There’s nothing Donald Trump can’t screw up. And I’m sure this will be another one.
But for whatever reason, he stumbled back into populist mode this week and proposed something that on its face is a good idea and, if handled right as an issue, could be a very popular one. CNBC reports:
President Donald Trump said the U.S. should bar large institutional investors from buying single-family homes, arguing that corporate ownership has helped push housing further out of reach for everyday Americans.
“For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream. It was the reward for working hard, and doing the right thing, but now, because of the Record High Inflation caused by Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress, that American Dream is increasingly out of reach for far too many people, especially younger Americans,” Trump said in a Truth Social post Wednesday.
“It is for that reason, and much more, that I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it. People live in homes, not corporations,” he added. [my emphasis] (1)
My guess is that he is responding to the affordability issue which Zohran Mamdani made so popular by his successful run for New York City Mayor.
CNBC immediately went into lobbyist mode in the video accompanying the article by suggesting this would hurt “mom-and-pop” investors in residential real estate.
We need to remember the TACO rule, “Trumpp Always Chickens Out,” which may wind up applying to this. But at least we get to see a short-term dip in the stocks of some of the financial vultures:
Invitation Homes, which is the largest renter of single-family homes in the country, tumbled 6%. Shares ofBlackstone, an investing firm that owns and rents single-family homes, dropped more than 5%. Private equity firm Apollo Global Management also declined over 5%.
The national median existing single-family home price was $426,800 in the third quarter of 2025 after hitting a record high of $435,300 in the summer, according to the National Association of Realtors. The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage is currently at 6.19%, according to Mortgage News Daily.
Blackstone was the largest private-equity owner of apartments in the U.S. with more than 230,000 units, according to data from the Private Equity Stakeholder Project released last year. Blackstone in recent years has spent billions acquiring real estate companies such as Tricon Residential, American Campus Communities and AIR Communities. [my emphasis]
Rick Perlstein on Facebook calls our attention to the fact that the kind of disinformation, scorn, and callousness that have been actively pimpled by the post-Reagan rightwing media world continue to be an essential part of the Trumpista cult. (1)
Dave Neiwert, one of the best-informed journalists about the American far right, commented on Rick’s post:
This is what 30 years of Fox News and its Limbaugh-style intentional demonization of over half of the nation for the sake of creating corporate profit has wrought. The face of the ICE murderer is the face of hatred concocted by a lying media system designed to divide the nation for the sake of hollowing out democracy in order to replace it with a kleptocratic oligarchy.
Whenever democratic control is restored to the federal government, ICE is going to have to be thoroughly reformed, purged of assassins and murderers, and ICE officers required to meet at least the training and competence level of major urban police departments.
If the next Democratic President approaches the ICE problem like Joe Biden talked about the Black Lives Matter criticism of murderous cops – “fund, fund, fund the police” in Biden’s phrase, the prospect of getting back even to a pre-Trump level of democracy could take decades.
Cleaning up dirty police departments is nothing new in the US. Oakland (2) and Los Angeles are California cities whose police had to be restrained by federal intervention in order to clean up corruption and violent misconduct by rogue police departments. And there are other examples in other states, as well. It’s not an easy process. But a federal government that is willing to act responsibly to restrain lawless municipal police can fix a lot of problems.
There are more options than one way for reforming ICE. But some things are obvious, like strict training and conduct requirements with some kind of extended supervision analogous to Justice Department or court oversight of rogue municipal police departments. And the Democrats should not do their typical hiding-under-the-covers act, i.e., “No, no, we can’t prosecute ICE murderers, we can’t cut their budget, and we have to frame any criticism of ICE misdeeds and even killings in the context of how much we love and respect the law-breaking ICE goon squads.”
There is good reason to separate U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from Homeland Security. Having it under Homeland Security – a creepy name for an agency in a democracy – inevitably leads to seeing immigration and refugees as a national danger in themselves.
Heather Cox Richardson discusses the recent Minneapolis murder Renee Nicole Good and its implications in the Trumpian process of implementing, well, fascism. Beginning at 7:40 in the video:
Notes:
(1) Rick Perlstein, Facebook 01/08/2026. (Accessed: 2026-09-01).
(2) Two reporters, Ali Winston and Darwin BondGraham, have done a book about a crime ring that operated inside the Oakland Police Department that was known by the Ku Klux Klan-like name of The Riders: The Riders Come Out at Night: Brutality, Corruption and Cover Up in Oakland (2023).
The regime-decapitation the US just carried out in Venezuela now makes the question more urgent of what Europe (and also Canada, which is a NATO ally) if the US carries out a blatant and hostile military takeover of Greenland, which is part of the nation of NATO ally and EU member Denmark.
I found myself posting a note yesterday saying that the US seizing Greenland militarily and claiming it as a colonial territory of the US would give European countries a big new push to unite to defend against the US as well as against Russia.
Despite the various controversies within NATO like that around the Iraq War, the perceived threat from the USSR and then Russia held the alliance together. Given the arsenals of nuclear missiles especially in the US and the USSR/Russia, there was an objectively real threat there – and there still is. And the 1989-2014 period looks more than ever like a period of major missed opportunities.
But how NATO could survive its most powerful member invading and seizing territory from Denmark is really hard to imagine. And the European powers aren’t as feckless as the Trumps and the JD Vances of the world imagine them to be. The closest we’ve come before to a war between two NATO member states were the clashes in Cyprus in the 1970s between forces backed by Greece and Türkiye, respectively, including the establishment of the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus. Discussions mediated by the UN over the division of Cyprus continue to this day, with no immediate resolution in sight. (1)
It’s hard to see how European countries can simply tiptoe diplomatically around the US threat to Denmark, which Trump renewed after the seizure of Venezuela’s head of government, Maduro. (2) And the Trump 2.0 regime continues its reality-TV approach to threatening Denmark:
Just hours after the US military operation in Venezuela, the rightwing podcaster Katie Miller – the wife of Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s powerful deputy chief of staff for policy – posted on X a map of Greenland draped in the stars and stripes with the caption: “SOON.”
Trump himself told the Atlantic magazine on Sunday: “We do need Greenland, absolutely.”
Miller’s threat to annex the mineral-rich territory, which is part of the Nato alliance, drew outrage from Denmark and Greenland.
Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, called the post “disrespectful”. “Relations between nations and peoples are built on mutual respect and international law – not on symbolic gestures that disregard our status and our rights,” he wrote on X. (3)
Despite the caution that European leaders are understandably trying to practice in regard to the US, issued a statement that focused on Denmark’s sovereignty, Denmark’s government posted this joint statement on X
Statement by President Macron of France, Chancellor Merz of Germany, Prime Minister Meloni of Italy, Prime Minister Tusk of Poland, Prime Minister Sánchez of Spain, Prime Minister Starmer of the United Kingdom and Prime Minister Frederiksen of Denmark on Greenland. [my emphasis]
That includes Europe’s two nuclear powers (Britain and France) and the country with its six biggest conventional armies: Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Poland.
I’m just sayin’. It is what it is.
Arctic security remains a key priority for Europe and it is critical for international and transatlantic security.
NATO has made clear that the Arctic region is a priority and European Allies are stepping up. Wc and many other Allies have increased our presence, activities and investments, to keep the Arctic safe and to deter adversaries. The Kingdom of Denmark – including Greenland - is part of NATO.
Security in the Arctic must therefore be achieved collectively, in conjunction with NATO allies including the United Stales, by upholding the principles of the UN Charter, including sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders. These are universal principles, and we will not stop defending them. [my emphasis] (4)
Denmark in October announced their intent to buy more US fighter jets. It also announced their intent to purchase “two new Arctic ships, maritime patrol planes, drones and early warning radar” and that “a new Arctic command headquarters will be set up in the Greenlandic capital, Nuuk, alongside a new military unit under Joint Arctic Command in Greenland.” (5)
Trump’s personal volatility and the evident deterioration in his mental condition certainly don’t help in this situation. He obviously looks for reality-TV moments, like declaring mission accomplished in Venezuela at the very beginning of the current intervention by the US there, which the Orange Anomaly describes as the US now running the country. To use an old Southern expression, “That ole boy just ain’t right.” This means in practice that working out complicated international arrangements over hotly contested issues just isn’t something he seems to be capable of doing.
As I’m writing this, we’re only in Day 4 of the Peace President’s perfect intervention in Venezuela. It’s exceptionally unlikely to be as smooth a process as the Trumpista Administration expects it to be. We’re in something like the pulling-down-Saddam’s-statue-in-Baghdad stage of this intervention. To recall, the day after that glorious event was went major looting broke out in Baghdad, the first major signal that the Iraq-will-be-a-cakewalk claims on the neocons began to quickly disintegrate.
And, thinking back for a moment on the Wilsonian view of cynical Old World politics, I’m sure that every foreign ministry in Europe is thinking that the more of a mess Venezuela becomes for the US, the less likely it is that Trump would be fool enough to invade Denmark/Greenland. I’m not sure any of them can do much to make it more of a problem for the US than the Venezuelans themselves will make it. But for all their problems, the European powers have never been quite the bumbling nincompoops that US neocons and MAGA isolationists like to imagine them to be.
For The Guardian’s editorial board, the initial European responses to Trump invading Venezuela and kidnapping its President along with his wife was pretty weak tea:
The initial reaction of European leaders to Donald Trump’s illegal military intervention in Venezuela was not only weak, it also had the briefest of shelf lives. Refusing on Sunday to condemn the attack as a breach of international law, European Union member states called hopefully for “a negotiated, democratic, inclusive and peaceful solution to the crisis, led by Venezuelans”. The delusional nature of that response was laid bare as Mr Trump told reporters the same day: “We’re in charge.”
So much for the restoration of democracy. The US president also repeated threats of further military action, should the repressive regime left behind when Nicolás Maduro was seized fail to do Washington’s bidding. As Mr Trump’s marginalising of the Nobel prize-winning opposition figurehead María Corina Machado illustrated early on, the will of Venezuelans is not on his list of priorities. Operation Absolute Resolve was about exercising raw power to dominate a sovereign nation, and controlling Venezuela’s future oil production. [my emphasis] (6)
The editorial goes on to observe that the restrained official comments were understandable because European democracies are trying to keep Trump “on side” as much as possible on the Russia-Ukraine War. “But unchecked and unchallenged, “America first” expansionism is becoming a geopolitical menace in its own right.”
And it ends on the ominous note:
Regime change in Caracas came weeks after the publication of a bellicose national security strategy that pledged to “restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere”. Colombia and Cuba have now been put on notice, and in Denmark, so has a Nato ally. With Washington in the vanguard, a dangerous new world order is forming at pace [i.e., quickly]. Within it, Europe urgently needs to speak up for its values, while building the capacity to defend its own interests. [my emphasis]
(5) Lau, S. & Aeberhard, D. (2025): Denmark to boost Arctic defence with new ships, jets and HQ. BBC News 10/11/2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy9n790j878o> (Accessed: 2026-04-01).
According to the Trump 2.0 reality-TV show the world saw on Saturday, the initial news from Venezuela makes it sound like the still-existing government in Caracas headed by Vice President Delcy Rodríguez hasn’t yet gotten the memo that they are now a colonial government working for Donald Trump. The Argentinian daily Página/12 reports that a non-trivial number of Venezuelans appear to be in more of a “¡No pasarán!” mode in relation to the new colonial status (according to DJT) of their country.
The Vice President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, confirmed Nicolás Maduro as the only president of the country on Saturday, after his capture by the government of Donald Trump in the early hours of the day [Jan. 3]. At the same time, in multiple parts of Venezuela, citizens mobilized to denounce the attack perpetrated as part of the [US] kidnapping operation and to demand the proof of life of the president and his wife, Cilia Flores, who arrived in New York after being captured by U.S. militias [Special Forces].
In a press conference from the Miraflores Palace, Delcy Rodríguez declared: "There is only one president of this country and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros." She also described the capture operation as "an illegitimate and illegal kidnapping" and called for the immediate release of Maduro and the First Lady. [emphasis in original] (1)
The Independent’s Sam Kiley warns that lots of things could go really badly in what looks like a regime-change operation with no actual plan for the new regime, e.g., who will nominally be in charge as Trump’s viceroy government. Or whatever it is that he and Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth may actually have in mind. (2)
Kiley takes a bit of a cheap shot at European leaders, “In Nato there will be horror. But one can be sure that the supine grovelling that has characterised the behaviour of Nato’s leadership towards Trump and Hegseth will continue.” The public diplomatic “grovelling” will likely continue because Europe (including Britain) is urgently focusesd on forming defense plans that don’t depend on the NATO structure that has always been dominated by the US.
And European leaders are very aware that the US Peace President has been threatening to seize Greenland, which is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, to be controlled by the US. Focusing on deterring – and preparing to respond to – an attempted US seizure of Greenland will take priority over diplomatic protests over Venezuela. But that threat to Denmark also gives European leaders incentive to be careful about sounding like they endorse the Trump team’s project to turn Venezuela into a colony. As Kiley puts it in explaining Europe’s initial diplomatic caution:
Doing otherwise would be to acknowledge that Donald Trump has swung America first from being a friend, then to being an unreliable ally, and now, in the dawn of 2026, Trump’s America is a threat.
He said he would attack Venezuela’s mainland, and he has.
His claim to be knocking over a narco-terrorist state that has exported vast quantities of opiates to the US, and killed hundreds of thousands of its citizens, is nonsense. Opiates get into the US from Mexico, not Venezuela.
And he rightly warns:
As a premise for regime change and invasion, it is as false as the claims that Saddam Hussein was making a nuclear weapon. The invasion of that nation set off decades of pain and murder, terror and mayhem, and gave birth to Isis. It also tore at the fabric of Western democracies, as some ripped up ethics and their own laws to hunt down alleged terrorists. [my emphasis]
Latin American leaders that are led by people who are not Trump toadies like Argentine President Javier Milei are taking the threat very seriously. Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum (whose country Trump has also threatened to invade militarily), Brazil’s Lula de Silva, and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro (also threatened with military aggression by Trump) have all condemned the US kidnapping of Venezuela’s Maduro. They are responding to the clear violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty and international law, not endorsing Maduro’s authoritarian type of rule. (It’s worth recalling that Maduro was first legitimately elected as Venezuela’s President and the rightwingers’ characterization of his predecessor Hugo Chávez as a dictator is frivolous.)
[Former Mexican President AMLO (Andrés Manuel López Obrador)] he reappeared this Saturday to warn that neither Simon Bolivar nor Abraham Lincoln would accept the United States acting as a "world tyranny," and affirmed that his libertarian convictions prevent him from remaining silent in the face of what he described as an attack on Venezuelan sovereignty. "President Trump: don't indulge in self-complacency or listen to the sirens' song. To hell with the hawks; you have the capacity to act with practical judgment," AMLO said on his X account. (3)
AMLO was being generous even there in his suggestion that Trump has “the capacity to act with practical judgment.”
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, whose country Trump has threatened to annex, responded with diplomatic caution:
He called for a “peaceful, negotiated, and Venezuelan-led transition process that respects the democratic will of the Venezuelan people.” He also said Canada calls “on all parties to respect international law” and that the country “attaches great importance to resolution of crises through multilateral engagement.” (4)
Richard Haass, who as the former longtime President of the Council on Foreign Relations has impeccably “establishment” diplomatic credentials, discussed Saturday’s US attack on Venezuela in an interview. Let’s just say he’s skeptical of the prospects for this turning out well. (5)
Our Peace President’s regime-change strike in Venezuela is still in the early reality-TV-shows stage right now.
But the safest prediction is that it will be a big, bloody mess. I’m trying to think of a half-feasible different option, but nothing comes to mind.
The columnist Will Bunch posted on Bluesky: (1)
As bad as the problems under Maduro have been, if the immediate results of this turn out well at all, it will be something closes to an actual miracle. That would be almost as surprising as Trump ending the Russia-Ukraine War on his first day in office.
If the miracle doesn’t happen and Venezuela has an extended period of civil strife, one of the most likely result would be a new outflow of refugees into Colombia and then further north.
The Peace President’s dwindling number of fans will presumably think this is another great “reality-TV” show event. But Will Bunch is calling attention to the fact that the various countries in the Western Hemisphere who he’s threatened with war – I count so far Denmark, Canada, Mexico, Panama, and (kinda-sorta) Colombia – must be thinking seriously about what alliances they need to make and what defense measures they need to take to protect themselves against US takeovers.
I expect that in his speech later today, the Peace President will tell us this is the greatest regime-change operation ever conducted, nobody’s ever seen anything like it, the whole world is amazed by it, blah, blah. If George W. Bush’s famous “Mission Accomplished” banner is still lying around in a White House storeroom, they can pull it out and use it as a backdrop for his speech.
At least for today, it would be conceivable (if highly unlikely) that there could be a reasonably smooth transition to a democratic government that could attract investors to modernize its oil industry.
But as the political scientist Reinhard Heinisch comments on Facebook, "Whatever happens in Caracas, the United States owns it," which is certainly spot on.
The most optimistic prediction I would make is that this will wind up as a godawful mess: I think Trump should use George W. Bush's famous "Mission Accomplished" banner as a backdrop to his press conference this afternoon.
Presumably somebody in the chaotic Trump 2.0 regime has some kind of blueprint or even active operations of some kind to facilitate putting a new regime in place. Whether that’s the good news or the bad news remains to be seen, though the latter is probably the worst case.
Argentina's President Javier Milei apparently is celebrating the regime-change strike in Venezuela. The outgoing President of Chile is condemning the attack. The new rightwing President-elect and Pinochet fan José Antonio Kast doesn't take office until March, but he's been cheering for Trump's regime-change pressure on Venezuela.
Connor Echols in an early commentary writes:
The operation marks a dramatic turn of events after months of U.S.-led escalation against the Maduro regime, which included a series of attacks on drug boats and even some targets within Venezuela. Maduro’s abduction, which appears to violate international law, comes just days after the now-ousted president offered to negotiate with Washington.
Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez has requested that the U.S. provide proof of life for Maduro and his wife, who was also captured. It remains unclear whether Rodriguez will now take over as president. Advocates of regime change in Venezuela have generally hoped that this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maria Corina Machado, would take over after Maduro.
In a scathing editorial, the New York Times editorial board described the attack as “latter-day imperialism.” ...
It remains to be seen whether Trump will simply declare victory now that Maduro has been removed from office. A broader effort at regime change would likely require a more sustained U.S. military effort — one that may include a full-scale invasion, which could tip the country further into chaos. [my emphasis] (2)
Ben Hodges is the former commander of the US Army Europe (2014-2017) and since 2022 has often appeared on podcasts and TV broadcasts discussing the Russia-Ukraine War. Since leaving the military, he has also held the Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies at the Center for European Policy Analysis. He is also listed as part of the consulting team of Republica Consulting LLC, which lists “defense” as the first item on its “representative issue areas.” I don’t ever recall seeing an interview with him where he is identified as working for a defense consulting firm.
That doesn’t mean he isn’t well-informed on military issues. And if his firm is making money with him doing military consulting for them, he presumably has decent advice to give. And in this eight-minute clip on the Venezuela regime-changer operation, he makes some helpful observations. And he obviously thinks there are some hinky aspects of it: (3)
(3) Trump would've had help on the inside to capture Maduro | Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges. Times Radio YouTube channel 01/03/2026. <https://youtu.be/zJYpuZaVQFk?si=n0eMnQCRmJ-TGK5U> (Accessed: 2026-03-01.)
British strategists surely want to keep military cooperation with members of the current EU strong. But the country is caught in a dilemma. Like its neighbors in the EU, it needs economic stimulus but is still suffering from the chronic austerity-politics conventional wisdom that has afflicted it since the days of Maggie Thatcher’s premiership.
As Robert Skidelsky has recently noted, Prime Minister Keir Starmer seems to be hoping for stimulative effects from military spending. But Skidelsky warns about how promoting military spending can also lead to threat inflation in evaluating potential external dangers. (1)
Britain is a key ally for the EU countries in preparing the new security architecture in the new environment. But the current government of Starmer and Starmer’s own starkly conservative bent in politics are making Labour’s polling numbers resemble Donald Trump’s. And Starmer’s reckless embrace of rightwing xenophobic political themes is having the effect that such a strategy has had across Europe and also in the US: it is strengthening the far right in British politics.
With the US commitment to NATO and even to traditional nuclear deterrence in relation to Russia no longer as certain as they once were – to put it mildly – Britain’s role as one of the two NATO powers in Europe along with France makes its importance in collective European defense more urgent than ever.
The logic of nuclear deterrence here is not dependent on evaluations of the other side’s intentions. It’s dependent on the grim concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, whose initials MAD are grotesquely appropriate. It refers to the idea that it would be crazy for one nuclear nation to launch nukes against another one because the initiating country would also result in unacceptable destruction to the initiating nation, as well.
Zeteo reports on the messy British political situation: (2)
Poland’s positioning
Poland shares a border with Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and EU member Lithuania. From Poland’s viewpoint, it’s a potentially dangerous neighborhood even in the best of times. Poland’s border with Russia is the enclave containing Kaliningrad, which has no direct land connection to the rest of Russia.
Poland has one of the largest armies in the EU and currently has the most soldiers on active duty. And in the current situation, it’s not surprising that Poland is making more formal defensive preparation against potential Russian threats.
Poland plans to complete a new set of anti-drone fortifications along its eastern borders within two years, a top defence official has said, after a massive incursion of unmanned Russian aerial combat vehicles into Polish airspace earlier this year.
“We expect to have the first capabilities of the system in roughly six months, perhaps even sooner. And the full system will take 24 months to complete,” the deputy defence minister, Cezary Tomczyk, told the Guardian in an interview in Warsaw. …
More than a dozen suspected Russian drones entered Polish airspace in September, in an incident that led to airport closures, fighter jets being scrambled, and damage to buildings on the ground as drones were shot down. The foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, told the Guardian at the time that the attacks, which involved drones not carrying any ammunition, were an attempt by Russia “to test us without starting a war”. (3)
In the conventional scheme of things, it is the job of the defense ministries to evaluate the capabilities of potential adversaries and that of the foreign ministries to evaluate their intentions.
It’s notable that Foreign Minister Sikorski describes recent Russian drone incursions as being designed to test Poland but not to start a war, i.e., he’s stating his government’s public interpretation of Russian intentions. While the deputy defense minister is quoted as agreeing with Sikorski’s assessment but also refers to Russia’s capabilities:
“The truth is that as long as Ukraine is defending itself and fighting Russia, Europe is not at risk of war in the conventional, strict sense of the word. What we will face instead are provocations and acts of sabotage,” said Tomczyk. But, he said, if the west allowed Russia to win in Ukraine, it could be not long before the Kremlin set its sights on Europe.
That also touches on one of those more-than-one-thing-can-be-true issues. That is, every Western nation from Washington to Warsaw is aware that there are potential geopolitical benefits from weakening and/or distracting Russia with combat in Ukraine, whether or not those potential benefits are consistent at a given moment with Ukraine’s own perceived interests. That calculation would be consistent with need to evaluate the capabilities of potential adversaries.
But that does not mean that the polemical argument used by Russia and its partisans that the US and NATO deliberately provoked the current war in 2022 as a way to weaken Russia is accurate. It could certainly at the same time be true that once the war started, the notion that a war would weaken Russia played a role in the West’s response to the diplomatic initiative that Russia made soon after the 2022 invasion. In that instance, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson apparently persuaded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to break off the talks that were taking place between Ukraine and Russia over an interim settlement proposed by Russia. (4) Those negotiations are now referred to as the “Istanbul talks.“
(There was a different set of talks in Istanbul in mid-2025 between Ukrainian and Russian representatives.) (5)
However serious or non-serious that Russian initiative may have been, it’s now long since become one of the many “what-ifs” of history.
In a December account of the 2022 “Istanbul talks” experience, Branko Marcetic concludes, “All of this will surely go down as one of the great missed opportunities of history.” (6)
It’s probably too early for “surely.” But it will likely remain an open “what-if” for a long time to come.
The Russian proposal was analyzed at the time by Fiona Hill and Angela Stent in The World Putin Wants. Foreign Affairs Sept-Oct 2022, published online 08/25/2022. <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/world-putin-wants-fiona-hill-angela-stent> They took a notably skeptical approach to the possible seriousness of the proposal and a notably dark view of Putin’s broader territorial intentions. In that article, they accurately predicted, “if Donald Trump or a Republican with views like his becomes president of the United States in 2025, U.S. support for Ukraine will erode.”
(5) Russia and Ukraine discuss more prisoner exchanges at Istanbul talks (Accessed: 2025-27-12).
I’ll start this year-end post with my favorite protest song of 2025, “The F-Word.” (1)
I won’t try to make predictions for 2026. So I’ll settle for speculating on what news themes I’m likely to be following most.
The US economy is facing big risks. The Trump 2.0 slash-and-burn approach to government regulation all but guarantees that preventable problems will not be prevented. And problems that could be constructively managed will be managed irresponsibly.
David Cay Johnston just reported on some potentially serious dangers signs in the banking system:
Ominous signs that at least one of America’s “Too Big to Fail” banks is yet again seriously short of cash emerged this weekend in documents examined by James Henry, DCReport’s economics correspondent.
For the past two months the Federal Reserve has been silently injecting tens of billions of dollars of cash into banks. No one announced this. Henry found the evidence in public records that few, if any, Wall Street journalists consult, but that we routinely review at DCReport.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York (NYFed), acting like a financial Santa Claus to recklessly naughty bankers, delivered $17 billion in cash to an unknown bank or banks at 8 AM the morning after Christmas.
The sudden demands for cash to cover shortfalls began on Halloween. That day the NYFed injected more than $50 Billion into one or more unnamed banks. Since then, it has injected tens of billions into banks 14 times, delivering greenbacks galore roughly every third business day. [my emphasis] (2)
As he describes and illustrates with a dramatic chart, these are not routine transactions, and the amounts are far beyond what has been more since mid-2020. He discusses the report with Mark Thompson: (3)
Meanwhile, much of the positive economic growth in the US in 2025 has been driven by the speculative financial bubble around AI and much of the real investment has been coming from the monster data centers companies are building to support the enormous power demands that AI and cryptocurrency require. Kyle Bradley discussed this in an analysis last March for a journal from the University of Pennsylvania’s Program on Regulation:
Cryptocurrency mining requires enormous amounts of electricity. An oversight group estimates that Bitcoin—the original and most popular cryptocurrency—has a global annualized energy that matches Poland’s annual power consumption. One Bitcoin transaction uses as much energy as hundreds of thousands of credit card transactions.
Cryptocurrency, a digital and encrypted medium of exchange, has become popular partly because it offers a decentralized alternative to traditional currency. Although cryptocurrency can be used to buy goods and services, it is primarily treated as an investment asset. [my emphasis] (4)
He could have added that crypto also provides a valuable vehicle for financial scams, bribery, and other types of illegal transactions.
The drastic reduction of federal spending that produces direct and relatively immediate stimulation of the economy has been accompanied by a chaotic and foolish tariff policy.
As Paul Krugman has been reminding us for years on end, things don’t have to be this way. With an economic policy aimed primarily at improving opportunities and conditions for the vast majority instead of a policy aimed at catering to the proverbial One Percent, that is: “[I]n going from the Biden Administration to the Trump Administration, we have traded an economy that disproportionately benefited low-income workers to one that disproportionately benefits the well-off (particularly those who own a lot of stocks).” (5)
And he observes that far too much of the economic commentary we’re getting remains stuck in the fantasy world of the One Percenters and supply-side economics voodoo:
[T]oo much of the commentary is marred by a sort of lazy cynicism. Too many of these commentaries rely on the casual assumption that it has always been thus. Or at least, that it was as true during the Biden years as it is now. But that’s not true. David Autor, Arindrajit Dube and Annie McGrew have documented that the Biden era post-pandemic economic recovery was the opposite of what we are experiencing now. In fact, during the Biden recovery wage gains for low-paid workers were much larger than for those further up the income scale. In fact, the pro-low-income worker tilt of wage gains during the Biden recovery was something we haven’t seen since the “Great Compression” of the 1940s. And that narrowing of wage gaps was due to special factors, including wartime wage policy and a rapid expansion of unions. [my emphasis]
Europe in the new year
The shift in European power alignments now has Britain, the EU members, plus Switzerland - i.e., all of Europe except Russia and Russian-dominated countries like Georgia and Belarus – adjusting politically, economically, and militarily to the situation in which the Trump 2.0 is explicitly aligning with Russia to weaken European cohesion and, in particular, to undermine liberal democracy in Europe
This is going to be a complicated process in which the militaries of Britain, France, Germany, Poland, Spain, and Italy in particular will need to push for new coordination structures outside of the NATO umbrella. It’s probably not often enough mentioned that the collective defense capabilities of Europe in the case of a hypothetical military attack by Russia are organized under NATO command structures dominated by the US. And European intelligence capabilities including satellite resources are also heavily dependent on US resources and structure, including Elon Musk’s Starlink. No country should be dependent on the whims of Elon Musk for its intelligence capabilities.
Europe is pushing for Musk-independent intelligence with an arrangement called IRIS², “a multibillion-euro secure connectivity constellation pitched in 2022 and designed to rival Elon Musk’s Starlink system.” (6)
And Timothy Garten Ash recently characterized the message that the US is sending to the European democracies, including explicitly with the official 2025 National Security Strategy:
When it says, for example, that within a few decades at the latest certain NATO members—i.e., in Europe—will become majority non-European, that is very clearly code for non-white. That is a pretty startling statement to find in a national security strategy of the United States. When it says “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations,” that is a declaration of political war against the European Union.
Particularly, … if what has been reported elsewhere is true—that an earlier version of this suggested that four EU member states, Austria, Hungary, Poland and Italy, should be wooed away from the current European Union. It is a frontal declaration of political war against the European Union.
In historical context, I think it is interesting because, as you know very well, Yascha, for a large part of its history the United States was indifferent to Europe, wanted to stand apart from it, pulled away from its isolationism. Since 1945, we have had a United States that has supported a more liberal, more united Europe. This is the first time ever in history we have had a United States explicitly supporting an anti-liberal, xenophobic, nationalist, populist Europe. In a way, it is playing our own worst reactionary past in Europe back to us. [my emphasis] (7)
Elsewhere, we can expect based on the outgoing year that the Trump 2.0 Peace Administration will continue to foment, support, and engage directly in more armed conflict in the Middle East and the Western Hemisphere.
New Year’s Wish
2026 is a midterm election year in the US. The Democrats have a very good chance of doing well in it. It will require them to take getting out the vote and protecting against Republican voter-suppression measures very seriously. If I have just one New Year’s wish, it would be that no Democratic Member of Congress and especially no one in party leadership would use the word “bipartisan” at all this year, in any context. If some Republicans decide to peel off from the Trump Cult momentarily and work with the Democrats in Congress or in the states to support democracy and the rule of law, then call that “democracy-ship,” or “Spirit-of-the-American-Revolution-ship,” or whatever. 2026 is the 250th anniversary year of the American Revolution.
It doesn’t much matter if it sounds dorky. The Democrats need to remind voters constantly that they are the party of democracy, rule of law, and resistance to Trump and to the Trump Cult which the Republican Party faithfully supports. Please, no fantasizing about how “the fever will break,” or “no Red America-no-Blue-America,” or “when they go low, we go high.” The Democratic message needs to be, “We go democracy, the Trump Cult goes fascist.”
Finally, one thing that we’ve seen in American politics this year, is that when the public actively protest and demand that our representatives favor democracy and human rights, it works. The Republican Party may be so hopelessly welded to the Trump Cult that no actual grassroots pressure will have much effect on the leaders. Of course, as we saw with the infamous “Tea Party” movement during the Obama years, Republicans billionaires can be pretty good at putting on a astroturf version of grass-roots pressure.
But with American politics cursed by Big Money in campaigns, no one should expect the public of activists and grassroots Democrats can affords to “go back to brunch” if the Democrats take one or both Houses of Congress. They won’t accomplish the kinds of things they need to accomplish if they don’t get continuous pressure from the party base, issues groups, and NGOs.
(3) Big Banks Are Short of Cash: Another Bailout and Recession to Come, Prof. David Cay Johnston. The Mark Thompson YouTube channel 12/31/2025. <https://youtu.be/c3uepHkwm3Y?si=IfjrDlw7cT1RYqFW> (Accessed: 31-12-2025).
When I say this YouTube news report (1) and wanted to repost it, I immediately found myself thinking if I should start identifying CBS News as “regime-conforming media,” now that Trumpista zealot Bari Weiss has been put in charge of it by its oligarch owner David Ellison.
In that clip, Peace President Trump, whose Eternal Peace Plan for the Middle East began last October 10, warns the Palestinian Hamas group of a new round of military attacks if it doesn’t do what he and Benjamin Netanyahu’s government says.
As a reminder, Trump told the Israeli Parliament in October: "After so many years of unceasing war and endless danger, today the skies are calm, the guns are silent, the sirens are still, and the sun rises on a Holy Land that is finally at peace, a land and a region that will live, God willing, in peace for all eternity." [my emphasis] (2)
To be fair, he did put in that “God willing” caveat that if the Eternal Peace Plan fails, it’s God’s fault, not Trump’s.
Ben Samuels reports on Trump’s Dec. 29 meeting with Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago:
For all the murmurs and leaks about growing U.S. impatience with Israel's actions in Gaza and concerns about ratcheted-up tensions with Iran that could once again bring the Middle East on the precipice of regional war, in a brief appearance alongside Netanyahu on the steps of Mar-a-Lago, Trump once again demonstrated that he is firmly in Israel's corner.
Whether declining to put a firm timeline on moving Gaza to the next phase ("I think it's gonna begin pretty soon,") declining to publicly assert any pressure on Netanyahu over a Turkish military presence in Gaza, or effectively committing to involving U.S. forces in any new military action against Iranian nuclear targets ("If Iran builds up again, we'll knock the hell out of them,") Netanyahu could not have scripted Trump's answers better. …
Netanyahu could not have scripted the beginning of his U.S. visit better in his wildest dreams. How long he can presume to reap the benefits of Trump's breathless support is a question that will only intensify throughout 2026. [my emphasis] (3)
But since the Eternal Peace Plan is going so well, apparently, Israel has now decided to promote a secessionist movement in Somalia by recognizing a breakaway entity called “Somaliland.” A rebel group there issued a declaration of independence in 1991. International recognition has been slow to come. So slow, in fact, that Israel’s recognition this month made it the first country to recognize “Somaliland.”
If you’re thinking this means Netanyahu’s government has developed a sudden fondness for African liberation movement, well, no, that’s not it. Ragip Soylu explains:
... Israel’s decision to establish diplomatic ties with this de facto state is not popular in the region.
It has drawn criticism from many regional actors, including Turkey, which has heavily invested in Somalia over the past 13 years. Many Arab and regional countries, with the notable exception of the United Arab Emirates, condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision.
Amichai Stein, an Israeli journalist with i24 who specialises in regional affairs, agrees. Ragip Soylu explains:
“So far, Israel has not developed a clear strategy to counter the Houthis, and this step could help the Israeli government strengthen its influence in the region, especially as the Suez Canal is largely blocked for cargo traffic destined for Israel,” he said.
“A second goal is to counterbalance Turkey’s influence in the Horn of Africa, as Turkey maintains military bases in the area. Ankara is not alone, the UAE also has a base there, and several other countries are seeking access and influence in this strategically important trade gateway.”
Turkey has officially condemned the Israeli move, but all eyes are on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is expected to make a statement later this week. [my emphasis] (4)
As we’ve seen in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria just in recent years, Israel can be reluctant to recognize the permanence of international borders in its immediate region. But because of the colonial history of Africa, changing national borders there is a particularly touchy issue.
As the BBC reports, “A few months ago, a number of news outlets reported that Israel had contacted Somaliland over the potential resettlement of Palestinians forcibly removed from Gaza.” (5)
Notes:
(1) Trump warns that if Hamas doesn't disarm very soon, "there will be hell to pay". CBS News YouTube channel 12/29/2025. <https://youtu.be/flV7yrfbEII?si=uE0PggWkttW8xoi7> (Accessed: 2025-29-12).
Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) reinforced the fact that Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Zelensky at the end of February 2025 put so dramatically on display: that Europe can no longer count on the US to fulfill its NATO commitments.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat recently posted this on Substack Notes:
Predicting anything about the erratic and chaotic Trump Administration is tricky. But this is likely to be true for as long as he remains President.
Europe’s efforts to rearrange their security plans, particularly in relation to real and potential threats from Russia, has become the leading security policy issue for Europe and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. It will be a messy process. And it may or may not work out well. But it’s a big break from the NATO era.
This is a useful discussion on one of the major issues, the military buildup of Germany. (1) Military buildups are never unambiguously good, and this discussion illustrates that:
And it’s also becoming clear that, at least as long as Trump is in power, European democracies will have to give a high priority to protecting their democratic political systems from the open hostility being expressed by Trump and his loyalists. I just posted about a take on the new NSS that indulged in a kind of mirror-image Cold-War-paranoia version of Russia’s efforts to influence Europe politically. It’s important to be realistic about such issues, which actually are complicated. But not hopelessly so.
Countries try to influence other countries. What kind of influence efforts are considered legitimate will vary according to laws and political system. The US Constitution included a provision that the President of the United States must be a native-born (birthright) citizen. This was a barrier against European powers trying to install a foreign official as head of the US government.
There was some maneuvering after the Revolution to install a Prussian prince in exactly that role. Taking advantage of the US Civil War, France installed Archduke Maximilian of Austria as Emperador Maximiliano I de México from 1864-1867. He was the younger brother of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph. The Mexicans didn’t much like this arrangement. And it didn’t end well for Emperor Max.
If the Mexicans themselves had not overthrown him, the US would have gone to war (again) with Mexico to remove him. The US was not going to allow France to government Mexico.
There’s nothing new about parties and governments trying to affect opinions and form friendly networks. The national representatives in the European Parliament form party blocs with other likeminded EU from other countries. The limits and boundaries of what is proper in such international politics are defined by elaborate sets of laws and practices. American political parties, for instance, are not allowed to accept donations directly from non-US-citizens.
As this report explains, European countries and parties and voters have to be aware about the practical implications of the kind of collaboration between the Trump regime and far-right parties in Europe. (2)
David Cattler of the (Estonian) International Cemtre for Defence and Security (EESTI) provides an analysis of the new NSS that doesn’t rely on paranoid clichees. (3) In international-policy-wonk mode, he writes:
The United States has released its new National Security Strategy (NSS), and for Europe—especially its frontline states—it marks more than a periodic policy update. It signals the emergence of a distinct US strategic doctrine: one that reorders global priorities, reframes Allies’ roles, and seeks stability in Europe chiefly so that Washington can redirect its focus to the Indo-Pacific and the Western Hemisphere. The document will be read in Washington as pragmatic. In Europe, it lands as a strategic inflexion point. [my emphasis]
The shift in US priorities from Europe to power-balancing against China became official in 2011 under the Obama Administration. Formally, that policy isn’t new.
But the level of overt hostility being expressed by the US government against liberal democracies in Europe is new. We did see a preview of that hostility and scorn during the Cheney-Bush Administration and its reckless war in Iraq.
Politico ran an article on Christmas Eve about how the European far-right parties – the ones Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy identified as MAGA’s preferred parties in Europe – have started borrowing the long-time US Republican theme of the so-called war on Christmas.
In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has made the defense of Christmas traditions central to her political identity. She has repeatedly framed the holiday as part of the nation’s endangered heritage, railing against what she calls “ideological” attempts to dilute it.
“How can my culture offend you?” Meloni has asked in the past, defending nativity scenes in public spaces. She has argued that children should learn the values of the Nativity — rather than just associating Christmas with food and presents — and rejected the idea that long-standing traditions should be altered. This year, Meloni said she was abstaining from alcohol until Christmas, portraying herself as a practitioner of spirituality and tradition.
France’s National Rally and Spain’s Vox have similarly opposed secularist or “woke” efforts to replace religious imagery with neutral seasonal language, and advocated for nativity scenes in town halls. In Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has warned that Christmas markets are losing their “German character,” amplifying disinformation about Muslim traditions edging out Christian ones. (1)
I’m not sure that the American version of the “war on Christmas” theme ever had much political effect beyond the loyal Republicans who appreciated its antisemitic undertones. (Because of course we know who’s really behind this here War On Christmas!) John Gibson’s 2005 book The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought was an attempt to give some minimal intellectual respectability to the slogan.
Trump picked up the “war on Christmas” slogan in his 2016 Presidential campaign. But his embrace of it did not give it any notable additional heft as a political slogan. Gretel Kauffman reported in late 2016 after Trump election to his first Presidential term:
Not all conservatives and Christians feel that Christmas is under
attack. In a recent survey by Public Policy Polling, only 13 percent
of Americans polled said they'd be personally offended if someone told them
"Happy Holidays," compared to the three percent of Americans who
found "Merry Christmas" offensive. The poll also notes that 57
percent of Republicans say there is a war on Christmas, down from 68 percent
of Republicans in 2012. (2)
She also noted in that analysis that the war-on-Christmas meme seemed to have peaked about the time Gibson’s book came out. It is a drearily bad book, so it’s even possible its inanity may have encouraged some people to ignore the slogan.
But even though it has largely faded away, FOX News and the dreary MAGA verbal moralizers were even whining about it this year. As Josh Olds observes for Baptist News Global:
The calendar flips to December and the old, familiar talking points begin.
The White House tweeted, “We’re saying MERRY CHRISTMAS again!” along with a photo of President Donald Trump standing stiffly next to a Christmas tree. Laura Ingraham has warned Fox News listeners, “The Left is ramping up its war on Christmas again.” Liberty Counsel released its annual “Naughty or Nice” list, which denotes which major retailers use the word “Christmas” in their holiday advertising.
For a holiday centered on the Prince of Peace, a lot of folks spend an extraordinary amount of time feeling threatened. [emphasis in original] (3)
And he notes that among far-right Christian adherents of the Trump cult, the theme is still part of their standard repertoire:
Now in its 20th year, The War on Christmas has grown from talk-radio outrage cycles and cable-news monologues to the halls of governmental and religious power. Megachurch pastors are claiming the angels who visited the shepherds were dressed “not in robes, but most likely … in battle fatigues” because of the War on Christmas. Donald Trump is claiming he has kept Christmas alive and declaring everybody is saying “Merry Christmas” again.
The War on Christmas is a conservative cultural shorthand for anything that could be framed as an assault on Christian identity or as proof that the culture was slipping away from “Christian values.” What rarely gets questioned is what values we are talking about.
He goes on to explain why the war-on-Christmas trope is also bad Christianity from his viewpoint:
The War on Christmas is a conservative cultural shorthand for anything that could be framed as an assault on Christian identity or as proof that the culture was slipping away from “Christian values.” What rarely gets questioned is what values we are talking about.
The Nativity story is not a tale of cultural dominance. It is the story of God entering the world through the margins - a baby born to a young teenage girl living in occupied land, laid in a feeding trough and first visited by shepherds who occupied one of the lowest rungs of society. Jesus’ birth does not protect the powerful. It does not comfort the culture. The Incarnation shakes the system of power to its core. [my emphasis]
According to the account in the Gospel of Matthew, Mary and Joseph found it necessary to become refugees to Egypt to prevent Baby Jesus from being murdered by the Judean King Herod I. (4)
Supporting refugees from actual persecution is not a value of the Trump Cult. They cheer for the active persecution of refugees and immigrants.
To be fair to the FOXists of recent decades, they didn’t come up with the War on Christmas notion all on their own:
The idea of the War on Christmas started with one of the founding fathers of American anti-Semitism: automaker Henry Ford. Back in the 1920s, he published a newsweekly called the International Jew. It frequently featured blatantly bigoted accusations such as, “Last Christmas, most people had a hard time finding Christmas cards that indicated in any way that Christmas commemorated someone’s birth.… People sometimes ask why three million Jews can control the affairs of 100 million Americans. In the same way that 10 Jewish students can abolish the mention of Christmas and Easter out of schools containing 3,000 Christian pupils.”
In modern times, Fox News has been airing segments such as Bill O’Reilly’s 2016 “Naughty or Nice” list, which praised businesses that use “Merry Christmas” and condemned others that say “Happy Holidays.”
In 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump triumphantly proclaimed that, “People are saying Merry Christmas again.” But when did people stop saying Merry Christmas? The answer is never. Former U.S. president Barack Obama said it, as did all of his predecessors. People in stores say it, greeting cards say it, even Jews have been known to say it when dealing with Christians over the holiday season. (5)
Ford also has the dubious distinction of having published the infamous Russian czarist forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in English. And also for being mentioned by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf as an American he admired:
„Jews are the rulers of the stock market powers of the American Union. Every year they increase their control of a people [Volk] of 120 million. One single great man, still stands independent [of the Jews] today, [Henry] Ford.” (6)
The present-day European edition of the “war on Christmas”
The Politico article doesn’t go into much detail about how today’s far right is using the war-on-Christmas nonsense as ideology. The mostly have few scruples about pandering to antisemitic prejudices. But Christian religiosity does not play as prominent a role for far-right, Trumpist-type parties like Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) or France’s National Revival as it did for Italian Fascism in Mussolini’s day or for the “Austrofascism” of the governments of Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schussnigg of 1934-38.
The fascist-leaning parties in Europe today certainly aren’t averse to promoting antisemitic prejudice. But their focus right now is much more on xenophobia and Islamophobia against Muslim citizens and immigrants. So right now they are willing to cheer Israel’s actions against Palestinians, which lets them strike a posture of: We support Israel in their fight against Muslim barbarians so we can’t possibly be antisemitic! Another variation is: We hate Muslims and Muslims hate women and so we can’t possibly be against women’s rights”
Politico describes the posturing of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni this way:
In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has made the defense of Christmas traditions central to her political identity. She has repeatedly framed the holiday as part of the nation’s endangered heritage, railing against what she calls “ideological” attempts to dilute it.
“How can my culture offend you?” Meloni has asked in the past, defending nativity scenes in public spaces. She has argued that children should learn the values of the Nativity — rather than just associating Christmas with food and presents — and rejected the idea that long-standing traditions should be altered. This year, Meloni said she was abstaining from alcohol until Christmas, portraying herself as a practitioner of spirituality and tradition.
Politico also observes:
France’s National Rally and Spain’s Vox have similarly opposed secularist or “woke” efforts to replace religious imagery with neutral seasonal language, and advocated for nativity scenes in town halls. In Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has warned that Christmas markets are losing their “German character,” amplifying disinformation about Muslim traditions edging out Christian ones.
(4) Photo: Flight Into Egypt (1923) by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1923 (The Met object ID 16947), Source: Wikipedia. <https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7540664>
The Trump Administration has revived its imperialist fantasies about taking over Greenland from Denmark, which is an autonomous territory (province) of the nation of Denmark. (1)
If you’re wondering about the title of this post, no, I’m not spending Christmas in Greenland. Or in any other part of Denmark.
But the Trump 2.0 regime has revived its threats against Denmark to seize Greenland from it. Trump himself seems to become more unpredictable and less coherent by the day. But at this point, Denmark and its European allies have to assume that Trump will continue to pressure Denmark over Greenland. And they can’t ignore the repeated threats by the US to take military action to do so. Despite the fact that Greenland has had very close security cooperation with the US since the end of the Second World War.
Trump has appointed the Republican Governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, as a “special envoy” to the Danish province of Greenland. Special envoys these days are often appointed as specialists for particular issues. Landry has initially been pretty explicit about his view of the goal is the seizure of Danish territory:
In response to a question from the BBC about the new role of Jeff Landry, the Republican governor of Louisiana, Trump said the US needed Greenland for "national protection" and that "we have to have it".
Landry, he said, would "lead the charge" as special envoy to Greenland, a semi-autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark.
The move has angered Copenhagen, which said it would call the US ambassador for "an explanation". Greenland's prime minister said the island must "decide our own future" and its "territorial integrity must be respected".
Gov Landry said in a post on X that it was an honour to serve in a "volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the US". ...
He has refused to rule out using force to secure control of the island, a stance that has shocked Denmark, a Nato ally that has traditionally enjoyed close relations with Washington.
"We'll have to work that out," Trump added. "We need Greenland for national security, not minerals." [my emphasis] (2)
Polls in Greenland show that a majority of its 57 thousand citizens would prefer to be an independent nation. But if anyone imagines that Trump’s territorial ambitions there are have anything to do with anti-imperialist principles of international law, well, they’re wrong. The Kingdom of Denmark is a country but not a federation. Greenland would have the formal option to secede and become an independent country like Iceland did in 1944. But Denmark’s Act on Greenland Self-Government of 2009 requires that a majority of the Danish Parliament, the Folketing, would have to approve it. A voluntary secession of Greenland to become a territory of the United States is highly unlikely. Greenland has more political clout over issues like the use of Greenlandic resources than it would ever have as a US state with a much smaller population than Wyoming, much less as a formal US territory, or with a Commonwealth status like Puerto Rico.
Of course, as an independent nation of 57,000 would be taking a huge risk in dealing with a rogue US government without being part of Denmark.
Gov. Landry is not especially fond of this whole rule-of-law things even in his own American state. As Charlie Pierce noted in April, “The state of Louisiana is on something of a law-and-order binge these days. Governor Jeff Landry is hot to kill more people. And the state also seems to be bound and determined to keep prisoners in prison by any means necessary, including faceless algorithms.” (3)
Oh, about those “information operations” that countries conduct against each other: “Denmark summoned the US chargé d’affaires in August [2025] for an urgent meeting over an alleged influence campaign after at least three US men with ties to Trump and the White House were accused of trying to infiltrate Greenlandic society.” (4)
Geopolitics happen
Greenland is important to US security. This is not new. And the US has long had a record of working with NATO ally Denmark to secure those interests. This map gives a good illustration of Greenland’s geographical position in between Russia and the US, including the location of the key US Thule Airbase: (5)
There has been some not-implausible speculation that part of Trump’s obsession with annexing Greenland may have to do with looking at flat maps of the Western Hemisphere, which makes Greenland look more gigantic than it is. But it is the world’s biggest island, and Greenland is “[m]ore than three times the size of the U.S. Texas. (6)
The Pituffik Space Base, plays a “crucial role in defense against missiles coming in from anywhere between North Korea and the Kola Peninsula, where Russian nuclear weapons are. So …, the nuclear posture of those two incidentally involves the Arctic in security dynamics that are not about the Arctic as such.” (7)
The caption to the map above notes:
The fastest way between the population centers in the US and the Soviet Union was via the North Pole and Greenland was, thus, the outermost outpost of the West towards the East [during the Cold War]. This explains the great interest of the US to have airbases here. …
it was first and foremost the Danish empire and not Denmark proper that was a member of the Western defense alliance. In recent years, the melting of the ice at the North Pole as a consequence of increased global heating has enabled new ship lanes and made a number of natural resources (minerals, oil) in Greenland and in the waters off Greenland accessible and possible to exploit. This has opened up for a number of economic opportunities in the Arctic, not only for Greenland, but also for great powers such as the US, Russia and China.
As Marc Jacobsen observed, Trump’s first-term fantasies about Greenland have intensified under Trump 2.0: “The first time – in the summer of 2019 – his idea of buying [Greenland] quickly fizzled out, but this time his interest is much more persistent and deeper.” (8)
Jacobsen goes on to recount some of the recent very ways that Denmark has used Trump’s demands to negotiate benefits for itself:
Even though Trump’s idea [of buying Greenland] was decisively rejected, since then [2019] there have been various concrete initiatives with the goal of strengthening the presence of the USA in Greenland and the bilateral relationships. Most notable were the opening of a US Consulate in the year 2020 and an economic package in the amount of $12.1 million, which would be invested to provide American consultant services for developing Greenland’s mining industry, tourism and education. At the same time, the role of Greenland on the international stage was strengthened, in that it was recognized as partner to be taken as an equal. These were reinforced in the following years among other ways by official state visits in Washington, D.C., Copenhagen and Nuuk.
This kind of thing was actually a continuation of the ways that Denmark has used its strategic position to gain benefits and secure its own place in the international system.
Here the stunning incompetence of Trump 2.0’s diplomacy shows itself again. Denmark has been very cooperative with the US for decades in cooperating on strategic security concerns. Here it seems that the old saying “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” would seem to be good advice for the US. But Trump’s team seems more oriented to the TechBro version, “If it’s not broke, break it.” Which was a predecessor of the “move fast and break things” motto.
But in general, it’s not a promising way to conduct diplomacy. Or, as Jacobsen puts it:
[T]he US already exercises de facto military control over Greenland, which plays an important role in deterring global and regional threats. In case the US wants to increase its military presence, that is already possible within the scope of existing defense treaties, and the government in Nuuk [Greenland] and Copenhagen should want to keep a door open for such a wish – above all, when it benefits Greenland.
As the leading military power in the world, it would in fact be easy for the US to march into Greenland, where they already have a strong military presence at their disposal. Should it do that, it would nevertheless encounter rejection by large parts of the world community, which would react sharply to such an aggressive and imperialist undertaking.
The problem is, of course, is that we have a government led by people such as Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth who don’t seem to be able to evaluate alternatives on big policies all that well. If the Trump 2.0 regime is really serious about what they projected in their 2025 National Security Strategy – treating European allies as enemies and trying to replace their governments with pro-Putting ones – then blatant and illegal military aggression against a long-standing and important ally like Denmark might strike them as a dandy idea.
(2) Landale, James & Hagan, Rachel (2025): Trump says US 'has to have' Greenland after naming special envoy. BBC News 12/22/2025. <https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgmd132ge4o> (Accessed: 20258-23-12).
