Key Highlights
- Leaders from Greenland, Denmark and several other Nato-member nations are pushing back against the presiden. Trump and his advisers are looking into “a range of options” in an effort to acquire Greenland, noting in a White House statement on Tuesday that using the US military to do so is “always an option”. The White House’s latest calls for a US takeover of Greenland after the dark-of-night arrest of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president, on Saturday.
- The next day, Trump said that he needed Greenland “very badly”, prompting a ramping-up of tensions among the US, the semi-autonomous Danish territory and Europe. Greenland has repeatedly stated that it does not want to be part of the US.
- The idea is also unpopular in the US, where one poll found just 7% of Americans agree with a military seizure of Greenland. In a show of solidarity on Tuesday, the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and other nations issued a joint statement with the prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, urging the US to respect its sovereignty.
- They wrote in the statement that Arctic security was a top priority for Nato, a defense alliance that includes the United States and Greenland. In a private briefing on Capitol Hill, the US secretary of state Marco Rubio told lawmakers on Monday that the administration would prefer to buy the island from Denmark rather than invade it, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Leaders of Greenland, Denmark respond to TrumpGreenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, urged Trump to give up his “fantasies about annexation” and accused the US of “completely and utterly unacceptable” rhetoric.“Enough is enough,” he said. The prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen previously warned that an attack by the US on a Nato ally would mean the “end” of the military alliance and “post-second world war security”.
- It would, she said, be the end of “everything”. Read the full storyVenezuela ‘turning over’ up to 50m barrels of oil to the US, Trump says“This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!” Trump said in a post online. Venezuela has millions of barrels of oil loaded on tankers and in storage tanks that it has been unable to ship due to the blockade imposed by Trump, as part of the pressure campaign that culminated in the toppling of Nicolás Maduro who was seized from his country by US forces over the weekend. Read the full storyTrump administration escalates attack on Minnesota with more immigration agentsThe Trump administration has sent more immigration agents to Minnesota, part of escalating attacks and rhetoric against the state and its immigrant populations in what immigration officials are saying is the agency’s “largest operation to date”. Read the full storyLawmakers mark (or downplay) fifth anniversary of US Capitol attackCongressional Republicans were largely silent on the fifth anniversary of the January 6 insurrection on Tuesday, even as Democrats sought to use the occasion to condemn Trump and a small group of protesters convened on the grounds of the US Capitol in solidarity with those who carried out the attack. Read the full storyTrump suggests US taxpayers could reimburse oil firmsTrump has suggested US taxpayers could reimburse energy.
