DONALD TRUMP

New Republic - Trump’s biggest congressional obstacle may be MAGA diehards.Trump and the hard-right House Freedom Caucus have been politically misaligned of late, according to reporting from Punchbowl News. The rift began when some caucus members chose to endorse Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley over Trump way back in the GOP primary. It’s only gotten worse since then.

During last week’s Speaker debacle, the Freedom Caucus Ralph Norman and Keith Self had to be personally lobbied over the phone by the president-elect himself to begrudgingly cast their votes for Mike Johnson. And they also seem to have a problem with how Trump’s congressional liaison and former HFC member James Braid is conducting funding negotiations, taking issue with his calling in to a meeting to lobby members on freezing the debt ceiling. This was the same day 38 Republicans, many of whom were Freedom Caucus members, defied Trump and voted against the Continuing Resolution he had endorsed.

New York Times - President-elect Donald Trump said on Tuesday that ‘no new windmills’ would be built in the United States when he takes office, a direct rebuke of the Biden administration, which has approved 11 commercial-scale offshore wind projects....

[Windmills are] an energy source he has bashed ever since he unsuccessfully tried to stop an offshore wind farm from being built in view of one of his Scottish golf courses. Mr. Trump insisted that wind farms “obviously” kill whales, although scientists have said there is no evidence to support that, and he said turbines “litter” the country and are like “garbage in a field.”

Why It’s Still Important That Our Felon President Face a Sentence

National Memo -   At a press conference on Tuesday, Donald Trump said that it’s possible that he’ll use military force to control Greenland and the Panama Canal once he’s president.

A reporter asked Trump if he could assure that he would not use military or economic coercion to assume control of the two territories, of which he previously said he wants to seize control.

“No. I can’t assure you on either of those two, but I can say this: We need them for economic security,” he said, later adding that “it might be that you’ll have to do something.”

Trump can’t seem to stop bringing up the potential purchase of Greenland, which his son Donald Trump Jr. is currently visiting to reportedly record a podcast.

“Don Jr. and my Reps landing in Greenland. The reception has been great. They, and the Free World, need safety, security, strength, and PEACE! This is a deal that must happen. MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The Guardian - France has warned Donald Trump against threatening the “sovereign borders” of the European Union after the US president-elect refused to rule out military action to take control of Greenland, an autonomous territory of the EU member Denmark. The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, told France Inter radio: “There is no question of the EU letting other nations in the world, whoever they may be, attack its sovereign borders.”

National Memo -  President-elect Donald Trump announced plans to rename the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America” as part of his freewheeling, often wild speech at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday. “We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” Trump said. “What a beautiful name. And it’s appropriate. It’s appropriate. And Mexico has to stop allowing millions of people to pour into our country.”