Greenland leaders criticise US delegation trip as Trump talks of takeover
Greenlandic leaders have criticised an upcoming trip by a high-profile American delegation to the semi-autonomous Danish territory that Donald Trump has suggested the US should annex, Reuters reports.
The delegation, which will visit an American military base and watch a dogsled race, will be led by Usha Vance, wife of vice-president JD Vance, and include White House national security adviser Mike Waltz and energy secretary Chris Wright.
Greenland’s outgoing prime minister Mute Egede called this week’s visit a “provocation” and said his caretaker government would not meet with the delegation.
“Until recently, we could trust the Americans, who were our allies and friends, and with whom we enjoyed working closely,” Egede told local newspaper Sermitsiaq. “But that time is over.”
The Greenlandic government, Naalakkersuisut, is now in a caretaker period after a 11 March general election won by the Democrats, a pro-business party that favors a slow approach to independence from Denmark.
Jens-Frederik Nielsen, leader of the Democrats, called for political unity and said the visit by the US delegation during coalition talks and with municipal elections due next week, “once again shows a lack of respect for the Greenlandic people.”
Waltz and Wright plan to visit the Pituffik space base, the US military base in Greenland. The White House said they will get briefings from US service members there. They will then join Vance to visit historical sites and attend the national dogsled race.
Brian Hughes, spokesperson for the White House national security council, said the US team is “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,” Hughes said.
Trump has made US annexation of Greenland a major talking point since taking office for a second time on 20 January. Greenland’s strategic location and rich mineral resources could benefit the US. It lies along the shortest route from Europe to North America, vital for the US ballistic missile warning system.
Key events
Supreme Court hears Louisiana racial gerrymandering claim
Sam Levine
The US supreme court is about to hear a case this morning that could upend Louisiana’s congressional map and have significant implications for the makeup of the US Congress and voting rights.
At the center of the case is Louisiana’s 6th congressional district. State lawmakers drew the oddly shaped district in 2022 after they were ordered to add a second majority-Black district in order to comply with the Voting Rights Act. A group of non-Black voters challenged that district, saying lawmakers had unlawfully sorted voters based on their race. The supreme court allowed the map to be used for elections last year and Cleo Fields, a Black Democrat, won the seat.
The supreme court has long said that lawmakers can consider race if it serves a “compelling interest” and its use is “narrowly tailored” to that interest. Those challenging the map say the state did not meet that standard.
The case is being closely watched both because of the close partisan balance of the US House and to see whether the court will further weaken protections for minority voters when it comes to redistricting.
We’ll bring you more on this as we get it.
Mia Love, first Black Republican woman elected to Congress, dies aged 49
Mia Love, a daughter of Haitian immigrants who became the first Black Republican woman elected to Congress, died on Sunday at the age of 49.
The former US House member of Utah had undergone recent treatment for brain cancer and received immunotherapy as part of a clinical trial at Duke University’s brain tumor center. Her daughter said earlier this month that the former lawmaker was no longer responding to treatment. Love died at her home in Saratoga Springs, Utah, according to a statement posted by the family.
Love didn’t emphasize her race during her campaigns, but she acknowledged the significance of her election after her 2014 victory. She said her win defied naysayers who had suggested that a Black, Republican, Mormon woman couldn’t win a congressional seat in overwhelmingly white Utah.
She was briefly considered a rising star within the GOP and she kept her distance from Donald Trump, who was unpopular with many Utah voters during his successful run for his first presidency in 2016.
In an op-ed published earlier this month in the Deseret News, Love described the version of America she grew up loving and shared her enduring wish for the nation to become less divisive. She thanked her medical team and every person who had prayed for her.
Andrew Sparrow
British prime minister Keir Starmer and Donald Trump held a brief call on Sunday to discuss progress on a new economic deal between the two countries, Downing Street said this morning.
At the lobby briefing, asked about reports that the government may cut the digital services tax, to help US tech firms and to persuade the White House to reduce the impact of tariffs on the UK in return, the PM’s spokesperson replied:
Firstly, just taking a step back, the UK is working with the United States on an economic prosperity deal, building on our shared strength of that commitment to economic security. As part of those discussions, the prime minister and President Trump discussed progress made in those discussions last night. The UK will only do a deal in the national interest, which reflects this government’s mandate to deliver economic stability for British people.
The spokesperson did not say whether or not the digital services tax came up in the call. But he said the government remained in favour of the tax in principle.
On the prospects of a trade deal, the spokesperson said that “good progress” was being made. But he confirmed that what was being envisaged was less a full-blown free trade agreement, and more a deal just covering certain sectors.
Downing Street also refused to respond directly to the claim from Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff that Starmer’s stance on Ukraine amounts to “posturing”.
Asked if Starmer was happy for one of Trump’s closest advisers to be talking in these terms, the PM’s spokesperson said that Starmer himself has explained in detail why he is working on plans for a “coalition of the willing” to support Ukraine, and why a peace deal would need military underpinning.
The prime minister is focused on delivering the right outcome in Ukraine. There’s frequent engagement with President Trump to that end, with shared vision with President Trump in terms of bringing a durable peace in Ukraine.
Appeals court to hear arguments in deportations case
Donald Trump’s forceful attack on the American judiciary hits the appeals court today for a high-stakes hearing over the president’s controversial use of wartime powers to deport foreign migrants.
Politico reports that the Trump administration will urge a three-member appeals panel to overturn federal judge James Boasberg’s temporary restraining order blocking use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport planeloads of migrants without due process. Justice Department lawyers will also demand Boasberg be thrown off the case following a ferocious weeklong effort to publicly discredit him led by the president himself. The hearing starts in Washington at 1.30pm ET, each side will be allocated 30 minutes to make their case.
The hearing will mark a significant test of the president’s ability to compel the entire US justice system to fall into line. At a hearing last Friday, Boasberg condemned government lawyers for using “intemperate and disrespectful language I’m not used to hearing from the United States”.
Politico notes that all eyes today will be on the two Republican appointees on the panel: George W. Bush appointee Karen Henderson and Trump appointee Justin Walker. (The third judge is Patricia Millett, a Barack Obama appointee.) Will they embrace Trump’s expansive view of executive power, or will they show concern about what Boasberg has called the “very frightening” possibility of almost any migrant being rapidly expelled to a third country based solely on the say-so of the executive branch?
Trump continued his attacks on Boasberg over the weekend, calling him a “constitutional disaster” in a post to his Truth Social platform on Sunday.
We’ll bring you all the latest on this afternoon’s hearing as we get it.
Kremlin says Russia and US have common understanding on need for settlement in Ukraine
Some information is trickling in from what is being discussed in the talks between US and Russian officials at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Reuters is reporting that the Kremlin said that Moscow and Washington shared a common understanding on the need to move towards a settlement to end the war in Ukraine, but that there are still many different aspects that need to be worked out.
A fast US brokered ceasefire in Ukraine is unlikely for many reasons. Vladimir Putin has said any talks must address what he frames as “the root causes” of Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022, primarily his concerns around an expanding Nato alliance. Ukraine has made membership of the alliance a key strategic aim that it says would help protect the country in the event of future Russian aggression.
Putin also said during his call with Donald Trump earlier this month that any long-term deal would require an ending of intelligence sharing and military aid to Kyiv from its allies. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said after the call that Ukraine’s allies would never agree to such a move, adding that he hopes supplies will continue.
My colleague Yohannes Lowe has all the latest on Ukraine and the US-Russia ceasefire talks over on our Ukraine live blog:
‘They chose the billionaire’: Tim Walz returns to Minnesota as part of ‘revenge’ tour
Rachel Leingang
The former Democratic VP nominee’s tour around the US is part brand redemption, part Democratic catharsis, part rally, writes my colleague Rachel Leingang from Rochester, Minnesota.
Tim Walz is trying to regroup to help Democrats fight the Trump administration, but he’s still trying to figure out why he and his party lost in November.
“I knew it was my job to try and pick off those other swing states, and we didn’t,” he said about the 2024 election. “I come back home to lick my wounds and say, goddamn, at least we won here.”
Walz was speaking on Saturday in Rochester, Minnesota – in the district he once represented in Congress, as part of his soul-searching tour around the country after the Democrats’ bruising 2024 defeat. He hasn’t ruled out a 2028 run for president, though neither have most 2028 hopefuls.
Walz told a crowd of roughly 1,500 people that filled an auditorium and spilled into an overflow room on a Saturday morning:
I thought it was a flex that I was the poorest person and the only public school teacher to ever run for vice-president of the United States. They chose the billionaire. We gotta do better.
Thinking about the path forward for Democrats, Walz acknowledges he doesn’t have a solid answer, but said Democrats need to do better at articulating their values and the ways their policies would improve people’s lives. He likes the idea of a “shadow cabinet”, borrowing a UK tradition where opposition parties have their own versions of cabinet members to speak out against the ones in power.
He also said Democrats shouldn’t let Republicans capture the narrative on issues like trans rights.
He sees the Trump administration as an “existential threat” that will chip away at programs such as social security, but wonders how Democrats aren’t able to message these popular, middle-class issues against oligarchs. “How did this happen?” he pondered.
Once Democrats get back in office, it’s time to shore up the programs they want to protect, he said.
Donald Trump is on his revenge and retribution tour. Well, I said I’ll be on one, too. I’m going to bring revenge just raining down on their heads with their neighbors getting healthcare. They’re gonna rue the day when we got re-elected because our kids with special needs are going to get the care that they need.
You can read the full piece here:
Maya Yang
Chuck Schumer defied calls to give up the top Democratic position in the Senate after he voted for Republicans’ funding bill to avoid a government shutdown, saying on Sunday: “I’m not stepping down.”
Schumer has faced a wave of backlash from Democrats over his decision to support the Republican-led bill, with many Democrats alleging that the party leader isn’t doing enough to stand up to Donald Trump’s agenda.
Explaining his decision during an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Schumer said: “I knew when I cast my vote against … the government shutdown … that there would be a lot of controversy.” He said that the funding bill “was certainly bad”, but maintained that a shutdown would have been 15 or 20 times worse.
Schumer has argued that billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) would have used a shutdown to “eviscerate the federal government”, which he said would have been “devastating”.
A delegation of officials from the United States will visit India from 25-29 March for trade talks with Indian officials, a US embassy spokesperson said on Monday.
Assistant US trade representative for South and Central Asia Brendan Lynch will lead the group. “This visit reflects the United States’ continued commitment to advancing a productive and balanced trade relationship with India,” the spokesperson said.
President Donald Trump is expected to impose reciprocal tariffs from 2 April on various nations, causing alarm among Indian exporters, Reuters reported.
India has an “obvious expectation”, a government source said, that the Trump administration could exempt it from reciprocal tariffs as the two nations continue talks on a bilateral trade pact.
The source said US vice-president JD Vance is also likely to visit India in April.
Sam Levine
Donald Trump’s second administration has shown an “unprecedented degree of resistance” to adverse court rulings, experts say, part of a forceful attack on the American judiciary that threatens to undermine the rule of law, undercut a co-equal branch of government and weaken American democracy.
The attacks, experts say, threaten one of the fundamental pillars of American government: that the judicial branch has the power to interpret the law and the other branches will abide by its rulings.
The attack came to a head this week when the Trump administration ignored an order from US district judge James Boasberg to turn planes carrying deportees around. “I don’t care what the judges think,” Thomas Homan, charged with enforcing Trump’s deportation agenda, said in a Fox News television interview on Monday as the decision came under scrutiny. The next day, Trump called for Boasberg to be impeached, calling him a “radical left lunatic”.
For months, the Trump administration has made it clear they believe they can ignore judicial orders. “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” vice-president JD Vance tweeted on 9 February.
Elon Musk, Trump’s top adviser, has repeatedly called for impeaching judges, and is donating to Republicans in Congress who have supported doing so. House Republicans have introduced resolutions to impeach Boasberg and four other judges who have ruled against Trump.
IRS nears deal with Ice to share data of undocumented immigrants – report
Olivia Empson
The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is reportedly nearing a deal to allow immigration officials to use tax data to support Donald Trump’s deportation agenda, according to reports by the Washington Post.
Under the proposed data-sharing agreement, said to have been in negotiations for weeks, Immigration And Customs Enforcement (Ice) could hand over the names and addresses of undocumented immigrants to the IRS, raising concerns about abuse of power from the Trump administration and the erosion of privacy rights.
If access to this confidential database is agreed upon, it would mark a significant shift, likely becoming the first time immigration officials have relied on the tax system for enforcement assistance in such a sweeping way.
Under the agreement, the IRS would cross-reference names of undocumented immigrants with their confidential taxpayer databases, a move that would breach the longstanding trust in the confidentiality of tax information. Such data has historically been considered sensitive and thereby closely guarded, so the reported deal has raised alarm bells at the IRS, according to the Washington Post.
Donald Trump’s administration is likely to exclude a set of sector-specific tariffs while applying reciprocal levies on 2 April, Bloomberg News and the Wall Street Journal reported, citing officials.
Trump said in February that he intended to impose auto tariffs “in the neighbourhood of 25%” and similar duties on semiconductors and pharmaceutical imports, but he later agreed to delay some auto tariffs after a push by the three largest US automakers for a waiver.
Sector-specific tariffs are now not likely to be announced on 2 April, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing an administration official.
The official added that the White House was still planning to unveil reciprocal tariff measures on that day, although planning remains fluid.
Bloomberg News reported on Saturday that sector-specific tariffs would be excluded.
Danish police have sent extra personnel and sniffer dogs to Greenland as the icy island steps up security measures ahead of a planned visit this week by second lady Usha Vance, AP reports.
The extra officers, deployed the day before, were part of regular steps taken during visits by dignitaries to Greenland, a self-governing, mineral-rich territory of American ally Denmark, a spokesperson said.
Citing office procedure, Danish police declined to specify the number of extra police flown on the chartered flight. News reports put the number at dozens of officers.
Vance’s visit comes at a time when Donald Trump has suggested the United States should take control of Greenland.
Greenlandic news outlet Sermitsiaq posted images of two US Hercules workhorse military aircraft on the tarmac Sunday in Nuuk, the capital, adding that the planes later departed.
Vance will leave on Thursday and return Saturday, a statement from her office said. She and one of her three children will be part of a US delegation that will “visit historic sites” and “learn about Greenlandic heritage.”
Greenland leaders criticise US delegation trip as Trump talks of takeover
Greenlandic leaders have criticised an upcoming trip by a high-profile American delegation to the semi-autonomous Danish territory that Donald Trump has suggested the US should annex, Reuters reports.
The delegation, which will visit an American military base and watch a dogsled race, will be led by Usha Vance, wife of vice-president JD Vance, and include White House national security adviser Mike Waltz and energy secretary Chris Wright.
Greenland’s outgoing prime minister Mute Egede called this week’s visit a “provocation” and said his caretaker government would not meet with the delegation.
“Until recently, we could trust the Americans, who were our allies and friends, and with whom we enjoyed working closely,” Egede told local newspaper Sermitsiaq. “But that time is over.”
The Greenlandic government, Naalakkersuisut, is now in a caretaker period after a 11 March general election won by the Democrats, a pro-business party that favors a slow approach to independence from Denmark.
Jens-Frederik Nielsen, leader of the Democrats, called for political unity and said the visit by the US delegation during coalition talks and with municipal elections due next week, “once again shows a lack of respect for the Greenlandic people.”
Waltz and Wright plan to visit the Pituffik space base, the US military base in Greenland. The White House said they will get briefings from US service members there. They will then join Vance to visit historical sites and attend the national dogsled race.
Brian Hughes, spokesperson for the White House national security council, said the US team is “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,” Hughes said.
Trump has made US annexation of Greenland a major talking point since taking office for a second time on 20 January. Greenland’s strategic location and rich mineral resources could benefit the US. It lies along the shortest route from Europe to North America, vital for the US ballistic missile warning system.
