Will Trump Win Greenland or Lose Europe? Plus. . .

It’s Tuesday, January 20. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: A video report on the activists smuggling Starlink terminals into Iran. Can the sports betting genie be put back in the bottle? Arthur Brooks on how public intellectuals lost America’s trust. And much more.

But first: The president really wants Greenland.

It reads like something out of a #NeverTrump fever dream: Donald Trump pressuring a European prime minister to hand over Greenland to the United States, in part because he was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. That’s exactly what happened late on Sunday.

Here’s the message Trump sent to Norwegian premier Jonas Gahr Støre:

Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT

Where to start? When the news broke Monday, the reaction in Europe was one of complete shock. Economist Ken Rogoff happened to be in Davos, where Europe’s technocratic and business elite gather every year for the World Economic Forum. In 25 years of attending the summit, he writes in our pages this morning, “I have never heard the Europeans as worked up as they are about Donald Trump’s threats to Greenland this week.”

Trump arrives in Davos on Wednesday and seems set on expanding the territory of the United States by hundreds of thousands of square miles before he leaves. So how will Europe respond? What would a trade war between Europe and America mean for the global economy? And who will blink first? Ken has answers to those questions in his column today.

It’s not just the technocrats hobnobbing in the Swiss Alps who are up in arms about the president’s saber-rattling. As Rod Dreher reports in his column today, the continent’s conservative populist parties are just as outraged. Politicians who ordinarily support Trump are denouncing him and are being forced to reconsider their position because, as Rod puts it, “they are patriots.”

Rod, who voted for Trump, says the president “seems to have lost his mind” and warns that his Greenland bullying “risks destroying America’s reputation abroad,” “threatens European sovereignty,” and drives voters away from the very parties the Trump administration says are key to Europe’s revival. Read Rod and Ken for two perspectives on Trump, Greenland, and Europe.

—Oliver Wiseman

WATCH: Iran’s Starlink Smugglers

For the past 23 days, Iranian protesters have flooded the streets in the largest anti-government protests in the Islamic Republic’s history. In response, the fundamentalist regime has unleashed a violent crackdown, killing thousands. Internet and phone service have been cut off by the government since January 8.

And yet the outside world has been able to see some images and videos of the atrocities committed in Iran, all thanks to Starlink terminals smuggled into the country that allow the Iranian people to bypass the regime’s internet shutdown. In a Free Press video report, Rafaela Siewert and Tanya Lukyanova go inside the effort to get the story of the Iranian protesters—and the bloody crackdown—out of the country and broadcast to the world. Watch it here:

Relatives of the passengers of the train from Puerta de Atocha to Huelva come to the Huelva train station. (Clara Carrasco via Getty Images)

• At least 40 people were confirmed dead in Sunday night’s high-speed train collision in Spain. The death toll is expected to rise as investigators continue to search for bodies, some of which were found hundreds of yards from the crash site, authorities said. The cause of the crash hasn’t been determined.

• Anti-gay bias among Americans rose 10 percent from the start of 2021 to the end of 2024, new research found. The researchers found that the trend was most robust among Americans under 25.

• Valentino Garavani, the Italian fashion designer famous for high-end clothing and high-society clients, died yesterday at 93. He was best known for dressing First Ladies and movie stars—including Jackie Kennedy and Julia Roberts—and for his signature shade of “Valentino red.”

• China’s birth rate fell to its lowest level since the country began recording the figures in 1949. China’s infamous one-child policy and strict immigration laws, conceived to limit overpopulation, now threaten the economic growth of what was once the world’s most populous nation. China now trails India.

• More than 170 Christians were abducted during church services in northern Nigeria on Sunday, according to Nigeria’s Daily Trust. Nine victims were able to escape, while 163 remained in captivity, according to Joseph John Hayab, chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria in its northern region.

• The Justice Department said it will pursue charges against people who interrupted a St. Paul, Minnesota, church service on Sunday to protest ICE. “You are on notice!” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon told former CNN host Don Lemon, who responded that he was covering the protest, not participating in it.

• Waistline slimming may soon lead to airline savings as American passengers increase their use of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. A new study from Jefferies Research Services found that if drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy produce a 10 percent slimmer population, airline fuel costs would shrink by 1.5 percent and earnings per share would rise by 4 percent.

• Only one Democrat out of nearly 20 seen as possible presidential contenders in 2028—Rahm Emanuel—gave a clear answer when asked by Axios if boys should be able to play girls’ sports. He said no.