TACO Wednesday: Trump Pushes Greenland Crisis, Then Retreats
Trump touts “concept of a deal,” but allies see something different. Plus: ICE decides it doesn't need warrants. Kyiv goes dark. And what billionaire-backed "Freedom Cities" are really selling.
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On Monday, I wrote about what I called Trump’s Instability Doctrine — governance through threat, chaos, and manufactured brinkmanship.
Today, we watched it unfold in real time.
After days of escalating rhetoric about taking Greenland, Trump arrived in Davos demanding the territory — only to declare hours later that he had reached a “framework” that made taking it unnecessary. Crisis on. Crisis off. For now.
Trump’s reversal hinges on a deal that appears to exist mainly in Trump’s telling. As we’ve seen before, the same words are being interpreted very differently by the parties involved. NATO says one thing. Trump says another. Denmark is clear about its red lines. Everyone is congratulating themselves for surviving the day.
The pattern: Create maximum alarm. Declare victory. Leave everyone else to figure out what just happened — and whether it will happen again tomorrow.
For now, the temperature has dropped. Markets exhaled. Allies unclenched.
But if the Instability Doctrine teaches us anything, it’s this: today’s de-escalation is not a resolution. It’s an intermission.
In today’s newsletter: Trump declares victory on a Greenland deal that may not exist. Stocks rally after Trump backs off, but Europe remains wary. Newsom disses Trump speech as "remarkably boring."
Also: ICE claims new power to enter homes without judicial warrants. Congress goes weak on ICE funding. The latest on Iran, Ukraine, Trump's assault on the Fed.
And Freedom Cities: The experiment Trump backers want next.
Here Are Your Headlines
In the Green: Trump on Wednesday announced a “framework of a future deal” over Greenland with NATO, which he claimed “gets us everything we needed to get” and will last “forever.” He said he’d explain the details of his “concept of a deal … down the line.” Senior US officials are leaking their version of the concept; they claim NATO agreed to grant the US sovereignty over small pockets of land in Greenland. The US, they say, would use these to build military bases. There’s one problem: NATO’s Secretary General seems to think he agreed to something entirely different. In a statement NATO said the framework will simply ensure “Arctic security through the collective efforts of Allies” and that negotiations will focus on “ensuring that Russia and China never gain a foothold” in Greenland. No mention of US sovereignty in Greenland at all. Translation: Trump may have declared victory on a deal that doesn’t actually exist yet—or that NATO and Denmark think means something completely different. Also, Denmark’s foreign minister reiterated that US ownership of Greenland is a “red line.” Who here thinks the “concept of a deal” could change at any moment? At least, for now, the feeling is one of relief; as one Danish official (under)stated, “the day ended better than it started.”
Master Market: What changed Trump’s mind? Perhaps it was the markets, which suffered their worst day since October on Tuesday in the face of Trump’s renewed threats to take Greenland, and plunged once again when the EU formally voted to suspend its trade deal with the US. But this deal, and Trump’s decision to back off threatened tariffs against countries opposing US ownership of Greenland, relieved investors, sending markets soaring higher than they have in months. European officials may take more convincing, however; one senior official warned they would “have to look at what this so-called solution would mean” before deciding whether to move forward with the trade deal, “so this will take some time.”
Instability Doctrine: Trump’s supposed deal came after a long, rambling speech to world leaders in which he said for the first time that he would not use force to take Greenland, but repeated his argument that total ownership was necessary. “We probably won’t get anything,” Trump said, “unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be, frankly, unstoppable. But I won’t do that.” Former NATO supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis told CNN he’s “relieved” force “appears to be off the table,” but said the relationship is damaged and this could lead to a Europe that “builds its own defense industry and goes its own way in the world,” in association with Canada. (He also said they might be open to more partnership with China.)
Different Approach: California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was in the audience for Trump’s speech (and received a bizarre shoutout from the president), dismissed it as “remarkably boring” and “insignificant.” “He was never going to invade Greenland,” Newsom said. “Everybody here has been willing to negotiate for a year.” Then Newsom said he was denied entry to the “US pavilion” at Davos, where he was scheduled to hold a fireside chat with Fortune. His team alleged this was due to pressure from Trump’s State Department.
Lies, Threats, and Leverage: Trump’s speech was built on multiple falsehoods. To take just one example, he claimed the US “gave Greenland back” to Denmark after World War II. In reality, the US never owned it. Denmark signed a 1941 defense agreement allowing US bases during the war, but never ceded sovereignty. In 1951, Washington formally recognized “the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Denmark over Greenland.” Trump also falsely claimed NATO has never helped the US in return for American support. “We never asked for anything and we never got anything,” he said, after congratulating himself for successfully asking NATO members to increase defense spending. “It’s always a one-way street…. So [Denmark and Greenland] have a choice. You can say yes, and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no, and we will remember.” Fact-check: NATO’s Article 5 has only ever been activated once — by the US, after 9/11. Denmark answered the call by sending almost 10,000 troops to Afghanistan, where it suffered one of the highest per-capita casualty rates of all allied nations.
Looking the Wrong Way: The Trump DOJ is now investigating six Minnesota Democratic leaders — including Gov. Tim Walz— for allegedly obstructing federal immigration enforcement. As of Wednesday, subpoenas went to: Gov. Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, Attorney General Keith Ellison, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, Ramsey County Attorney John Choi, and Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty. Ellison warned that “everything about this is highly irregular,” accused Trump of “coming after the people of Minnesota,” and insisted he “will not be intimidated.” Mayor Her similarly described the subpoena as “retribution” and said she is “unfazed by these tactics.”
No Good Motive: The timing and targets of these subpoenas are important. County Attorney Moriarty, for example, has argued her office has jurisdiction to investigate the killing of Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. She called on the public to submit any evidence related to the killing. “The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good,” Gov. Walz noted, “is the federal agent who shot her.” Attorney General Ellison said his subpoena arrived “shortly after” his office “sued the Trump administration to challenge their illegal actions within Minnesota.” Noted.
What Constitution: An internal ICE memo obtained by the AP asserts that agents can forcibly enter people’s homes with only administrative warrants — a shocking reversal from years of precedent holding that forced entry is only permitted with a judicial warrant. For context: administrative warrants are issued by ICE itself. Judicial warrants require a judge to review evidence and find probable cause. The difference matters — a lot. According to a whistleblower complaint, the memo is being used to train new ICE officers, despite written training materials explicitly contradicting it. So officers are being told one thing in writing and another thing in practice.
Would You Like ICE With That? House Democratic leaders told colleagues on Wednesday that they will vote against a bill to fund DHS that would keep ICE funding steady at $10 billion. But that threat is without teeth. There are no apparent plans to organize support to block the bill, so it will almost certainly pass — with some moderate Democrats, including Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), actively supporting it. He and other supporters of the bill are touting small wins, like $20 million for body cameras, a rule forcing DHS to “ensure that all agents and officers are appropriately trained on the rights of individuals,” and the fact the bill “encourages” DHS to implement a new uniform policy to make officers clearly identifiable. (That doesn’t mean forcing them to reveal their faces, by the way.) Many Democrats say this simply isn’t enough. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) slammed it as a “surrender to Trump’s lawlessness.” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) warned the proposed bill “puts no meaningful constraints on the growing lawlessness of ICE and increases funding for detention.… Democrats have no obligation to support a bill that not only funds the dystopian scenes we are seeing in Minneapolis but will allow DHS to replicate that playbook of brutality in cities all over this country.”
Gone Dark: Russian strikes overnight left more than one million residents in Kyiv without power. In recent weeks, Ukraine has suffered some of the worst electricity outages of the entire war as Russia has intensified its targeting of electrical and heating infrastructure during the frigid winter. “It’s emotionally very difficult,” one Kyiv resident, told Reuters. His young son contracted pneumonia after their apartment’s temperature dropped to the 40s during a previous blackout. “There is constant worry. This winter is the hardest.”
Repression: Iran has continued its brutal crackdown on people involved in recent protests, arresting thousands, launching lawsuits, and seizing properties. In addition to the thousands killed, new reports claim the regime injured hundreds of thousands of protesters. Now families are left to pick up the pieces, searching through hundreds of body bags to find missing loved ones and coughing up thousands of dollars in “bullet money” demanded by security forces in exchange for bodies. Hundreds of horrifying photos of people killed by those security forces were recently leaked to the BBC, many of them too disfigured to be identified.
Let Them Cook: The US Supreme Court seemed deeply skeptical of the Trump administration’s arguments in favor of Trump’s removal of Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve. After hours of arguments, the Justices sounded inclined to rule in Cook’s favor — and quickly.
No More Rulez: Trump on Wednesday insisted he isn’t interested in Greenland’s mineral wealth. The same may not be true for the billionaires pushing for US control of the massive territory. Some of them — including Ken Howery, a PayPal cofounder who was appointed US ambassador to Denmark in December — are intensely interested in “Freedom Cities.” It’s a project backed by Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Sam Altman, and others. They’re pushing Trump to fulfill his campaign promise to permit them in the US. These billionaires already invested millions in one such “start-up city” off the coast of Honduras, and may be eyeing Greenland as the perfect place to put this dubious libertarian experiment into practice.
Keep reading for the truth behind Freedom Cities, what happens there (from Tesla-based bionics to unsanctioned medical experiments), and why billionaires are so interested in them. Unlock this and more with a paid subscription.
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