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Yesterday, the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland met behind closed doors with the American vice president and the secretary of state. Afterward, the Europeans described a “fundamental disagreement” over what the future of Greenland should be. President Trump keeps insisting the United States should take over the island, and they’re not interested.
Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the Danish foreign minister, told reporters he hoped the three governments could lower the temperature on the debate. “This is actually the very first time where we could sit down at a top political level to discuss it,” he said. He said he understood Trump’s view that Greenland’s …
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Yesterday, the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland met behind closed doors with the American vice president and the secretary of state. Afterward, the Europeans described a “fundamental disagreement” over what the future of Greenland should be. President Trump keeps insisting the United States should take over the island, and they’re not interested.
Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the Danish foreign minister, told reporters he hoped the three governments could lower the temperature on the debate. “This is actually the very first time where we could sit down at a top political level to discuss it,” he said. He said he understood Trump’s view that Greenland’s future lies with America — or China or Russia. “We share, to some extent, his concerns,” he said. “There’s definitely a new security situation in the Arctic and the High North.”
That morning, the White House had posted a cartoon on X showing Greenland’s supposed paths:
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Alongside it, Trump declared that anything less than U.S. control of Greenland was “unacceptable.”
The view from Nuuk
How does the saber-rattling play with the 57,000 people who live in Greenland?
Not well, report Jeffrey Gettleman and Maya Tekeli, who traveled to Nuuk, the capital, to find out. They discovered a kaleidoscope of feelings: shock, anger, confusion, humiliation, insult and, most of all, fear. No one they spoke to wants Greenland to be recolonized, and very few have any interest in joining the United States. One told them she was well aware of the holes in this country’s health care system and its gaping economic inequality.
I talked to Jeffrey about that yesterday. He told me the people he spoke to hated the idea that officials thousands of miles away might decide their fate. And they are worried about changing the way they live:
People here enjoy a highly Scandinavian standard of living, which means free health care, free education and a strong safety net. At the same time, they value their traditions. I can’t tell you how many people we’ve met who still hunt seals and reindeer and love ice fishing and spending hours outside, with their sled dogs or on their snowmobiles.
Jeffrey had just talked to a Greenlander selling secondhand clothes and knickknacks on the street in Nuuk. “Trump really wants it, he keeps saying he wants it, and if he comes what are we going to do?” the guy told him. Then he laughed. His name was Thue Norhsen. Jeffrey asked him if he wanted to become an American. “I like the way things are,” Norhsen said. “I don’t want to give that up.” Jeffrey said it was a refrain he had heard in Greenland over and over again.
A strategic hub
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Credit...Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated Press
The Trump administration wants Greenland for a host of reasons, including its mineral resources, its size and its strategic location near Canada, Europe and even Russia via the Arctic Ocean. Among other things, it’s a good place to keep track of Chinese and Russian naval ships crossing new routes through melted ice. (It’s also a good place, because it’s so close to the North Pole, to track missiles.)
NATO countries like the United States also use those routes and gather intelligence to counter Russia. Trump has repeatedly berated and coerced the organization, demanding that its member nations pay more for defense. Now, his quest to take over Greenland, which as part of the Kingdom of Denmark is already under NATO’s protection, has raised concerns that he will shatter the alliance itself.
Trump said yesterday that NATO “should be leading the way for us to get” Greenland.
That view came with an implied threat: Without American military power, “NATO would not be an effective force or deterrent — Not even close!” he wrote on social media. “They know that, and so do I. NATO becomes far more formidable and effective with Greenland in the hands of the UNITED STATES.”
But what if Trump seizes the island by force? Then NATO has a different problem. Its founding treaty holds that an attack on one ally in the organization — in this case, Denmark — is an attack on all. An attack on all brings the obligation for each NATO member to respond, though not always with armed force.
In the nearly eight decades of the alliance, no NATO ally has ever attacked another.
More coverage
Denmark announced yesterday that it was increasing its military presence in and around Greenland.
Greenland’s rapidly melting ice sheet is raising sea levels globally and may be slowing ocean currents, which could affect weather patterns.
THE LATEST NEWS
Iran
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In Tehran last week.Credit...via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Iranian officials postponed the execution of a 26-year-old protester, stepping back from a red line that Trump had suggested would provoke a U.S. attack.
The U.S. military evacuated some nonessential personnel from its main air base in Qatar, which lies less than 200 miles south of Iran and could be a target if Trump orders an attack on Iran.
American allies in the Persian Gulf are asking Trump not to strike Iran.
Politics
The U.S. health agency reversed its decision to cut $2 billion for mental health and addiction services.
The Trump administration said it would suspend the processing of immigrant visas for people from 75 countries, including Iran and Somalia.
The Supreme Court ruled that law enforcement officials can enter a home without a warrant in an emergency.
Congress
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Senator Josh HawleyCredit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Senate Republicans blocked a resolution that sought to force Trump to seek congressional approval for any U.S. military action related to Venezuela.
Congress is rejecting almost all of Trump’s proposed spending cuts for the year.
Federal judges upheld California’s new voting map, which could help Democrats gain five seats in the House.
Minneapolis Shooting
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In Minneapolis on Tuesday.Credit...David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
A federal agent shot and injured a Venezuelan immigrant in Minneapolis, setting off hours of protests.
Lawyers for Renee Good’s family say they plan to investigate her shooting.
The ICE agent who killed Good is unlikely to face criminal charges in her death.
International
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A fentanyl lab in Mexico.Credit...Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
The U.S. is pressuring Mexico to allow joint operations against fentanyl labs inside the country. Mexico’s president has resisted allowing U.S. troops over the border.
A top Venezuelan diplomat is traveling to the U.S. today, the same day Trump is scheduled to meet with the opposition leader María Corina Machado.
In Australia, nearly five million social media accounts belonging to teenagers have been deactivated or removed since the country barred those younger than 16 from using the services.
The U.S. government is trying to sell millions of barrels of Venezuelan oil, which have been trapped in the country since Trump started blocking the movement of tankers.
Other Big Stories
Four astronauts returned to Earth this morning, splashing down near San Diego after evacuating from the International Space Station.
Chinese universities are rising in global rankings as U.S. schools slip.
GOVERNMENT WORK
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Credit...Note: Data represents December snapshots (November for 2025). It includes all federal civilian employees, with some exceptions, including the Postal Service, foreign nationals overseas, some intelligence agencies and temporary Census Bureau workers. Source: U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Alicia Parlapiano/The New York Times
The federal work force shrank by about 10 percent, or 220,000 workers in the first 10 months of the Trump administration, according to new government data analyzed by our colleagues Emily Badger, Francesca Paris and** **Alicia Parlapiano. Some agencies saw much bigger declines. The U.S. Agency for International Development, for instance, lost all but 8 percent of its staff.
See how a decade of growth for America’s largest employer ended. You can look up more than 500 agencies and sub-agencies, comparing their employment as of November with one year earlier.
MORNING READS
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Credit...The New York Times
**Heavy-metal diplomacy: **The prime minister of Japan, a heavy-metal drummer, wrapped up a day of talks with the president of South Korea by inviting him to jam with her. The two leaders rocked out to songs from “KPop Demon Hunters” in a hotel ballroom.
**Heating up: **Did your hometown feel warmer than usual last year? If so, you’re not alone. Click here to see the average temperature last year where you live.
Your pick: The most-clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about Trump making an obscene gesture at a heckler.
**A civil rights icon: **Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white woman, but her act of resistance was overshadowed a few months later by a similar stand by Rosa Parks. Colvin was later a star witness in the landmark Supreme Court case that desegregated public transportation. She died at 86.
TODAY’S NUMBER
125
— That’s how many millions of dollars the Congressional Budget Office estimates it could cost to change the name of the Department of Defense to the “Department of War.”
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Credit...Matt Taylor-Gross for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.
Here’s a lovely recipe from Yasmin Fahr for baked fish with olives and ginger that works particularly well with cod, though I bet Gulf Coasters would hit it out of the park with grouper. West Coasters could use halibut to great effect. Whitefish for the Great Lakes crowd? Yes, please. Whichever protein you use, nestling the fillets in oil will help keep them moist in the oven while helping to create a no-work pan sauce brightened by lemon. Don’t like the ginger? Bring in a few anchovies or cloves of garlic instead. We’re flexible here and aim only for the delicious.
JODIE IN PARIS
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Credit...Benjamin Malapris for The New York Times
Jodie Foster’s latest film is “A Private Life,” in which she plays an American psychoanalyst in Paris whose life unravels when one of her patients dies. Foster’s character believes it was murder. Tragicomedy ensues. The whole thing’s in French.
It’s a language Foster has been speaking fluently since childhood. Still, she prepared for the role, she told Elaine Sciolino, who has covered France for decades. She “read French books aloud at home and then turned up in Paris to immerse herself in French life, visiting bookstores, riding the Métro and the bus, working out at a gym, meeting with French psychoanalysts, taking cello lessons, dining in small bistros.”
“I am a different person in that language,” Foster told Elaine. “I have a whole host of other things to express. I would maybe even like to direct in French.”
More on culture
Gourmet magazine, which shuttered in 2009, is back. Sort of. Its trademark, long held by Condé Nast, expired in 2021 and was scooped up by a team of five 30-something food writers eager to publish words and recipes with complexity. They’ll start next week with a newsletter. “More power to them,” said Ruth Reichl, Gourmet’s last editor.
Forget the cynics, writes Amy Kellner in The New York Times Magazine. You should get your dog a stroller. Don’t snigger. As Amy writes, “You never know what someone’s going through.”
Late night hosts commented on Trump’s visit to a Ford factory.
THE MORNING RECOMMENDS
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Megan MoroneyCredit...Seth Herald/Reuters
Listen to Megan Moroney’s “6 Months Later,” a single off one of the seven albums our critic Lindsay Zoladz is looking forward to in 2026.
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Sam Sifton, the host of The Morning, was previously an assistant managing editor responsible for culture and lifestyle coverage and is the founding editor of New York Times Cooking.
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