President Donald Trump attempted to quell growing bipartisan backlash to his immigration crackdown on Monday following a second fatal shooting by a federal agent in Minneapolis in just over two weeks.

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The President announced on Truth Social that he was dispatching his border czar, Tom Homan, to Minneapolis, where he will manage Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in the city.

He added that Homan, who is considered a proponent of targeted immigration enforcement over the kind of sweeping street grabs that have been a flashpoint for violence in Minneapolis, “has not been involved in that area, but knows and likes many of the people there.”

Read more: Support for Abolishing ICE Is Surging Among Republicans

Separately, Trump said he had a “very good” call with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and they were now on a “similar wavelength” regarding immigration enforcement in the city. Walz’s office said in its readout of the same call that Trump had expressed an openness to reducing the number of federal agents deployed.

The apparent shift in tone from Trump comes as he faces mounting pressure over a spate of violence linked to his Administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.

Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, was killed by a Border Patrol agent as he took part in a protest in Minneapolis on Saturday morning. His death came just over two weeks after the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a poet and mother of three, also by a federal immigration agent. 

A city on fire

Minneapolis was already convulsed by protests over Good’s killing in the days before Pretti’s death. Minutes later, the scene of his shooting became a battleground between protesters and federal agents as the city exploded in anger again.

By Saturday evening, the shooting had developed into a political crisis for Trump. In Washington, D.C., Senate Democrats who had previously been reluctant to block funding for ICE now threatened a partial government shutdown rather than pass another spending bill that would give the agency $10 billion more in funding. Several Republicans were calling for an investigation into the shooting.

The anger was fueled not just by the shooting itself, but by the Trump Administration’s handling of its aftermath. Trump and his top officials quickly tried to pin the blame on Pretti, labelling him an instigator and suggesting he had attacked the agents who killed him, despite multiple videos clearly showing otherwise.  

“This is the gunman’s gun, loaded (with two additional full magazines!), and ready to go — What is that all about?” Trump posted soon after the shooting. 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in its initial statement on the killing that Pretti “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun,” and “violently resisted,” suggesting that he wanted to “massacre law enforcement.”  

At a press conference in the hours after the shooting, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem suggested Pretti wanted “to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.” 

Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino claimed that Pretti had approached agents with a handgun, had “violently resisted, and intended to “massacre law enforcement.” 

In several social media posts, White House senior adviser Stephen Miller described Pretti as an “assassin” and a “domestic terrorist” who “tried to murder federal agents.” Vice President J.D. Vance reposted Miller’s characterization of Pretti as an “assassin” on X.

But multiple videos of the incident, released by witnesses to the shooting in the hours after, clearly contradicted those accounts.

They show Pretti holding a phone, not a gun, when an agent approaches him and other protesters and squirts pepper spray in their faces. When Pretti moves to help another protester who has been sprayed, he is tackled and pulled to the ground, where he is struck repeatedly. 

Soon after, one shot rings out, then several more in quick succession. 

In total, at least 10 shots appear to have been fired within five seconds—including several after Pretti is lying motionless on the floor. 

The backlash 

The reaction to Pretti’s killing was more forceful than the one that followed Renee Good’s— compounded by it. On Saturday, responding to a wave of anger from his party, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats would oppose a government spending bill that includes $64.4 billion in funding for DHS, of which $10 billionis earmarked for ICE.

“What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling—and unacceptable in any American city,” Schumer, who represents New York, said on Saturday evening. He added that “because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the DHS bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE.”

Before the weekend, Schumer and other Senate Democrats had signaled that they had wanted to avoid a shutdown and the bill looked likely to pass in the Senate. But Pretti’s killing at the hands of a Border Patrol agent, after being pepper-sprayed and shot several times on the ground, prompted a wave of anger in the party.  

The shooting prompted rare statements of condemnation from former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Obama, whom Trump succeeded in 2017, called Pretti’s killing a “heartbreaking tragedy.” In a statement with his wife Michelle posted on X on Sunday, he said Trump and officials in his Administration “seem eager to escalate the situation” instead of “trying to impose some semblance of discipline and accountability over the agents they’ve deployed.”

Several Republicans, too, broke ranks with their party to call for an investigation into the shooting, among them Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas and Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. 

Cassidy, who serves on the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, described the events in Minneapolis as “incredibly disturbing” and said the “credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake” following the shooting. 

Ricketts, who is a staunch supporter of Trump, called for a “prioritized, transparent investigation into this incident,” describing the shooting as “horrifying”.

Sen. Rand Paul, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, sent letters to the heads of ICE, Border Patrol, and Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on Monday, inviting them to a hearing on Feb. 12. The Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, New York Rep. Andrew Garbarino, requested a similar hearing over the weekend.

Walking back 

By Sunday, Trump appeared to have realized that Minneapolis represented a political crisis. Successive polls have shown his approval rating on immigration plummeting. A YouGov poll taken after the killing of Pretti showed support for abolishing ICE at record highs—with more supporting abolition than opposing it—and nearly 20% of Republicans in favor of shuttering the agency.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he declined to give his backing to the officer who killed Pretti, and said his Administration was “reviewing everything” to do with the incident. 

He also suggested for the first time that he might be looking for a way out of Minneapolis. 

“At some point we will leave. We’ve done, they’ve done a phenomenal job,” he said, without offering a timeline.

On Monday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt distanced Trump from Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem’s description of Pretti, saying she had “not heard the president characterize” Pretti as a domestic terrorist.

Trump and Walz had been heavily critical of each other in recent weeks.

“What’s the plan, Donald Trump? What is the plan?” Walz said during a news conference on Sunday. “What do we need to do to get these federal agents out of our state? If fear, violence and chaos is what you wanted from us, then you clearly underestimated the people of this state and nation.”

But on Monday, his office said in a statement that the two had a “productive call” in which Trump agreed to “look into reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota and working with the state in a more coordinated fashion on immigration enforcement regarding violent criminals.”

Trump said: “I told Governor Walz that I would have Tom Homan call him, and that what we are looking for are any and all Criminals that they have in their possession. The Governor, very respectfully, understood that, and I will be speaking to him in the near future.”

President Donald Trump blamed Democrats for escalating violence after federal agents enforcing his immigration agenda killed another protester on Saturday, which has further fueled rising concern about the direction of the country under Trump.

Alex Pretti, 37, was shot dead by a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis, amid protests against federal immigration operations in the state that had ramped up since the killing of 37-year-old Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent just weeks earlier. 

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The Trump Administration has framed Pretti’s shooting as an act of self-defense. The Department of Homeland Security claimed that Pretti “approached” federal officers with a handgun and “violently resisted” their attempts to restrain and disarm him, while White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller on X called Pretti a “would-be assassin” who “tried to murder federal law enforcement.” But videos circulating online, which were also analyzed by news outlets, contradicted the Administration’s claims and showed Pretti was holding a phone in his hand before the fatal confrontation. 

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal on Sunday amid public backlash about the killing and the federal government’s response, Trump said that his Administration is “reviewing everything” regarding the incident.

Then he took to his social media site, Truth Social, to assail Democrats for the violence.

“Tragically, two American Citizens have lost their lives as a result of this Democrat ensued chaos,” he posted Sunday. The President zoomed in on “Democrat run” sanctuary jurisdictions—which limit their cooperation with federal immigration enforcement—for  “REFUSING to cooperate with ICE” and for “encouraging Leftwing Agitators to unlawfully obstruct their operations to arrest the Worst of the Worst People.”

In a separate Truth Social post, Trump also called on the GOP-led Congress to “immediately” pass legislation that would end sanctuary jurisdiction policies, which he claimed “is the root cause of all of these problems.” He also called on Minnesota’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, Minneapolis’ Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey, and all Democratic mayors and governors across the country “to formally cooperate with the Trump Administration to enforce our Nation’s Laws, rather than resist and stoke the flames of Division, Chaos, and Violence.”

Trump specifically asked Walz and Frey in his post to turn over to federal authorities the unauthorized immigrants in their state prisons and jails, and those with active warrants or known criminal histories, for immediate deportation.

Ex-Presidents speak out

In the wake of Pretti’s shooting, several high-profile Democrats have doubled down on their criticism of the Trump Administration. 

Former President Barack Obama, whom Trump succeeded in 2017, called Pretti’s killing a “heartbreaking tragedy.” In a statement with his wife Michelle posted on X on Sunday, Obama claimed that Trump and officials in his Administration “seem eager to escalate the situation” instead of “trying to impose some semblance of discipline and accountability over the agents they’ve deployed.”

“This has to stop,” Obama said. “I would hope that after this most recent tragedy, Administration officials will reconsider their approach.” 

Former President Bill Clinton, another Democrat, also said in a Sunday statement on social media that the events in Minnesota were “unacceptable and should have been avoided,” adding that “the people in charge have lied to us, told us not to believe what we’ve seen with our own eyes, and pushed increasingly aggressive and antagonistic tactics.”

“Over the course of a lifetime, we face only a few moments where the decisions we make and the actions we take will shape our history for years to come,” Clinton posted. “This is one of them.”

Senate Democrats said they would block a funding bill that includes tens of billions for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after federal agents fatally shot another person in Minneapolis on Saturday, a move that looks likely to cause a partial government shutdown at the end of the week.

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Reacting to a wave of anger from his party over the killing of 37-year-old Alex Pretti, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats would oppose the package that includes $64.4 billion in funding for the DHS, $10 billion of which is earmarked for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling—and unacceptable in any American city,” Schumer, who represents New York, said on Saturday evening. He added that “because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the DHS bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE.”

Read more: Why Democrats Fought the ICE Funding Bill—and Why It Passed Anyway

The bill was passed in the House of Representatives on Thursday with few changes after seven Democrats joined with nearly all Republicans to send the package to the Senate and keep the government open past Jan. 30.

Despite a growing national backlash over the actions of immigration agents in the wake of the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, the seven Democrats—many of them in swing districts—backed the bill, citing the potential damaging effects of a shutdown.

Before the weekend, Schumer and other Senate Democrats had signaled that they had wanted to avoid a shutdown and the bill looked likely to pass in the Senate. But Pretti’s killing at the hands of a Border Patrol agent, after being pepper-sprayed and shot several times on the ground, prompted a wave of anger in the party.  

Republicans need seven Democratic votes to reach the 60 they need to pass the bill, but several Senate Democrats who previously voted with Republicans to avoid shutdowns, or had indicated they would support the legislation, said they would no longer vote for it.

“Enough is enough,” said Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Democrat from Nevada who voted against her party to end the government shutdown in November last year. “I have the responsibility to hold the Trump administration accountable when I see abuses of power.”

Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico used the same language in announcing his opposition to the bill. 

“Enough is enough. I will not vote to fund the lawlessness of DHS, not by itself and not packaged with other funding bills. We need MAJOR reforms at DHS, and we need them now,” he wrote on X.

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington had argued in favor of the legislation before Saturday, but shifted her position after the shooting. 

“Federal agents cannot murder people in broad daylight and face zero consequences,” she wrote Saturday. “The DHS bill needs to be split off from the larger funding package before the Senate — Republicans must work with us to do that. I will continue fighting to rein in DHS and ICE.”

Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, another one of the eight Democrats who voted to end the shutdown in November, said she wouldn’t support the DHS measure.

“The Trump Administration and Kristi Noem are putting undertrained, combative federal agents on the streets with no accountability,” Cortez Masto said in a statement on social media. “This is clearly not about keeping Americans safe, it’s brutalizing U.S. citizens and law-abiding immigrants. I will not support the current Homeland Security funding bill.”

Read More: Photos of Minneapolis Protests As City Erupts in Anger Over Killing By Federal Agent

Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine of Virginia, Peter Welch of Vermont, Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy of Connecticut, and Brian Schatz of Hawaii all also vowed to vote no.

Independent Maine Sen. Angus King said on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday that he would not vote for an ICE package but that “we don’t have to have a shutdown.”

Schumer’s announcement came hours after authorities identified the person killed by federal authorities in Minneapolis as Alex Jeffrey Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Minneapolis, who wanted to “make a difference in this world,” according to his father. His killing marked the second by federal agents in just over two weeks, after Good, a 37-year-old poet and mother of three.

Senate Republicans are now scrambling to avoid a shutdown. Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins told the New York Times she was “exploring all options.”

“We have five other bills that are really vital, and I’m relatively confident they would pass,” she said.

The bill covers around $1.3 trillion in annual spending, and its failure would mean some parts of the government would have to shut down.

Although the move marks a shift in the Democratic Party’s willingness to block funding for ICE, the agency is sitting on tens of billions of dollars from President Donald Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which passed last year—$14 billion of which was to be allocated to deportation efforts.

The man fatally shot by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday morning has been identified as 37-year-old Alex Pretti.   

Pretti was an intensive care unit nurse at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Minneapolis, the city where he lived. He was a keen outdoorsman and biked trails near his home. 

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Pretti’s father, Michael, said he wanted to “make a difference in this world.”

“Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital,” he said in a statement shared with several media outlets. 

“Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact,” he added. 

Multiple videos of Saturday’s shooting show Border Patrol agents spraying Pretti with a substance and pinning him to the ground before the shooting. Moments before the confronation, Pretti was attempting to help a woman protester who was being pushed by a federal agent.

Pretti’s family said he had been motivated to join the protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after the killing of another Minneapolis resident, 37-year-old mother of three, Renee Nicole Good, by a federal agent just over two weeks ago.

Read more: Federal Agents Kill Another Person in Minneapolis Immigration Crackdown

“He cared about people deeply and he was very upset with what was happening in Minneapolis and throughout the United States with ICE, as millions of other people are upset,” Michael Pretti told the Associated Press. “He felt that doing the protesting was a way to express that, you know, his care for others.”

He said he had a conversation with his son earlier this month in which he told him to be careful while protesting.

“We had this discussion with him two weeks ago or so, you know, that go ahead and protest, but do not engage, do not do anything stupid, basically,” Michael Pretti said. “And he said he knows that. He knew that.”

At a news conference on Saturday, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said Pretti was a “lawful gun owner” with a permit to carry a firearm in public and only had a few parking tickets.

Dr. Dimitri Drekonja, a former colleague of Pretti’s at the VA Hospital, described him as “a kind person who lived to help.”

“He had such a great attitude. We’d chat between patients about trying to get in a mountain bike ride together,” Drekonja said in a post on BlueSky. “Will never happen now,” he added. 

Born in Illinois, Pretti graduated from Preble High School in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in 2006. He went on to receive a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota in 2011, before attaining a nursing license. 

Pretti was devoted to his patients at the VA hospital. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents professional employees affiliated with the Minneapolis VA Hospital, said Pretti “dedicated his life to serving American veterans.”

“While details of the incident are still emerging, one fact is already clear: this tragedy did not happen in a vacuum. It is the direct result of an administration that has chosen reckless policy, inflammatory rhetoric, and manufactured crisis over responsible leadership and de-escalation,” AFGE President Everett Kelley said in a statement.

After watching coverage of the shooting on the news, Mac Randolph recognized Pretti as the man who cared for his father, Terry Randolph, during his final days in December 2024.

“He spent three, four days in the ICU and explained everything that would happen when they turned off the oxygen,” he told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “He was as compassionate a person as you could be.”

After his father passed, Randolph said Pretti took his father, an Air Force veteran, on an “honorary walk” around the facility on his gurney, draped in an American flag.

“You could see that it wasn’t the first time he had done that,” he said.

Randolph said he felt compelled to share a video on social media in which Pretti reads a final tribute to his father, Terry, who passed away at 77-years-old.

“Today, we remember that freedom is not free,” Pretti says in the video. “We have to work at it, nurture it, protect it, and even sacrifice for it.”

A man was shot and killed by a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis on Saturday morning, the second fatal shooting in just over two weeks by federal authorities in the city.

The incident follows the Jan. 7 killing of Renee Good by a federal agent less than three miles away, and comes as the city was already convulsed by mass protests calling for an end to the surge of immigration agents in the state.

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The victim was named as Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident and intensive care unit nurse who treated veterans. His family said he was motivated to join protests after Good’s killing.

Several videos of the shooting show an altercation taking place around 9 am when a woman protester was pushed to the ground by a Border Patrol agent. When Pretti attempts to stand between the agent and the woman, the agent pepper-sprays him in the face. More agents join the fray and tackle Pretti to the ground as he is disoriented. As a group of agents restrain Pretti on the ground, one emerges from the melee with a gun, and soon after, a shot rings out, then several more in quick succession. At least 10 shots were fired in around five seconds, including several as Pretti lay motionless on the ground.

Read more: Minnesotans Shutter Businesses and Call Off Work in Economic Blackout Day to Protest ICE

President Donald Trump responded to the shooting in a lengthy post on Truth Social that called immigration agents “patriots” and claimed they were in Minneapolis because of “massive Monetary Fraud” and “Illegal Criminals that were allowed to infiltrate the State.”

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said at a press conference on Saturday afternoon that Pretti had not been in trouble with the police before.

“The only interaction that we are aware of with law enforcement has been for traffic tickets and we believe he is a lawfully gun owner with a permit to carry,” O’Hara said.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) gave a detailed account of the shooting in a statement that was contradicted by several videos shot by bystanders at the scene. The agency said it was carrying out a “targeted operation” when an individual approached U.S. Border Patrol officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun, pictures of which it shared with the media. It said officers attempted to disarm the man, but he “violently resisted.”

“Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots. Medics on scene immediately delivered medical aid to the subject but was pronounced dead at the scene,” the statement continued. It added: “[T]his looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

But several videos showing the lead-up to the fatal shooting show Pretti filming a group of Border Patrol officers with his phone in his right hand, with his left hand empty. The video shows an agent pepper-spraying Pretti in the face and, together with several other officers, dragging him to the ground. That is when the fatal shooting occurs.

Read more: Fatal ICE Shooting Sparks Scrutiny of Killings in Trump’s Immigration Crackdown

The incident is the latest in a series of shootings in which the DHS claims the victim was threatening the life of an agent, only for video evidence to later contradict the claim. After the shooting of Renee Good, the DHS accused her of “attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism,” only for video evidence to show her turning her car away, and the agent positioned to the side of her vehicle when he fired the fatal shot.

Several other federal officials gave accounts of events that were similarly inaccurate to those given by DHS.

Pretti’s parents, Michael and Susan Pretti, found out about the death of their son when they were called by an Associated Press reporter. As of Saturday evening, the family had still not heard from anyone at a federal law enforcement agency about their son’s death, according to the AP.

In a statement released to the media, the family criticised the “sickening lies told about our son by the administration.”

“Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed,” the statement said.

Saturday’s shooting prompted a wave of anger from local politicians, many of whom have been calling for the Trump Administration to bring an end to its immigration surge following weeks of violent encounters with Minnesotans, including the use of pepper spray and the arrest of peaceful protesters.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz described the shooting as “sickening” and called on President Trump to end his immigration crackdown in the state.

“I just spoke with the White House after another horrific shooting by federal agents this morning. Minnesota has had it. This is sickening,” Walz said in a post on X.

“The President must end this operation. Pull the thousands of violent, untrained officers out of Minnesota. Now.”

Later, he urged people protesting the shooting to do so peacefully.

“We want peace, they want chaos,” the governor said of the federal government. “We cannot and will not give them what they want.”

Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar said: To the Trump administration and the Republicans in Congress who have stood silent: Get ICE out of our state NOW.

O’Hara, in his press conference, called for greater discipline from the estimated 3,000 federal immigration agents in the city.

“Our demand today is for those federal agencies that are operating in our city to do so with the same discipline, humanity and integrity that effective law enforcement in this country demands,” he said.

A few hundred protesters gathered at the scene of the shooting in south Minneapolis by noon, where they scuffled with federal agents who had blocked off the intersection. Protesters screamed “I smell Nazis” at the federal agents and shouted at them to “go home.”

The agents deployed tear gas and used pepper-spray as they fought running battles with protesters.

The shooting comes a day after thousands took to the streets across Minnesota on Friday, closing down businesses and calling out of work in a mass protest against the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown in the state.

The “Ice Out of Minnesota: Day of Truth and Freedom” demonstration, organized by community leaders, members of the clergy, and labor unions, called for a “no work, no school, no shopping” economic blackout.

Trump, in his Saturday afternoon post, accused Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Governor Walz of “inciting Insurrection.”

“Where are the local Police? Why weren’t they allowed to protect ICE Officers? The Mayor and the Governor called them off? It is stated that many of these Police were not allowed to do their job, that ICE had to protect themselves — Not an easy thing to do!” he wrote.

As night fell across Minneapolis, many residents set out candles in their windows to memorialize Pretti. Several vigils were held across the city. A New York Times reporter visited one at Painter Park, near Pretti’s home, where more than 100 people gathered with candles and sang the opening lines to ‘This Little Light of Mine.’

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has condemned President Donald Trump‘s false claims that non-American NATO troops “stayed a little back” from the front line during the war in Afghanistan.

“I consider President Trump’s remarks to be insulting and, frankly, appalling,” said Starmer on Friday, adding he was not surprised the comments had caused “such hurt” across the country.

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Starmer paid tribute to the “457 [members] of our armed services who lost their lives in Afghanistan” and vowed to never forget the sacrifice they made to the United Kingdom. He also paid respect to the many more who were injured, “some with life-changing” injuries.

When told that some are calling for an apology from Trump, the U.K. Prime Minister appeared to be in agreement, although he stopped short of telling the President to apologize.

“If I had misspoken in that way, or said those words, I would certainly apologize,” he said.

As he did earlier in the week when denouncing Trump’s tariffs threat, Starmer doubled down on the importance of the “very close relationship” between the U.K. and U.S., but said it’s because of that alliance that the U.K. “fought alongside the Americans for our values in Afghanistan.”

According to British veterans charity Help for Heroes, around 3,486 troops among the coalition forces died in the Afghanistan war. Over 2,300 of those were members of the U.S. armed forces.

TIME has reached out to the White House for comment.

Read More: Starmer Breaks With Trump Over ‘Completely Wrong’ Greenland Tariff Threats and Urges Avoiding a Trade War

During an interview with Fox News on Thursday, Trump said he was unsure if NATO would be there to support the U.S. if it were needed.

“We’ve never needed them, we have never really asked anything of them. You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, or this or that, and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines,” he claimed.

Trump has repeatedly aired his grievances with NATO and recently refused to ruled out leaving the alliance over his contentious push to annex Greenland.

NATO’s Article 5, in which all members consider “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all,” has only been activated once, in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks in the U.S. in 2001.

Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, after 9/11, pledged to “stand shoulder to shoulder” with the U.S. in its response to the al-Qaida attacks. British troops went on to play a role in the Afghanistan war until their withdrawal in 2014. The U.S. stayed on until August 2021.

Blair, who was recently appointed to serve on the Executive Board overseeing Trump’s Gaza Board of Peace, responded to the President’s remarks on Friday, although he didn’t mention Trump by name.

A spokesperson for the former Labour Party leader told TIME via email: “Tony Blair knows—and will always remember with deep gratitude—the enormous contribution and sacrifice British troops made in Afghanistan on the front line of the fight against terrorism, following the 9/11 attacks on the U.S.”

Read More: Trump Refuses to Rule Out Leaving NATO Over Greenland Tussle—Can He Legally Do That?

Many British lawmakers issued stronger statements, directly denouncing Trump’s false claims.

British Defence Secretary John Healey said: “The U.K. and NATO allies answered the U.S. call. Those British troops should be remembered for who they were: heroes who gave their lives in service of our nation.”

Alistair Carns, the U.K. Minister of State for the Armed Forces who himself served five tours in Afghanistan, referred to Trump’s claims as “utterly ridiculous.”

“Many courageous and honorable service personnel from many nations fought on the front line,” he said. “We shed blood, sweat, and tears together. And not everybody came home.”

He later shared a video of himself serving on the front line in Afghanistan.

Leader of the opposition Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, called Trump’s remarks “flat-out nonsense” and said the sacrifice of NATO troops deserves “respect not denigration.” 

Earlier on Friday, Downing Street had said that Trump was “wrong to diminish the role of troops, including British forces.”

Prince Harry, who returned to the U.K. this week to give evidence in his case against Associated Newspapers Limited, remembered how “allies answered [the] call” in support of the U.S.

“Thousands of lives were changed forever. Mothers and fathers buried sons and daughters. Children were left without a parent. Families are left carrying the cost. Those sacrifices deserve to be spoken about truthfully and with respect, as we all remain united and loyal to the defence of diplomacy and peace,” he is quoted as saying.

Outside of the U.K., other NATO allies also took a firm stance against Trump’s remarks.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk recalled a ceremony he attended in 2011 that paid tribute to five Polish soldiers who were killed in Afghanistan.

“The American officers who accompanied me then told me that America would never forget the Polish heroes,” he said. “Perhaps they will remind President Trump of that fact.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney issued a stern response after President Donald Trump told Davos attendees that “Canada lives because of the United States.”

In a filmed address delivered upon his return to Québec City on Thursday, Carney—who also attended the World Economic Forum in Switzerland—firmly stated: “Canada does not live because of the United States. Canada thrives because we are Canadian.”

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Arguing that diversity is “a strength, not a weakness,” Carney maintained that Canada is “the greatest country in the world to be a regular person” and said you don’t need to be rich, “have a certain color,” or “worship a certain God” in order to thrive.

Although he celebrated the long-standing partnership between the U.S. and Canada, Carney emphasized: “We are masters in our home, this is our own country, it’s our future, the choice is up to us.”

Trump later rescinded his invitation for Canada to join his Gaza Board of Peace, which he unveiled in Davos on Thursday, after Carney had left the annual forum.

“Please let this letter serve to represent that the Board of Peace is withdrawing its invitation to you regarding Canada’s joining, what will be, the most prestigious Board of Leaders ever assembled, at any time,” Trump said via Truth Social. (Carney announced earlier in the week that he had received an invitation to join the Board of Peace, but did not confirm if he intended to accept.)

Trump had previously lashed out at Canada during his Davos address on Wednesday, accusing the country of getting “a lot of freebies” from the U.S. and saying they should be “grateful.”

“I watched your Prime Minister yesterday, he wasn’t so grateful,” Trump told the audience, referencing the speech Carney had delivered the day before.

Although Carney didn’t mention Trump by name, there appeared to be pointed references to the U.S. President throughout his own poignant address.

In a bold statement that prompted much discussion, Carney said the old world order is “not coming back.” Encouraging people not to “mourn” the way things used to be, he advised that “nostalgia is not a strategy.”

Carney also urged middle powers to stand up for themselves, accusing “great powers” of using economic pressure to yield results.

“More recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited,” he said.

This came after Trump threatened to tariff European allies until Denmark agrees to sell Greenland to the U.S.—a threat he has since walked back on.

Read More: Zelensky Publicly Rebukes Europe, Urges Leaders to ‘Act Now’ in Withering Davos Address

Carney campaigned against Trump’s global tariff threats last year during his country’s general election. His platform also strongly opposed Trump’s annexation threats toward Canada.

Trump frequently—and publicly—expressed his desire to annex Canada and have it become the “51st state” upon returning to the White House. Both Carney and his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, stood firm that the annexation of Canada is not something they would allow to happen. During Trudeau’s tenure, Trump took to referring to him as “Governor Trudeau” rather than recognizing him as the Prime Minister of Canada.

Carney and Trump have worked on building a better working relationship, and have even shared jovial moments in front of the world press.

In October, when Trump mistakenly referred to Carney as a “President,” Carney joked: “I’m glad you upgraded me to President.” To which Trump responded with: “At least I didn’t say Governor!”

However, as Carney has since expressed Canada’s full support to Greenland and Denmark maintaining their “Arctic sovereignty,” and amid tense disagreements over tariff threats, the relationship between the two leaders has become strained once more.

Donald Trump suggested putting the world’s strongest military alliance “to the test” in his latest social media posting that could have grave consequences.

The U.S. President has long criticized the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which also includes 30 European allies and Canada, over his belief that other members don’t pay their fair share.

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“Maybe we should have put NATO to the test: Invoked Article 5, and forced NATO to come here and protect our Southern Border from further Invasions of Illegal Immigrants, thus freeing up large numbers of Border Patrol Agents for other tasks,” Trump posted on Truth Social Thursday night.

Article 5 refers to NATO’s mutual defense clause, which states that an “armed attack” on one member is considered an attack on all 32 member-states. 

NATO says it assesses on a case-by-case basis what triggers Article 5—such as the “invasion by one state of the territory of another state”—but clarifies that “events that lack an international element, such as purely domestic acts of terrorism, do not trigger” the mutual defense clause, even though member states may choose to assist.

In the alliance’s nearly-80-year history, the mutual defense clause has only been invoked once: on the day after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and the U.S.’s NATO allies then backed the American response in Afghanistan, where more than 1,000 non-American NATO soldiers were ultimately killed.

Trump’s latest Truth Social post comes amid his ongoing threat to pull the U.S. out of the alliance. 

“We’ve never needed them—we have never really asked anything of them,” the President told Fox Business on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland on Thursday. “You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan or this or that, and they did: they stayed a little back, little off the front lines.”

The day before, Trump, in his meandering speech in Davos, blasted NATO’s seeming unreliability: “I know them all very well. I’m not sure that they’d be there. I know we’d be there for them. I don’t know that they’d be there for us.”

Trump particularly criticized NATO ally Denmark, as he campaigns to bring Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, under U.S. control. He called the Nordic country “ungrateful” after falsely claiming that the U.S. “gave” Greenland back to Denmark after American forces defended it during World War II. 

But Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general, pushed back Wednesday to assert that NATO did help the U.S. in Afghanistan. 

“For every two Americans who paid the ultimate price,” Rutte said, “there was one soldier from another NATO country who did not come back to his family—from the Netherlands, from Denmark, particularly from other countries.”

Denmark actually suffered the highest per capita deaths among the military coalition members in the Afghanistan conflict: military casualty tracker iCasualties.org lists 43 Danish soldiers killed.

“You are not absolutely sure that the Europeans would come to the rescue of the U.S. if you will be attacked,” Rutte told Trump. “Let me tell you, they will.”

President Donald Trump is once again floating the idea of running for another term.

“RECORD NUMBERS ALL OVER THE PLACE! SHOULD I TRY FOR A FOURTH TERM?” he wrote on Truth Social on Thursday evening.

The Constitution prohibits Trump from serving another term; the 22nd Amendment reads: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”

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But Trump and his allies have repeatedly suggested the possibility of him running for office again. Last year, the Trump Organization started selling hats that say “Trump 2028” and t-shirts that say “Trump 2028 (Rewrite the Rules).”

In October, the President told reporters that he “would love to” run for another term. When reporters questioned if he was ruling out the idea, he replied, “Am I not ruling it out? I mean, you’ll have to tell me.” Just days before that, his former chief strategist Steve Bannon, who has supported the idea of Trump serving another term, told The Economist that there is a “plan” to get around the 22nd Amendment. Bannon didn’t share what the plan entailed, but said there are “many different alternatives” and the details would be shared “at the appropriate time.”

The President has also previously falsely suggested that a hypothetical “third term” would actually be his “fourth term.” Last year, he told reporters that “in a way,” a third term would be a “fourth term because the other election, the 2020 election was totally rigged.” Trump has repeatedly spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being “stolen” from him.

Despite Trump’s claim that he’s receiving “record numbers all over the place,” his approval rating is underwater—though he continues to receive strong support from his base. Only about 4 in 10 U.S. adults approve of his performance in his second term, according to an AP-NORC poll from earlier this month. A majority of voters—56%—disapprove of how he has addressed several major issues, including the economy, immigration, managing the federal government, and the cost of living, according to a New York Times-Siena poll released on Thursday. And about 49% of respondents in the Times-Siena poll said that they believed the U.S. was worse off than it was a year ago, before Trump was sworn in for a second term. Less than a third felt that the country was faring better.

Trump railed against the Times-Siena poll on social media, saying that he would include the poll in his “lawsuit against The Failing New York Times” and claiming, without providing evidence, that the results were “fake.”

More than a year after his historic prosecutions of Donald Trump were rendered moot by the 2024 presidential election, former Special Counsel Jack Smith defended his indictments as he was grilled by House Republicans in a heated House Judiciary Committee hearing.

“My fear is that we have seen the rule of law functioning in our country for so long that many of us come to take it for granted,” Smith said in his first public testimony since his investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents were dropped.

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The public hearing came as Trump, who repeatedly called Smith a “sick person,” said in a Truth Social post that Smith “destroyed many lives under the guise of legitimacy” and called for Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into Smith and “some of the crooked and corrupt witnesses.”

“A big price should be paid by them for what they have put our Country through,” Trump wrote.

Read more: Trump Has Vowed to Prosecute His Political Foes. Here’s Who Could Be Next

Smith offered a strong pushback against House Republicans in his testimony, rebuking Trump’s rhetoric against him and his colleagues, saying many of the narratives spread about his team were “false and misleading.” 

“President Trump has sought to seek revenge against career prosecutors, FBI agents, and support staff, simply for having worked on these cases. To vilify and seek retribution against these people is wrong,” Smith said during his testimony. 

Asked if Smith believed the Department of Justice under Trump would find ways to indict him as retribution, Smith predicted it would do “everything in their power because they’ve been ordered to by the president.”

Smith made clear he still believed that both of his investigations into Trump were just. “Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity,” Smith said. “If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat.”

Republicans zeroed in on the scope of Smith’s investigations, including his use of collecting cell phone records of members of Congress, including Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, which Smith said is a “normal practice” in a conspiracy investigation. 

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat of the committee, offered his praises to Smith and said he “did everything right.”

“You acted based solely on the facts, the opposite of Donald Trump who now is purported to take over the Department of Justice,” Raskin said, adding that Trump now “acts openly, purely on political vendetta.” 

Republican Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas directly addressed four former Capitol police officers in attendance for the hearing, telling them that Trump was not to be blamed for the violence on January 6. One of the former officers, Michael Fanone—who was beaten during the insurrection—responded to Nehls by flipping him off and telling the lawmaker to go “f— yourself.”

Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and the Judiciary Chairman also sought to discredit the testimony of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified two years ago that Trump did not move quickly to stop the violence at the Capitol on January 6 even as he was made aware of it, and that Trump tried to take control of the wheel of the SUV that he was being driven in that day so he could go to the Capitol.

Thursday’s hearing was the second time Smith sat in for a congressional deposition. In December, Smith testified in a closed-door meeting before the committee. House Republicans later released the transcript of the hearing on New Year’s Eve. In it, Smith similarly defended his investigation and made clear he still believed that Trump is guilty of the charges.

Smith was appointed as special prosecutor by former Attorney General Merrick Garland during the Biden administration to investigate Trump’s handling of classified documents, as well as his effort to overturn the 2020 election. Both cases resulted in criminal indictments against Trump, but the cases were later dropped.
Republicans have accused Smith of running partisan investigations in an attempt to stop Trump from getting reelected. In a letter to Smith sent in October, Jordan, the Judiciary Committee chairman, said the investigations “undermined the integrity of the criminal justice system.”

President Donald Trump has officially launched his Gaza Board of Peace, amid concerns from European nations over its membership and the potential involvement of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Returning to the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday morning, Trump was joined by the board’s newly-announced members, many of whom hail from the Middle East and South America. The U.S. President said he was honored to be the chairman of what could be “one of the most consequential bodies ever created.”

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There was a notable lack of leaders from Western European nations with Trump on stage. The U.K. had earlier expressed reservations about the possibility of Putin being involved. Despite receiving an invitation, Putin is thought to be still considering.

Trump sparked concerns earlier in the week when he suggested his board “might” replace the United Nations, but he somewhat backtracked on that, instead presenting the board as having “tremendous potential with the United Nations.” Sharing his hopes for the new organization, he said: “We’ll work with many others, including the U.N.” The United Nations adopted the U.S.-penned resolution establishing the Board of Peace in November.

Other concerns related to the board center on the charter draft which reportedly states that while nations who accept the invitation will be given a three-year membership term, permanent membership will be given to member states that contribute $1 billion in cash within the first year.

Putin said on Thursday that Moscow is open to contributing $1 billion to the Board of Peace, but argued it would require the release of Russian assets in the U.S. that were frozen during the Biden Administration.

Sidestepping the mounting reservations at Davos, Trump instead celebrated a new dawn for Gaza. The Israel-Hamas war is “really coming to an end,” he said, before delivering a stark warning to Hamas, who must disarm. Referring to Hamas as being made up of people “born with rifles in their hands,” he said: “They have to give up their weapons, and if they don’t do that, it’s going to be the end of them.”

The President also called for Hamas to release the final deceased Israeli hostage, Ran Gvili.

Speaking about Gaza, Trump referred to himself as a “real estate person at heart” and referenced the placement of the territory. “I said look at this location on the sea. People that are living so poorly are going to be so well, but it all began with the location.”

The Board of Peace unveiling comes a week after Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff announced the launch of “Phase Two” of the Gaza cease-fire plan, officially embarking on the “demilitarization, technocratic governance, and reconstruction” of the territory.

Phase One encountered setbacks due to Hamas not handing over the final deceased hostage and the Israeli airstrikes that occurred after the cease-fire came into effect in October.

Moving forward, the Board of Peace will provide oversight to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), who will oversee the day-to-day rebuilding efforts. As announced last week, the committee will be headed by Ali Shaath, a former deputy minister in the Palestinian Authority.

Ahead of the official signing and ratification of the Board of Peace, Trump went through a long list of, what he views to be, his accomplishments overseas.

Praising the “unrivalled skill set of the U.S. Military,” he looked back on last year’s strikes against three key nuclear sites in Iran. “Iran does want to talk, and we’ll talk,” he added, in an apparent reference to the U.S. retreating after initially threatening to take action over the deadly Iran protests. Trump also lauded his recent Venezuela operation, which resulted in the capture and detainment of fallen President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

Turning his attention back to the members of his board, Trump referred to the signatories as “great people, great leaders” and said the organization is already “running beautifully.”

While it’s been noted that other members may sign at a later date, you can see the full list of today’s Board of Peace signatories, below.

• Argentina: President Javier Milei
• Armenia: Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan
• Azerbaijan: President Ilham Aliyev
• Bahrain: Sheikh Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa
• Bulgaria: Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov (Serving in a caretaker capacity after his resignation)
• Hungary: Prime Minister Viktor Orban
• Indonesia: President Prabowo Subianto
• Jordan: Deputy Prime Minister Ayman Safadi
• Kazakhstan: President Kassym‑Jomart Tokayev
• Kosovo: President Vjosa Osmani
• Mongolia: Prime Minister Gombojavyn Zandanshatar
• Morocco: Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita
• Pakistan: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif
• Paraguay: President Santiago Pena
• Qatar: Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani
• Saudi Arabia: Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al‑Saud
• Turkey: Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan
• United Arab Emirates: Chairman of the Executive Affairs Authority Khaldoon Al Mubarak
• Uzbekistan: President Shavkat Miromonovich Mirziyoyev

The “New Gaza”

Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, outlined the board’s vision for Gaza’s reconstruction, displaying mock-ups of high-rises along the enclave’s seafront. He proposed the introduction of different zones to promote “coastal tourism” and economic prosperity.

“New Gaza, it could be a hope. It could be a destination, have a lot of industry, and really be a place that the people there can thrive,” said Kushner, estimating that some construction could be completed within the next two to three years.

Expressing total confidence in the proposal, he said “we don’t have a ‘Plan B,’” just a “master plan.”

The proposal was bolstered by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who described the board as a “new era and a new stage.” He went on to suggest the board could make an impact beyond Gaza, stating that “it will serve as an example of what’s possible in other parts of the world.”

Kushner and Rubio will both serve on an “Executive Board” intended to “operationalize the Board of Peace’s vision.”

They will be joined by Witkoff, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, president of the World Bank Group Ajay Banga, national security adviser Robert Gabriel, and Marc Rowan, the CEO of Apollo Global Management, one of the biggest U.S. private equity firms.

According to the White House, each Executive Board member will “oversee a defined portfolio critical to Gaza’s stabilization and long-term success, including, but not limited to, governance capacity-building, regional relations, reconstruction, investment attraction, large-scale funding, and capital mobilization.”

In his much anticipated speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, President Donald Trump reiterated his desire to take over Greenland, railed against wind farms, and criticized what he claimed was an imbalance in trade between the United States and the rest of the world.

He also delved into a range of domestic political issues, airing grievances against Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, and former President Joe Biden.

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Here are some of the key claims that Trump made in his speech.

Read more: Newsom Tells World Leaders to Stand Up to Trump: ‘It’s Just Pathetic’

The U.S. gave Greenland back

What Trump said: “After the war, which we won, without us, you’d all be speaking German and a little Japanese. After the war, we gave Greenland back to Denmark. How stupid were we to do that? How ungrateful are they now?”

“So we want a piece of ice for world protection. And they won’t give it.”

The facts: The U.S. never owned Greenland. In 1941, during the Second World War, the U.S. and Denmark signed an agreement granting the U.S. the right to establish military bases on the island to defend it from Nazi Germany, while recognizing the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Denmark over the territory. The island is, however, covered with a large amount of ice.

The U.S. pays for NATO

What Trump said: “We pay for NATO. We paid for many years, until I came along, in my opinion, 100% of NATO, because they weren’t paying their bills. ”

The facts: This is an inaccurate claim that Trump has been repeating since his first presidency. NATO figures show that in 2025, the United States paid for roughly 16% of its budget. In the same year, 31 of the 32 NATO members are estimated to have contributed 2% of their GDP to NATO.

China has no wind farms

What Trump said: “China makes almost all of the wind mills, and yet I haven’t been able to find any wind farms in China… They make them. They sell them for a fortune…But they don’t use them themselves.”

The facts: China’s installations of windmills in 2024 made up 70% of the global total, and the cumulative electricity capacity was more than 520 GW, accounting for almost 50% of the total global wind power installed capacity, according to a report from the Global Wind Energy Council.

Europe’s energy prices are higher

What Trump said: “Germany now generates 22% less electricity than it did in 2017… and the electricity prices are “64% higher.”

“The United Kingdom produces just 1/3 of the total energy from all sources that it did in 1999.”

The facts: Germany generated a total of 406.9 TWh of electricity in 2025, a 25% decrease from 2017, when it generated 546.9 TWh, according to reports from the Fraunhofer Institute. Electricity prices, however, have increased by 35%, according to the statistics from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. As for the United Kingdom, the country generated a total of 285 TWh of electricity in 2024, 25% less than it produced in 2000, according to data from the UK government.

The 2020 election was stolen

What Trump said: “It’s a war that should have never started and it wouldn’t have started if the 2020 US presidential election weren’t rigged. It was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that. They found out. People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. ”

The facts: There is no evidence that the 2020 election was rigged. Following the election, Republicans at the federal and state levels launched multiple investigations into the results of the 2020 election and found no rampant voter fraud. Trump’s former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, baselessly claimed that Dominion Voting Systems manipulated its results in favor of former President Joe Biden. Dominion sued Giuliani for defamation, and Giuliani reached a confidential settlement in 2025. He was also disbarred in New York and Washington, D.C. for repeating false statements regarding the 2020 elections.

President Donald Trump said Wednesday he would not use force to acquire Greenland, the first time he has ruled out using military action to acquire the territory.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump lamented that the United States “probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be, frankly, unstoppable.”   

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“But I won’t do that,” he added. “That’s probably the biggest statement I made, because people thought I would use force. I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.”

Read more: The Five Ways Europe Could Respond to Trump’s Greenland Threat

“All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland,” he continued.

The comments come amid a prolonged campaign by Trump to annex the island, which is a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark.

That campaign has become increasingly confrontational in recent weeks, as Trump has insisted that there was “no going back” on his push to acquire Greenland, which he has insisted is essential for U.S. national security.

In recent weeks, Trump has posted a meme showing pictures of the island draped in an American flag, and raised the example of the U.S. military’s removal of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro when discussing his designs on Greenland, prompting fears that he may use military action to seize the territory.

Trump’s aggressive posture prompted angst among European officials, and his appearance was preceded by a series of speeches condemning his ambitions to take the territory. On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron denounced what he described as a “new imperialism,” without mentioning Trump by name.

“We do prefer respect to bullies,” Macron said. “And we do prefer rule of law to brutality.”

Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, similarly, did not say Trump’s name, but announced that the “rules-based order is fading.”

“Canadians know that our old, comfortable assumption that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security is no longer valid,” Carney said.

Trump’s pressure campaign over Greenland had ramped up ahead of Davos, escalating from words to action.

Over the weekend, he announced tariffs on eight European countries—and NATO allies— for taking part in military exercises on the island.

That in turn prompted threats of retaliatory economic measures from those countries, which were already subject to tariffs of 10% and 15%. European Union (E.U.) officials convened an emergency meeting to discuss a coordinated response. Some officials raised the prospect of abandoning the U.S.-E.U. trade deal struck last summer. The agreement includes $750 billion worth of energy purchases from the U.S., $600 billion in E.U. investment, and billions of dollars in reduced tariffs on imports from European countries.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned during her speech at the World Economic Forum that the E.U.’s response to the tariff threats will be “unflinching, united and proportional.”

“In politics as in business—a deal is a deal. And when friends shake hands, it must mean something,” von der Leyen said.

This is a developing story.

President Donald Trump delivered a defiant and combative address at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, using the annual gathering of world leaders and business executives to tout America’s role as the world’s main peacekeeper and economic engine, and make his most explicit case yet for the U.S. to acquire Greenland from Denmark.

Calling for “immediate negotiations” with Denmark, Trump asserted that Greenland was essential to American and global security, even as he insisted he would not use military force to obtain it—his clearest effort yet to somewhat soften the threat behind a demand that has already unsettled NATO allies.

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“We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be, frankly, unstoppable,” Trump said. “But I won’t do that.”

He added: “I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland.” Yet the President made clear that he still envisioned full American ownership of the semiautonomous Danish territory, arguing that “you need the ownership to defend it” and that “you can’t defend it on a lease.”

“This enormous unsecured Island is actually part of North America, on the northern frontier of the Western Hemisphere,” Trump said. “That’s our territory.”

The comments underscored Trump’s willingness to wield raw power and transactional threats in pursuit of territorial and strategic gains—even at the risk of tearing at alliances that have anchored Western security since World War II.

While Trump insisted he did not intend to use force, he coupled that assurance with a thinly veiled warning: “You can say yes and we will be very appreciative, or you can say no, and we will remember.” That combination of conciliation and coercion came up repeatedly throughout Trump’s remarks. He boasted of forcing NATO members to increase defense spending, even as he questioned whether they would come to America’s aid if the United States were attacked. He described Europe as dependent on American protection but insufficiently grateful for it. “The problem with NATO is that we’ll be there for them 100%,” he said. “But I’m not sure that they’d be there for us.”

Read more: The Most Startling Line From Trump’s Davos Speech

Trump’s speech, which lasted more than an hour, emphasized how dramatically his maximalist foreign policy has shifted the footing of those attending the annual World Economic Forum. Once a bastion of multilateralism and consensus-building, the forum this week revolved around a single question: how to navigate a world increasingly shaped by one leader’s willingness to pressure allies as aggressively as rivals.

Trump began his remarks focused on delivering a triumphant verdict on his first year back in office, calling it “the fastest and most dramatic economic turnaround in our country’s history” and claiming inflation had been “defeated,” the border rendered “virtually impenetrable” and growth set to surpass any previous benchmark. He contrasted his record with what he described as the “nightmare of stagflation” under former President Joe Biden whom he repeatedly derided as “the autopen.”

But what unfolded over the course of his lengthy speech was less a celebration of economic revival than a sweeping assertion of American dominance—and of his own role as its chief architect—over allies, adversaries and institutions alike.

“The USA is the economic engine of the planet,” Trump declared. “And when America booms, the entire world booms.”

“Without us, right now you’d all be speaking German and a little Japanese, perhaps,” Trump said to the room full of billionaires, government officials, and diplomats.

Trump warned that “certain places in Europe are not even recognizable anymore,” blaming “unchecked mass migration,” environmental policies, and the outsourcing of heavy industry for what he called the continent’s decline. He criticized Europe multiple times, even as many of its leaders sat in the audience.

“The more windmills a country has,” he said, “the more money that country loses.”

He urged other nations to “follow what we’re doing” while making clear that noncompliance would carry costs. He boasted of slashing regulations and cutting tariffs on domestic producers while raising them on foreign goods, and he claimed to have reduced the U.S. trade deficit dramatically while securing deals covering 40% of American trade.

The message resonated uneasily in Europe, where leaders have spent the past year struggling to navigate a more transactional and confrontational Washington. Emergency summits, retaliatory tariff planning, and quiet efforts to insulate European industries from American pressure have become a staple of the diplomatic calendar since Trump returned to office.

Nowhere was that tension clearer than when Trump turned to Greenland. “No nation or group of nations is in any position to be able to secure Greenland other than the United States,” he said, recounting how American forces defended the island during World War II before returning it to Denmark, a decision he now questioned. “How ungrateful are they now?” he added. At various points, Trump appeared to confuse Greenland with Iceland. “Iceland has already cost us a lot of money,” he said, a reference to the stock market’s recent dip. By the end of his address, the U.S. stock market had risen following his assurances that no military action would be used to acquire Greenland.

The comments came amid a growing rift with Denmark and other European governments, which have rejected any suggestion that the island could be sold or transferred. In recent weeks, Denmark has increased its military presence in Greenland, joined by Germany, Sweden and Norway.

The President’s posture stood in sharp contrast to the thinly veiled condemnations of U.S. policy delivered on Tuesday in Davos by key European figures. Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada warned of a “rupture” in the world order, declaring that the rules-based international system was eroding and that “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” French President Emmanuel Macron decried the use of coercion and tariffs to advance territorial ambitions, asserting that Europe would not accept the “law of the strongest” or be intimidated by “bullies.”

Trump responded to their comments by singling out both leaders. He mocked Macron’s sunglasses before recounting how he said he forced France’s leader to narrow the gap between French and American drug prices by threatening sweeping tariffs. “Emmanuel, you’re going to do it, and you’re going to do it fast,” Trump said he told the French leader, recalling a threat to impose a 25% tariff on French goods and a 100% tariff on French wine and champagne if he did not comply. French officials have previously disputed aspects of his account. 

​​“Canada gets a lot of freebies from us,” Trump said, adding that it “should be grateful” to the United States. Referring directly to Carney’s appearance at Davos, he said, “I watched your Prime Minister yesterday. He wasn’t so grateful.”

“Canada lives because of the United States,” Trump added. “Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”

The episodes served as a broader illustration of Trump’s approach to diplomacy: not as a matter of quiet negotiation among allies, but as a series of public confrontations in which leverage is applied through the blunt use of American economic power.

At Davos, such remarks landed with particular force. Halfway through the speech, a senior Western European official told TIME: “We can’t react to everything he says. We have our values and our interests, and we have to work with the U.S. to protect them. We have to talk. We listen; then we talk.”

Trump’s speech also revisited long-standing grievances and disputed claims: that his 2020 election loss was “rigged,” that he had single-handedly settled eight wars in the past year, and that the war in Ukraine would never have happened had he remained in office.

He touted a deal with Venezuela over oil production, took credit for wiping out Iran’s nuclear program, praised the expansion of U.S. nuclear and artificial intelligence infrastructure, and spoke admiringly of allowing private companies to build their own power plants. Throughout, Trump returned to a central theme: that American power, unapologetically wielded, was the ultimate guarantor of global stability.

“We did a lot of big things, all perfectly executed,” Trump said.

—With reporting by Nikhil Kumar/DAVOS

President Donald Trump’s renewed push to annex Greenland, seemingly at any cost, has led to calls for his removal from office.

When asked how far he will go to acquire the Kingdom of Denmark territory, Trump told reporters on Tuesday: “You’ll find out.” The ominous response came after weeks of the White House refusing to rule out using military force to annex the island. Trump sparked global outrage over the weekend by threatening to tariff European allies until Denmark sells Greenland to the U.S. He’s set to come face-to-face with some of those countries’ leaders at Davos.

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Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who is among the Republicans to denounce Trump’s Greenland efforts, has said he would “lean” toward impeachment if the U.S. were to invade the territory.

“I don’t want to give you a definite yes or no, but I would lean that way. It would be a total mistake to invade an ally. It would be catastrophic to our allies and everything. It’s just the worst idea ever in my view,” Bacon told the Omaha World-Herald.

Other critics have suggested alternative means of removing Trump from office.

Trump, in a letter to Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, reportedly linked his failure to win a Nobel Peace Prize to his efforts to acquire Greenland. He’s quoted as saying he “no longer feel[s] an obligation to think purely of peace.” In response to the reports, one Democratic Senator called for Trump to be removed from his Commander-in-Chief position by way of the 25th Amendment.

“Invoke the 25th Amendment,” said Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts. Democratic Rep. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona expressed a similar sentiment, arguing: “The 25th Amendment exists for a reason—we need to invoke it immediately.”

After Trump published a flurry of late-night social media posts on Monday, during which he said there was “no going back” on Greenland, other lawmakers raised concerns.

Democratic Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove of California said of the President: “He’s risking the safety of every American. Invoke the 25th.”

This isn’t the first time the 25th Amendment has been mentioned in reference to Trump. In a 2018 anonymous op-ed in the New York Times, a “senior official in the Trump Administration” said there “were early whispers within the Cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment” during Trump’s first term. (Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security, later claimed ownership of the op-ed.)

As renewed calls grow for the 25th Amendment to be invoked, here’s what you need to know.

What is the 25th Amendment?

The 25th Amendment ensures that “the United States will always possess a functioning President and Vice President” and that in the event of the President’s removal from office, it “provides for the prompt, orderly, and democratic transfer of executive power,” according to the Constitution. 

It was introduced following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and ratified by Congress in 1967 to establish a constitutional procedure to transfer Presidential powers.

The law is implemented across a number of scenarios, including if the President dies or resigns while in office under Section 1 or the President themselves withdraws from the position, which can be temporarily, under Section 3.

If it is decided that the President is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” Section 4 of the Amendment can be used. In such scenarios, the Vice President will take up the position of President.

Now, lawmakers are calling for the Amendment to be applied within Section 4, with many Democrats expressing the opinion that Trump is unfit for office.

When was the last time the 25th Amendment was invoked?

Section 3 of the Amendment, which gives the President the ability to transfer power to the Vice President, has been used a number of times, most recently by President Joe Biden in November 2021 when he was anesthetized for a routine medical procedure.

The same scenario occurred twice during George W. Bush’s Presidency, in 2002 and 2007, for medical reasons. These transfers of power to the Vice President have typically only lasted a few minutes or hours each time.

Section 4, in which the Vice President and the majority of the 15-member Cabinet can vote to discharge the President, has never been formally invoked.

Can the 25th Amendment be used to remove Trump from office?

In order for the 25th Amendment to be implemented, there first must be concerns regarding one’s ability to perform their duties as President.

Per Section 4, this could come in the form of serious health issues, which some previously cited as an argument to remove Biden from office.

For Section 4 to be carried out, the Vice President and a majority of the 15-member Cabinet must declare the President unable to perform their duties. But the threshold for this scenario is “incredibly high” says Nicholas Cole, a senior research fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford University.

As TIME magazine previously noted of the Amendment’s ratification in 1967: Under the amendment, an incapacitated Chief Executive can himself declare in writing that he is unable to continue in office, and the Vice President can take over—at least temporarily. If an ailing President is unable or unwilling to step aside voluntarily, the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet can send a written statement to Congress declaring that the President is incapable of holding office. If the President were to challenge such a resolution, Congress itself would vote on the question. The amendment also authorizes the President to appoint, and Congress to confirm, a new Vice President if a vacancy occurs in that office.

“This idea that the Vice President and the President’s own Cabinet are going to take the view that a set of policy decisions indicate that the President has [some kind of] incapacity is a case I can’t see,” says Cole.

He adds that should lawmakers, Republicans or Democrats, be unsatisfied with the President’s ability to perform his duties, then impeachment is a far more suitable avenue to pursue.

In the unlikely scenario that the Vice President did issue such an order with a Cabinet majority, they would assume the President’s role, informing Congress of the decision. Trump would then likely immediately contest the decision, and Congress would hold a vote within 48 hours, Cole says.

“It would take a two thirds vote of the Congress to side with the Vice President. So that threshold is the same as for impeachment. If you think you’ve got the votes to do that, you go for impeachment,” he says.

European leaders are bracing for an all-out trade war with the U.S. once again after President Trump threatened to impose a 10% tariff on imports from from countries that oppose his demand to take control of Greenland.

The potential tariff would put the U.S.-EU trade deal struck last summer in jeopardy. The agreement includes $750 billion worth of energy purchases from the U.S., $600 billion in EU investment, and billions of dollars in reduced tariffs on imports from European countries.

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Read more: Trump Says No Need ‘To Think Purely of Peace’ in Letter to Norway About Nobel Prize Loss, Greenland Ambitions

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned during her speech at the World Economic Forum that the EU’s response to the tariff threats will be “unflinching, united and proportional.”

“In politics as in business—a deal is a deal. And when friends shake hands, it must mean something,” von der Leyen said. 

Trump, however, remains adamant on taking over the Arctic island. In a series of posts on Truth Social, Trump said he had spoken to NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte regarding Greenland and told him that “there can be no going back.”

Here are five ways the European allies could respond to Trump’s threat to acquire the island:

Retaliatory tariff

The EU could respond by imposing a reciprocal tariff on a range of U.S. goods. 

During the trade negotiations last year, Brussels came up with a list of 4,800 types of U.S. exports to impose tariffs on, ranging from whiskey and soybeans to planes and cars, totaling $108 billion. The list will go into effect on Feb. 7 unless the European Parliament votes to freeze it.

Since Trump revived his interest in Greenland, the proposal to let the EU Parliament pass the tariffs has gained momentum. On Tuesday, France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said France supports the European Parliament’s push to suspend the trade deal between the U.S. and EU.

Still, the European Commission Spokesperson Olof Gill said the current priority is still to engage and avoid the imposition of tariffs.

“This will ultimately harm consumers and businesses on both sides of the Atlantic,” Gill said. 

Trade “bazooka”

Another measure that the EU could take is activating the Anti-Coercion Instrument, also known as the “trade bazooka.”

The policy, which was adopted in late 2023, aims to deter foreign countries from blackmailing European countries through economic pressure. The “trade bazooka” is much more expansive than reciprocal tariffs, because it can not only impose additional tariffs, but also restrict imports and exports through quotas and licenses, limit access to direct investment in the EU’s financial markets, or suspend intellectual property rights.

“Since the EU is America’s largest commercial partner, this would cause substantial damage to the U.S. economy, most likely generating a US recession and a global downturn, as well as raising costs on many everyday staples,” said Dan Hamilton, nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center.

This is, however, the EU’s last resort for countermeasures for multiple reasons. For one thing, it would take up to 10 months for the European Commission to investigate and determine whether there is any coercion and retaliation from the concerned country. It would also need a supermajority of 27 Parliament members to back the measure after the investigation, which could take a maximum of 10 weeks to deliberate. The bazooka has also never been used before, and some European countries, like Germany, are still looking for ways to deescalate. 

“We simply want to try to resolve this problem together, and the American government knows that we could also retaliate,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Monday.

Dumping U.S. assets

European countries hold trillions of dollars in U.S. bonds and stocks. The EU could dump a huge amount of its assets to drive up the cost of borrowing and sink the U.S. financial market, adding more uncertainties to retirement account investments, running a business, and buying a home. But selling U.S. assets on a large scale is much harder to execute than it seems. 

Most of the U.S. assets owned by the European countries are owned by private entities and not the government, according to FT. Even if European governments can compel a sale of U.S. assets from their public wealth funds, it would also be hard to find a buyer who could absorb even a fraction of what the European countries own. 

More importantly, an abrupt sale of the U.S. assets would sink the value of the dollar and drive up the euro, which could quickly upend European countries’ own economies. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent brushed off this idea on Tuesday in Davos as a “false narrative” that “defies any logic.” 

“I am sure that the European governments will continue holding it and as I said, I think everyone needs to take a deep breath,” Bessent said. 

The Supreme Court

Like many Americans, European leaders are also waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to deliberate on the legality of Trump’s tariffs, with a ruling expected as soon as this week. 

The White House argued that a national security law dating back to the 1970s—the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)—gives the President the authority to declare an emergency and slap down tariffs on his own. 

Before the case reached the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in a 7-4 decision that none of the emergency powers granted the President under the IEEPA  law “explicitly include the power to impose tariffs, duties or the power to tax.”

But regardless of the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Trump administration is determined to keep the tariffs. In an interview with the New York Times last Thursday, the U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the Trump administration plans to begin replacing them almost immediately with other levies if the high court strikes down Trump’s tariffs.

Defending Greenland by force

Despite Trump’s suggestion of seizing Greenland by force, a military option remains unlikely. Still, Denmark, a NATO ally, has been boosting its military presence in the Arctic island in response to Trump’s brinkmanship. 

Denmark’s defense minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, announced that Denmark would increase military activity in and around Greenland, citing an increasingly unpredictable security environment. Several European NATO allies confirmed that they were also sending personnel to the island.

Asked on Monday whether he would use force to seize Greenland, Trump told NBC News “no comment.”

Eight years ago, when President Donald Trump arrived at the World Economic Forum in his first term, the alpine gathering of billionaires and heads of state waited nervously to hear how a self-described nationalist would address a temple of globalization. He told the audience that “America First” did not mean “America alone,” boasted about tax cuts and deregulation, and charmed many in the room into seeing him as a pro-business disrupter rather than a threat to the postwar order.

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On Wednesday, as Trump prepares to take the Davos stage for the third time, the world is once again waiting nervously—but for very different reasons.

His return to the World Economic Forum comes amid an extraordinary standoff with U.S. allies over his threats to seize Greenland from Denmark, a widening trans-Atlantic trade dispute, and growing alarm among world leaders that the United States has become an unpredictable and coercive power. 

Trump’s address will be the first major speech of the second year of his second term, coming as his approval ratings have slipped at home and backlash has grown over proliferating immigration raids by federal agents. It is also shaping up to be a defining moment for a presidency that has alienated U.S. allies to an unprecedented degree. It will test whether Trump still sees value in reassuring allies—as he did in 2018—or whether he now intends to formalize a doctrine of coercion, using tariffs and threats of territorial acquisition to bend partners to his will. 

Asked on Tuesday for a preview of his address in Davos, Trump told reporters in the White House briefing room that he plans to project American dominance. “I think more than anything else what I’m going to be speaking about is the tremendous success that we’ve had in one year,” he said.

World leaders began the week in Davos with thinly veiled denunciations of Trump’s conduct. Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada warned on Tuesday of a “rupture” in the world order and the end of a “pleasant fiction” in which great powers were constrained by rules. President Emmanuel Macron of France said that Europe would not submit to “bullies” and preferred “the rule of law to brutality.” Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, argued that Europe must build a new form of independence and deepen trade ties with partners beyond the United States.

None of them mentioned Trump by name. None needed to.

Their remarks came hours after Trump posted an AI-generated image showing himself hoisting an American flag in Greenland, labeled “U.S. Territory. Est. 2026,” and shared what appeared to be private text messages from Macron and Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general, praising his leadership and seeking a way forward on the crisis.

“Greenland is imperative for National and World Security,” Trump wrote in one post. “There can be no going back.”

The Greenland standoff has upended the opening days of a forum that had been expected to largely focus on artificial intelligence, economic growth, and climate change. European leaders have scrambled to update their Davos talking points to try and contain a confrontation that threatens to rupture NATO.

“Nostalgia will not bring back the old order,” von der Leyen said on Tuesday. “If this change is permanent, then Europe must change permanently too.”

In recent days, Denmark and its NATO partners have taken visible steps to reinforce their presence in Greenland, sending hundreds of soldiers to the island. Greenland’s leaders said they were reviewing civil preparedness plans, including advice that households might need five days of food supplies. 

Speaking in Davos on Tuesday, world leaders appeared to brace for Trump’s address. Carney said medium-size countries would have to band together because “if you are not at the table, we’re on the menu.” Macron warned against “vassalization” and said Europe would not accept the law of the strongest.

Those remarks landed against the backdrop of Trump’s increasingly mocking posture toward allied leaders. He dismissed Macron as irrelevant, predicted he would soon be out of office, and threatened tariffs of up to 200% on French wine and Champagne. He ridiculed Britain for agreeing to cede sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius—a deal his Administration previously praised, but now cites as another reason the U.S. must acquire Greenland.

The confrontations have made Trump the inescapable topic of a gathering that bills itself as “Committed to Improving the State of the World.” Some 3,000 participants from 130 countries have descended on the Swiss resort town, including 65 heads of state and 850 major corporate executives, according to forum organizers.

The Trump Administration is touting this year’s U.S. delegation as its largest and most senior delegation in Davos history, with five Cabinet officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, alongside Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff. A sprawling “USA House” has taken over storefronts along the main promenade, offering a visual display of American power.

A White House official said the President would emphasize that the United States and Europe must leave behind “economic stagnation” and the policies that caused it, and that housing affordability would remain a chief focus—a message aimed at domestic audiences struggling with the cost of living.

But Trump will likely also boast about projecting U.S. power abroad, including the recent capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his efforts to stop foreign wars.

He is also expected to expand the remit of his “Board of Peace,” a new organization initially billed as overseeing Gaza’s reconstruction, into a more expansive global body that some allies fear is designed to rival the United Nations—with Trump holding veto power over its decisions. The charter-signing ceremony is scheduled for Thursday at Davos, with invited leaders facing a choice that has become emblematic of their week at the conference: align with Trump or risk being targeted by him. France has already said it will not join the board, and other European governments are deeply skeptical, worried the initiative could undermine the U.N. system.
Democratic governors, including Gavin Newsom of California, have accused world leaders of failing to stand up to Trump and warned Europeans not to capitulate. “You mate with him or he devours you,” Newsom said from Davos.

President Donald Trump delivered a meandering and grievance-filled speech to a packed White House Press Briefing room on Tuesday, speaking for more than an hour to mark the one-year anniversary of his return to office before taking questions from reporters.

The speech started with Trump defending the thousands of federal officers he’s sent to Minnesota to conduct sweeping immigration searches. The President slowly held up photo after photo of immigrants he said were arrested in the state after committing heinous crimes.

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He soon touched on dozens of other topics, insisting again he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, praising the impact of his tariffs and his Administration’s gutting of investments in low-carbon emissions technologies, joked that the Gulf of Mexico should be called the Gulf of Trump, and blamed many of the country’s problems on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. He also said he “felt terribly” about the killing of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE officer in Minnesota.

Trump repeatedly veered far from topics of policy or politics. At one point, he told a story from his childhood of playing at a park next to a mental institution and his mother telling him he could have been a professional baseball player.

He also denigrated many of his perceived enemies, calling former Justice Department prosecutor Jack Smith, who brought charges against him for his actions trying to overturn the results of the 2020 elections, “a sick son of a bitch,” and saying of Rep. Ilhan Omar, “I can’t stand her.”

Hanging over Trump’s appearance were his sagging approval numbers and his growing frustration that the American public hasn’t supported how he has implemented his policies. In particular, he claimed that the success of his harsh immigration policies isn’t breaking through with Americans. “Maybe I have bad public relations people, but we’re not getting it across,” Trump said.

Before Trump came into the briefing room, White House press aides handed out a press release titled “365 WINS IN 365 DAYS: President Trump’s Return Marks New Era of Success, Prosperity.” Trump had a printed copy in his hands when he stepped up to the microphone.

Read more: How Trump’s Foreign Policy Gambits Are Reshaping the World

After speaking for an hour and 20 minutes, Trump started taking reporter’s questions. With a flick of the wrist, Trump pointed to reporters, taking questions from long-standing media organizations like ABC News and the Associated Press, as well as reporters from right-wing organizations, some of whom were quick to compliment him. He predicted “things are going to work out very well” in his effort to annex Greenland over the objections of Denmark and U.S. allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Asked whether the U.S. would withdraw from NATO over his quest to own Greenland, he said: “Whether you like it or not, NATO is only as good as we are.” One reporter asked Trump if God would be proud of his first year in office. In response, Trump said: “God is proud of the job I’ve done.”

Trump seemed particularly focused on reversing the nagging perception among Americans that his policies haven’t helped them economically. “I think we’ve done a much better job than we’re able to promote.” That’s “one of the reasons I’m doing this news conference—I think it’s important—we have taken a mess and made it better,” Trump said.

Polling shows that economic confidence has declined in recent months. Gallup surveys in November and December found 36% of Americans approved of the job Trump was doing, down from 45% after his first month back in office. mong modern presidents, only Richard Nixon—who had 30% approval in December 1973 amid the Watergate investigation and an energy crisis—polled worse than Trump at this point in their second term.

Trump addressed the press just before was set to leave for Davos, Switzerland, where he was scheduled to make a high-profile speech at the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering.

When President Donald Trump unveiled his vast tariff regime targeting imports from almost every country in the world last year, he promised foreign countries would pay the levies and that Americans would reap the rewards. 

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But a new study published Monday by researchers at the Kiel Institute, an independent economic research institute based in Germany, found that American consumers and importers are paying for the tariffs by an overwhelming margin.

“Foreign exporters absorb only about 4% of the tariff burden—the remaining 96% is passed through to U.S. buyers,” the authors of the research wrote in a study, which analyzed $4 trillion of shipments between January 2024 and November 2025.

Read More: How Trump’s Foreign Policy Gambits Are Reshaping the World

The research found that exporters to the U.S. raised prices to account for the tariffs, or kept prices the same while reducing shipments.

The study concludes that the $200 billion increase in customs revenue that the U.S. government raised in 2025 was a “tax paid almost entirely by Americans.”

Trump unveiled his sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs, a signature economic policy that defined his first year in office, on April 2, 2025. The tariffs included a baseline 10% tariff on almost all imports, higher country-specific rates for many trading partners, and additional sector-specific tariffs on autos, steel, and aluminum. Several sporadic tariff announcements followed over the year.

Read more: Trump, Tariffs, and the Rewiring of the American Empire

Researchers at the Kiel Institute specifically examined Brazil and India, both of which faced sharp tariff increases in August 2025, and in both cases, exporters did not “eat” the tariffs—a claim Trump often made. The researchers argued that this could be because exporters found competitive markets elsewhere, or because they “believe tariffs may be temporary or subject to negotiation,” in which case they’d have less incentive to cut costs to maintain volume.

In the immediate future, it said consumers are the “ultimate bearers of the burden.”

“Whether through higher prices on imported goods, higher prices on domestically produced goods that use imported inputs, or reduced availability and variety of products, American households pay for the tariffs,” the study found.

This corroborates findings from other think tanks and institutes that have tracked corporate activity since the tariffs dropped. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), in disclosures at the end of 2025, “industry executives have publicly told investors they are protecting profits by passing the costs of tariffs on to consumers.”

Other researchers at the Harvard Business School, the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, and the Brookings Institution have also argued that consumers are most affected by tariffs.

Trump has given varied justifications for the use of tariffs in his second term—both as an economic measure and a foreign policy tool. Over the weekend, Trump announced new tariffs on European allies who sent troops to Greenland after Trump threatened to annex the island.

“Starting on February 1st, 2026, all of the above mentioned Countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Finland), will be charged a 10% Tariff on any and all goods sent to the United States of America,” he said on Truth Social on Jan. 17, adding that these tariffs would increase to 25% on June 1, and would remain in effect “until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.”

The Supreme Court is set to release a much-anticipated ruling on the legality of Trump’s tariffs in the coming weeks. Two lower courts have already found that Trump overstepped his authority by imposing tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a strong message to global leaders on Tuesday, urging them to take a stand against President Donald Trump.

“People are rolling over. I should have brought a bunch of kneepads for all the world leaders,” Newsom told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “It’s just pathetic.”

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Newsom made reference to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado regifting her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump during a visit to the White House last week and said the behavior around the President is “embarrassing.”

The Democratic Governor—who is a long-time adversary of Trump’s—urged European lawmakers to “stop being complicit” and “have a backbone.” Newsom’s comments come amid tense international discussions after Trump threatened to tariff European allies until Denmark agrees to sell Greenland to the U.S.

“The Europeans should decide for themselves what to do, but one thing they can’t do is what they’ve been doing. They’ve been played. This guy [Trump] is playing folks for fools,” said Newsom, referring to Trump as a “T-Rex.”

You either “mate with him or he devours you,” he quipped.

Amid mounting backlash from European leaders, Trump revealed he is set to meet with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and others at Davos, although he warned there is “no going back” on his plan.

Trump has also refused to rule out the possibility of leaving NATO in order to carry out his Greenland ambitions. Should the President pursue that avenue, the legalities involved are, at best, murky, experts told TIME. Trump declared on Tuesday that “no person or President” has done more for NATO than himself. “If I didn’t come along, there would be no NATO right now! It would have been in the ash heap of history,” he claimed.

This isn’t the first time Trump has clashed with NATO or E.U. officials since returning to the White House.

Trump has often criticized European allies over discussions about Russia. Following a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing in September, during which Ukrainian allies committed security guarantees to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump cited concerns with European purchases of Russian oil, a White House official told TIME. The President insisted European leaders must put more economic pressure on China, arguing that Beijing funds Russia’s war efforts.

There have also been repeated clashes over tariffs—a matter that has come to the forefront once more following Trump’s most recent threat.

Read More: Trump Refuses to Rule Out Leaving NATO Over Greenland Tussle—Can He Legally Do That?

Europe responds to Trump at Davos

As the world looks to Europe to make its next move, president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, during a speech in Davos on Tuesday, championed “European independence” and said Europe is the right place to invest.

Concluding her address, von der Leyen made reference to the escalating row over Greenland and Trump’s insistence that the U.S. must acquire it as a matter of “national security.”

“When it comes to the security of the Arctic region, Europe is fully committed. And we share the objectives of the United States in this regard,” said von der Leyen, noting that Finland recently completed a sale of icebreaker vessels to the U.S., the first deal of its kind.

When French President Emmanuel Macron took to the Davos stage some time later, he echoed von der Leyen’s statements about the strength of Europe, calling it a “good place.”

But Macron took his defence of Europe a step further and appeared to follow Newsom’s playbook by calling out Trump’s trade strategy.

“We do prefer respect to bullies, we do prefer science to politicism, and we do prefer rule of law to brutality,” he said.

Macron—who wore sunglasses throughout his speech, reportedly due to a burst blood vessel in his eye—went on to warn world leaders, saying “conflict has become normalized” and the current state of geopolitics is one in which “the only law that seems to matter is that of the strongest.”

“This is a shift towards a world without effective collective governance,” said Macron. “It’s clearly a very concerning time, because we are killing the structure where we can fix the situation and the common challenges we have without collective governance.”

On international trade, the French President took aim directly at the U.S., describing Trump’s policies as ones that “undermine our [European] export interests, demand maximum concessions and openly aim to weaken and subordinate Europe, combined with an endless accumulation of new tariffs that are fundamentally unacceptable.”

Macron said that industries in Europe, such as chemical and automotive sectors, “are being literally killed by the lack of respect for a normal framework and [a] level playing field.”