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Donald Trump Jr.' s plane landed in Nuuk, Greenland, where he made a short private visit, weeks after his father, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, suggested Washington annex the autonomous Danish territory.
(Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump’s ‘America First’ is now just imperialism
Jan 13, 2026
In early 2025, before Donald Trump was even sworn into office, he sent a plane with his name in giant letters on it to Nuuk, Greenland, where his son, Don Jr., and other MAGA allies preened for cameras and stomped around the mineral-rich Danish territory that Trump had been casually threatening to invade or somehow acquire like stereotypical American tourists — like they owned it already.
“Don Jr. and my Reps landing in Greenland,” Trump wrote. “The reception has been great. They and the Free World need safety, security, strength, and PEACE! This is a deal that must happen. MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!”
Upon returning, one of Trump’s so-called reps, an influential MAGA podcaster, told his audience that it was absolutely imperative that America acquire Greenland. Why?
“It makes America dream again, that we’re not just this sad, low-testosterone, beta male slouching in our chair, allowing the world to run over us. It is the resurrection of masculine American energy. It is the return of Manifest Destiny.”
Wow. What an endorsement.
The idea that America is, essentially, owed Greenland as ordained by God, and that acquiring it was going to accomplish nothing short of resurrecting both the American dream and “masculine American energy” was quite the preposterous promise. But it was made in earnest by someone Trump voters loved and trusted: Charlie Kirk.
It was a huge shift in a very short period of time from the way Kirk and other MAGA acolytes had been talking. Kirk had long bought into Trump’s “America First” marketing pitch, and he often used it as a cudgel against all sorts of liberal ills.
“American citizens should come first,” he’d insist, arguing for a total halt to immigration at times. “The last thing America needs right now is a new war,” he’d argue as it pertained to foreign policy and meddling in other countries’ affairs. He believed the United States was founded as an “America First” Christian nation. And he warned that a vote for Kamala Harris was a vote for WWIII.
As Trump touted an end to “forever wars” while on the campaign trail, Kirk and others in the manosphere — including previously Trump-skeptical media personalities — decided “America First” was Trump’s calling card, his raison d’être, his most compelling doctrine. Gone were the days of George W. Bush’s cowboy neoconservatism — real men minded their own business. And if you couldn’t abide the other more sordid stuff — say, the fact that Trump was a convicted criminal — putting an end to America’s interventionist foreign policy should trump it all.
That was the pitch to voters made for years by MAGA influencers who promised nothing was more morally imperative than America retreating from the world.
Until it wasn’t.
Kirk was hardly alone in flipping the script to suddenly defend the thing they’d been told would never happen. Now, they were telling us, intervention, threatening to invade sovereign nations, maybe even getting involved in some foreign wars, and even Trump’s tariffs — an economic interventionist policy — were not only OK, they were crucial to making America great again. (And men, too.)
The shameless abandonment of principles is so utterly comical in its scope and speed, calling it “hypocrisy” almost gives it too much intellectual heft. They simply don’t care.
This week Sen. Rick Scott is boasting that Trump, in addition to toppling the Nicolás Maduro regime in Venezuela, will also see to the toppling of the Cuban government “this year,” after spending years touting Trump’s America First agenda.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, another of Trump’s “America First” foot soldiers, is now brazenly warning the leader of Iran that Trump is going to kill him — “Change is coming to Iran.”
After lambasting just two months ago our “endless cycle of regime change,” DNI Tulsi Gabbard is now offering “kudos” to the Trump administration for the capture of Maduro in a constitutionally questionable operation that ended with Trump insisting “we’re in charge” now.
These people were either never serious about America First, ending forever wars, and minding our business, or they are so wholly owned by Trump that his unhinged whims just matter more.
But, as he threatens to take Greenland and Canada, and invade Colombia and Mexico and Cuba, it’s very clear Trump was never serious about America First. Just as he was never serious about releasing the Epstein files. Or making America affordable again. Or draining the swamp. Or replacing Obamacare. Or myriad other slick slogans he pitched to get elected.
But are his voters serious about America First? While MAGA falls in line to defend Trump’s imperialist warmongering and oil-grabbing, many of his voters did not sign up for this. Midterms are around the corner. We’ll know their answer soon enough.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
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Political Midterm Election Redistricting
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The Common Cause North Carolina, Not Trump, Triggered the Mid-Decade Redistricting Battle
Jan 12, 2026
“Gerrymander” was one of seven runners-up for Merriam-Webster’s 2025 word of the year, which was “slop,” although “gerrymandering” is often used. Both words are closely related and frequently used interchangeably, with the main difference being their function as nouns versus verbs or processes. Throughout 2025, as Republicans and Democrats used redistricting to boost their electoral advantages, “gerrymander” and “gerrymandering” surged in popularity as search terms, highlighting their ongoing relevance in current politics and public awareness. However, as an old Capitol Hill dog, I realized that 2025 made me less inclined to explain the definitions of these words to anyone who asked for more detail.
“Did the Democrats or Republicans Start the Gerrymandering Fight?” is the obvious question many people are asking: Who started it?
Most media suggest that Republican President Donald Trump started the mid-decade redistricting fight. However, I see it differently, as many overlook the earlier political moves and court decisions that set the stage for this ongoing battle.
I believe the fight actually began earlier, in 2016, fueled by Common Cause North Carolina and supported by the North Carolina Democratic Party.
President Trump publicly called on Republican-led state legislatures to pursue mid-decade redistricting, especially following the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause, which clarified that federal courts cannot hear claims of partisan gerrymandering, leaving such disputes to state courts and legislatures.
This Rucho case established that claims of partisan gerrymandering cannot be filed in federal court, effectively leaving the issue to the states.
The Rucho case arises from North Carolina’s 2016 congressional map, drawn by the Republican-controlled legislature. This map became a key example in a legal battle involving Common Cause and the North Carolina Democratic Party, highlighting the ongoing struggle over partisan gerrymandering. Its significance lies in how it shows the legal and political conflicts that continue to influence redistricting disputes today, making these groups feel central to the story.
While Rucho definitively ended federal judicial oversight of partisan gerrymandering, League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry (2006) mainly addressed mid-decade redistricting and racial gerrymandering. The Supreme Court ruled in that case in 2006 that there is no constitutional barrier to changing maps mid-decade.
By the end of 2025, six states’ dominoes are falling into place after adopting new congressional maps outside the regular post-census cycle: Texas (favoring Republicans), California (Democrats), Missouri (Republicans), North Carolina (Republicans), Ohio (Republicans), and Utah (Democrats).
On December 11, twenty-one of the 40 Republican senators joined all 10 Democratic senators in voting against a plan to implement a mid-decade congressional gerrymander. So, its domino still stands.
In his December congressional statement praising Indiana’s stance against Mid-Decade Gerrymandering, U.S. Representative Kevin Kiley (R-CA) wrote, “Gerrymandering is wrong wherever it occurs. Now is the time for Congress to end the practice once and for all.”
Most of the public is unaware that, four months earlier, on August 5, Rep. Kiley introduced his legislative bill, H.R. 4889, which aims to prevent states from conducting more than one congressional redistricting after a decennial census unless a court orders it to uphold the Constitution or the Voting Rights Act. If enacted, the bill would “apply with respect to any Congressional redistricting which occurs after the November 2024 election.”
Currently, this bill is still in the House Judiciary Committee and has no official cosponsors, not even from Texas Democrats or California Republicans.
The benefits of H.R. 4889 include (1) ensuring district lines are set for a full ten years between censuses, providing stability and maintaining a consistent relationship between representatives and voters, (2) preventing mid-decade efforts by the ruling party to redraw maps for partisan advantage, (3) safeguarding the voters' will against politicians, often referred to as a “redistricting war.”
However, the disadvantages of H.R. 4889 include (1) the potential for political hypocrisy, (2) the fact that it prohibits when redistricting can occur but does not address partisan gerrymandering itself (which the Supreme Court has largely left to the states to manage), and (3) oversteps federal authority by limiting states’ ability to manage their own election processes in response to changing demographics or other factors, even though the U.S. Constitution’s Elections Clause grants Congress authority in this area.
The National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC) asserts that the recent increase in mid-decade redistricting poses a “dangerous threat” to democracy. Neither the NDRC nor the National Republican Redistricting Committee (NRRC) has publicly endorsed H.R. 4889.
H.R. 4889 has been sitting in the House Judiciary Committee for five months, but, championed by Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren (California), the bill aimed at preventing gerrymandering by allowing each state to establish an independent redistricting commission, has not moved out of the House Judiciary Committee since 2005 (20 years ago!).
Rep. Lofgren’s latest bill was introduced on September 18, 2025, when she unveiled the Redistricting Reform Act of 2025 (H.R. 5449) with 55 Democratic cosponsors and no Republican cosponsors. Some aspects of her legislation have also been included in broader voting rights packages, such as the For the People Act (H.R. 1), which passed the House in 2019 and 2021 but failed in the Senate.
Arguments against Lofgren’s redistricting reform efforts mainly focus on violations of state authority, the potential for nonpartisan commissions to be manipulated, and the timing of these federal mandates.
Fact: Since the 93rd Congress (1973–75), no redistricting bills have experienced any action besides being referred to the appropriate committee or subcommittee.
“We have to end the practice of drawing our congressional districts so that politicians can pick their voters, and not the other way around,” said Democratic President Barack Obama in his final State of the Union address in January 2016. It echoes calls made by Republican President Ronald Reagan twenty-nine years earlier in 1987, “That’s all we’re asking for: an end to the anti-democratic and un-American practice of gerrymandering congressional districts... The fact is, gerrymandering has become a national scandal.”
Gerrymandering is named after Elbridge Gerry, the Governor of Massachusetts in 1812. In reality, Gerry didn’t invent it himself and reportedly found the map drawn by his Democratic-Republican party uncomfortable. Still, he signed a bill that benefited his party by manipulating district lines for unfair political advantage.
If the Common Cause North Carolina and the North Carolina Democratic Party decide not to file a complaint, there will be no mid-decade redistricting effort in the 2020s.
Howard Gorrell is an advocate for the deaf, a former Republican Party election statistician, and a longtime congressional aide. He has been advocating against partisan gerrymandering for four decades.
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Puerto Rico: America's oldest democratic crisis
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Puerto Rico’s New Transparency Law Attacks a Right Forged in Struggle
Jan 11, 2026
At a time when public debate in the United States is consumed by questions of secrecy, accountability and the selective release of government records, Puerto Rico has quietly taken a dangerous step in the opposite direction.
In December 2025, Gov. Jenniffer González signed Senate Bill 63 into law, introducing sweeping amendments to Puerto Rico’s transparency statute, known as the Transparency and Expedited Procedure for Access to Public Information Act. Framed as administrative reform, the new law (Act 156 of 2025) instead restricts access to public information and weakens one of the archipelago’s most important accountability and democratic tools.
This is not merely an administrative reform. It is an attempt to limit the exercise of a right with deep constitutional, political and historical roots.
Unlike many U.S. jurisdictions, the right to access public information in Puerto Rico is not an administrative privilege created by statute. It is a constitutional right, derived from freedom of expression and developed through decades of jurisprudence, legal mobilization, and political struggle. Long before the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Puerto Rican courts recognized that democracy requires public access to government records, especially in a political system shaped by colonial rule, surveillance, and repression.
As I have shown in a recently published article, history matters because the right to access public information in Puerto Rico did not emerge from bureaucratic reform. It emerged from oppositional politics.
As a U.S. colonial territory, Puerto Rico has long been governed through a regime that relied heavily on secrecy, political surveillance and repression, particularly against pro-independence and leftist movements. The practice of Carpeteo, or the systematic collection of political dossiers by police and intelligence agencies, produced a culture of surveillance, state violence and persecution, which was all legitimized by opacity and a lack of accountability. Families of victims, activists, and lawyers were routinely denied information about arrests, surveillance and political assassinations. It was in response to this machinery of colonial repression that the constitutional right to access information began to take shape.
A pivotal moment came in 1982, when the Puerto Rico Supreme Court ruled in favor of citizens seeking access to documents related to the political assassination by Puerto Rico police of anticolonial activists Carlos Soto Arriví and Arnaldo Darío Rosado at Cerro Maravilla on July 25, 1978. The court affirmed that access to public information carries constitutional rank and established a strict standard, requiring that any limitation on this right favor the public’s right to know. This ruling did more than release documents; it transformed access to information into a legal weapon against impunity.
Subsequent cases reinforced the transparency principle. Together, these decisions did not simply clarify procedure; they helped to dismantle official narratives, enabled the construction of counter-memory, and challenged the state’s monopoly over truth. Access to information became a means of confronting colonial state violence and rewriting Puerto Rico’s historical record from below.
This history explains why access to information has played such a central role in Puerto Rico’s contemporary political life. Over the last two decades, especially during the economic crisis that began in 2006, the imposition of austerity, and the aftermath of Hurricane María, journalists, researchers and civil society organizations have relied on this right to expose corruption, mismanagement and abuse of power. Investigative reporting and legal mobilization made visible the social costs of colonial austerity, failures in disaster response, secrecy surrounding public debt, and the beneficiaries of tax incentive regimes.
An example of these legal mobilizations for access to information reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In May 2023, the Supreme Court delivered an opinion in Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico v. Centro de Periodismo Investigativo, a case addressing whether the federally imposed Fiscal Oversight and Management Board (FOMB) was shielded from transparency lawsuits in Puerto Rican courts. In 2017, the CPI sued the FOMB in federal court, arguing that its refusal to disclose financial records violated Puerto Rico’s constitution. The federal district court and the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit agreed with CPI, arguing that FOMB was not exempt from core principles of democratic governance. However, SCOTUS sided with the FOMB, holding that the constitutional right to access information does not apply to the FOMB. The case underscored the fragility of transparency rights under colonial governance.
It is against this backdrop that Act 156 of 2025 must be understood. Rather than strengthening enforcement or correcting the government’s long-standing failure to comply with transparency obligations, the law normalizes delay, discretion, and deterrence. Response deadlines have been doubled. Requests that once required answers within ten business days now allow agencies twenty, with an additional twenty-day extension. If records exceed 300 pages or are more than three years old, a routine reality in investigative work, agencies have thirty business days, plus another twenty, turning a constitutional right into a months-long waiting game.
The law also raises the threshold for what counts as a valid request. Requesters must now notify agency leadership and public information officers, yet the government provides no public directory of those officials’ contact information.Agencies are granted broader authority to declare information confidential, permanently shielding it from disclosure. Agencies are no longer required to provide records in usable formats and may deem a request fulfilled simply by allowing in-person inspection, without guaranteeing meaningful access. Requests can also be denied if information is spread across multiple documents. Even enforcement has been weakened. Fines apply only after a court order, are capped at $18,000,and lawsuits may be filed only in San Juan. Transparency remains formally recognized, but practically hollowed out.
International press, civil rights organizations groups and the ACLU of Puerto Rico warned that the law would provide the government with new mechanisms to deny access to public information and would mark a clear democratic regression. According to the CPI, more than 50 Puerto Rican organizations urged the governor to veto the bill. She signed it anyway.
The process was as troubling as the substance. As journalist Carla Minet documented, the bill was rushed through the legislature without meaningful hearings, amended behind closed doors, and approved without giving civil society organizations a genuine opportunity to participate.
This new bill does not eliminate the right to access information outright. Its constitutional protection remains. But by multiplying delays, formalities, and justifications for denial, the law transforms that right into a bureaucratic ordeal. In practice, it will reduce access to information essential for understanding corruption, public administration failures, and Puerto Rico’s ongoing transformation into an offshore financial center and tax haven.
Puerto Rico has seen this before. In a colonial context marked by overlapping economic, environmental, and political crises, opacity functions as a tool of governance. Weakening access to information shields decision-makers from accountability while maintaining the appearance of legality.
The right to access public information was forged precisely to confront this kind of power. In Puerto Rico, transparency has never been a technocratic ideal but a practice of democratic resistance, historically mobilized against colonial governance, fiscal secrecy, and impunity. The current moment demands a renewed articulation of forces that moves beyond denunciation toward coordinated action. This includes sustained legal mobilization and strategic litigation, but also grassroots organizing, investigative journalism, and public education campaigns that contest the normalization of opacity and corruption.
While the constitutional right to access information remains one of the few legal tools available to hold a colonial government accountable, it is also part of a broader political repertoire aimed at advancing genuinely democratic and transparent institutions. that is, decolonization. As noted above, access to information claims have long been central to the anticolonial toolbox, used to expose the anti-democratic and coercive practices deployed by the colonial state. Transparency, in this sense, is not an end in itself but a means within a larger struggle for self-determination and independence.
This struggle is especially urgent given that Gov. González’s administration lacks a clear democratic mandate. In the 2024 election, a majority of voters did not support her party, instead backing alternative political projects, including the pro-independence party. This deficit of popular legitimacy matters. It creates both the political justification and the urgency for civil society to challenge recent actions that weaken public oversight. A meaningful response must therefore do two things at once: confront the immediate rollback of transparency through litigation, public pressure, and international scrutiny, while simultaneously building an alternative political project rooted in decolonization and independence. Only through this dual strategy can the practices that justify secrecy, austerity, and executive overreach be effectively called into question.
A government confident in its legitimacy does not fear transparency; it does not dilute rights born of struggle but instead strengthens them. This legislation, and the colonial institutions that made it possible, do the opposite, normalizing secrecy and the absence of transparency as a mode of governance.
Jose Atiles is an associate professor of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of Illinois, a Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project, and the author of “Crisis by Design: Emergency Powers and Colonial Legality in Puerto Rico,” which analyzes the role of law, emergency powers, and colonial structures in producing and exacerbating political and economic emergencies.
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A woman shows palm demonstrating protest
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The SHAPE Act and the Fight to Protect State Department Workers
Jan 11, 2026
When the #MeToo movement erupted in 2017, it exposed sexual harassment across industries that had long been protected by their power. While early attention focused on the entertainment sector and corporate workplaces, the reckoning quickly spread to the federal government.
Within weeks, more than 200 women working in national security signed an open letter under the hashtag #MeTooNatSec, stating they had experienced sexual harassment or assault or knew colleagues who had. Many of those accounts pointed directly to the U.S. State Department.
The stories revealed a troubling pattern: misconduct by senior officials, inconsistent disciplinary outcomes, and reporting systems that survivors said felt opaque and unsafe.
Out of that moment emerged the State Harassment and Assault Prevention and Eradication Act, known as the SHAPE Act.
The bill was first introduced in the 116th Congress as H.R. 8465, following a major lobbying push by the advocacy nonprofit Inclusive America. The legislation sought to establish uniform, enforceable standards for preventing harassment within the State Department, addressing gaps in survivor support. It also aimed to curb retaliation and require greater transparency in how misconduct cases are handled. Despite its early momentum, it stalled amid broader legislative gridlock.
The conditions that inspired it, advocates say, never changed.
“The #MeToo movement gave people a voice,” said Mark Hanis, co-founder of Inclusive America, which is leading the bill’s current push. “Now, we are working to respond with policy changes.”
The SHAPE Act has since lost traction in the House, although Inclusive America and other supporters have continued to advocate for its reintroduction. Still, its goal is to fundamentally change how the State Department prevents and responds to harassment, discrimination, sexual assault, and retaliation.
At the center of the bill is a mandate requiring the Secretary of State to implement a comprehensive department-wide policy. That policy would cover prevention, training, reporting, investigations, victim support, and data collection.
One of the bill’s most significant provisions establishes an Office of Employee Advocacy, an independent resource designed to help employees navigate the reporting process.
That office would offer confidential guidance, optional legal representation, and access to a 24-hour hotline available worldwide; all of which are critical for a workforce often stationed abroad.
“For too long, survivors have been expected to figure everything out on their own,” Hanis said. “This office is about making sure that support is built into the system, [rather than] treated as an afterthought.”
Rachel Ledoux is a student at Simmons University studying political science and economics with a focus on public policy.
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