The Fulcrum introduces Congress Bill Spotlight, a weekly report by Jesse Rifkin, focusing on the noteworthy legislation of the thousands introduced in Congress. Rifkin has written about Congress for years, and now he's dissecting the most interesting bills you need to know about, but that often don't get the right news coverage.
President Donald Trump wants the U.S. to control Greenland. A bill in Congress could help.
The bill
laying off Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America great again,” the Make Greenland Great Again Act would give the president congressional authorization to enter into negotiations with Denmark about acquiring their territory. The bill would technically apply to any president, not just to Trump.
It would also specify that any such potential Greenland acquisition deal becomes official unless Congress disapproves it within 60 days. That’s essentially the exact opposite of the way international deals like treaties are supposed to work: namely, that even if the president signs a treaty, the U.S. only becomes a party once Congress affirmatively approves it.
The House bill was introduced on January 13 by Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN5). No Senate companion version appears to have been introduced yet.
Context: Trump
In his first term, Trump expressed interest in U.S. ownership of Greenland, whether through a financial purchase or a potential land trade – with one trade reportedly involving the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. The whole Greenland idea, originally pitched to Trump by fellow billionaire Ronald Lauder of the Estée Lauder cosmetics company, ultimately went nowhere.
The U.S. previously attempted to purchase Greenland in 1868 for $5.5 million, then again in 1946 for $100 million. But certain aspects make the current idea different.
- Timing: The U.S. hasn’t added new territory since 1947. So while adding Greenland very much fit the trend of national expansion circa 1868 or 1946, it’s literally unprecedented within the lifetimes of most Americans alive today.
- Military possibility: In a press conference two weeks before his second inauguration, Trump refused to rule out military force to obtain Greenland.
Context: Greenland itself
Greenland is a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, home to only 56,000 people. For comparison, five random U.S. small cities or towns with populations around that size are Harrisonburg, Virginia; Parker, Colorado; Euless, Texas; Sammamish, Washington; and Manhattan, Kansas.
But what Greenland lacks in people it makes up in size, natural resources, and geographical importance.
- Size: it’s the largest island in the world, with more square miles than Mexico.
- Natural resources: the land is plentiful with elements used in technologies like electric vehicles and artificial intelligence, plus oil reserves representing potentially more than four years’ worth of U.S. usage.
- Geographical importance: Greenland is near geopolitical rivals China and Russia, which is why the U.S. has maintained a military base there since 1951.
What supporters say
Supporters argue that the U.S. needs Greenland to better defend against its geopolitical rivals.
“The acquisition of Greenland by the United States is essential to our national security,” Rep. Ogles said in a press release days before Trump was inaugurated. “Joe Biden took a blowtorch to our reputation these past four years, [but] before even taking office, President Trump is telling the world that America First is back. American economic and security interests will no longer take a backseat.”
Trump’s top foreign policy official also defended the idea.
Greenland “long has been a curiosity or something people have not talked about, but I think now we have the opportunity to see it for what it is,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in his Senate confirmation hearing. “And that is, if not the most important, one of the most critical parts of the world over the next 100 years will be whether there's going to be freedom of navigation in the Arctic, and what that will mean for global trade and commerce.”
What opponents say
Greenland and Denmark's political leaders have expressed hesitancy.
“We don’t want to be Americans,” Greenland’s Prime Minister Múte Egede said in a Fox News interview with Bret Baier. “We don’t want to be a part of the U.S., but we want a strong cooperation together with the U.S.”
“Greenland is not for sale,” Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen echoed, in her office’s summary of points she made to Trump on a phone call. “It is up to Greenland itself to make a decision on independence.”
Former President Joe Biden’s top foreign policy official also opposes the proposal.
“The idea expressed about Greenland is obviously not a good one,” Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a press conference. “But maybe more important, it’s obviously one that’s not going to happen.”
Odds of passage
The bill has attracted 16 cosponsors, all Republicans. Curiously, one of the original cosponsors – Rep. Neal Dunn (R-FL2) – withdrew only two days after signing on, but didn’t provide a public reason why.
It now awaits a potential vote in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, controlled by Republicans.
A similar bill
On February 10, Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA1) introduced a similar bill, with a noteworthy addition: it would rename Greenland as Red, White, and Blueland.
“America is back and will soon be bigger than ever,” Rep. Carter said in a press release. “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.”
The Red, White, and Blueland Act awaits a potential vote in either the House Foreign Affairs or Natural Resources Committee, controlled by Republicans. It has not yet attracted any cosponsors.
Jesse Rifkin is a freelance journalist with the Fulcrum. Don’t miss his weekly report, Congress Bill Spotlight, every Friday on the Fulcrum. Rifkin’s writings about politics and Congress have been published in the Washington Post, Politico, Roll Call, Los Angeles Times, CNN Opinion, GovTrack, and USA Today.
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Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.