Outgoing secretary of state says Trump’s idea is ‘obviously not a good one’, while Department of Justice plans to withhold part of Jack Smith’s report
Antony Blinken, the outgoing secretary of state, said that Donald Trump’s idea of the United States taking over Greenland – perhaps by military force – is “not a good one” and will not happen.
“I think one of the basic propositions we brought to our work over the last four years is that we’re stronger, we’re more effective, We get better results when we’re working closely with our allies, not saying or doing things that may alienate them,” Blinken said at a press conference in Paris held alongside French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot.
“Having said that, the idea expressed about Greenland is obviously not a good one, but maybe more important, it’s obviously one that’s not going to happen. So we probably shouldn’t waste a lot of time talking about it.”
Blinken will step down once Joe Biden leaves office on 20 January. Trump has nominated Marco Rubio, the Republican Florida senator, to succeed him.
Democrats may be headed for at least two years in the minority in the US House and Senate, but yesterday managed to preserved their control of Virginia’s state legislature in a special election. Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Michael Sainato:
Democrats in Virginia preserved their majority in the state legislature late on Tuesday in the first statewide elections since Donald Trump’s presidential victory in November.
In special elections for open seats, Kannan Srinivasan, a Democratic state representative, defeated Republican Tumay Harding in a race for an open state senate seat in Loudon county, Virginia, just outside of Washington DC.
Democrat JJ Singh won an open state house seat in the same county, over Republican Ram Venkatachalam. Republicans held on to a state senate seat vacated by John McGuire, who won a first term in the US House of Representatives in November 2024.
The state Democrats have a slim 21-to-19 seat majority in the state senate and a 51-to-49 lead in the state house, making things difficult for the state’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, in the final year of his first term in office. He flipped the governorship to Republican in the November 2021 election.
Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries took a swipe at Donald Trump’s calls for the United States to take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal and merge with Canada, saying his party’s lawmakers were not elected to pursue such policies.
“House Democrats believe that they are not sent Washington to invade Greenland, rename the Gulf of Mexico or seize the Panama Canal by force. We were sent to Washington to lower the high cost of living in the United States of America,” Jeffries said at a press conference.
Asked if he would get behind Trump’s call yesterday to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”, Jeffries reiterated his earlier comments about lowering costs. “Housing costs are too high, grocery costs are too high, insurance costs are too high, utility costs are too high and childcare costs are too high. We have to build an affordable economy for hard working American taxpayers.”
Jeffries said he did not expect to meet with Trump later today, when the president-elect has a meeting scheduled with Senate Republicans, but expects to talk with him in the future.
Greenland is an autonomous part of Denmark, and the Danish foreign minister said they would be open to discussing security concerns over the island with Donald Trump’s administration, but downplayed the possibility of it becoming part of the United States. Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Patrick Wintour, Kim Willsher and Miranda Bryant:
Denmark has said it is open to dialogue with Donald Trump about his legitimate security concerns after the incoming US president said he was prepared to use economic tariffs or military force to seize control of Danish-administered Greenland.
Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the experienced Danish foreign minister, insisted he did not see a political crisis, but said it was in everyone’s interests to lower the temperature in the discussions.
“We are open to a dialogue with the Americans on how we can possibly cooperate even more closely than we do to ensure that the American ambitions are fulfilled.”
He added: “I have my own issues with Donald Trump and I also know that you shouldn’t say everything you think out loud.”
But he played down the possibility that Greenland would ever become part of the US: “We fully recognise that Greenland has its own ambitions. If they materialise, Greenland will become independent, though hardly with an ambition to become a federal state in the United States.”
At the same time he praised the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, who told France Inter radio: “There is no question of the EU letting other nations in the world, whoever they may be, attack its sovereign borders.”
Barrot added that, while he did not believe the US “would invade” Greenland, “we have entered an era that is seeing the return of the law of the strongest”.
Antony Blinken, the outgoing secretary of state, said that Donald Trump’s idea of the United States taking over Greenland – perhaps by military force – is “not a good one” and will not happen.
“I think one of the basic propositions we brought to our work over the last four years is that we’re stronger, we’re more effective, We get better results when we’re working closely with our allies, not saying or doing things that may alienate them,” Blinken said at a press conference in Paris held alongside French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot.
“Having said that, the idea expressed about Greenland is obviously not a good one, but maybe more important, it’s obviously one that’s not going to happen. So we probably shouldn’t waste a lot of time talking about it.”
Blinken will step down once Joe Biden leaves office on 20 January. Trump has nominated Marco Rubio, the Republican Florida senator, to succeed him.
The justice department did not say when it would release the portion of special counsel Jack Smith’s report detailing his investigation of Donald Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the Associated Press reports.
Yesterday, a federal judge in Florida temporarily blocked the department from releasing the entire report, and the justice department has asked an appeals court to overturn that decision.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s spokesman Steven Cheung has released a statement detailing his appeal to the supreme court to block his sentencing on business fraud charges scheduled for Friday.
“President Trump’s legal team filed an emergency petition with the United States supreme court, asking the court to correct the unjust actions by New York courts and stop the unlawful sentencing in the Manhattan DA’s Witch Hunt,” Cheung said.
“The supreme court’s historic decision on immunity, the constitution, and established legal precedent mandate that this meritless hoax be immediately dismissed. The American People elected President Trump with an overwhelming mandate that demands an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and all of the remaining witch-hunts. We look forward to uniting our country in the new administration as President Trump makes America great again.”
The justice department intends to make special counsel Jack Smith’s report detailing his investigation into Donald Trump’s possession of classified documents available only to the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate judiciary committees, the Associated Press reports.
“This limited disclosure will further the public interest in keeping congressional leadership apprised of a significant matter within the Department while safeguarding defendants’ interests,” the department wrote in a filing to an appeals court that is weighing a request from Trump’s lawyers to block release of the report.
While Smith has dropped the charges against Trump, he is continuing the prosecutions of two of his co-defendants indicted alongside him in the classified documents case.
The justice department plans to make public part of special counsel Jack Smith’s report detailing his investigation into Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, but not the portion that looks into the classified documents he is accused of hiding at his properties, the Associated Press reports.
The department made its intent known in a court filing responding to a decision yesterday by a Florida judge that temporarily halted release of Smith’s report, which is expected to detail the evidence behind the two indictments he brought against the former president.
Smith dismissed the charges in November, after Trump won re-election.
Elsewhere in his interview with USA Today, Joe Biden said he might have beaten Donald Trump in the November election, though is not sure he would have been able to serve the entirety of a term that would have concluded when he was at the age of 86.
He also says that the president-elect complimented his economic policies when they met following Trump’s re-election, even though the Republican had anchored his campaign on sharp criticisms of Biden’s administration.
Here’s more, from USA Today:
“Who knows what I’m going to be when I’m 86 years old?”, Biden said regarding whether he would have been able to handle another four years in the job. At 82, he is the oldest president ever to serve.
Could he have won? “It’s presumptuous to say that, but I think yes,” Biden said in the interview.
The president made his meeting with Trump sound fairly cordial. “He was very complimentary about some of the economic things I had done. And he talked about − he thought I was leaving with a good record,” Biden said.
USA Today’s interview is the last one Biden has scheduled with a print journalist before he departs the White House. The president did far fewer interviews and press conference in his term than many of his recent predecessors, according to the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Preemptive pardons by American presidents are rare, but not unheard of. Should Joe Biden opt to protect prospective targets of retaliation by Donald Trump, like Anthony Fauci or Liz Cheney, from prosecution, here’s an idea of how that would work, as told by the Guardian’s Sam Levine:
Joe Biden is reportedly considering issuing a number of preemptive pardons for top critics of Donald Trump.
Many top Democrats have urged the US president to consider blanket pardons due to fears that the president-elect will follow through on threats of legal retribution against his critics when he re-takes office in January. Among those speculated to receive clemency are California senator Adam Schiff, California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, and former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney – all of whom have been publicly threatened by Trump.
The presidential pardon power has been deployed by presidents beginning with George Washington, who pardoned those involved in the Whiskey Rebellion, to Trump, who pardoned his political allies.
Earlier this month, Biden pardoned 39 Americans and commuted the sentences of almost 1,500 people. Those pardons, touted by the White House as the largest act of presidential clemency on a single day, followed Biden’s move to issue a sweeping pardon to his son, Hunter, for any federal crimes committed over a 10-year period beginning in 2014.
Biden’s pardons have brought renewed focus on the expansive power the US constitution gives the president.
Attorneys for Donald Trump this morning appealed to the US supreme court to pause proceedings in the president-elect’s prosecution on business fraud charges in New York, ahead of his sentencing scheduled for Friday, Reuters reports.
Two previous appeals to stop the sentencing have failed, and now the president-elect’s attorneys are petitioning the nation’s highest court, where conservative justices, three of whom Trump appointed, hold a six-seat supermajority. Trump’s attorneys want the case put on pause while a separate appeal they have filed, which cites the court’s decision last year in a separate Trump-related case that grants presidents immunity for official acts, plays out.
Juan Merchan, the New York judge presiding over the case, has signaled that he will not sentence Trump to jail after being convicted of 34 felony charges related to concealing a payment to an adult film actor made ahead of his 2016 election victory. Here’s more:
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Joe Biden is in his final days in office, and still has a few pieces of unfinished business to deal with before he hands power to Donald Trump on 20 January. One of them is deciding whether to issue preemptive pardons to political enemies of the incoming president, such as former congresswoman Liz Cheney or Anthony Fauci, who spearheaded the fight against Covid-19 in Trump’s first term. In an interview with USA Today published today – a rare, final sit-down interview by a president who spent much of his term avoiding the press – Biden confirmed he may still opt to protect Trump’s enemies from prosecution, and signaled he would decide based on who the president-elect appoints to top roles in his administration.
Meanwhile, Trump is scrambling to halt the sentencing in his criminal business fraud case that is scheduled to take place in a Manhattan court on Friday. Reuters reports that his attorneys have asked the US supreme court to intervene to pause the proceedings, though the New York judge presiding over the case has signaled he is unlikely to sentence the president-elect to jail time. We will let you if the nation’s highest court responds.
Here’s what else is happening today:
Trump will this evening trek to Capitol Hill for a strategy meeting with the Republican senators tasked with enacting his administration’s priorities, ranging from mass deportations to extending tax cuts enacted during his first term.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the rightwing Georgia congresswoman, says she will introduce legislation to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”, as Trump proposed at a rambling press conference yesterday.
Los Angeles continues to be battered by three separate wildfires fueled by high winds. Follow our live blog as more than 1,400 firefighters attempts to contain the flames.
