Hakeem Jeffries to Lead Bipartisan Delegation to Denmark to Discuss Greenland
The visit comes as President Donald Trump has suggested that the United States could obtain Greenland.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) is leading a bipartisan congressional delegation to Denmark, his office announced on April 22, as President Donald Trump continues to express interest in the United States’ asserting control over Greenland.
The delegation will travel to Denmark to discuss “the continued importance of the NATO alliance and the geopolitical status of Greenland,” Jeffries said in an April 22 statement.
Trump has repeatedly emphasized Greenland’s strategic importance to U.S. national security, noting that it straddles strategic air and sea routes in the North Atlantic, is mineral-rich, and plays a key role in monitoring security in the North Pole region. The semiautonomous Danish territory of Greenland also hosts a large U.S. military base.
During a governors’ dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in January, Trump said the United States needs Greenland “very badly,” pointing to Russia’s and China’s increased military activity in the region.
“The Russian ships and Chinese ships are all over the place, they’re surrounding [it] now, they have for a long time,” he said. “That’s a lane. We need that for national security.”
Trump added that the people of Greenland “would love to become a state of the United States” but acknowledged that Denmark would not welcome such a move.
Speaking at his March 6 joint address to Congress, Trump said of Greenland, “I think we’re going to get it, one way or the other.”
Shortly after Trump’s comments, Vice President JD Vance visited the U.S. air base on the island and criticized Denmark’s government for failing to protect Greenlanders from the aggressive actions of China, Russia, and other nations, while vowing that the United States would ensure its future security.
