2026: Even More Craziness

Political Notes

by Jon Fuhrman

Wednesday, January 14. ACT took a holiday break, skipping our December meeting and Phoenix, but we’re back in force in the new year, confronting even more craziness than when we last talked in November.

One hardly knows where to begin. Strikes against civilian boats in the Pacific and the Caribbean that clearly violate international law. Invading a sovereign state to capture their chief of state, even if he had “won” a rigged election. Domestic activity by ICE that seems indisputably to cross Constitutional boundaries.

But there is one Presidential fixation that I wanted particularly to debunk, at least briefly, and that is Greenland. President Trump seems determined to “acquire” Greenland, the easy way or the hard way. The Danish government, and Greenland’s own indigenous government, are clearly saying it’s going to be the hard way; they have no interest in being our 51st state. (By the way, if someone made clear to the President that Greenland would then have two Senators, most likely Democrats, and at least one Representative, also likely a Democrat, perhaps his ardor for annexing the territory might cool.)

What makes the whole thing especially nutty is that we already have an agreement, dating from 1951, which gives us essentially unlimited rights to create military bases and defense areas throughout the whole territory. The text of the 1951 agreement, still in force, reads that “without compensation to the Government … of Denmark”, we can “construct, install, maintain, and operate facilities and equipment”, “station and house personnel”, “control landings, takeoffs, anchorages, moorings, movements and operation of ships, aircraft … and vehicles”, “improve and deepen harbors, channels, entrances and anchorages”. The agreement goes even further to state that “United States ships, aircraft and armed forces shall have free access to Greenland with a view to the defense of Greenland and the rest of the North Atlantic Treaty area.”

So we already have unconstrained access to Greenland, without having to pay the Danes anything. It would appear that no one has bothered to brief the President on the 1951 Agreement, perhaps preferring to avoid the President’s ire and instead let him bumble down a path that would surely lead to a disastrous breach of the NATO agreement.

I infer, though, that there may be some resistance inside the Administration, since we haven’t already simply taken possession of the territory. The idea of paying each Greenlander between $10,000 and $100,000 to buy their consent seems to have gone over like a lead balloon, with the added disadvantage of actually requiring Congressional consent to spend that money. Even Republican Congressional leaders, not surprisingly, are hostile to this whole idea.

Interestingly, Congressional Republicans seem, ever so slightly, to be slipping away from their heretofore slavish loyalty to the President. The most interesting example is the fight over extending subsidies for Obamacare. Democrats in the House favored a simple, clean three-year extension of benefits. Speaker Johnson and the GOP leadership were dead set against that. They tried to bury the legislation in committee, but four GOP Congressmen broke ranks and signed a discharge petition, joining every Democrat, giving the Dems 218 signatures and forcing the bill onto the floor. That was pretty much equivalent to high treason in the GOP camp.

But it got worse. In a preliminary vote to schedule debate, five more GOP members sided with the Dems to pass the procedural measure, and then another 8, to make a total of 17, voted in favor of the final bill. That’s a huge break in their hitherto solid ranks. The bill stands little chance of being approved by the Senate, but these GOP renegades are clearly seeing political peril in allowing healthcare costs to increase dramatically. Nearly all these Representatives come from districts that are R+5 or less favorable, well within the range of districts that were flipped last November. Yet only four of those Reps are listed as Toss-Ups in the Cook ratings, and another 4 as Lean Republican; perhaps these GOP incumbents are seeing political peril on the ground more clearly than the traditional commentators.

In the Senate, five GOP members joined Democrats in passing a War Powers Resolution to constrain the Administration’s use of force against Venezuela. While the Resolution will likely have no practical effect (even if it passes the House, the President can veto it), these votes collectively begin to undermine the appearance, and the reality, of a Congress subservient to an imperial President. With the mid-term elections only 10 months away, that’s not the direction in which the President wants to be moving.

Talking about the mid-terms, the Dems got some excellent news: Mary Peltola, who had twice been elected state-wide as Alaska’s sole member of Congress, will run for the Senate. In the first 24 hours after her announcement, she raised over $1.5 million on-line, which for Alaska is quite a tidy sum. With former Gov. Roy Cooper running in North Carolina, and former Sen. Sherrod Brown running in Ohio against the appointed incumbent, and Gov. Janet Mills running in Maine, Democrats have pretty much fielded their dream team (for which Sen. Chuck Schumer can take significant credit). Pundits are now admitting that the Dems have a real chance at taking back, not just the House, but the Senate as well, with additional longer-shot chances in Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, Kentucky, and maybe even Kansas (should Congresswoman Sharice Davids decide to run).

The critical task facing Congress now is the Jan. 31 deadline to, once again, fund the government. There’s a strong chance that at least 3 bills, permanently funding parts of the government, will be ready for voting next week. The good news there is that one of the bills funds the National Science Foundation and other research arms of the government, and the bills have soundly rejected the budget cuts advocated by the Trump administration. If those bills are approved, then only 6 more appropriations bills remain outstanding. It’s unlikely all 6 could be debated before the end of the month, but with visible progress on those, there may be a willingness to approve another one or two month extension. My guess is there will not be a fight over the “mini-bus” extension (the “mini-bus” would extend funding temporarily for the Departments covered by the 6 bills not yet approved, versus the “omnibus” bill that extended funding for the whole government), with Democrats agreeing that they will not hold up the bill for a further fight over healthcare subsidies. I think that’s the right strategy; we have enough ammunition as it is, so give the GOP enough rope to hang themselves and fight it out next fall, when we have a real chance of taking back control of the whole Congress.