Trump Backpedals
Plus: Behind the badge, regime change in Cuba, surrogacy controversy, and more...
Greenland proposal: On Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced that he had reached a deal with European allies in NATO over his proposed acquisition of Greenland. He also withdrew his threat of increased tariffs, causing markets to rebound a bit.
Genuinely insane that we've just been doing this over and over for months pic.twitter.com/TQpvUbJdDO
— Dominic Pino (@DominicJPino) January 21, 2026
This comes on the heels of conversations in which NATO mulled the idea of giving the United States sovereignty over the land housing its military bases, though it's unclear whether that was the tentative framework or whether Trump refused those concessions in favor of full sovereignty over Greenland. The details of the agreement reached between Trump and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte are not yet public, but Trump says that "this solution, if consummated, will be a great one for the United States of America, and all NATO Nations." NATO, meanwhile, released a statement saying the discussions were centered around making sure "Russia and China never gain a foothold" in the territory.
Of course, it is undeniably good that Trump has backed away from threats of coercion—whether military or economic—in favor of striking a deal that won't burn bridges with NATO. "We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be, frankly, unstoppable," Trump said at the gathering of world leaders in Davos, Switzerland. "But I won't do that. That's probably the biggest statement, 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. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland."
Trump made the case for the island's strategic importance—and the value of controlling the Arctic, more broadly—and spent some time deriding allies like Denmark. "Without us, most of the countries don't even work," he said at one point. Kind of an awesome thing to say at Davos, in my opinion.
Whether you love or hate Trump's expansionist impulses, libertarians can at least enjoy that he's lightly antagonizing the many nations whose defense policy can best be summed up as "freeload on the U.S."
Scenes from New York: Former Mayor Eric Adams and TV host Dr. Phil have apparently been trying to collaborate on a new Cops-esque show called Behind the Badge. The show was already in production, filming crime scenes around New York. Now, lawyers for the city are trying to stop the production company from advancing.
QUICK HITS
- "By analyzing $4 trillion of shipments between January 2024 and November 2025, the Kiel Institute researchers found that foreign exporters absorbed only about 4% of the burden of last year's U.S. tariff increases by lowering their prices, while American consumers and importers absorbed 96%," reports The Wall Street Journal. "The tariffs had a significant effect on trade volumes: Facing higher U.S. tariffs, Indian exporters maintained their prices but reduced the volume of shipments to the U.S. by 18%-24% relative to the European Union, Canada and Australia, the report found."
- The Trump administration appears to be trying to find ways to overthrow the Cuban regime.
- A Cuban man in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention in El Paso died. "The report from the county medical examiner said the detainee, Geraldo Lunas Campos, was asphyxiated and restrained by law enforcement," reports The New York Times. "Federal officials described his death as a suicide."
- Vice President J.D. Vance will visit Minnesota. Just what we needed! Let's get some J.D. in there, that will improve things.
- "Youtube and its parent company Google deserves to be sued," writes Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) for The New York Post. "For the past three weeks YouTube has been hosting a video that is a calculated lie, falsely accusing me of taking money from Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro. It refused to remove the video. It is, of course, a ludicrous accusation, but paid trolls are daily spreading this lie across the internet. This untruth is essentially an accusation of treason, which then leads the internet mob to call for my death. Advocating for liability for Google is no small step for me.…But I will not sit idly by and let them host a provably false defamatory video, which is now part of a widespread harassment campaign. I am now receiving death threats." (Read a takedown of this argument from Reason's Elizabeth Nolan Brown.)
- Surrogacy "wasn't our first choice, but we had endless conversations with our doctors on this journey, and this was the safest way for us to be able to continue growing our family," says (rather forgettable) pop star Meghan Trainor, following an announcement that she had a third child via rent-a-womb.
If you think about it, "our doctors told us surrogacy was the safest way for us" is kinda brilliant because that will literally always be technically true
— Mason (@webdevMason) January 22, 2026
- You don't hate the state enough:
There is a very weird phenomenon where extremely expensive cities are extremely hard to afford to live in for the middle class and the affluent, but then municipal and state authorities give free money and apartments to junkies and felons. https://t.co/OiasLRLmQo
— Daniel Friedman (@DanFriedman81) January 20, 2026
