Jeffries leading delegation to Denmark to discuss 'geopolitical status of Greenland'
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) is leading a bipartisan congressional delegation to visit Denmark amid U.S. tensions with the island, he announced Tuesday.
Jeffries said lawmakers will discuss “the continued importance of the NATO alliance and the geopolitical status of Greenland.”
Reps. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.), Gregory W. Meeks (D-N.Y.), Amata Coleman Radewagen (R-American Samoa), Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.), Marilyn Strickland (D-Wash.), Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) and Laura Friedman (D-Calif.) will join Jeffries on the trip.
The group is also scheduled to stop for talks in the United Kingdom and Middle East during a time of “global uncertainty.”
President Trump has expressed a desire to annex Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, calling it an “absolute necessity” for national security to combat the presence of China and Russia in the region. Leaders in Greenland and Denmark have sharply pushed back.
Jeffries in January also criticized what he characterized as Trump's “obsession” with the idea of the U.S. taking over Greenland.
“For far too long, the size of the middle class in this country has gone down, but the cost of living has gone up. That’s a problem,” Jeffries told reporters in the Capitol.
“The problem is not Greenland; the problem is not the Gulf of Mexico and the need to rename it; and the problem is not the Panama Canal. It’s making sure that the American dream is brought to life for everyone in this nation,” he added.
Greenland and Denmark have been adamant about insisting the U.S. will not take control of Greenland.
“Let me be clear: The United States will not get that,” Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said in a March social media post after being sworn in. “We do not belong to others. We decide our own future.”
Vice President Vance visited Greenland in late March and proposed a plan for a peaceful acquisition of the island.
“What we think is going to happen is that the Greenlanders are going to choose, through self determination, to become independent of Denmark, and then we’re going to have conversations with the people of Greenland from there,” Vance told reporters two weeks ago.
Danish leaders have said that for the time being, there is nothing stopping the U.S. from implementing more military bases on Greenland to assuage security concerns.
“There is a treaty from 1951 where it is very clear that the Americans have huge access to Greenland,” former Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt said after Vance’s visit.
She also questioned if it was time for Denmark to “scale up” on the island.
“The irony of all this is that the Americans could do exactly the same,” she said. “Greenland is NATO territory. There’s nothing stopping the Americans from getting more engaged militarily in Greenland, having more bases, if that’s what they want.”
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