President Donald Trump has insisted the U.S. needs to ‘get’ Greenland, ‘one way or another.’ But it’s not the first time U.S. leaders have had their eyes on the icy, sprawling island.

Located in the middle of contested waters between the U.S., Russia and Western Europe, Greenland is situated at a point that could protect the North Atlantic passage from Russian ships and submarines. It was a key military vantage point during the Cold War, and President Harry Truman offered to buy Greenland from the Danes in 1946. 

The island is also a transfer point for communication cables that cross the Atlantic. European officials claim Russian ‘ghost ships’ have been destroying such cables by dropping their anchors and dragging them across the ocean floor.

Greater control over the island would not only offer the U.S. the shortest ship route to Europe but also the opportunity to bolster its ballistic missile early warning system and place radar on the ocean floor to track the movements of Russian and Chinese ships.

The island rests on top of lucrative supplies of critical and rare earth minerals, such as cobalt, nickel, uranium and iron — materials that are essential to electric vehicles, medical equipment, electronics, batteries and advanced defense systems. 

The U.S. was once a top producer of rare earth minerals, but has been knocked off by China. China currently dominates the global supply chain with access to 60% of the world’s supply, but Greenland could be a ‘game changer,’ according to national security attorney Irina Tsukerman.

‘Their total resources of these rare earths could be greater than what China has,’ she told Fox News Digital.

Vice President JD Vance, second lady Usha Vance, national security advisor Mike Waltz and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, along with Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, visited Greenland on Friday. 

‘Our message to Denmark is very simple: you have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,’ the vice president remarked on the trip. 

‘You underinvested in the people of Greenland, and you’ve underinvested in the security architecture of this incredible, all-beautiful landmass filled with incredible people. That has to change and because it hasn’t changed, this is why President Trump’s policy in Greenland is what it is.’

Greenland is estimated to have the world’s eighth-largest reserve of rare earths, just behind the U.S. But its minerals have proven difficult to access — 80% of the island’s surface is covered in thick sheets of ice. The island also has lots of red tape: strict environmental and social impact requirements mean the permitting process takes time. 

The nation’s economy is currently built on fishing and welfare: Denmark offers around $700 million each year, nearly half of Greenland’s budget. 

The U.S. has dangled ‘billions’ in investment to mine minerals in Greenland as part of an effort to reduce its reliance on China, though China has already had a limited involvement in mining projects there. 

‘China is more concerned about access to the Arctic than those minerals,’ said Tsukerman. 

‘China has focused its mineral efforts on Africa, where it is indeed far ahead of the U.S. Russia has been focused on the Arctic,’ she continued. ‘There’s been growing talks about increasing NATO presence in the area to deter Russian and Chinese vessels from entering.’

There’s oil and gas, too, but in 2021 Greenland passed a ban on all future oil and gas exploration and extraction. 

As the ice caps continue to melt, the waters around Greenland are becoming more and more navigable — meaning ships traveling from Asia and Europe can sail polar routes and avoid heading south to the Panama and Suez canals. 

U.S. and Danish defenses on the island have become outdated, just as Russia is refurbishing its own Arctic ports. Greenland once hosted dozens of U.S. bases and outposts, but today hosts just one: Pituffik Space Force Base. Once home to around 10,000 U.S. troops, just around 200 are deployed there now. 

‘We need Greenland for international safety and security. We need it. We have to have it,’ Trump said in an interview on Wednesday.

The territory largely opposes the idea of joining the U.S. 

In response to Trump’s threats to take Greenland, Denmark announced a $2 billion investment in defense on the island in January. 

Denmark’s defense intelligence service has determined Greenland to be ‘a priority for Russia, and it will demonstrate its power through aggressive and threatening behavior, which will carry along with it a greater risk of escalation than ever before in the Arctic.’

‘We have not invested enough in the Arctic for many years,’ Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen admitted recently. ‘Now we are planning a stronger presence.’

As we learn the full melodrama of the so-called Signal ‘scandal’ of inviting left-wing, Trump-despising, Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg onto a supposedly secure conference list involving top Trump security officials, lots of questions need asking and answering.

Most importantly, who had Goldberg’s private number and inserted it, ostensibly by mistake, into the cleared list of participants in the discussions? Why would any top Trump officials or their staffers ever even have Goldberg’s contact information, given his quite public record of: a) fabricating stories with unnamed sources, and b) suffering from a decade of chronic Trump derangement syndrome?

Questions for Goldberg: Did he know the mechanisms that had prompted and continued his stealthy presence in the secure discussions? Why did citizen Goldberg not simply come clean as soon as he realized he was mistakenly included in key national security conference communications, to which he did not belong, and thus should be obviously excluded immediately? Why did he instead stealthily listen in for nearly two weeks? Was the idea of informing his hosts of his own improper presence too morally old-fashioned?

Questions for posterity: Did Goldberg’s publicizing these discreet discussions really affect the otherwise completely successful mission to neutralize years of appeased Houthis’ aggression and begin to end their veritable destruction of Red Sea international maritime commerce? How did this blunder rank with prior diplomatic and military screw-ups, like Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s January 1950 Press Club speech de facto excluding South Korea from the American defense umbrella—an omission that may have contributed to the June 1950 North Korean invasion of the South? Was it comparable to Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie’s assurance to Saddam Hussein that, ‘We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait’— which may have prompted his 1990 invasion of Kuwait?

Was it comparable to President Obama’s March 2012 ‘hot mic’ assurance to then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have ‘flexibility’ on American-Eastern European missile defense after his last election? Both kept their promises: Obama foolishly dismantled American-sponsored Eastern European plans for missile defense, and Russia postponed its pre-planned invasion of Ukraine until 2014. 

Did it rank with former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley secretly contacting his Chinese communist counterpart, Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng, to tell him he would give the People’s Liberation Army leader a heads-up if he determined President Donald Trump was likely to trigger an existential war?

And just look who is weighing in. There was Hillary Clinton, despite her illegal use of a private server to transmit classified State Department information and her subsequent destruction of subpoenaed communication devices.

There was serial fabulist Susan Rice, who in 2012 flat-out lied to the nation on five Sunday news shows, claiming preposterously that the terrorist attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi were ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations incited by anger over an anti-Muslim video. Ditto Rice’s fallacious Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl ‘honor’ narrative and her lie about the removal of Syrian weapons of mass destruction.

And why would Leon Panetta weigh in, when he was one of the supposed 51 intelligence authorities in 2020 who ridiculously claimed Hunter Biden’s FBI-authenticated laptop had all the hallmarks of a Russian intelligence disinformation effort? That lie was designed to arm Joe Biden before the last 2020 debate, and it may well have affected the election.

In the end, this was a blunder, but also what the Left likes to call a ‘teachable moment. All future similar conferences should be either held in person or participants must be triple-checked on a secure line. And perhaps most importantly, all Trump high appointees and their staffers should know enough to have nothing to do with those who wake up each morning wishing to destroy them—and go to bed each night lamenting that they have not done enough to advance that destruction.

This column was adapted from Victor Davis Hanson’s post on X.

President Donald Trump’s continued criticism of Germany’s failure to pay its defense bills looks to have pushed one of Europe’s wealthiest nations into action. 

The president’s criticism of Berlin has compelled Germany to increase funding for its military forces and infrastructure, which critics say are in a bad state of affairs.

Richard Grenell, U.S. Ambassador to Germany during the first Trump administration, told Fox News Digital ‘multiple German leaders ignored the warnings from President Trump that Russia was using energy as a weapon against them. 

‘The war in Ukraine and the invasion of Putin showed the new German leadership that Donald Trump was absolutely right about Germany feeding the beast that ultimately turned on them.’

Trump appointed Grenell as presidential envoy for ‘special missions’ in December.

In 2018, Trump rebuked Germany’s addiction to Russian gas, according to observers of German-U.S. relations. He told the U.N. General Assembly that ‘Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course. Here in the Western Hemisphere, we are committed to maintaining our independence from the encroachment of expansionist foreign powers.’

During his remarks, the camera panned to Germany’s delegation to the U.N. in 2018, including its then-U.N. Ambassador, Christoph Heusgen, and former Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, who all seemingly laughed and smiled at Trump. 

However, those smirks soon turned into raw anxiety, when four years later, in 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and Germany scrambled for a way to wean itself off Russian gas to avoid helping reward Putin.

Matthew Kroenig, director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, told Fox News Digital, ‘Every U.S. presidential administration since Eisenhower has complained about European free riding, but asking ‘pretty please’ has not worked. Trump’s tough rhetoric is achieving results that eluded his predecessors.

‘The Trump effect is in part due to Trump raising NATO burden sharing to the very top of the transatlantic security agenda and in part due to genuine fears that Washington could abandon NATO and Europe would need to fend for itself.’

After Trump and Grenell helped to cajole the Germans out of their security slumber, Berllin reached the NATO goal of spending 2% of gross domestic product spending in 2024. This was the first time Berlin reached 2% since 1991, the end of the Cold War. 

Trump, however, called for Germany to spend 5% on defense because, he argues, the U.S. is contributing significant resources to protect the central European country.

The frustration with Germany and other European allies was captured in text messages reported between Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance. 

‘I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC,’ Hegseth said in response to Vance, who questioned U.S. leadership in advancing security policies in the Red Sea to counter Houthi aggression and reopen shipping lanes. 

Germany’s export trade greatly benefits from free navigation in the Middle East, but it refuses to aid the U.S. in stopping the Iran-backed Houthi terrorist movement via military strikes. Europe and Germany are unwilling to follow Trump’s lead and sanction the Houthis as a terrorist entity.

The so-called Trump Effect has also affected the German parliament’s decision to relax restrictions on debt so it can pump funds into its military superstructure.  

The likely new German chancellor, Friedrich Merz of the conservative Christian Democratic Union party, said he would do ‘whatever it takes’ to rebuild Germany’s frail military. Berlin’s mainstream parties aim to invest hundreds of billions of euros in defense and infrastructure. Germany’s armed forces (Bundeswehr) are, according to reportsin a state of disarray, with a mere 181,174 soldiers at the end of last year. Germany’s Defense Ministry seeks to expand its armed forces to 203,000 by 2031.

Recruitment remains an ongoing challenge within a population raised on pacifism. After Germany started two World Wars in the last century, Germany’s power politics stressed the role of multilateral institutions like the U.N. and diplomacy in remedying conflicts.

The Associated Press recently reported that Germany’s parliamentary commissioner for the armed forces, Eva Högl, said, ‘The biggest problem is boredom. She added ‘If young people have nothing to do, if there isn’t enough equipment and there aren’t enough trainers, if the rooms aren’t reasonably clean and orderly, that deters people, and it makes the Bundeswehr unattractive.’

In an interview earlier this month with German news outlet WELT, the German historian Michael Wolffsohn, who taught atthe Bundeswehr University Munich, said of Germany and Western Europe’s failure over the decades to address its severe defense deficits, ‘Now we get the receipt for everything we neglected.’

Fox News Digital sent a detailed press query to the German Foreign Ministry about Trump’s criticism that Berlin has chronically underinvested in defense and remained wedded to Putin’s gas supply after his warnings.

Fox News’ Caitlin McFall contributed to this report.

While the U.S. military has been conducting strikes against Iran-backed Houthi rebels, President Donald Trump and his White House have been engaging in a battle of their own, defending leaked texts detailing war plans about those very strikes in Yemen. 

This week, the Trump administration has fielded a litany of questions and criticism after the Atlantic published a story detailing how administration officials used a Signal group chat to discuss strikes in Yemen, and accidentally added a journalist to the group.  

The group chats included White House leaders, including Vice President JD Vance and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, as well as other administration officials including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Additionally, the chat included Atlantic editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. 

While the White House said that classified information was not shared via the encrypted messaging service, the Atlantic published the full exchange of messages Wednesday. The messages included certain attack details, including specific aircraft and times of the strikes. 

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt maintained Wednesday no classified information was shared. 

‘We have said all along that no classified material was sent on this messaging thread,’ Leavitt told reporters. ‘There were no locations, no sources or methods revealed, and there were certainly no war plans discussed.’

Meanwhile, the episode has prompted backlash from lawmakers. Senate Armed Service Committee leaders Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Jack Reed, D-R.I., said they are requesting an inspector general investigation into the use of the Signal app and as a classified briefing with a top administration official on the matter. 

Additionally, several lawmakers including Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., from the House Intelligence Committee have called for Hegseth’s resignation.

Here’s what also happened this week: 

Trump pardons Devon Archer

Trump issued a pardon Tuesday for Devon Archer, former first son Hunter Biden’s prior business associate, who was convicted in 2018 for defrauding a Native American tribe in a plot to issue and sell fraudulent tribal bonds.

Archer faced a sentence of more than a year in prison, but his conviction was overturned before later being reinstated in 2020. His appeal to the Supreme Court was rejected, and so his prison sentence was up in the air prior to the pardon. 

‘Many people have asked me to do this,’ Trump said Tuesday ahead of signing the pardon. ‘They think he was treated very unfairly. And I looked at the records, studied the records. And he was a victim of a crime, as far as I’m concerned. So we’re going to undo that. … Congratulations, Devon.’ 

Declassification of Crossfire Hurricane Russia investigation docs

Trump signed an executive order Tuesday directing the FBI to immediately declassify files concerning the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the agency probe launched in 2016 that sought information on whether Trump campaign members colluded with Russia during the presidential race. 

After signing the order, Trump said that now the media can review previously withheld files pertaining to the investigation — although he cast doubt on whether many journalists would do so.

‘You probably won’t bother because you’re not going to like what you see,’ Trump said. ‘But this was total weaponization. It’s a disgrace. It should have never happened in this country. But now you’ll be able to see for yourselves. All declassified.’

The FBI on July 31, 2016, opened a counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump, then a presidential candidate, or members of his campaign were colluding or coordinating with Russia to influence the 2016 election. That investigation was referred to inside the bureau as ‘Crossfire Hurricane.’

The extensive probe yielded no evidence of criminal conspiracy or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Vance visits Greenland

Vance and second lady Usha Vance, along with National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, visited Pituffik Space Base in Greenland Friday, the Department of Defense’s northernmost military installation. The base is home to the Space Force’s 821st Space Base Group to conduct missile warning, missile defense and space surveillance operations.

The Trump administration is seeking to acquire Greenland for national security purposes, and has accused Denmark of neglecting Greenland. 

But leaders in Denmark and Greenland remain unequivocally opposed to Greenland becoming part of the U.S., although Greenland’s prime minister has called for independence from Copenhagen. 

Meanwhile, Denmark has come under scrutiny for its treatment of indigenous people from Greenland. A group of indigenous women from Greenland sued the Danish government in May 2024 and accused Danish health officials of fitting them with intrauterine devices without their knowledge between the 1960s and 1970s. 

Denmark and Greenland launched an investigation into the matter in 2022, and the report is expected for release this year.

The Associated Press and Fox News’ Emma Colton and Brooke Singman contributed to this report. 

Mark Twain’s famous advice to ‘buy land, they aren’t making it anymore’ couldn’t have found a more receptive audience than President Donald Trump, a real estate man at heart who covets a certain piece of property to our north.

Vice President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha traveled to the Island nation this week, visiting a U.S. Space Force base, in the firmest message yet that Trump means business when he says he wants to make Greenland part of America.

Notice that when Trump talks about foreign countries he almost always references the properties he owns there, a golf course in Scotland or a hotel in Dubai. He’s not merely boasting. He’s saying that he has skin in the game and therefore understands the country.

This is not a president who puts much store in intangible multilateral defense agreements that allow the United States to pay for the protection of Danish Greenland. No, he wants the land, not some complicated leasing agreement.

And is it such a crazy notion? We are the nation that pushed Lewis and Clark across the Rockies. We have acquired Alaska and Hawaii, Guam and all the little micro-islands nobody has been to.

The last time the United States grew in territory was in 1947 with the addition of the Marshall Islands and some others, but these last 78 years have been an outlier. Prior to that, America’s appetite for land was almost insatiable. 

So why not Greenland?

The only reason that Greenland is Danish to begin with is that 1,000 years ago some Vikings bumped into it. Since then it’s been too cold for anyone else to bother with it.

And while it ultimately should be up to the Greenlandic people to decide their sovereignty, that is not the only consideration in a world where control of the Arctic could mean control of the globe.

Trump’s interests, which is to say America’s interests, may well be best served by possessing the strategic nation.

More than anything else, what is standing in the way of a big beautiful deal to buy Greenland, something the United States tried to do after occupying and protecting the large island in World War II while Denmark was under German rule, is the post-Cold-War order of the past 40 years.

Under the neo-liberal bromides of leaders with good hair, the West, led by the U.S., came to view newly-minted borders in Europe and elsewhere as sacrosanct, fixed as the firmament, immovable, which runs counter to all of human history, including America’s. 

It kind of worked for a while. There has been no third world war, but even by the mid-1990s, the former Yugoslavia was descending into violent chaos, there is no peace in the Middle East, and Russia has spent decades redrawing its border with Ukraine in blood.

To Trump, and to many Americans who think like him, if countries like Russia are expanding, if China has an eye towards doing so, then we cannot sit on the sidelines, especially if the defense of the free world is conducted on our dime.

In chess, the early 20th century saw the emergence of the hyper-modern style in which the conventional wisdom that pawns must physically occupy the all-important center of the board was tossed aside in favor of powerful pieces controlling the center from a distance.

But unlike chess, geopolitics does not have a firm and discrete set of rules. So one can see why Trump prefers the idea of physically holding space, rather than allowing it to be protected by a vague collection of Western interests.

Because we have been conditioned by the post-Cold War order, it sounds strange when Trump refers to borders as ‘artificial lines.’ But it’s absolutely true: Borders are negotiated, and you might even think of them as a kind of real estate deal.

Nobody wants to go to war over Greenland, but that is no reason not to pitch this deal to the 57,000 people who live there. America has a lot to offer, and maybe Trump can make them an offer too good to refuse.

In any event, as Americans we should not be shocked by or shy about the idea of expanding our territory. It’s not just what Trump has always done, it’s in America’s DNA. 

As federal judges exceed records with an onslaught of nationwide orders blocking President Donald Trump’s orders, some have revisited how each was confirmed, and whether Republicans could have foreseen their rulings or done anything more to block them. 

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., a member of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, told Fox News Digital in an interview, ‘This is why I think I voted against every Biden judge.’

He acknowledged that many of the judges in question were confirmed before his time, given he was first elected in 2018. 

‘People said to me, ‘Why don’t you ever vote for any of Biden’s judges?” he said. ‘This is why.’

‘Because if they’re not faithful to the rule of law, then you can bet they’ll just be looking for opportunities to intervene politically.’

Since Trump entered office, he has faced a slew of nationwide injunctions to halt actions of his administration, which exponentially outweighs the number his predecessors saw. So far in his new term, the courts have hit him with roughly 15 wide-ranging orders, more than former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden received during their entire tenures. 

Some of those who have ordered the Trump administration to halt certain actions are U.S. District Judges James Boasberg, Amir Ali, Loren AliKhan, William Alsup, Deborah Boardman, John Coughenour, Paul A. Engelmayer, Amy Berman Jackson, Angel Kelley, Brendan A. Hurson, Royce Lamberth, Joseph Laplante, John McConnell and Leo Sorokin. There are 94 districts in the U.S. and at least one district court in each state. These courts are where cases are first heard before potentially being appealed to higher courts. 

Several of these judges were confirmed in the Senate in a bipartisan manner, and some even prevailed with no opposition. There were others who were opposed by every Republican senator. 

One of the most controversial judges, Boasberg, known for blocking a key immigration action by the Trump administration, was confirmed by a roll call vote after being nominated by Obama in 2011. The vote was 96-0 and no Republicans opposed him. 

Former Trump attorney Jim Trusty told Fox News Digital, ‘I don’t think the Republicans ever expected quite the onslaught of lawfare that we’ve seen when President Trump is in office.’

‘The activist nature of some federal district court judges – issuing nationwide injunctions against the Executive Branch on a minute’s notice – is unfortunate and puts pressure on appellate courts, including SCOTUS, to fix these problems,’ he explained.

However, he said the real problem is ‘an army of lawyers’ who he said are trying to ‘bend and twist legal principles.’

‘They are spending their days devoted to stopping President Trump’s agenda even if it means siding with Venezuelan gang members who illegally entered the US,’ Trusty claimed. 

Andy McCarthy, a former assistant U.S. attorney and a Fox News contributor, told Fox News Digital, ‘Republicans could have done a much better job blocking Biden’s judicial appointments.’

He pointed to Biden’s recent time as a lame-duck president, specifically referring to nominees that ‘squeaked by’ due to Republican absences. 

‘Biden’s nominees were very radical and should have been opposed as vigorously as possible,’ he said. ‘These are lifetime appointments and the progressives filling these slots will be a thorn in the nation’s side for decades.’

However, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, made a point of saying, ‘There was no way to know how they would rule in future cases like these.’ 

He argued that senators can conduct their due diligence to the best of their abilities, but they can’t see into the future. 

‘The Senate has the right to reject nominees whom it thinks will interpret the Constitution incorrectly, but nominees also have an obligation not to promise how they might rule on cases once they join the bench,’ Yoo said. 

Thomas Jipping, senior legal fellow with the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, noted to Fox News Digital that senators ‘can’t use the filibuster to defeat the judge,’ which makes blocking controversial nominees even more difficult. 

‘The only way to actually defeat someone’s confirmation is to have the majority of the votes,’ he explained. ‘If Republicans are in the minority, there has to be at least a few Democrats voting against the Democratic nominee to defeat someone.’

Fox News Digital reached out to former Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to comment on how these judges were able to get confirmed. 

The senators were asked if they were still happy with how the judges were confirmed and their individual votes. They were also asked whether there was anything alarming in the judges’ records and if Republicans did enough to block certain confirmations. 

McConnell’s office pointed Fox News Digital to comments he made over the legislative recess at a press conference in Kentucky. 

‘The way to look at all of these reorganization efforts by the Administration is what’s legal and what isn’t… they’ll be defined in the courts,’ he told reporters in response to the legality of potentially shutting down the Department of Education. ‘I can understand the desire to reduce government spending. Every Administration – some not quite as bold as this one – have tried to do that in one way or another. This is a different approach… and the courts will ultimately decide whether the president has the authority to take these various steps. Some may have different outcomes, I’m just going to wait – like all of us in effect are going to wait, and see whether this is permissible or not.’

Grassley’s office pointed to a previous statement from the senator’s spokesperson, Clare Slattery. 

‘The recent surge of sweeping decisions by district judges merits serious scrutiny. The Senate Judiciary Committee will be closely examining this topic in a hearing and exploring potential legislative solutions in the weeks ahead,’ she said. 

The committee has notably slated a hearing on nationwide injunctions for next week.