Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, who also took part in the visit by House and Senate lawmakers, said he would push ahead with legislation to curb Trump’s power to act unilaterally.
A bipartisan group of American lawmakers introduced a bill this week to prevent Washington from invading a fellow NATO member. (Greenland, as a Danish territory, is part of the Atlantic alliance.) Congress can force votes on constraining presidential war powers, but recent efforts to rein in Trump have not succeeded. Even if it did pass, the White House has asserted any such measure would be unconstitutional.
Coons also undercut Trump’s arguments about Greenland from a national security perspective.
“Are there real, pressing threats to the security of Greenland from China and Russia?” Coons said. “No, not today.”
Trump has invoked the specter of Russian and Chinese warships in the Arctic as an argument for seizing control of Greenland. Conns said such claims were “rhetoric” rather than “reality.”
The president’s threats have sparked a full-blown diplomatic transatlantic crisis. Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and his Greenlandic counterpart Vivian Motzfeldt met with U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this week at the White House to discuss the matter as European nations rushed to deploy troops to the Arctic territory.