Usha Vance, US officials to visit Greenland as prime minister blasts ‘aggressive American pressure’
Jason Almond / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Second lady Usha Vance will be part of a delegation traveling to Greenland this week, after President Donald Trump’s repeated statements that the U.S. should own and control the semiautonomous Danish territory.
Vance’s office announced the trip on Sunday, describing it as one dedicated to learning about Greenlandic culture with stops at historical sties and its national dogsled race.
But White House national security adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright will be joining her, the National Security Council confirmed to ABC News.
“The U.S. has a vested security interest in the Arctic region and it should not be a surprise the National Security Advisor and Secretary of Energy are visiting a U.S. Space Base to get first-hand briefings from our service members on the ground,” National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes said in a statement.
Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede, in a statement to Greenland’s Sermitsiaq newspaper, called the upcoming visit part of a “very aggressive American pressure against the Greenlandic community” and called for the international community to step in to rebuke it.
Trump reintroduced his first-term suggestion for U.S. ownership of Greenland, the world’s largest island and a semiautonomous territory within Denmark, during the presidential transition. It again prompted Greenland officials to emphasize the island territory is not for sale.
His son, Donald Trump Jr., visited Greenland in early January, weeks before the inauguration. Trump Jr. said it was a personal visit and that he was not meeting with officials, though the president still celebrated it and alluded to a “deal” that he said “must happen.”
At one point, he notably declined to rule out military force to acquire Greenland.
Trump officials have pointed to Greenland as a key interest for national security as China and Russia ramp up activity in the Arctic. Greenland is also rich in valuable minerals, including rare earth minerals — the accession of which has become part of Trump’s foreign policy agenda.
In his joint address to Congress earlier this month, Trump said his administration needed it for “international world security.”
“And I think we’re going to get it. One way or the other, we’re going to get it,” Trump said.
Trump’s interest in Greenland comes as he’s pushed similar land grabs of Canada and the Panama Canal. Amid a trade war with Canada, Trump has called for America’s northern ally to become the 51st state, though his nominee to be the U.S. ambassador to Canada has noted that it’s a sovereign state.
Ahead of her visit to Greenland on Thursday, second lady Vance released a video saying she was going to “celebrate the long history of mutual respect and cooperation between our nations and to express hope that our relationship will only grow stronger in the coming years.”
The National Security Council said Waltz and Wright “also look forward to experiencing Greenland’s famous hospitality and are confident that this visit presents an opportunity to build on partnerships that respects Greenland’s self-determination and advances economic cooperation.
“This is a visit to learn about Greenland, its culture, history, and people and to attend a dogsled race the United States is proud to sponsor, plain and simple,” the National Security Council said in its statement.
But Greenland’s prime minister, in a Facebook post, said Vance’s trip “cannot be seen only as a private visit.”
Egede added, “It should also be said in a bold way that our integrity and democracy must be respected, without any external disturbance.”
ABC News’ Hannah Demissie and Fritz Farrow contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — A sharply divided Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that the Trump administration must comply with a district court order and pay out nearly $2 billion in foreign assistance funds to nonprofit aid groups for work already completed on the government’s behalf.
The court ruled 5-4 with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett siding with the liberal justices.
The court did not elaborate on the decision but said the district court judge should “clarify what obligations the Government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order, with due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timelines.”
A lower court judge is currently weighing whether or not to impose a longer-term preliminary injunction against the foreign aid freeze.
Justice Samuel Alito said in his dissent that he was “stunned” by the majority’s decision.
“Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) $2 billion taxpayer dollars? The answer to that question should be an emphatic “No,” but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise,” he wrote.
The Trump administration did not immediately comment on the ruling.
The court’s majority did not specify a deadline by which the administration needed to comply.
The administration initially tried to freeze the payments via an executive order before U.S. District Court Judge Amir Ali ordered the payments to resume in a temporary restraining order issued three weeks ago.
Last week, Ali, a Biden appointee, ruled the administration violated the terms of a temporary restraining order and ordered the Trump administration to dole out delayed payments by 11:59 p.m. Feb. 26.
Lawyers with the Department of Justice acknowledged that the Trump administration ignored the temporary restraining order, which prohibited them from freezing foreign aid funds since the order was issued. Instead, they argued that they should not be required to pay back the money because of “sovereign immunity.”
During an extended exchange with Ali, a DOJ lawyer struggled to answer basic questions about the Trump administration’s compliance with the temporary restraining order.
Chief Justice Roberts ordered a stay before the deadline as the court heard the case.
Foreign aid groups have been teetering on bankruptcy following Trump’s decision to end aid and have been searching for answers.
During a Feb. 13 meeting with representatives from those organizations, Pete Marocco, the Trump administration official tasked with the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) defended what he called a “total zero-based review,” and arguing that some areas of foreign aid required “radical change,” according to audio from that meeting that was obtained by ABC News.
“As far as payment, one of the reasons that there have been problems with some of the payments is because, despite the president’s executive order, despite the secretary’s guidance, we still had nefarious actors in the agencies that were trying to push out hundreds of illegal payments,” Marocco said. “And so we were able to seize control of that, stop them, take control of some of those people, and make sure that that money was not getting out the door.”
Marocco suggested that payments for organizations with existing contracts would resume the following week, but they remained frozen.
ABC News’ Will Steakin, Lucien Bruggeman and Shannon K. Kingston contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — If she is confirmed as director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard would be the youngest-ever in that role, the first millennial, the first Asian American, and only the second woman to hold the position.
But she is expected to face questions in her confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee about statements she has made that appear to support U.S. enemies and dictators as well as having no significant experience in intelligence. Gabbard can afford to lose the votes of only three Republicans and sources tell ABC News the vote on her nomination is expected to be a close one.
Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., began his opening statement by expressing “dismay” at what he characterized as unfair attacks on Gabbard’s patriotism, citing Hillary Clinton’s accusation that she was “an asset of a foreign nation,” referring, of course, to Russia.
Cotton said he personally “spent two hours” reviewing Gabbard’s past background checks and found them “clean as a whistle.”
“No doubt she has some unconventional views,” Cotton acknowledged, but suggested any criticism from Democrats reflects their frustration that she “saw the light” and left their party.
In his opening statement, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the committee’s top Democrat, ticked through a litany of Gabbard’s more controversial public statements to demonstrate what he called his “significant concerns about your judgment and your qualifications.”
“Now I don’t know if your intent in making those statements was to defend those dictators, or if you were simply unaware of the intelligence and how your statements would be perceived,” Warner said. “In either case, it raises serious questions about your judgment.”
In excerpts from her opening statement, Gabbard confronts her critics.
“The truth is: what really upsets my political opponents is my consistent record of independence, regardless of political affiliation, and my refusal to be anyone’s puppet. You know who else is committed to defending our country and reforming Washington with a fierce and unparalleled independence, President Donald J. Trump who ran and won with a mandate for change this November,” she says in the excerpt.
For most of her career, Gabbard has broken barriers. She was the youngest woman ever elected to a state house of representatives and the first to graduate from the Accelerated Officer Candidate School at the Alabama Military Academy as a distinguished honor graduate. In Congress, she was the first Samoan American, the youngest woman elected at the time, and the first combat veteran to serve — a distinction she shares with Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth.
Gabbard has prepared extensively over the past two months for her hearings, meeting with former DNI leaders, including John Negroponte, the first DNI, and Michael Allen, who led Negroponte’s confirmation hearing preparations. She also has consulted with former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden, along with Trump allies Morgan Ortagus, deputy special presidential envoy for Middle East peace, and FBI director nominee Kash Patel.
She has sought input from a broad range of intelligence experts, former government officials and lawmakers across the aisle. She has participated in policy roundtables with lawyers, ex-intelligence officials, and national security negotiators, including figures involved in the Abraham Accords.
She also held a full-scale mock confirmation hearing ahead of Thursday’s Senate Intelligence Committee proceedings. Former Republican Sen. Richard Burr, who chaired the committee from 2015 to 2020, will introduce her.
Sources on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill tell ABC News Gabbard will likely face scrutiny over her past stances on Russia, Ukraine, Syria, and Iran, as well as her defense of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who reached a plea deal with the Justice Department over disseminating classified documents he had obtained illegally. Gabbard said last year on “Real Time With Bill Maher” that “the charges against him are one of the biggest attacks on freedom of the press that we’ve seen and freedom of speech.”
As a member of Congress, Gabbard introduced a bill in 2020 calling for the federal government to drop all charges against Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked information in 2013 about how the U.S. government surveils the American public.
She’s also expected to face question on her reversal on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a key surveillance tool she voted against reauthorizing in 2020, her last year in Congress.
Gabbard argued that Americans shouldn’t be forced to choose between security and liberty, saying that the Patriot Act and FISA have “been allowing for the abuses of our civil liberties and overreach by our own intelligence and law enforcement agencies through doing things like warrantless sweeping collection of our data, violating our Fourth Amendment constitutional rights.”
Gabbard is also expected to face questions past statements about former President Donald Trump including her decision to vote present on Donald Trump’s.
Over the last two months, Gabbard has met with more than 50 senators, primarily Republicans. The meetings have largely served as an introduction — an opportunity to explain her past positions and assuage concerns about her political evolution. A source close to her told ABC News, “They know they can’t put her in a box. She’s not a Democrat. She’s a new Republican. She has very similar, if not 100% aligned, views with President Trump on ‘America First’ foreign policy. That makes people uneasy because they can’t quite figure her out.”
Gabbard, like Trump, is a former Democrat whose policy views have shifted significantly. Her evolution has been shaped by her 22 years in the Army, including deployments to Iraq, Kuwait, and Djibouti. If confirmed, she will be the first female DNI to have served in the military. She plans to continue serving in the Army Reserve, which is permitted under ODNI regulations.
Behind the scenes, Gabbard has earned bipartisan support within the intelligence community for her willingness to engage with a range of stakeholders. Earlier this month, the families of two former ISIS and al-Qaeda hostages publicly endorsed her nomination in a letter shared with ABC News. The parents of Kayla Mueller, who was killed by ISIS, and Theo Padnos, a former al-Qaeda hostage, argued that the radicalization of individuals — such as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who drove his truck into a crowd of New Orleans New Year’s revelers — underscores the need for Gabbard’s swift confirmation.
The letter of support came under scrutiny by some lawmakers after rebels toppled Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Gabbard met with Assad in Syria in 2017, which remains a point of controversy. She has previously defended the trip as a “fact-finding mission” and has maintained that U.S. intervention in Syria empowered extremist groups.
Gabbard warned in the same year that she was concerned that toppling Assad’s regime could lead to groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda to step in to fill the void and “completely massacre all religious minorities there in Syria.”
“I had no intention of meeting with Assad, but when given the opportunity, I felt it was important to take it,” Gabbard said in a 2017 statement. “We should be ready to meet with anyone if there’s a chance it can help bring about an end to this war.”
Padnos, who was kidnapped by the al-Nusra Front in 2012 and held for nearly two years, said Gabbard’s willingness to engage with hostage families compelled him to speak out.
“This is a woman with deep compassion for the victims of terrorism and the courage to get things done,” he told ABC News. “Nobody else has offered their help — except Tulsi.”
Gabbard told ABC News that she was “honored and humbled by that statement of support.”
She has also received backing from law enforcement. The National Sheriffs’ Association endorsed her nomination, citing her commitment to bridging intelligence gaps between federal agencies and local authorities. In a statement, the group praised Gabbard’s pledge to give sheriffs “a seat at the table” in national security discussions.
Sheriff Kieran Donahue, president of the National Sheriffs’ Association, wrote “Gabbard has demonstrated a commitment to addressing the critical disconnect between our intelligence agencies and local law enforcement in preparing for sophisticated and pervasive threats.”
A source close to Gabbard told ABC News that her focus as director of national intelligence will be on restoring trust in the intelligence community and reforming what is and isn’t classified. Specifically, she aims to ensure that the intelligence provided to the Senate and White House is not information already available to lawmakers through media outlets. On Capitol Hill, lawmakers have expressed concern about the overclassification of information.
The source added that Gabbard intends to provide more accurate, raw intelligence to help lawmakers make informed decisions, rather than relying on overclassified data. She also plans to streamline the process for security clearances and return ODNI to its original mission — leading the intelligence community by fostering integration, collaboration and innovation.
Her allies argue that her outsider perspective will help modernize the intelligence community — though critics remain skeptical of her lack of traditional experience.
Thursday’s hearing will test whether Gabbard can win over skeptics — or if her controversial past will derail her bid to become the nation’s top intelligence officer.
(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Richard Hudson, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, encouraged House Republicans to do more virtual events over in-person town halls, according to multiple sources familiar with the meeting.
The plea comes as multiple House Republicans have faced fiery constituents at recent in-person town halls concerning cuts to the federal workforce and the impact Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has had on communities.
Hudson told members that communicating with constituents via Facebook Live, tele-town halls and other virtual avenues would be more effective, allowing them to screen questions and have better control over the events.
“Chairman Hudson supports members reaching and helping as many of our constituents as possible, using technology makes this a heck of lot easier. Chairman Hudson opposes attention-seeking MoveOn and Indivisible activists hijacking these events,” Will Kiley, NRCC’s spokesman, told ABC News.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., claimed tele-town halls are “more productive than if you just go to an open forum right now,” accusing Democratic activists, without evidence, of showing up to in-person town halls to portray Republicans in a negative light.
“Look, these are their people who do this as a profession,” Johnson said at the GOP press conference. “They’re professional protesters. So why would we give them a forum to do that right now? The best thing that our members can do is communicate directly, frequently, consistently, with their constituents, and there are other avenues to do it than just going in to try to give the other side sound bites.”
This comes after President Donald Trump made accusations, without evidence, that “paid troublemakers” were interrupting GOP town halls, not constituents.
Outside Tuesday’s GOP conference meeting, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., claimed she experienced safety concerns in her district, saying that virtual events were safer and more effective.
“I’ve done many tele-town halls, and I think those are very productive and we can reach 1,000s more people than we ever could in person,” she said. “And so, I think that that is a great strategy, but for me personally, it’s just not safe to do an in person town hall because I don’t know what to expect.”
Meanwhile, some Democrats said that if Republicans won’t host town halls, they will.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said on Tuesday that he’d soon go out to red districts in his state to speak out against DOGE layoffs.
“Starting March 24th, I will be going to three red districts in California to speak out against DOGE’s mass firings and the Republicans’ Medicaid cuts,” Khanna wrote in an op-ed in The Prospect published on Tuesday.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, posted on X Tuesday morning that he’d host events in districts where Republican representatives won’t meet constituents.
“If your Republican representative won’t meet with you because their agenda is so unpopular, maybe a Democrat will,” he said. “Hell, maybe I will. If your congressman refuses to meet, I’ll come host an event in their district to help local Democrats beat ’em.”
