DL Open Thread: Tuesday, January 20, 2026
President Trump is now claiming that one reason he is pushing to acquire Greenland is that he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize, according to a text message he sent to Norway’s prime minister over the weekend.
Jonas Gahr Store, Norway’s leader, received the text message on Sunday, an official in the prime minister’s office said on Monday.
“Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America,” Mr. Trump wrote in the message, which was first published by PBS.
Mr. Trump also questioned Denmark’s claim to Greenland, saying, “There are no written documents,” and adding, “The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you!”
Sane enough for you?
Bessent To Europe: ‘Don’t do what we’re doing’:
The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has urged European countries not to retaliate against the US’s trade tariffs announced over the Greenland crisis.
Speaking in Davos during the World Economic Forum, Bessent said countries and companies should pause and “let things play out” after Donald Trump threatened a 25% tariff on a slew of European countries in his pursuit of the autonomous Danish territory.
As global stock markets fell amid political uncertainty, Bessent indicated that retaliatory tariffs would be unwise, citing last year’s tit-for-tat tariff war that broke out between the US and China.
Bessent told a press conference at the annual meeting of global leaders: “I would say this is the same kind of hysteria that we heard on 2 April. There was a panic.”
Bessent said: “What I am urging everyone here to do is sit back, take a deep breath, and let things play out. The worst thing countries can do is escalate against the United States.
Translation: We all know he’s crazy. Let us work on him.
Finally, Calls To Invoke The 25th Amendment:
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) is calling on President Donald Trump’s Cabinet and Vice President JD Vance to remove him from office via the 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution over his latest threat to Greenland.
While Greenland is a semi-autonomous Danish territory, Trump said earlier this month that “one way or the other, we’re going to have Greenland” and has repeatedly refused to rule out the use of military force.
That was enough for Markey and at least three other U.S. lawmakers. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.) and Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) also called for the 25th Amendment to be invoked, with Ansari explicitly describing Trump as “extremely mentally ill.”
Better Than Nothing On The Environment:
The US Senate passed a limited spending package on Thursday that will largely fund several science- and land-related agencies, including the Department of Interior, the US Forest Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the US Environmental Protection Agency, at current levels. Having passed the House on January 8, the bill now heads to President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it.
The bill was, in many ways, a congressional rebuke of Trump’s request to drastically cut critical federal services related to the environment.
“It really shows that our public lands are meant to be managed for everyone in this country and not just private industry looking to turn a profit,” said Miranda Badgett, senior government relations representative for The Wilderness Society. “This bill really rejected some of the reckless budget cuts we saw proposed by the administration that would impact our national public-land agencies.”
The Senate also rejected nearly 150 budget riders placed by the House that would have dramatically hamstrung agencies, Badgett said.
The biggest blow to the West, climate science and the nation’s health and safety, however, are potential cuts to the National Center for Atmospheric Research, based in Boulder, Colorado. The center creates the modeling and analysis that underpins the weather forecasting people around the world depend on for their lives and work. But instead of including a line item to fund NCAR in this budget, the bill simply tells the National Science Foundation, which oversees the center, to continue its functions.
Just a reminder–today is the Delaware filing deadline for campaign finance reports. I’ll be updating all day long as reports go online.
What do you want to talk about?
Great reporting on our fearless leader. The EU NATO countries hold 8 trillion dollars of United States Bonds. Market crash on 47’s watch?
The disheartening news for Jan. 20 is that the S.Ct. did not issue its tariff decision today. If the Court was going to strike down Trump’s tariffs, it would have issued its opinion with due haste – simply to avoid increasing the secondary morass of how refunds would be handled. Recall that the Court let his tariffs continue while it heard the cases; and Trump has during that time increased the scope of his tariffs. If the Court was going to rule against his tariff power, it would try to rein in such expansion.
In short, the fact that the Court Is slow walking its decision suggests the majority (6-3 is my guess) is going to uphold his tariffs – at least in most instances, if not completely. Today, is a real tell of the outcome. And I fear such ruling will simply emigrate Trump to do more not just on the tariff side, but across the board.