JD Vance to join wife on Greenland visit but scales back scope of trip amid protests
Jakub Krupa
US vice-president JD Vance has decided to join his wife, Usha, on a trip to Greenland later this week, attracting even more attention to the controversial visit criticised by both Greenlandic and Danish leaders.
In a social media post last night, Vance said:
There was so much excitement around Usha's visit to Greenland this Friday that I decided that I didn't want her to have all that fun by herself, and so I'm going to join her.
He said he wanted to 'check out what is going on with the security there of Greenland' after 'a lot of other countries have threatened Greenland, have threatened to use its territories and its waterways' to pose threat to the US and Canada.
But in a potentially inflammatory part of his video, he said:
I say that speaking for President Trump: we want to reinvigorate the security of the people of Greenland because we think it's important to protecting the security of the entire world.
Unfortunately, leaders in both America and in Denmark, I think, ignored Greenland for far too long.
That's been bad for Greenland, it's also been bad for the security of the entire world.
We think we can take things in a different direction, so I'm gonna go check it out.
Despite the rhetoric, the character of the visit will also change: after protests from Greenlandic leaders, the Vances will no longer take part in a dog-sled race or visit historical places, but solely focus on the US military base, Pituffik Space Base. A view of Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Base) in Greenland. Photograph: Ritzau Scanpix/Reuters
As Danish broadcaster DR notes, its history goes back to 1953 when 116 Greenlanders were forcibly removed from the area to make room for the base (they later won a lawsuit and received some compensation for the move).
The base was previously known as Thule Air Base, but was renamed Pituffik Space Base in 2023, after the plain on which the base is built, Pituffik.
DR also noted that in 1968 an American military bomber B52 carrying nuclear weapons crashed near the base.
The White House press release highlighted the base's importance during the cold war, and noted:
In the decades since, neglect and inaction from Danish leaders and past U.S. administrations have presented our adversaries with the opportunity to advance their own priorities in Greenland and the Arctic. President Trump is rightly changing course.
Responding to the announcement, Danish foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said this morning on P1 Morgen that it was 'very positive that the Americans cancelled their visit to the Greenlandic society.'
'Instead, they will visit their own base, Pituffik, and we have nothing against that,' he said, noting with satisfaction that cars shipped to the island in the last few days in preparations for the broader US visit are now being sent back.
The minister argued that by limiting the visit, the US is actually de-escalating the tension, even as it theoretically upgraded its delegation by sending the US vice-president. The Danish press also called it 'a small victory.'
But defence minister Troels Lund Poulsen remained unconvinced about the visit, saying it was not the right development in relations between close allies, DR reported.
The acting government of Greenland only said diplomatically that it 'notes that the previously announced US delegation visit to Nuuk and Sisimiut has been cancelled by the US government.'
Expect this topic to continue to attract a lot of attention ahead of Friday, as a practical test of what US leaders are prepared to do and say on Greenland, which remains a Danish territory and does not appear to show much interest in becoming a part of the US.
Elsewhere, we will be following updates on Ukraine ahead of what appeared to amount to a Black Sea ceasefire, as Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy visits Emmanuel Macron in Paris this evening, ahead of another meeting of 'the coalition of the willing' tomorrow.
It's Wednesday, 26 March 2025, and this is Europe live. It's Jakub Krupa here.
Good morning. Share
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
4 minutes ago
- Reuters
Pakistan to upgrade diplomatic ties with Afghanistan in easing of tensions
ISLAMABAD, May 30 (Reuters) - Pakistan will designate an ambassador to Afghanistan, the first since Kabul fell to the Taliban in 2021, the country's foreign minister said on Friday, announcing an upgrade in diplomatic ties that shows some easing of tensions between the two neighbours. Currently, Pakistan and Afghanistan's top envoy in each other's country is a charge d'affaires, a lower level than ambassador. Pakistan has not yet said who will be nominated to the upgraded post. Announcing the decision to upgrade diplomatic representation, Pakistan's foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, said bilateral relations had been on a positive trajectory since he visited Kabul with a Pakistani delegation last month. "I am confident this step would further contribute towards enhanced engagement," he said on X. Afghanistan's foreign ministry and Taliban's charge d'affaires in Islamabad did not immediately respond to a request for comment. China, which hosted an informal meeting last week between the Pakistani government and the Afghan Taliban administration, said afterward that the two countries planned to upgrade their diplomatic ties. Pakistan and Afghanistan have had a strained relationship since the Taliban administration took power after the withdrawal of U.S.-led NATO forces. Islamabad says that Islamist militants who launch attacks inside Pakistan use Afghan soil. Kabul denies this, saying such militancy is Pakistan's domestic problem to handle. No country has formally recognised the Taliban administration since it took power, with foreign powers calling for it to change course on women's rights. Pakistan becomes the fourth country after China, UAE and Uzbekistan to designate an ambassador to Kabul. Although those governments say they have not formally recognised the Taliban's government, diplomats and experts say that having an ambassador officially present their credentials represents a step towards recognition.
Reuters
4 minutes ago
- Reuters
Global crises disrupt effort to get millions to quit smoking, report says
LONDON, May 30 (Reuters) - The COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and wars have combined to hamper global governments' plans to reduce tobacco use, derailing efforts to get an estimated 95 million people to stop smoking, a report endorsed by 57 campaign groups said on Friday. Governments had planned to reduce smoking rates among people over 15 by 30% between 2010 and 2025 as part of an action plan tied to global sustainable development targets agreed in 2015. But the timeline to achieve the goal was extended an extra five years in 2024 as other priorities pushed countries to divert resources away from implementing a World Health Organization treaty on tobacco control signed by 168 countries. "This ... delay represents an estimated 95 million additional tobacco users, who would otherwise have quit by 2025," said the report, submitted to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, which oversees global sustainable development. While governments have succeeded in reducing the number of smokers, the failure to hit the 30% reduction target means that 1,207,800,000 people are still smoking globally, instead of the target of 1,112,400,000, based on a Reuters calculation using smoking rates and population figures provided in the report. Published by Action on Smoking and Health Canada and endorsed by the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, Cancer Research UK and others, the report warned the delays could result in millions of additional deaths from tobacco use if sustained. The U.N. has already acknowledged that funding shortfalls, geopolitical tensions and pandemic-linked disruptions have pushed the world off track on most of the 17 wide-ranging sustainable development goals. Those goals aim, among other things, to reduce poverty and hunger and increase access to healthcare and education. The groups that endorsed ASH Canada's report urged governments to redouble their efforts on tobacco control policies such as tax increases and smoking bans.
NBC News
6 minutes ago
- NBC News
Supreme Court allows Trump to revoke legal status of 500,000 immigrants
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Trump administration to revoke temporary legal status granted to more than 500,000 immigrants by the Biden administration. The court granted an emergency application filed by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem that ends the Biden program that gave 532,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela permission to temporarily live and work in the United States. The brief order noted that liberal justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor dissented. Jackson wrote that the court had failed to take into account "the devastating consequences of allowing the government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending." The administration was contesting a ruling by Massachusetts-based U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, who ruled the administration could not sweep away each person's status without an individualized determination. Starting in 2022, then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas granted what is called parole for two years to people from the affected countries in part to alleviate the surge of immigrants arriving in the U.S.-Mexico border. The policy, known as the CHNV parole programs, allowed immigrants who passed a security check and who had a sponsor in the United States who could provide housing, to enter the country and stay. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in court papers that Talwani did not have authority to rule on the issue, with Noem given authority to make her decision under the federal Immigration and Nationality Act. The same law gave Mayorkas the discretion to allow the affected immigrants to enter and stay in the country. The Department of Homeland Security said in October 2024 that each person's parole would not be extended once their two-year approval period expired. Noem's move to unwind the Biden action was challenged in court by individuals who would be affected as well as the Haitian Bridge Alliance, an immigrant rights group. Their lawyers wrote in court papers that if the Trump administration action is upheld, all the parolees will immediately "become undocumented, legally employable, and subject to mass expulsion." They noted that Talwani's decision did not prevent Noem from ending the program, only that the government could not immediately rescind the status of the people already enrolled via a single sweeping order. The dispute is one of dozens of cases in which the Trump administration has complained about lower court judges blocking its policies even as President Donald Trump has sought to aggressively expand the power of the presidency without the authorization of Congress.
