Music: Dhafer Youssef — ‘Diaphanes’
Russians encourage Trump to annex Greenland
Steve Rosenberg writes: Listen to Donald Trump and you would think Moscow and Beijing were lying in wait off the coast of Greenland, ready to pounce to boost their power in the Arctic. “There are Russian destroyers, there are Chinese destroyers and, bigger, there are Russian submarines all over the place,” President Trump said recently. That is why, according to America’s president, US control of Greenland is essential. So how do you think Moscow has reacted to its alleged plot…
EU eyes tariffs on €93 billion of U.S. goods over threat
Bloomberg reports: The European Union is in talks to potentially impose tariffs on €93 billion ($108 billion) of US goods if President Donald Trump follows through on his threat to hit European countries with a 10% levy on Feb. 1. The EU is also weighing additional countermeasures beyond the tariffs but will first try to find a diplomatic solution, according to people familiar with the discussions. Representatives from the EU’s 27 countries met Sunday to begin preparing options. EU leaders…
EU considers deploying its trade ‘bazooka,’ its Anti-Coercion Instrument, against the U.S.
Politico reports: Donald Trump’s decision to slap tariffs on countries that have shown support for Greenland is pushing transatlantic relations to a breaking point as EU leaders contemplate ways of retaliating against Washington that until now have been unthinkable. Relations between Washington and Europe have been rocky for months as the U.S. president has wavered on support for Ukraine, pressured EU countries into accepting a lopsided trade deal and forced NATO allies to massively ramp up their spending on defense….
Europeans quietly consider severing military ties with the U.S.
Politico reports: As Donald Trump threatens to use the U.S. military to seize Greenland, European officials and diplomats have started quietly airing a previously unsayable thought: What would it look like to fight back? While a military confrontation between the U.S. and any European force would likely result in one of the shortest wars in history, there are other ways that Greenland’s allies can resist the American president if he refuses to compromise. Chief among the potential pressure points is…
Minnesota is under siege: ‘This is tyranny’
Lydia Polgreen writes: Late last Wednesday night, I was standing on a street corner in the Hawthorne neighborhood in North Minneapolis when I witnessed an extraordinary confrontation. A federal agent marched up a narrow residential sidewalk flanked by modest bungalows, kitted out in gear fit for the battle of Falluja: full body armor, military boots and camouflage fatigues and helmet, with a heavy machine gun slung by his side. His carriage was erect, his gaze fixed straight ahead, seemingly oblivious…
New Hampshire bishop warns clergy to prepare for ‘new era of martyrdom’
The Associated Press reports: A New Hampshire Episcopal bishop is attracting national attention after warning his clergy to finalize their wills and get their affairs in order to prepare for a “new era of martyrdom.” Bishop Rob Hirschfeld of the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire made his comments earlier this month at a vigil honoring Renee Good, who was fatally shot on Jan. 7 behind the wheel of her vehicle by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer. The Trump…
China reports robust economic growth, thanks to resilient exports
The Wall Street Journal reports: A surge in exports powered China’s growth last year, defying expectations that a trade war with the U.S. would hobble the world’s second-biggest economy. China’s gross domestic product expanded 5% last year when adjusted for deflation, according to data released Monday by the country’s National Bureau of Statistics. That met Beijing’s official growth target and is in line with the 5% real GDP growth notched in 2024. At the beginning of last year, many analysts…
Music: Pat Metheny — ‘In On It’
If Trump tries to annex Greenland he may face a military tribunal outside the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction
Brett Wagner and J. Holmes Armstead, who both served as professors at the U.S. Naval War College, write: Just because the commander in chief of our nation’s armed forces is also our duly elected president, with all the powers invested in that high office, that does not imply, in any way, that the president has unchecked power over the military. A president must follow the law, too, or face the consequences. Normally, in a situation where subordinates believe themselves to…
Boycott the 2026 World Cup
Jim Souhan, a sportswriter for The Minnesota Star Tribune, writes: Authoritarian governments love sportswashing — using international events to put a smiling face on their grim realities. That’s what the United States will try to do this summer with the World Cup. Eleven U.S. cities are scheduled to play host to World Cup matches this summer. The United States does not deserve this privilege as long as uniformed thugs are attacking people in the streets with the support of the…
The threat against Greenland shows that we need to stop appeasing Trump
Trine Pertou Mach, Member of the Danish Parliament, writes: For more than a year, US President Donald Trump has openly threatened to “take” the world’s largest island, Greenland, which is currently a semi-autonomous entity within the Kingdom of Denmark. The threats seem to intensify by the hour, and the situation may well have worsened by the time you read this. I am a member of the Danish parliament, the Folketing, and the foreign affairs spokesperson for Enhedslisten, the left-wing Red-Green…
Trump’s Greenland threats will boomerang against America
Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German ambassador to Washington and currently chairman of the Munich Security Conference, writes: As Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has warned, an attack on Greenland would be the end of NATO. That would rob the United States of an unbeatable web of allies, offer rifts for our common enemies to exploit and eradicate the alliance’s collective moral high ground that has helped project American soft power across Europe and the world for decades. In short, it…
Europe needs an escape plan from the Trump world order
Gaby Hinsliff writes: One way or the other, President Trump said, he will have Greenland. Well, at least now we know it’s the other; not an invasion that would have sent young men home to their mothers across Europe in coffins, but instead another trade war, designed to kill off jobs and break Europe’s will. Just our hopes of an economic recovery, then, getting taken out and shot on a whim by our supposedly closest ally, months after Britain signed…
Chairman Trump’s Board of Peace looks like a plan to replace the UN Security Council
Paul Beckett and Isabel Ruehl write: Imagine you’re the president of a midsize country, and you’re offered a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. The only condition: You have to pay the secretary-general of the United Nations $1 billion. This is something like what Donald Trump is now offering world leaders. The U.S. president has sent letters of invitation to various heads of government to join a new Board of Peace, which he will chair. The organization was…
Astronomers confirm earliest Milky Way-like galaxy in the universe, just 2 billion years after the Big Bang
Live Science reports: Scientists continue to push the boundaries of astronomy and cosmology, thanks to next-generation instruments that can see farther and clearer than ever before. Through these efforts, astronomers have observed some of the earliest galaxies in the Universe. In turn, this has led to refined theories and timelines of galactic formation and evolution. In a recent study, a team of astronomers led by the University of Pittsburgh (UPitt) uncovered what could be the earliest barred spiral galaxy ever…