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‘We do not want to be Americans’: Greenlanders on Trump comments, Vance visit

After decades spent amassing golf courses, mega-mansions and Manhattan skyscrapers, President Donald Trump is now setting his sights on what could be the biggest acquisition of his career: the world’s largest island.

He’s expressed a keen interest in obtaining Greenland — an 836,000 square mile semi-autonomous Danish territory — for the United States, marking an unprecedented bid for territorial expansion that would rival the Louisiana Purchase.

There’s just one problem. Most of the 56,000 people who live on the ice-covered Arctic landmass aren’t on board.

In interviews, Greenlanders expressed outrage at Trump’s heavy-handed overtures and delivered a blunt reply: “We do not want to be Americans.”

Reaction to Trump overtures

Reactions to Trump from Greenlanders have shifted over time. When he first talked publicly about acquiring the territory in 2019, it wasn’t taken too seriously.

“It was a joke, laughable even,” Anguteeraq Jessen Larsen, a 26-year-old fashion designer from Maniitsoq, told McClatchy News. “We didn’t make a big thing out of it.”

But, since returning to the White House, Trump has doubled down on his desire to annex the Arctic island — in addition to other territories — resulting in a growing concern.

In December, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”

Two months later, during his March 6 joint address to Congress — after supporting Greenland’s right to self-determination — he said, “One way or the other, we’re going to get it.” And, in a March 30 interview with NBC News, he refused to rule out the use of military force to acquire the territory.

The New York Times also reported on April 10 that the administration has moved forward with a “formal plan” — which does not include a military option — to obtain Greenland.

In response to these moves, apathy has given way to alarm.

“People have been moved,” Naleraq Eugenius, a 39-year-old theater technician from Nuuk, the territory’s capital, told McClatchy News. “Some are afraid, some are confused, but most of them are quite angry.” “Many of us are very uneasy,” Bruno Josefsen, a 51-year-old municipal worker in Qaqortoq, told McClatchy News. “Trump and his administration are rude the way they behave towards us.”

This feeling that Trump has shown a lack of respect to the people of Greenland — and failed to take into account their opinions — was shared by others.

“It’s like we have no say,” Kim Andersen, a 34-year-old project manager from Aasiaat, told McClatchy News. “We have to just accept ‘the threat of annexation.’” He added: “I trust Trump enough that he won’t ‘rain fire’ upon us.”

Larsen said it is “ridiculous” how local residents are treated “like a Monopoly piece.”

Response to Vance visit

One of the biggest developments in Trump’s quest to appropriate Greenland came when Vice President JD Vance visited the island in late March — a last-minute trip that was slammed by Danish officials as “completely unacceptable.”

Speaking at a U.S. military base in Pituffik, Vance accused Denmark of underinvesting in the territory’s security, citing growing interest from China and Russia in Arctic sea routes and mineral resources.

“I think we do have to be more serious about the security agreement,” he said. “We cannot just ignore this place. We cannot just ignore the president’s desires.”

Some Greenlanders were not outright opposed to his visit in principle.

“I think it is ok to visit Greenland. It is (a) free democratic country. We have been political allies,” Sivalerak Terkilsen, a 44-year-old police officer from Nuuk, told McClatchy News, adding, “I think political leaders should talk about the security question.”

Others took issue with the vice president’s presence and rhetoric.

“Most of the people in Greenland were very against JD Vance(‘s) visit,” Eugenius said. “I know that they don’t have bad intentions, but treating Greenlandic people without respect is no diplomacy.”

Vance’s remarks about bolstering Greenland’s security came across as ironic given the threat it currently faces is from Trump himself, Larsen said.

“The ‘security’ they think of is they know Greenland (has) a lot of minerals and resources they can use,” she said.

“It could be more reassuring if Trump and his administration could say ‘we want to talk to you and cooperate with you’ instead of saying ‘we want Greenland here and now,’” Josefsen said.

Greenland’s future

So, what future do Greenlanders envision for themselves? Certainly not one with apple pie, the NFL and U.S. statehood.

“In my knowledge, and through talking to fellow Greenlanders, the opinion is that we do not want to be Americans,” Taatsi Berthelsen, a 37-year-old from Nuuk and the owner of tourism company Greenland Explorer, told McClatchy News.

“We have a similar lifestyle. Hunting and fishing is ‘freedom’ here,” Andersen said. But, he added, “I don’t want to be part of the U.S.”

Larsen was unequivocal: “To be a part of America? Never in a million years.”

A January poll, commissioned by the Danish newspaper Berlingske, bore out the same results, finding 85% of Greenlanders do not want to be incorporated into America. Just 6% said they favored joining the U.S.

Most of those interviewed, though, did express interest in political change — in the form of independence from Denmark. However, they acknowledged that this is a complex issue, given that over 50% of the island’s budget is contributed by the Scandinavian country.

In the territory’s recent parliamentary election, independence was the major campaign issue, with the business-friendly Demokraatit party — which supports Greenland breaking free from Denmark eventually — winning a plurality of voters.

“We want to seek full independence,” Berthelsen said. “In order to do that, we need way more investments in the country.”

“Independence doesn’t come overnight,” Larsen said, but it is “a wish for the future.”

Others suggested they would be open to working with the U.S. — to improve their economy and security — in order to attain their ultimate goal of independence.

But, the main point, Terkilsen said, is that these decisions are “up to people in Greenland, not Denmark or the U.S.”

Why is there a generational divide on Israel in the US? Experts explain

The mention of Israel and the Palestinian territories often divides Americans along generational lines — with older generations, by and large, more sympathetic to Israelis, while the young are increasingly siding with Palestinians, polls have shown.

This generational rift grew into a chasm following the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas, which has so far left 1,200 Israelis and more than 15,000 Palestinians dead, according to officials from both governments.

Sixty-five percent of voters 65 and older sympathize primarily with Israelis, and 52% of voters under 34 sympathize more with Palestinians, according to a Nov. 16 Quinnipiac University poll.

“Younger American voters, 18-34 are much less inclined to support Israel militarily and not nearly as supportive of Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 massacre as older Americans we polled,” Tim Malloy, a polling analyst at Quinnipiac University, told McClatchy News.

Why exactly the generations are so at odds over Israelis and Palestinians was not polled, Malloy said.

But academics, activists and public opinion experts told McClatchy News that a variety of long-standing factors — including differences in media consumption, historical narratives and demographic changes — likely come into play.

“There’s so much that flows into the views that we have,” Thomas Patterson, a Harvard University professor who researches public opinion, told McClatchy News. “I think there’s quite a lot going on here below the surface.”

Media consumption

One prominent factor likely contributing to the generational imbalance is the striking differences in media consumption by age, Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, told McClatchy News.

While baby boomers rely heavily on print media and cable television as a source of political news, millennials and Generation Z are more inclined to use social media for current events coverage, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center poll.

“Very bluntly, I think younger people are much less affected by mainstream media, which they see as very biased,” Khalidi said.

“A lot of students tell me that they follow young people in the Gaza Strip or elsewhere who are livestreaming or doing podcasts and on social media regularly whom they’ve come to trust over time,” Khalidi said.

Through the use of social media, young people have been exposed to the oppression of Palestinians, which often goes uncovered by mainstream outlets, Khalidi said.

Popular cable news networks exemplify this blindspot, Patterson said. “They talk about Palestinians, but they talk a lot more about the Israelis and much more about the Israeli hostages than the Palestinians in jails.”

Social media platforms, however, are far from perfect vehicles for delivering news. Americans who primarily get their news from places like Facebook and Twitter are less informed about current events, according to a 2020 Pew study.

These platforms have the power to polarize young users, sending them down rabbit holes and into echo chambers, Julie Fishman Rayman, the managing director of policy and political affairs at the American Jewish Committee, an advocacy group for Jewish people, told McClatchy News.

“You like one video — whatever the political bent of it is — and suddenly the algorithm is all over you, sending you all sorts of legitimate or not legitimate sites or videos that simply validate or reinforce that message,” Fishman Rayman said.

Historical narratives

The collective narratives about Israel and the Palestinian territories — shaped by the media and influenced by proximity to historical events — have also changed over time, leaving each generation with a unique perspective, one that’s difficult to change, Patterson said.

“For older Americans, the history of Israel is different than if you’re 25,” Patterson said. “This relationship between the U.S. and Israel, and to some degree the U.S. as a protector of Israel, that’s a more deeply embedded idea, I think, in older people than younger people.”

For people who came of age in the wake of World War II, the narrative that captured the public consciousness was that of the Israelis, whose connection to the Holocaust was ever-present, Khalidi said. The story of the Palestinians, though, was largely overlooked.

“I think the time from the Holocaust is absolutely a factor here,” Fishman Rayman said, adding that Israel’s early wars with multiple surrounding countries also shaped perceptions.

“That memory, that sort of Israel as the David and the neighborhood as the Goliath — which was the prevailing narrative for decades — that narrative has been lost,” Fishman Rayman said. “Now, I think, amongst young people especially, Israel is not the David; Israel is the Goliath.”

Social justice

Another factor to consider is that younger generations tend to be more affected by social justice issues, Khalidi said.

Over the years, a variety of social justice movements, like the push for racial equality and environmental rights, have become linked to the movement to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, Sonya Meyerson-Knox, the communications director of Jewish Voice for Peace, an organizations that describes itself as a “progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization,” told McClatchy News.

“I would argue that those movements are never exclusive to the young, but certainly are made up more strongly by younger people,” Meyerson-Knox said.

Fishman Rayman said that an idea exists “especially among young progressives that Palestinian liberation is somehow in the same vein or in line with LGBTQ rights, anti-racism, feminism, climate justice.”

She said it creates a “mental gymnastics” that allows “people to turn a blind eye to Hamas’ really truly evil subjugation of women… the willingness to put Palestinians in harm’s way.”

Changing demographics

Demographic change in the United States also is prone to play a role in shaping public opinion of Israel and the Palestinian territories, Patterson said.

Younger generations are made up of larger percentages of racial minorities, certain groups of which have historically been more sympathetic to Palestinians, Patterson said.

The decline in religious affiliation, too, has probably had an effect on the divide, Patterson said.

White evangelicals, who tend to be older, are far more supportive of Israelis than their nonreligious counterparts, who tend to be younger, Patterson said.

Younger American Jews, as well, have become “less attached to Israel,” Ted Sasson, a professor of Jewish Studies at Middlebury College, told McClatchy News. Though, this detachment partly reflects a “lifecycle dynamic rather than a generational dynamic.”

“Having said that, there’s no guarantee that today’s younger Jews will grow more attached to Israel in the future, as did prior generations,” Sasson said. “Israel’s right-wing government has alienated many American Jews, and the future of the American Jewish-Israel relationship probably depends in some measure on the future composition and conduct of the Israeli government, as well as future dynamics in the American political arena.”

Younger generations, though, are more likely to be affected by current events than their older counterparts, Patterson said.

When you’re young, your opinions are more malleable, as they’re underlied by less information, but as you age, they become more baked in, Patterson said.

“The way our minds’ work, we accumulate these pieces of information and these experiences, and they work their way into our opinions,” Patterson said. “At some point, our opinions kind of stand on their own.”

Marianne Williamson is wowing Gen Z on TikTok. But could she beat Biden in the polls?

Speaking from the edge of the stage at the second Democratic debate in 2019, she railed against corrupt corporations, environmental degradation and “dark psychic forces” of hatred. With the cadence of a fired-up minister and the confidence of John F. Kennedy grasping for the moon, she vowed to overcome then-President Donald Trump with the power of love. By the time the cameras stopped rolling, the relatively unknown author had taken off like a rocket online, becoming the most Googled candidate in 48 states.

For a brief moment, Marianne Williamson had captivated the country.

Now, one failed campaign and four years later, Williamson is back, mounting a second long-shot bid for the presidency.

But this time, her viral moments are being made far from the debate stage — none have been organized by the Democratic National Committee. Instead, they’re being shot on a phone and uploaded online.

She’s tapped into the power of TikTok, with nearly half a million followers and millions of views.

“You always try to get your message heard in whatever way possible and in my case there has clearly been a blackballing of sorts in certain mainstream corners of the media,” Williamson, 70, told McClatchy News. “So, TikTok is an independent media platform that gives you direct access to people.”

Translating her virality into votes, however, will not be easy. The electorate is indeed open to a fresh face, as most voters don’t want Biden or Trump, the front-runners in their respective primaries, to run again, according to an April NBC poll.

But the odds remain stacked against Williamson, who is struggling to be taken seriously, polling in the single digits and facing an incumbent president with the full backing of the DNC.

From author to aspiring politician

Unlike most White House contenders, Williamson has never held public office. She instead made a name for herself as a self-help author and self-described spiritual leader.

Daytime television viewers regularly saw her on The Oprah Winfrey Show. In one episode, she prayed for bickering sisters, and in another, she argued against a military response to 9/11.

The Texas native and West Coast transplant took the well-trodden path from the TV studio to the political arena in 2014, launching a campaign for Congress in California. She ultimately finished fourth after running as an independent in a crowded primary, according to the Los Angeles Times.

She took a second bite at the apple — a much bigger apple — when she announced her run for president in 2020, adopting an ambitious progressive platform. But, after only polling around 1 percent, she ultimately bowed out before primary voting began, according to The New York Times.

Now, she has thrown her hat in the ring once more, adopting a similar policy playbook of bold and potentially controversial proposals while casting Biden as a “typical establishment corporatist Democrat.”

If elected, among her first priorities would be scrapping the Willow Project, an Alaskan oil drilling venture, and canceling all government contracts with union-busting companies.

She would initiate an audit of “every penny spent by the Pentagon,” call for bipartisan police reform, and push for a massive slavery reparations program to the tune of $1 trillion over two decades.

More broadly, she would seek to “transition from a dirty economy to a clean economy and from a war economy to a peace economy,” which she says would include ending all fossil fuel subsidies, increasing corporate tax rates and cutting military spending.

Taking over TikTok

In an effort to promote these progressive policies, Williamson has taken to TikTok, the popular video-sharing app that a growing share of the American population — particularly adults under 30 — turns to for news.

Her videos, which include clips from cable interviews, old The Oprah Winfrey Show appearances and self-recorded shots from her car, have been viewed over 13 million times, according to a TikTok data counter.

Williamson is “all over TikTok,” Ashley Vasel, a 25-year-old veterinarian in Boston, told McClatchy News.

“When I kept seeing her I literally stopped and said wait I don’t even know who else is running,” Vasel said.

Her content seems to have resonated with many Gen Z users, who frequently crop up in the comment sections of videos to offer their wholehearted support.

“Gen Z votes for Marianne!” one commenter said, attracting over 4,500 likes.

“I’m glad the first year I’m able to do a presidential vote there is an actually AMAZING candidate,” said another.

Isaiah Cabino, 24-year-old nonprofit worker in Virginia, has joined the chorus of sympathetic commenters, defending Williamson against skeptical Democrats.

“A lot of modern day Democrat politicians are more centrist, but they use the label progressive,” Cabino told McClatchy News. “I see her as a real progressive candidate.”

The admiration is mutual, Williamson said, noting that she is “particularly fascinated by Gen Z.”

“Most of them were not even born in the 20th century. And they clearly don’t see why they should live their lives at the effect of bad economic ideas left over from the 20th century,” Williamson said. “Gen Z has the healthy rambunctiousness of youth, and many of them seem to relate to the rambunctiousness of my campaign.”

Her boisterous, youthful supporters have ruffled some feathers on TikTok, though, including Yeganeh Mafaher, a 24-year-old political analyst in Los Angeles.

Mafaher told McClatchy News she has been a “victim” of Williamson’s followers, saying they have shown up en masse to comment on her videos that are critical of Williamson.

“It’s kind of like they’re jumping on a bandwagon, almost treating her like a musician,” Mafaher said. “They’re not watching her old stuff. They’re just watching these short, perfectly made clips — almost like Andrew Tate-eque perfect owns that they can support, but they’re not looking at the broader person.”

Roadblocks to the White House

Some who have taken that broader look, and a deeper dive into her past, view her more skeptically.

Her history of promoting dubious holistic health advice, while criticizing vaccines and various medicines, has turned her off to many liberals, Matt McDermott, a Democratic strategist, told McClatchy News.

In her 1992 debut book, “Return to Love,” she called sickness “an illusion,” adding, “Cancer and AIDS and other serious illnesses are physical manifestations of a psychic scream.”

In recent years, she’s come under fire for calling clinical depression a “scam,” and referring to vaccine mandates as “Orwellian” — both statements she later walked back. She has said she supports science and medicine, and is not against vaccines.

Whether for those comments or other political reasons, Williamson has so far failed to gain broad appeal. Only ten percent of Democratic caucus voters in Iowa plan to vote for her, according to a May Emerson poll. Nationally, nine percent of Democratic primary voters said they’d vote for her, while 62% said they support Biden, according to an April Fox poll.

And, unlike four years ago, the DNC has said there will be no debates this time around, stripping Williamson and competitor Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from the chance to take Biden on face to face.

“The party that purports to be the greatest champion of democracy should not be so wary of democracy in our own house,” Williamson said while calling for Biden to debate.

“The reality is that that is just not the historical precedent in either party,” McDermott said. “It is typically always the case that the incumbent, while not literally running unchallenged, basically has the field cleared by the party apparatus.”

Without debates, substantial campaign funding and the ability to get on the ballot in 50 states — a difficult task — any campaign against an incumbent is highly unlikely to be successful, McDermott said.

In fact, only one elected president — Franklin Pierce 167 years ago — ever lost his party’s nomination while seeking a second term, according to NPR.

Still, Williamson is pressing forward with her eyes fixed on the nomination, batting away questions about impact and legacy that dog dark horse candidates.

“When you are on a tightrope, you can’t afford to ask yourself what will happen if I fall,” Williamson said.

Colonists accused of being witches were executed 300 years ago. They may be exonerated

Salem may be synonymous with witch trials, but the superstitious practice has its origins elsewhere.

Decades before the Massachusetts town was swept by mass hysteria, colonial America’s first convicted witches were sent to the gallows in Connecticut.

Now — over three centuries later — these condemned individuals, many of whom were women of humble means, might have their names cleared. After a yearslong push from activists, a resolution has been put before the state legislature that would exonerate them of their alleged crimes and apologize to their descendants.

“It’s a token resolution of remorse basically for the families of the victims, saying we’re sorry this happened to you; it was an injustice,” Beth Caruso, co-founder of the Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration Project, an organization that has lobbied for the resolution, told McClatchy News.

“This is part of Connecticut’s history,” Caruso said. “We embrace the wonderful things about colonial history, but often the darker parts are ignored.”

America’s first witch trials

Witchcraft — which involved consorting with the devil — was criminalized by the English parliament during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and was considered a capital offense in the New England colonies, according to a 2006 Office of Legislative Research (OLR) report.

The law was first enforced in 1647 when a Connecticut woman named Alse Young was tried and executed, making her the first person put to death for witchcraft in America, according to a state judicial branch report. A town administrator briefly noted the event in his diary, writing, “Alse Young was hanged.”

In total, at least 34 Connecticut colonists were indicted on witchcraft charges and 11 were executed between 1647 and 1665, according to the resolution. Of those who were killed, nine were women and two were men.

The women were mostly middle-aged and of low social status, while the men were relatives of accused women — “thus a matter of literal guilt by association,” John Demos, a historian and author of two books on witch hunts, told McClatchy News in an email.

“The reasons for women’s predominance are deeply psychological, I believe — with misogyny, in both men and women, as the galvanizing force,” Demos said.

The intensely religious colonists blamed suspected witches for natural disasters, diseases and other misfortunes, according to the OLR report.

Trials were initiated after a formal complaint was lodged, and a single witness testimony was enough to attain a conviction, according to the report.

If a guilty verdict was reached, the accused individual was hanged to death, Demos said.

“Connecticut proved to be much harsher in its treatment of suspected witches than Massachusetts,” Walt Woodward, the state historian emeritus said in a 2021 lecture, per a video posted on YouTube. “Whereas in Massachusetts a person had a fifty-fifty chance of gaining their freedom, to be indicted for witchcraft in Connecticut during those early years was simply a death sentence.”

Exoneration effort

For years, a group of activists has lobbied the state of Connecticut to acknowledge these early injustices with little luck, Tony Griego, a retired police sergeant and co-founder of the Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration Project, told McClatchy News.

“Many of the elected officials that we wrote to over the years didn’t return our letters,” Griego said.

In 2016, he and Caruso, the author of several historical novels on witch trials, founded the Facebook page CT Witch Memorial to promote awareness of the trials.

The pair began to hear from descendants of both condemned witches and perpetrators, who were asking for something to be done to clear their ancestors’ names, Caruso said.

Several state legislators showed interest in the group’s appeals last year, and one of them requested that a resolution be drafted in January, Caruso said.

The state judiciary committee overwhelmingly voted to approve the resolution in March, clearing the way for it to be brought before the state house and senate this session.

Opponents to the resolution have said that it distracts from more pressing issues affecting living individuals, Caruso said.

“People have said ‘why not talk about current injustices, like the disparities of people in our jails,’” Caruso said. “We totally agree that those things should be addressed. But it’s not like empathy is finite. It’s a false argument that you have to choose one or the other.”

Others have argued that because Connecticut was an English colony at the time of the trials, the state bears no responsibility, Griego said.

In response, Lieutenant Governor Susan Bysiewicz, an advocate of the resolution, told McClatchy News, “Some of the people who participated in the trials actually became leaders of our state,” adding, “Who was in charge really doesn’t matter. We should just take responsibility and tell the world what really happened because we all know.”

Beyond absolving the deceased, there are other reasons to pass the resolution that could have implications for the modern world, Bysiewicz said.

“There are still some countries that have these witchcraft laws on the books, so we should take leadership and hopefully those countries change their laws,” Bysiewicz said.

Thousands of people worldwide are accused of witchcraft every year, often resulting in their death or mutilation, according to the United Nations. Women, children and people with disabilities like albinism are especially vulnerable.

“And also, in light of women being attacked in federal courts, state courts and state legislatures, I think it’s important to stand up for them,” Bysiewicz said.