Usha Vance’s Greenland Trip Is Already Backfiring on Trump

Greenland flatly denied inviting members of Donald Trump’s administration to visit Monday, after the U.S. president claimed that the presence of White House officials had been requested. 

A group including second lady Usha Vance, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and national security adviser Mike Waltz of group chat fame, are expected to arrive Thursday on the massive island territory that the U.S. president longed to control before even entering the White House. 

Trump claimed Monday that officials from Greenland had “requested” to meet with a team from the U.S. government. 

“People from Greenland are asking us to go there,” Trump said. 

But, in a statement on Facebook Monday, Greenland’s government denied ever extending an invite to the White House.  

“Just for the record, Naalakkersuisut, the government of Greenland, has not extended any invitations for any visits, neither private nor official. The present government is a caretaker government awaiting the formation of a new government coalition and we have kindly requested all countries to respect this process,” the statement read. 

Earlier this month, Greenland held a parliamentary election that saw the pro-independence center-right party Demokraatit come into power, as well as other sizable shifts in the island’s representative government. The new leadership seems equally uninterested in Trump’s bids to claim the autonomous territory from Denmark. 

Outgoing Prime Minister Múte B. Egede called Trump’s fake invite part of his “very aggressive” bid for the territory. “We are now at a level where this cannot in any way be characterized as a harmless visit from a politician’s wife,” Egede said, referring to Vance. “The only purpose is to demonstrate power over us.”

Trump has repeatedly claimed that Greenlanders want to be Americans, despite multiple statements from officials and citizens to the contrary. Ahead of his inauguration, Trump sent his son Donald Trump Jr. on a futile mission to create the impression that there was a MAGA movement there. It seems something similar may be intended for Vance’s unbidden mini-break.

Trump hopes to acquire the Arctic island that is home to roughly 56,000 people because of its rich mineral resources and geopolitically strategic location.

A U.S. permanent resident and Columbia University student is suing the Trump administration over its attempts to deport her for participating in pro-Palestinian protests at the institution.

Yunseo Chung, 21, has lived in the U.S. since her family moved from South Korea at the age of 7, and her lawsuit not only seeks to stop deportation efforts from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but also to stop the “pattern and practice of targeting individuals associated with protests for Palestinian rights for immigration enforcement.”

Chung is a model student, maintaining a 3.99 grade point average and making it onto the dean’s list every semester. She is also part of the Columbia Undergraduate Law Review. But that’s not enough for the Trump administration, which is targeting noncitizen students who support Palestinian human rights, including Mahmoud Khalil, Ranjani Srinivasan, Momodou Taal, and Badar Khan Suri.

The lawsuit names President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, ICE acting Director Todd M. Lyons, and New York ICE acting Field Office Director William P. Joyce. It states that the administration’s policy appears to be to “retaliate against and punish noncitizens, including Ms. Chung, for their actual or perceived advocacy for Palestinian rights.”

Earlier this month, Chung was involved in a sit-in at the university to protest “excessive punishments meted out by the Columbia administration,” and was arrested by the New York Police Department and given a desk appearance ticket for “obstruction of government administration.” Since then, Columbia has put her on “interim suspension due to the arrest and restricted her campus access.”

On March 8, an ICE official signed an administrative arrest warrant and has been looking for Chung ever since, going to her parents’ house and searching two residences at Columbia, including her dorm. On March 10, ICE told Chung’s attorneys that her permanent residence status was being “revoked.”

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told CNN that Chung “is being sought for removal proceedings under the immigration laws.”

“Yunseo Chung has engaged in concerning conduct, including when she was arrested by NYPD during a pro-Hamas protest at Barnard College,” the spokesperson said. “Chung will have an opportunity to present her case before an immigration judge.”

Chung’s attorneys say in their lawsuit that the Trump administration’s actions are unconstitutional. It’s also interesting that Chung is getting the opportunity to present her case before a judge, when Khalil, a fellow permanent resident, was sent from New York to a detention facility in Louisiana before he could even be charged or speak to his counsel.

“The government’s actions are an unprecedented and unjustifiable assault on First Amendment and other rights, one that cannot stand basic legal scrutiny. Simply put, immigration enforcement—here, immigration detention and threatened deportation—may not be used as a tool to punish noncitizen speakers who express political views disfavored by the current administration,” the lawsuit states.

The Trump administration has identified its newest scapegoat. 

Politico is reporting that national security adviser Mike Waltz may be the first head on the chopping block after the disastrous Signal scandal, in which Waltz added The Atlantic’s editor in chief to a war-planning group chat with all of the highest-ranking defense Cabinet members and Vice President JD Vance. 

“Half of them [are] saying he’s never going to survive or shouldn’t survive,” an anonymous official close to the situation told Politico. “It was reckless not to check who was on the thread. It was reckless to be having that conversation on Signal. You can’t have recklessness as the national security adviser.”

“Everyone in the White House can agree on one thing: Mike Waltz is a f—king idiot,” said another. 

While the breach is unprecedented, most within the administration believe Waltz’s political future depends on how badly Trump feels about the situation. 

“I don’t think there are any longterm political consequences for Trump or the Administration, outside of this potentially costing Waltz his job,” said the same source who called Waltz a “f—king idiot.” 

It is absolutely illegal for this type of senior-level political planning to occur on a commercial messaging platform like Signal. Waltz has yet to comment. 

Trump administration officials accidentally added The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a Signal chat regarding sensitive details of a plan to bomb Houthis in Yemen earlier this month.

The monumental slipup was a horrific omen for U.S. national security, whose weakest link is apparently a crew of Cabinet members who can’t accomplish the basic due diligence of double-checking who they’re adding to a group chat hosted by a private company.

It was, however, incredible fodder for the administration’s critics, who didn’t hesitate to seize the opportunity to mock the stunning level of incompetence.

“This has very Trump 1.0 fuck up vibes, honestly kinda fun,” posted Unpopular Front newsletter writer John Ganz.

“New phone, Houthis,” chirped National Review columnist Christian Schneider on X.

The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein noted it was “very annoying they messaged ‘Jeff Goldberg’ and not, for instance, ‘Jeff Stein.’”

At least one former government official couldn’t help but highlight the enormous hypocrisy of Republican attempts to sidestep the national security scandal.

“You have got to be kidding me,” posted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was excoriated for using a private email server to receive official government communications during her time serving the Obama administration.

The “Houthi PC small group” included 18 members who appeared to represent senior officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.

Another account labeled as Vice President JD Vance actively criticized Trump’s plans—in what would be the first known instance of Vance refuting the MAGA agenda—arguing that the planned bombing was not imminently needed.

“Vice President texting the group, ‘chat are we cooked’,” posted independent journalist Ken Klippenstein.

“Looks like I’m changing my initials to DJT on Signal now. Hoping for some scoops!” posted NBC News’s Amanda Terkel.

Trump, however, was apparently not invited to the Signal exchange.

“I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic, to me it’s a magazine that’s going out of business, I think it’s not much of a magazine,” Trump said during a press conference Monday, noting that a reporter’s question regarding the group chat was the first he had heard of it. “But I know nothing about it, you’re saying that they had what?”

President Donald Trump isn’t even denying that his administration has been influenced by Russia.

During a Cabinet meeting Monday, Trump was asked to respond to statements made by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Time magazine, where he suggested that members of Trump’s White House had been influenced by Moscow.

Rather than outright deny it, Trump dodged the question.

“Well, probably they have been influenced to get this thing settled because Ukraine wants to see it settled, I think they have to have it settled, and Russia wants to see it settled. And I think if I weren’t president this would never happen,” Trump said.

In his interview with Time, Zelenskiy recounted how, in the midst of the U.S. withholding crucial military and intelligence aid from Kyiv earlier this month, Trump had repeated a story from Russian President Vladimir Putin claiming that Russian forces had surrounded thousands of Ukrainian troops in Kursk.

“That was a lie,” Zelenskiy said, but it was one that Trump had readily amplified.

Zelenskiy suggested that it was part of a pattern among U.S. officials to parrot Putin rather than trust their own intelligence. “I believe Russia has managed to influence some people on the White House team through information,” Zelenskiy told Time. “Their signal to the Americans was that the Ukrainians do not want to end the war, and something should be done to force them.”

Last week, after agreeing to a partial ceasefire with Russia, Zelenskiy shared several photographs of Russia’s continuing strikes on Ukraine. “Russia’s attacks on Ukraine, despite its propaganda statements, do not stop,” he wrote.

As Russian and U.S. officials sat down for a new round of negotiations for a partial ceasefire on Monday, Russia launched a series of strikes on the Ukrainian city of Sumy, injuring 74 people including 13 children.