Hegseth All but Confirms Trump Plans to Take Greenland by Force

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth refused Thursday to answer a simple question about the Trump administration’s plans for Greenland, implying that the U.S. military has drawn up plans to take the country by force.

While testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, Republican Representative Mike Turner gave Hegseth the opportunity to clarify the Trump administration’s position on taking military action to acquire Greenland—but the secretary refused to deny rumors of a potential invasion.

“While you’re here, I just want to help you out because people try to twist your words,” said Turner. “You are not confirming in your testimony today that at the Pentagon there are plans for invading or taking by force Greenland, correct? That is not your testimony today?”

“All my testimony is, is that the Pentagon has plans for any number of contingencies,” Hegseth replied simply.

“It is not your testimony today that there are plans at the Pentagon for taking by force or invading Greenland?” Turner asked, sounding incredulous. “Cause I sure as hell hope that it is not your testimony—”

“We look forward to working with Greenland to ensure that it is secured from any potential threat,” Hegseth responded, still giving no clear answer.

Turner yielded his time back to the chair.

Hegseth’s position should only come as a surprise to those who still wish to believe that Trump is kidding about his fantasies of annexing the massive, mineral-rich Arctic island, which the president has claimed the U.S. absolutely needs to wrest from Denmark’s control in order to establish “international peace.”

But to the hammer Hegseth and his so-called “warrior ethos,” every problem seems to be a nail, and every acquisition a potential invasion. The Trump administration also previously asked the U.S. military to draw up options for retaking the Panama Canal, and Trump has said he wouldn’t rule out the use of military force to seize Greenland.

Hegseth’s revelation also comes just hours after the Danish government approved the construction of U.S. military bases on Danish soil. The Trump administration is also planning to move Greenland under the protection of its U.S. Northern Command, rather than the U.S. European Command—a symbolic change to incorporate the Danish territory.

The White House also has plans to conduct an expensive public relations campaign to convince Greenlanders that they actually want to be Americans.

President Trump thinks Gavin Newsom should be thanking him for “saving his ass.”

“Los Angeles was safe and sound for the last two nights. Our great National Guard, with a little help from the Marines, put the L.A. Police in a position to effectively do their job. They all worked well together, but without the Military, Los Angeles would be a crime scene like we haven’t seen in years,” he wrote Thursday on Truth Social. “Governor Gaven NewScum had totally lost control of the situation. He should be saying THANK YOU for saving his ass, instead of trying to justify his mistakes and incompetence!!!”

Trump sent thousands of National Guardsmen and hundreds of Marines to L.A. without Newsom’s permission to quell anti-ICE protests, an unprecedented escalation that led to violent clashes between troops and civilians last Friday.

“Federal antagonization, through the presence of soldiers in the streets, has already caused real and irreparable damage to the City of Los Angeles, the people who live there, and the State of California,” Newsom said in a statement. “They must be stopped, immediately.”

The scene did not reach a point that necessitated the presence of the Guardsman and the Marines. Trump is not saving anyone here. He’s creating a spectacle of fear, siccing the military on his own citizens to frame Newsom as weak and indecisive and depict himself as strong and poised. And he spent $134 million in taxpayer dollars to do it.

A pro–Andrew Cuomo super PAC released a mailer this week that modified the image of Zohran Mamdani, the progressive front-runner in New York City’s mayoral race, to appear as if he has a darker, longer beard.

The altered image of Mamdani, a New York state representative, appeared next to text on a mailer claiming that Mamdani “rejects” the police and capitalism. It also claimed that Mamdani “rejects Israel,” on the basis that the Ugandan-born Democratic Socialist supports a nonviolent Palestinian-led movement known as BDS that advocates for economic sanctions against Israel.

The advert also advertised Mamdani as a candidate who “rejects Jewish rights,” claiming that he “refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.” It was developed by Fix The City Inc., whose largest donor is DoorDash, according to the New York City Campaign Finance Board and the group’s website.

Fix the City denied releasing the mailer.

“The mailer was proposed by a vendor; upon review it was immediately rejected for production and was subsequently corrected,” Liz Benjamin, a spokesperson for the group, told The New Republic. “We are disturbed that this was posted online without our consent.”

But the backlash was already underway.

“Andrew Cuomo is afraid he’ll lose, so his donors want you to fear me,” the assemblyman posted on X Thursday. “His SuperPAC just sent out a mailer that artificially lengthened and darkened my beard.

“This is blatant Islamophobia—the kind of racism that explains why MAGA billionaires support his campaign,” he added.

Mamdani’s connection to New York City’s Jewish community was challenged by a curveball during last week’s mayoral debate when he was asked, as a hypothetical mayor of New York City, if he would visit Israel.

“I believe you need not travel to Israel to stand up for Jewish New Yorkers,” Mamdani said. “That is what I’ll be doing as the mayor.”

Why Mamdani would be involved with sensitive foreign affairs as the local leader of New York is unclear, but the debate moderators did not appear privy to their own lack of rationale. Instead, they followed up by questioning Mamdani if he believed Israel had a right to exist.

“I believe Israel has a right to exist,” he said.

“As a Jewish state?” the moderator pressed.

“As a state with equal rights,” Mamdani replied.

Speaking with Fox 5’s Good Day New York in the wake of the debate, Mamdani clarified that he is “not comfortable supporting any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion or anything else.”

The gross visual attempt to sway the voters of New York appears especially desperate on the heels of Mamdani’s surging numbers: A survey published late Wednesday found that—for the first time—Mamdani had actually topped Cuomo’s campaign, beating the ex-governor by 35 percent to 31 percent. The survey was conducted by Public Policy Polling for Democrat Justin Brannan’s city comptroller campaign.

Cuomo’s continued presence in the race nearly defies logic. The former New York  governor was forced to resign from his leadership position in 2021 after he was deemed too corrupt for Albany. Four years on, several major political backers, including a lobby of New York City landlords, have forced Cuomo back into the limelight, surging him toward a political comeback to Gracie Mansion despite his lagging popularity.

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump just admitted that his administration’s massive deportation efforts are causing chaos for farmers—but he doesn’t care.

In a post on Truth Social Thursday, Trump took a moment to respond to criticism that his crackdown on undocumented immigrants was hurting multiple industries, including farmers.

“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote.

“In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”

Trump managed to actually acknowledge that he had created a massive problem but then moved to blame Joe Biden for letting in criminals, who apparently want jobs on farms. Then he promised to do something but didn’t deign to delve into specific “changes.”

All of this comes as Immigration and Customs Enforcement has begun sweeping raids in rural California, where an estimated 255,700 farmworkers are undocumented, following a series of ICE arrests last week that sparked massive protests in Los Angeles.

Trump’s promise to get criminals out of the country is a massive lie. As part of the Trump administration’s inhumane crackdown on immigration, ICE has readily arrested U.S. citizens, deported families, and endangered sick children, leaving hollow promises to target individuals with criminal records in the rearview.

The thousands of National Guardsmen President Trump sent to Los Angeles in an authoritarian power play are working for free.

More than a dozen guardsmen told Military.com that they remain unpaid, as they have yet to receive official activation orders. Receiving such orders would allow them to receive pay, Tricare health benefits, and Department of Veterans Affairs eligibility. Without them, the troops dispatched aren’t getting anything.

Trump’s abrupt deployment of the guardsmen, against the wishes of Los Angeles’s mayor and California’s governor, circumvented executive norms and has resulted in thousands of soldiers who aren’t sure if they’ll be compensated for the work they’re doing. Guardsmen have also complained about their living conditions, as many of them are sleeping on cots at a Naval Base on the edge of Los Angeles.

Forcing people to work for no pay is very on brand for the president. He owes the city of Albuquerque nearly half a million dollars in unpaid safety fees for a 2019 rally. He did a similar dash in cities across the country, racking up millions of dollars in unpaid fees. Some places, like Nassau County, gave up on trying to bill Trump entirely and just ate the $1 million he owed them. Similar instances occurred in Eerie, Pennsylvania; Tuscon, Arizona; and Green Bay and Prairie Du Chien, Wisconsin. “He’s welcome here, but we need to have our bills paid. Any expenses incurred by us for him being here, or we don’t really want him here,” Prairie Du Chien Mayor Dave Hemmer said last year. “We are a smaller city and if we incurred expenses like that, we expect to be reimbursed. Or we’d say, ‘Don’t come.’” In his private life as a businessman, Trump frequently refused to pay contractors—hundreds have claimed he stiffed them for completed work as a private citizen.

Now the guardsmen are getting the same treatment.