $7.5 billion for science in fiscal-year 2025, the Trump administration has proposed a science topline budget of just $3.9 billion for the coming fiscal year. | |
Submitted at 04-12-2025, 02:17 AM by sleeppoor | |
Former President Jair Bolsonaro was hospitalized on Friday in northeast Brazil with abdominal pain, breaking off a regional tour aimed at drumming up political support as he prepares for a trial before the Supreme Court. | |
Submitted at 04-11-2025, 06:55 PM by sleeppoor | |
Albert Saniger, the founder and former CEO of Nate, an AI shopping app that promised a “universal” checkout experience, was charged with defrauding | |
Submitted at 04-11-2025, 03:30 PM by sleeppoor | |
Submitted at 04-11-2025, 11:14 AM by Grief Bacon | |
On a quiet pandemic afternoon in 2021, Zihyuan Wang, then a graduate student at Rice University, was alleviating his boredom by working on a weird mathematical problem. After he found an exotic solution, he started to wonder if the math could be interpreted physically. Eventually, he realized that it seemed to describe a new type of particle: one that’s neither a matter particle nor a force-carrying particle. It appeared to be something else altogether.
Wang was eager to develop the accidental discovery into a full theory of this third kind of particle. He brought the idea to Kaden Hazzard, his academic adviser.
“I said, I’m not sure I believe this can be true,” Hazzard recalled, “but if you really think it is, you should put all your time on this and drop everything else you’re working on.”
This January, Wang, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany, and Hazzard published their refined result in the journal Nature. They say that a third class of particles, called paraparticles, can indeed exist, and that these particles could produce strange new materials. | |
Submitted at 04-11-2025, 02:48 PM by thirteen3seven | |
A Louisiana law cedes much of the power of the parole board to an algorithm that bars thousands of prisoners from a shot at early release. Civil rights attorneys say it could disproportionately harm Black people — and may even be unconstitutional. | |
Submitted at 04-11-2025, 06:24 AM by sleeppoor | |
"Fucking finally," says local Beast. | |
Submitted at 04-11-2025, 03:22 AM by thirteen3seven | |
Flemming Hansen and Mette Helbæk, now in Guatemala, had racked up large tax debt at Stedsans forest retreat | |
Submitted at 04-11-2025, 02:14 AM by sleeppoor | |
The NEH budget is tiny. The loss is huge. | |
Submitted at 04-11-2025, 02:07 AM by sleeppoor | |
It sounds like something from a science fiction movie, but Stephen Eisele is confident that one day his company will open a data centre on the Moon.
"The way we see it is that by putting the data centre in space, you're really offering unparalleled security," says the president of Lonestar Data Holdings. | |
Submitted at 04-11-2025, 02:06 AM by Nibbles | |
The island’s population might not be easily convinced as the president tries to clinch what he may see as one of history’s greatest real estate deals.
President Trump’s longtime goal of claiming Greenland for America has shifted from rhetoric to official U.S. policy as the White House moves forward on a formal plan to acquire the Arctic island from Denmark.
The plan mobilizes several cabinet departments behind Mr. Trump’s years of talk about wanting Greenland, whose economic and strategic value has grown as warming temperatures melt Arctic ice.
Greenland’s size — 836,330 square miles — also offers Mr. Trump, a former Manhattan developer, the chance to clinch what he may see as one of history’s greatest real estate deals.
Danish officials angrily insist that the sparsely populated island is not for sale and cannot be annexed. But Mr. Trump has made clear his determination to control it.
“We need Greenland for national security and even international security, and we’re working with everybody involved to try and get it,” he said in an address to Congress last month.
“One way or the other, we’re going to get it,” Mr. Trump added.
Image
Denmark’s leaders and some residents are furious over President Trump’s talk of buying or seizing the island.Credit...Christian Klindt Soelbeck/Ritzau Scanpix Denmark, via Reuters
The White House’s National Security Council has met several times to put Mr. Trump’s words into action, and recently sent specific instructions to multiple arms of the government, according to a U.S. official.
The plan’s full details are unclear. But despite Mr. Trump’s allusions to the possible use of force, the deliberations led by the security council never seriously considered military options, the official said.
The policy instead emphasizes persuasion over coercion, and features a public relations effort aimed at convincing Greenland’s population of 57,000 that they should ask to join the United States.
Mr. Trump’s advisers have discussed using advertising and social media campaigns to sway public opinion on the island, according to another person briefed on the matter.
It may be an uphill battle. In an election last month, an opposition political party that favors quick independence and closer ties with the United States finished in second place but with just a quarter of the vote.
The U.S. messaging campaign will include an unlikely appeal to Greenlanders’ shared heritage with the native Inuit people of Alaska, nearly 2,500 miles away, the official said.
Greenland’s Inuit population is descended from people who migrated from Alaska hundreds of years ago, and the island’s official language is derived from Inuit dialects that originated in Arctic Canada.
Image
Michael Waltz, the U.S. national security adviser, and his wife, Julia Nesheiwat, in Greenland last month. The National Security Council has sent specific instructions to multiple arms of the government about acquiring the island.Credit...Pool photo by Jim Watson
Mr. Trump’s advisers have already begun making their public case, arguing that Denmark has been a poor custodian of the island, that only the United States can protect it from encroachment by Russia and China, and that America will help Greenlanders “get rich,” as Mr. Trump has put it.
The Trump administration is also reminding Greenland that the United States has defended it before.
Last month, Mr. Trump posted a slick 90-second video on social media celebrating the “blood and bravery” of U.S. troops who took positions on the island during World War II to prevent a feared Nazi invasion after Germany occupied Denmark.
Although Denmark hoped that American forces would leave after the war, they never did, and the United States still maintains a military base there.
The Trump administration is also studying financial incentives for Greenlanders, including the possibility of replacing the $600 million in subsidies that Denmark gives the island with an annual payment of about $10,000 per Greenlander.
Some Trump officials believe those costs could be offset by new revenue from the extraction of Greenland’s natural resources, which include rare earth minerals, copper, gold, uranium and oil.
Trump officials argue that American capital and industrial might can gain access to the island’s largely untapped mineral wealth in a way that Denmark cannot. “This is about critical minerals,” Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, told Fox News in January. “This is about natural resources.”
Image
The Trump administration is eyeing rare earth minerals and other natural resources in Greenland.Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times
But analysts do not universally agree that it will be simple to profit from mining in the island’s still-frigid regions. And explaining a significant expenditure to American voters as Mr. Trump has tasked the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, with slashing the federal government by $1 trillion might be tough.
Mr. Trump’s interest in Greenland is not new: He was serious enough in his first term to charge national security officials with exploring the idea. But after he started discussing it publicly, Greenland officials balked and Mr. Trump did not pursue the idea, which was treated as a wild fantasy.
Since his second election last fall, Mr. Trump has renewed his desire with greater fervor. “Let’s get it done,” he has demanded of aides.
“President Trump believes Greenland is a strategically important location, and is confident Greenlanders would be better served protected by the United States from modern threats in the Arctic region,” said the National Security Council spokesman, Brian Hughes.
Mr. Hughes noted that Mr. Waltz and Vice President JD Vance had recently visited Greenland and “laid out the important case for a partnership between Greenland and the United States to establish long-term peace at home and shared prosperity abroad.”
Some analysts say the idea of incorporating Greenland into the United States, or at least developing much closer ties with the island, is less absurd than it might sound.
That is largely because of climate change, which is thawing resource-rich areas and making them more commercially viable. Warmer temperatures have also opened new sea routes through the Arctic for commercial shipping — as well as for Chinese and Russian military vessels.
But Mr. Trump’s vows to control Greenland “one way or another” sound to much of the world like raw imperialism, along with his talk of retaking the Panama Canal and even annexing Canada. If the administration’s persuasion efforts fail, it seems quite possible that Mr. Trump will escalate his tactics.
Several U.S. presidents have considered trying to acquire Greenland. The Truman administration, rattled by Nazi threats to the island during World War II, offered Denmark the equivalent of $1 billion for it in 1946.
Image
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark has condemned the Trump administration’s “pressure and threats.”Credit...Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Denmark has exercised varying forms of control over Greenland for centuries and accepted it as a part of its kingdom in 1953. Today, Greenland manages its own domestic affairs with a budget subsidized up to 60 percent by Denmark, which also manages its defense and foreign policy. Many of Greenland’s leaders support independence, but differ on how soon that should happen and whether to move closer to the United
For their part, Denmark’s leaders are shocked and furious over Mr. Trump’s talk of buying or seizing the island, and they insist that Greenlanders must freely determine their own fate. During a visit to Greenland last week, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark condemned the Trump administration’s “pressure and threats,” saying that “you cannot annex another country.”
Amid Denmark’s fierce resistance, the Trump administration is turning to direct courtship of Greenlanders.
Addressing the people of Greenland during his address to Congress, Mr. Trump said, “We strongly support your right to determine your own future and, if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America.”
“We will keep you safe,” he said. “We will make you rich.”
Mr. Vance struck a similar note on March 28 during a visit to a U.S. military base on the island.
ADVERTISEMENT
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Speaking to reporters there, Mr. Vance predicted that Greenlanders would “choose, through self-determination, to become independent of Denmark, and then we’re going to have conversations with the people of Greenland from there.”
Image
Vice President JD Vance predicted during a visit to Greenland that the island would choose “to become independent of Denmark.”Credit...Pool photo by Jim Watson
Mr. Trump and his senior officials have not yet publicly drawn connections between Greenland’s Inuit population and American Inuit in Alaska, as envisioned in the plan approved by the National Security Council.
But that dynamic was noted in December by Robert O’Brien, who served as one of Mr. Trump’s first-term national security advisers.
ADVERTISEMENT
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Denmark, Mr. O’Brien said in an interview with Fox News, “can let us buy Greenland from it, and Greenland can become part of Alaska. I mean, the native people in Greenland are very closely related to the people of Alaska, and we’ll make it a part of Alaska.”
It is unclear how powerfully that message will resonate on the island. While Alaskans share in the profits of their state’s oil wealth in the form of annual checks to residents, its Inuit people endure disproportionate poverty and poor health.
Danish leaders argue that the U.S. pressure campaign is already damaging America’s post-World War II alliance with Denmark.
“We have looked up to you,” Ms. Frederiksen said of the United States during her visit to Greenland this month. “You have inspired us. You have stood guard over the free world.”
“But,” she added, “when you demand to take over a part of the kingdom’s territory — when we are subjected to pressure and threats — what are we to think of the country we have admired for so many years?”
Michael Crowley covers the State Department and U.S. foreign policy for The Times. He has reported from nearly three dozen countries and often travels with the secretary of state.
Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent, reporting on the second, nonconsecutive term of Donald J. Trump. | |
Submitted at 04-10-2025, 08:25 PM by Mordant | |

The Ivy League is silently complicit in Trump’s war on international students.
The currency’s dominance enables very high debts and deficits, meaning a plunge might spell disaster
: Hallucinated package names fuel 'slopsquatting'
“By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic, and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures,” Kennedy subsequently said.
Marks, in his conversation with Brennan, cited past research that established that the broad spectrum of neurodevelopmental conditions referred to as autism involve genetic and environmental factors. He said the higher number of autism cases that have been reported over the years almost certainly results from improved diagnosis rather than an increase in prevalence.
Nonetheless, appearing on the Trump administration-friendly Fox News network, Kennedy asserted that increasing autism rates were the product of “an environmental toxin”. He said vaccines were one of the factors the administration would explore, though more than two dozen studies have refuted claims that they may be a possible cause for autism.
The president weighs 224lb (101kg) and stands 6ft 2.5in tall, according to the records from Dr Barbabella. Trump has shed some pounds since February 2019, when he weighed 243lb.
A Customs notice reported a glitch in a system shippers use to exempt freight from tariffs. Logistics experts say it is a bad sign for the supply chain.
Former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince and a team of defense contractors are pitching the White House on a plan to vastly expand deportations to El Salvador — transporting thousands of immigrants from U.S. holding facilities to a sprawling maximum security prison in Central America.
The proposal, exclusively obtained by POLITICO, says it would target “criminal illegal aliens” and would attempt to avoid legal challenges by designating part of the prison — which has drawn accusations of violence and overcrowding from human rights groups — as American territory.
President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking to end nearly all of the climate research conducted by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA), one of the country’s premier climate science agencies, according to an internal budget document seen by Science. The document indicates the White House is ready to ask Congress to eliminate NOAA’s climate research centers and cut hundreds of federal and academic climate scientists who track and study human-driven global warming.
The administration is also preparing to ask for deep cuts to NASA’s science programs, according to media reports today.
The proposed NOAA cuts—which could be altered before the administration sends its 2026 budget request to Congress in the coming weeks—would cut funding for the agency’s research arm, the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), to just over $171 million, a drop of $485 million. Any remaining research funding from previously authorized budgets would be moved to other programs. “At this funding level, OAR is eliminated as a line office,” the document states.
This week, as part of the process to develop a budget for fiscal-year 2026, the Trump White House shared the draft version of its budget request for NASA with the space agency.
This initial version of the administration's budget request calls for an approximately 20 percent overall cut to the agency's budget across the board, effectively $5 billion from an overall topline of about $25 billion. However, the majority of the cuts are concentrated within the agency's Science Mission Directorate, which oversees all planetary science, Earth science, astrophysics research, and more.
According to the "passback" documents given to NASA officials on Thursday, the space agency's science programs would receive nearly a 50 percent cut in funding. After the agency received $7.5 billion for science in fiscal-year 2025, the Trump administration has proposed a science topline budget of just $3.9 billion for the coming fiscal year.
Former President Jair Bolsonaro was hospitalized on Friday in northeast Brazil with abdominal pain, breaking off a regional tour aimed at drumming up political support as he prepares for a trial before the Supreme Court.
Albert Saniger, the founder and former CEO of Nate, an AI shopping app that promised a “universal” checkout experience, was charged with defrauding
On a quiet pandemic afternoon in 2021, Zihyuan Wang, then a graduate student at Rice University, was alleviating his boredom by working on a weird mathematical problem. After he found an exotic solution, he started to wonder if the math could be interpreted physically. Eventually, he realized that it seemed to describe a new type of particle: one that’s neither a matter particle nor a force-carrying particle. It appeared to be something else altogether.
Wang was eager to develop the accidental discovery into a full theory of this third kind of particle. He brought the idea to Kaden Hazzard, his academic adviser.
“I said, I’m not sure I believe this can be true,” Hazzard recalled, “but if you really think it is, you should put all your time on this and drop everything else you’re working on.”
This January, Wang, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany, and Hazzard published their refined result in the journal Nature. They say that a third class of particles, called paraparticles, can indeed exist, and that these particles could produce strange new materials.
A Louisiana law cedes much of the power of the parole board to an algorithm that bars thousands of prisoners from a shot at early release. Civil rights attorneys say it could disproportionately harm Black people — and may even be unconstitutional.
"Fucking finally," says local Beast.
Flemming Hansen and Mette Helbæk, now in Guatemala, had racked up large tax debt at Stedsans forest retreat
The NEH budget is tiny. The loss is huge.
It sounds like something from a science fiction movie, but Stephen Eisele is confident that one day his company will open a data centre on the Moon.
"The way we see it is that by putting the data centre in space, you're really offering unparalleled security," says the president of Lonestar Data Holdings.
The island’s population might not be easily convinced as the president tries to clinch what he may see as one of history’s greatest real estate deals.
President Trump’s longtime goal of claiming Greenland for America has shifted from rhetoric to official U.S. policy as the White House moves forward on a formal plan to acquire the Arctic island from Denmark.
The plan mobilizes several cabinet departments behind Mr. Trump’s years of talk about wanting Greenland, whose economic and strategic value has grown as warming temperatures melt Arctic ice.
Greenland’s size — 836,330 square miles — also offers Mr. Trump, a former Manhattan developer, the chance to clinch what he may see as one of history’s greatest real estate deals.
Danish officials angrily insist that the sparsely populated island is not for sale and cannot be annexed. But Mr. Trump has made clear his determination to control it.
“We need Greenland for national security and even international security, and we’re working with everybody involved to try and get it,” he said in an address to Congress last month.
“One way or the other, we’re going to get it,” Mr. Trump added.
Image
Denmark’s leaders and some residents are furious over President Trump’s talk of buying or seizing the island.Credit...Christian Klindt Soelbeck/Ritzau Scanpix Denmark, via Reuters
The White House’s National Security Council has met several times to put Mr. Trump’s words into action, and recently sent specific instructions to multiple arms of the government, according to a U.S. official.
The plan’s full details are unclear. But despite Mr. Trump’s allusions to the possible use of force, the deliberations led by the security council never seriously considered military options, the official said.
The policy instead emphasizes persuasion over coercion, and features a public relations effort aimed at convincing Greenland’s population of 57,000 that they should ask to join the United States.
Mr. Trump’s advisers have discussed using advertising and social media campaigns to sway public opinion on the island, according to another person briefed on the matter.
It may be an uphill battle. In an election last month, an opposition political party that favors quick independence and closer ties with the United States finished in second place but with just a quarter of the vote.
The U.S. messaging campaign will include an unlikely appeal to Greenlanders’ shared heritage with the native Inuit people of Alaska, nearly 2,500 miles away, the official said.
Greenland’s Inuit population is descended from people who migrated from Alaska hundreds of years ago, and the island’s official language is derived from Inuit dialects that originated in Arctic Canada.
Image
Michael Waltz, the U.S. national security adviser, and his wife, Julia Nesheiwat, in Greenland last month. The National Security Council has sent specific instructions to multiple arms of the government about acquiring the island.Credit...Pool photo by Jim Watson
Mr. Trump’s advisers have already begun making their public case, arguing that Denmark has been a poor custodian of the island, that only the United States can protect it from encroachment by Russia and China, and that America will help Greenlanders “get rich,” as Mr. Trump has put it.
The Trump administration is also reminding Greenland that the United States has defended it before.
Last month, Mr. Trump posted a slick 90-second video on social media celebrating the “blood and bravery” of U.S. troops who took positions on the island during World War II to prevent a feared Nazi invasion after Germany occupied Denmark.
Although Denmark hoped that American forces would leave after the war, they never did, and the United States still maintains a military base there.
The Trump administration is also studying financial incentives for Greenlanders, including the possibility of replacing the $600 million in subsidies that Denmark gives the island with an annual payment of about $10,000 per Greenlander.
Some Trump officials believe those costs could be offset by new revenue from the extraction of Greenland’s natural resources, which include rare earth minerals, copper, gold, uranium and oil.
Trump officials argue that American capital and industrial might can gain access to the island’s largely untapped mineral wealth in a way that Denmark cannot. “This is about critical minerals,” Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, told Fox News in January. “This is about natural resources.”
Image
The Trump administration is eyeing rare earth minerals and other natural resources in Greenland.Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times
But analysts do not universally agree that it will be simple to profit from mining in the island’s still-frigid regions. And explaining a significant expenditure to American voters as Mr. Trump has tasked the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, with slashing the federal government by $1 trillion might be tough.
Mr. Trump’s interest in Greenland is not new: He was serious enough in his first term to charge national security officials with exploring the idea. But after he started discussing it publicly, Greenland officials balked and Mr. Trump did not pursue the idea, which was treated as a wild fantasy.
Since his second election last fall, Mr. Trump has renewed his desire with greater fervor. “Let’s get it done,” he has demanded of aides.
“President Trump believes Greenland is a strategically important location, and is confident Greenlanders would be better served protected by the United States from modern threats in the Arctic region,” said the National Security Council spokesman, Brian Hughes.
Mr. Hughes noted that Mr. Waltz and Vice President JD Vance had recently visited Greenland and “laid out the important case for a partnership between Greenland and the United States to establish long-term peace at home and shared prosperity abroad.”
Some analysts say the idea of incorporating Greenland into the United States, or at least developing much closer ties with the island, is less absurd than it might sound.
That is largely because of climate change, which is thawing resource-rich areas and making them more commercially viable. Warmer temperatures have also opened new sea routes through the Arctic for commercial shipping — as well as for Chinese and Russian military vessels.
But Mr. Trump’s vows to control Greenland “one way or another” sound to much of the world like raw imperialism, along with his talk of retaking the Panama Canal and even annexing Canada. If the administration’s persuasion efforts fail, it seems quite possible that Mr. Trump will escalate his tactics.
Several U.S. presidents have considered trying to acquire Greenland. The Truman administration, rattled by Nazi threats to the island during World War II, offered Denmark the equivalent of $1 billion for it in 1946.
Image
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark has condemned the Trump administration’s “pressure and threats.”Credit...Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Denmark has exercised varying forms of control over Greenland for centuries and accepted it as a part of its kingdom in 1953. Today, Greenland manages its own domestic affairs with a budget subsidized up to 60 percent by Denmark, which also manages its defense and foreign policy. Many of Greenland’s leaders support independence, but differ on how soon that should happen and whether to move closer to the United
For their part, Denmark’s leaders are shocked and furious over Mr. Trump’s talk of buying or seizing the island, and they insist that Greenlanders must freely determine their own fate. During a visit to Greenland last week, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark condemned the Trump administration’s “pressure and threats,” saying that “you cannot annex another country.”
Amid Denmark’s fierce resistance, the Trump administration is turning to direct courtship of Greenlanders.
Addressing the people of Greenland during his address to Congress, Mr. Trump said, “We strongly support your right to determine your own future and, if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America.”
“We will keep you safe,” he said. “We will make you rich.”
Mr. Vance struck a similar note on March 28 during a visit to a U.S. military base on the island.
ADVERTISEMENT
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Speaking to reporters there, Mr. Vance predicted that Greenlanders would “choose, through self-determination, to become independent of Denmark, and then we’re going to have conversations with the people of Greenland from there.”
Image
Vice President JD Vance predicted during a visit to Greenland that the island would choose “to become independent of Denmark.”Credit...Pool photo by Jim Watson
Mr. Trump and his senior officials have not yet publicly drawn connections between Greenland’s Inuit population and American Inuit in Alaska, as envisioned in the plan approved by the National Security Council.
But that dynamic was noted in December by Robert O’Brien, who served as one of Mr. Trump’s first-term national security advisers.
ADVERTISEMENT
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Denmark, Mr. O’Brien said in an interview with Fox News, “can let us buy Greenland from it, and Greenland can become part of Alaska. I mean, the native people in Greenland are very closely related to the people of Alaska, and we’ll make it a part of Alaska.”
It is unclear how powerfully that message will resonate on the island. While Alaskans share in the profits of their state’s oil wealth in the form of annual checks to residents, its Inuit people endure disproportionate poverty and poor health.
Danish leaders argue that the U.S. pressure campaign is already damaging America’s post-World War II alliance with Denmark.
“We have looked up to you,” Ms. Frederiksen said of the United States during her visit to Greenland this month. “You have inspired us. You have stood guard over the free world.”
“But,” she added, “when you demand to take over a part of the kingdom’s territory — when we are subjected to pressure and threats — what are we to think of the country we have admired for so many years?”
Michael Crowley covers the State Department and U.S. foreign policy for The Times. He has reported from nearly three dozen countries and often travels with the secretary of state.
Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent, reporting on the second, nonconsecutive term of Donald J. Trump.