Author: admin

A view of the city center of the Greenlandic capital Nuuk. Trump’s renewed interest in acquiring the island hasn’t gone over well with Greenland or Denmark. Steffen Trumpf/picture alliance via Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption

Steffen Trumpf/picture alliance via Getty Images

President Trump’s repeated talk of buying Greenland has inspired a number of related proposals — both serious and satirical — from those who either endorse or oppose the idea.

Trump first spoke of purchasing the massive Arctic island from Denmark in 2019 and has strongly reiterated his interest in the early weeks of his second term, part of a “manifest destiny” push that has also included talk of “taking back” the Panama Canal, making Canada the 51st state and taking over Gaza.

Trump has said buying Greenland is essential for American economic security, and “National Security and Freedom throughout the World.” Experts say the island holds value geopolitically and geographically: It’s home to rare earth minerals that the U.S. largely relies on China to get.

Trump’s idea has been welcomed by congressional Republicans, who have introduced supportive bills with names like “Make Greenland Great Again” and the “Red, White and Blueland Act.”

But the leaders of Denmark and Greenland rejected it, saying the island is “not for sale.” (Trump has declined to rule out military or economic coercion to take control of it.)

A January poll found that 85% of Greenlanders do not want to be part of the U.S. And, as NPR has reported, most Danes “have gone from shock, confusion to just plain bemused” by Trump’s proposal.

Some Danes are now flipping the script, suggesting their leaders buy California and turn it into “New Denmark.” More than 220,000 people had signed the satirical petition as of Wednesday morning.

The push to “Danify California” 

The petition aims to gather 500,000 signatures and raise “$1 trillion (give or take a few billion)” in support of what it calls “Denmark’s Next Big Adventure.”

“Have you ever looked at a map and thought, ‘You know what Denmark needs? More sunshine, palm trees, and roller skates.’ Well, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make that dream a reality,” its website says. “Let’s buy California from Donald Trump!”

Why California? The petition lists a few reasons, including its year-round sunshine, tech dominance, avocado supply (“avocado toast forever”) and Disneyland (“we’ll rename it Hans Christian Andersenland”).

And it jokes that Trump might be willing to part with it for the right price.

Trump has had no shortage of critical words for California, which voted against him three times. He has accused Democrats of destroying the state, even calling it “Paradise Lost” on the campaign trail.

He has long feuded with its Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, most recently blaming him for the scale of the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles in January and threatening to tie federal aid to voter ID. Newsom, in turn, signed two laws last week setting aside $50 million for legal battles against the second Trump administration.

The petition borrows some language from Trump, like calling its plan “tremendous,” including “bigly” in its email address and brandishing the slogan “Måke Califørnia Great Ægain.” It says it is in Denmark’s national interest to promote its heritage by turning California into New Denmark and L.A. into Løs Ångeles.

“We’ll bring hygge to Hollywood, bike lanes to Beverly Hills, and organic smørrebrød to every street corner,” it says. “Rule of law, universal health care and fact based politics might apply.”

The website includes fake testimonials of support from celebrities — like Danish-born Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich and Danish-American actor Viggo Mortensen — and imaginary people, including Sven the Viking and Karen from Accounting.

It’s not clear who the organizers of the petition are. Their website, Denmarkification.com, cheekily says they are located “somewhere on Earth, for strategic and economic reasons.” And they are upfront about it being satire, with a disclaimer reading “This campaign is 100% real… in our dreams.”

A bill to rename Greenland 

Meanwhile, in Congress, some Republican lawmakers are throwing their legislative support behind Trump’s efforts.

On Tuesday, Rep. Buddy Carter of Georgia introduced a bill that would authorize Trump to enter into negotiations with Denmark to acquire Greenland and, if successful, rename it “Red, White, and Blueland.”

“Any reference in a law, map, regulation, document, paper, or other record of the United States to Greenland shall be deemed to be a reference to ‘Red, White, and Blueland,” it reads.

The bill directs the Secretary of the Interior to oversee its implementation on federal documents through the Board of Geographic Names — which is effectively how Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

“America is back and will soon be bigger than ever with the addition of Red, White, and Blueland,” Carter said in a statement. “President Trump has correctly identified the purchase of what is now Greenland as a national security priority, and we will proudly welcome its people to join the freest nation to ever exist when our Negotiator-in-Chief inks this monumental deal.”

Carter’s bill has been referred to the committees on Foreign Affairs and Natural Resources for further consideration, though it’s unclear how much support it will have. It’s the second of its kind — a dozen House Republicans introduced the “Make Greenland Great Again Act” in mid-January, before Trump was even sworn in.

The bill authorizes the president to seek to enter into negotiations with Denmark over Greenland. It requires any agreement they may reach to be submitted to the House and Senate Foreign Relations committees within five days and gives Congress 60 days to review it.

Does Trump need Congress’ support? 

Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution gives a president the power to make treaties “with the Advice and Consent of the Senate” and “provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.”

But in the decades after World War II, according to the Senate, presidents have entered the U.S. into a growing number of international agreements without the Senate’s approval.

“Since 1990, only about 6 percent of international agreements have been made through formal treaties submitted to the Senate for advice and consent,” it says.

Those executive agreements, as they are called, are still considered binding under international law.

While Trump’s push for Greenland gains steam among Republicans, support among Democrats appears to be lacking. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in January that “House Democrats believe that we are not sent to Washington to invade Greenland.”

US President Donald Trump has held separate phone calls in quick succession with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on potentially moving forward with peace talks.

In a post on social media platform Truth Social, Trump said he had a “lengthy and highly productive phone call’ with Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.

In the same post, Trump wrote “I have asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of the CIA John Ratcliffe, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and Ambassador and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, to lead the negotiations which, I feel strongly, will be successful.”

Trump said he and Putin also discussed other topics including the Middle East, energy, Artificial Intelligence and “the power of the dollar”, as well as reflected on the “great history of our nations,” and thanked him for the release of American school teacher Marc Fogel as part of a prisoner swap with Alexander Vinnik, a convicted Russian criminal.

Soon after his conversation with Putin, Trump spoke with Zelenskyy, who later posted on X saying the two talked “about opportunities to achieve peace, discussed our readiness to work together at the team level. I am grateful to President Trump for his interest in what we can accomplish together.”

“Together with the US, we are charting our next steps to stop Russian aggression and ensure a lasting, reliable peace,” said Zelenskyy.

“As President Trump said, let’s get it done,” he continued, adding that the two had “agreed to maintain further contact and plan upcoming meetings.”

Zelenskyy also mentioned discussions he had had with US Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent on the “preparation of a new document on security, economic cooperation, and resource partnership.”

Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Putin and Trump agreed in the telephone conversation to organise a meeting in person, and that the Russian president told Trump he is ready to receive Americans in the country.

“The Russian President supported one of the main theses of the head of the American state that the time has come for our countries to work together,” the Kremlin spokesperson said.

Speaking about the war in Ukraine, Trump claimed that millions of people had died in a conflict that “would not have happened” if he were president when it began, and added that “it did happen, so it must end.”

CNN  — 

President Donald Trump made a campaign promise to lower prices on Day One. Well, it’s Day 24, and as anyone who has gone shopping for eggs lately knows: Prices aren’t any lower than they were on Inauguration Day.

In fact, inflation rose much more than expected last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday – rising another half percentage point last month overall, buoyed by surging fuel and egg prices. It was the biggest monthly increase since August 2023. And prices were 3% higher year-over-year for the first time since June 2024.

Yes, Joe Biden was president for 19 ½ of the 31 days the report covers, so much of America’s renewed inflation pain rests on the former president’s shoulders. But the bad inflation report also depicts a difficult political reality for the new president: Prices aren’t falling now that Trump is in office; they’re actually rising faster.

Trump’s campaign promise was doomed to be broken from the moment he made it. No president can wave a magic wand to lower prices, and for that matter, Trump has been unlucky: Oil prices have been on the rise on concerns about tensions in the Middle East and on sanctions against Russia and Iran. And avian flu sent egg prices more than 15% higher last month – the biggest surge since June 2015.

Prices were up across the board last month, though – not just those volatile and hard-to-control categories like food and fuel. There’s no way to spin this; January’s inflation report was just plain bad, and Trump is starting to own high prices.

A CBS poll this week showed that nearly two-thirds of Americans think Trump hasn’t focused enough of his policies on reducing inflation. And a University of Michigan consumer survey released Friday showed that Americans’ inflation expectations for the year ahead surged this month.

Trump does have a strategy to lower inflation, though. The president has spelled out a four-part plan to get prices down for American consumers.

1) Lower taxes within America’s borders, incentivizing companies to do business there.

2) Raise taxes on businesses outside of America (that is, tariffs), bringing in revenue that will both pay for the lost proceeds from lower tax rates and drive more American manufacturing to grow the economy.

3) Produce more oil to lower energy costs to defeat inflation.

4) Cut spending, primarily via Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, to lower interest rates to reduce costs for businesses and consumers.

Kevin Hassett, a White House economic adviser, told CNN Wednesday that Trump is already taking action on prices. For example, he claimed DOGE found $40 billion worth of spending to cut, although that amount remains hard to verify.

“We’re focusing on getting spending under control and having supply-side tax cuts and regulatory policies and drilling and so on, so that there’s a lot of supply-reduced demand,” he said. “That’s how you get prices down at the more macroeconomic level.”

Hassett also noted that the administration is working on a plan to combat the avian flu that has disrupted egg supplies and driven prices higher, although he didn’t share any specifics.

At least one of those policies can have and appears to be having an immediate impact on consumers. For example, the 10-year US Treasury yield has fallen since Trump was inaugurated, partially in anticipation of spending cuts, helping to lower mortgage rates a tad – from just above 7% on average the week before he took office to just under 6.9% last week.

But other policies either haven’t been introduced or aren’t working – at least not yet. Remember: Just because Trump has a plan doesn’t mean it will work. Biden spent most of the past two years working to fight inflation, but it was ultimately the Federal Reserve’s historically high interest rates that brought inflation down from 40-year highs.

Mainstream economists and policy experts remain dubious about Trump’s plan.

Cutting taxes could be done with a simple majority of Republicans through a process known as budget reconciliation. But there’s already infighting and a disagreement between Senate and House Republicans about the best approach to take on tax cuts. So the timing and scope remains unclear.

And though tax cuts could save Americans money in their take-home pay, they could ultimately raise loan rates. For example, Trump’s 2017 corporate tax cuts gave the economy a boost, raising wages and productivity, but the benefits were not nearly enough to offset the losses in tax revenue that have widened the US deficit, according to an analysis from Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Trump plans to pay for tax cuts with tariff revenue and by cutting government spending. But the math doesn’t add up. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget last week estimated Trump’s tax cuts would cost between $5 trillion and $11 trillion. Even if Trump enacts his most aggressive tariff plan, the expected revenue would be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Elon Musk has recently said he is targeting $1 trillion in spending cuts – an incredibly high number that would likely involve cutting popular social services like Medicare and Social Security. And the timing of when those savings could be realized remains unknown because of mounting legal challenges – and much of the money for contracts that were eliminated may have been allocated already.

So if Trump gets his tax cuts through, the government will almost certainly have to borrow even more money in the form of Treasury bonds. That will flood the market even more with bonds, reducing their price and sending yields higher. And yields are pegged to all kinds of consumer loan rates, including mortgages.

Tariffs themselves present a problem: Mainstream economists agree that American importers, not foreign exporters, pay their costs. That means those costs get passed on to American consumers, which can reignite inflation and hurt the economy.

And Trump’s energy plan is also problematic: He can open up as many oil fields and offshore sites for drilling as he wants – it will remain hard to pump more oil. Demand is weak around the world, as economies, particularly China, struggle with inflation and slow growth. Meanwhile, the United States is already producing more oil now than any other country at any other time. Energy companies are not clamoring for new oil drilling leases, as evidenced by Alaska’s recent wildlife refuge drilling auction receiving zero bids.

Lastly, Trump’s demand that interest rates fall is something largely outside of his control. On Wednesday, Trump posted on Truth Social, “Interest Rates should be lowered, something which would go hand in hand with upcoming Tariffs!!! Let’s Rock and Roll, America!!!”

Trump didn’t specifically mention the Federal Reserve, and Hassett suggested Wednesday that Trump was pushing to lower the 10-year Treasury yield rate (which, as noted above, could be complicated by tax cuts).

But Trump has repeatedly tried to exert more direct control over the Federal Reserve’s interest rate decisions and has called out Jerome Powell, the Fed chair Trump appointed in his first term, for not lowering interest rates faster. Trump has repeatedly denied speculation that he would try to fire Powell.

The Fed may ultimately reduce rates whether or not Trump wants it to. But with inflation numbers like Wednesday’s report, it’s not looking likely anytime soon.

CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald contributed to this report.