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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. I want to repeat something I said at the top of the show today because, of course, I know the audience turns over during the morning. I want to thank Brigid and Tiffany and Amina, Brigid Bergin, Tiffany Hansen, Amina Srna, for filling in in recent days. Some of you have asked about why I've been out so much.

My mom has been going through some health things that are demanding more of my time to help her and my dad right now. Of course, that's got to be a priority for me at the moment. It is great to be back today, let me tell you. My attendance is likely to be inconsistent for a period of time going forward. I just wanted to say that out loud because I know some of you have been calling and texting and asking, so thank you for understanding. Of course, my colleagues are fabulous hosts, so please be nice to them on any day that I'm out, all right? Back to the present.

A year and a day into his second term, President Trump seems to be pushing the limits of presidential power. I don't have to tell you that, right? Both on the domestic and international levels. The administration has turned the blue state of Minnesota recently into a testing ground for Trump's most extreme national policies, as many people see them, including door-to-door mass deportation, you don't have to have committed a crime, et cetera, and the threat of military deployments on US soil, in addition to what ICE has already done there.

He's also going after those he sees as political enemies in Minnesota, pushing his Justice Department to investigate Democrats Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who have been outspoken against these policies. The country of Greenland, as you've been hearing, is now a testing ground for Trump's international policies, threatening even the future of NATO by threatening to annex another NATO member's territory without the agreement of the rest of the NATO members and with or without military force, imposing an additional 10% tariff also on several European countries, unless a deal is reached. This is not using tariffs for trade purposes. This is using them as punishment or pressure to get them to agree to the US acquiring Greenland. Here is the president at the World Economic Forum in Davos just this morning, making some news on this.

President Donald Trump: We never ask for anything, and we never got anything. We probably won't get anything, unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be, frankly, unstoppable, but I won't do that, okay? Now, everyone's saying, "Oh, good." That's probably the biggest statement I made because people thought I would use force. I don't have to use force. I don't want to use force. I won't use force. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland.

Brian Lehrer: President Trump at Davos this morning. Our next guest writes that this year's midterms, only 285 days away, will be a referendum on the president's actions, both domestic and abroad. Joining us now is Amy Davidson Sorkin, staff writer at The New Yorker. You know her Close Read articles from over the years, which have been so amazing. Her latest article is titled An Unhappy Anniversary: Trump's Year in Office. Amy, always great to have you. Welcome back to WNYC.

Amy Davidson Sorkin: Thanks so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: When I saw the headline of your article, An Unhappy Anniversary: Trump's Year in Office, I was ready for the Amy Davidson Sorkin big think right out of the box, but it was on the news of the last three days. I guess that represents what the big think is on this year in office, doesn't it?

Amy Davidson Sorkin: Yes. Who would have thought a year ago that the big news this morning would be that we're not actually about to invade a NATO ally? Yet, that sums up a lot that's been building over the years, a gradual realization that he's kind of serious, not only about Greenland, but about a lot of what sometimes seems like big talk.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and I'll just acknowledge that I mentioned that clip, that statement that he won't use force earlier in the show, and it broke. We immediately got some texts from people who said, "Why do you believe him, or why should we believe him?" He might turn around in two months and say, "Well, now, I have to use force."

Amy Davidson Sorkin: That's an excellent point. If you look at that phrase that he had, "I don't want to, I don't have to, I won't," are those conditional? Are they all synonyms? It's hard to know. He says he's not going to use force. That doesn't mean he's not going to use strength. The tariffs we've talked about, he feels he's owed Greenland. It's a bit remarkable. Also, in his Davos speech this morning, we know the question is, why Greenland?

He talked about it being a big, beautiful piece of ice. He talked about some of the national security reasons why you might want Greenland, this golden dome that he wants to build, the American equivalent of the Iron Dome missile defense, the strategic location of Greenland. Of course, all of those things are better achieved within the framework of NATO that doesn't feel it's being beaten up and abandoned. He's talked about minerals. You could say the same thing, but he thinks about it differently.

He talked a lot this morning about, basically, that Europe is ungrateful, and all America wants, and all America should get is Greenland. He talked about how the US had occupied Greenland during World War II, when Denmark had fallen to the Nazis, and that we should have kept it. We should have never let it go. In the clip that you played, he talked about, "We never asked for anything." What preceded that was complaints about NATO paying its share of defense, but it's more than that. It's more than--

Brian Lehrer: A lot of people think he was right on that one.

Amy Davidson Sorkin: Well, a lot of Europeans, in retrospect, think that he was right, that they had left too much to the US. Obama pushed them on this. He's also saying not only do they need to take control of their own defense right now, but somehow, as back pay, we should get Greenland, that we're owed it. He talked about how maybe we wouldn't psychologically feel the same impulse to protect Greenland if it wasn't ours. It's this very me, ours, property kind of concept of foreign policy, which is interesting.

Brian Lehrer: Consistent with his approach to other things, right?

Amy Davidson Sorkin: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Me, mine, ours.

Amy Davidson Sorkin: Me, mine, ours. The me of Trump and the ours of the United States, sometimes they're interchangeable. Sometimes you're not quite sure what order they go in in terms of priority.

Brian Lehrer: Tomorrow, we're going to talk to a foreign affairs expert about Greenland and defense and China and Russia, those aspects of the president's argument that you were just citing. I don't know if this is too far off your beat to have a substantive answer at this point. As you were citing, he said, taking control of Greenland is vital for US national security because of Russia and China's Arctic influence. He referenced a golden dome, he called it, that would protect not only the US but Canada from Russian missiles if the US gets Greenland. Have you heard any European or Canadian, for that matter, reaction to that?

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Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Amy Davidson Sorkin: For one thing, Arctic security is important, but there's a lot that we could do, for example, in Alaska, which is part of the United States. There's a lot that we could do in cooperation with Europe. It's not crazy to think, how can we integrate the Arctic more closely into our shared security? What seems strange is to break away, to say that we're going to just do this while alienating a lot of other countries who also have Arctic interests.

He talked a lot about, what could Denmark do? Denmark can't really defend Greenland on its own. Really, can anybody in this world defend anything completely on their own? There's a real contradiction between his scorn for Denmark and little Denmark. They have no business having a role in Greenland, and his concept that Greenland is important to security. The one interesting thing in this for me is that there are Greenlanders as well. [chuckles]

Greenland is a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark. There's been an interesting history with Greenlanders and Denmark that hasn't always been good. It's been an exploitative relationship at different stages in history. I suppose the one good thing that could come out of this, assuming nothing really terrible comes out of it, is if there's more attention paid by the Danes to the real interests of the people living in Greenland. That's already happening a bit.

Brian Lehrer: On the people of Greenland themselves, there were big demonstrations against this in the last few days. Listener writes, "Like a colonialist country, the native communities don't even get mentioned about Greenland. They don't exist like here at home or South America or everywhere else." Another listener writes, "Has anyone noticed that Trump has had another problem with another large body of water and calling NATO the 'North American Treaty Organization' rather than the North Atlantic Treaty Organization?" I hadn't noticed that. If the listener is accurate, that's interesting.

Amy Davidson Sorkin: That is interesting. There was a poll last year that said only a very small single-digit fraction, I think, maybe a little more than that, of Greenlanders were interested in joining the United States, but a majority of Greenlanders were interested in independence. There's definitely things for the Greenlanders and the rest of the Danes to talk about, but I don't know that it's going to be really helpful the way we're going about encouraging that conversation.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we'll have time for another few listeners to get in if you want for Amy Davidson Sorkin, staff writer at The New Yorker, whose new article is titled An Unhappy Anniversary, no bones there about her opinion, Trump's Year in Office. 212-433-WNYC, call or text, 212-433-9692. Before we leave Greenland on the politics of it, the domestic politics of it, you write in your piece, "For at least some other Republicans at this one-year juncture, the breaking point may be Trump's uncannily serious talk of buying or seizing Greenland, a territory of our NATO ally, Denmark." Where have Republicans come down on Greenland? Why do you cite this as a possible breaking point?

Amy Davidson Sorkin: Because some of them who I think were cruising along when they thought the Greenland thing was just the thing he threw into a speech at a rally are realizing that there are some seriousness to it and serious consequences to it and pushing back a bit. Now, there are some limits to that. A lot of them preface their reservations about it by saying, "Greenland is really important, but this isn't the way to go about it." Thom Tillis, I thought, was interesting, has said that he thought there could be a--

Brian Lehrer: Republican senator from North Carolina.

Amy Davidson Sorkin: Republican senator from North Carolina said that he thought that if Trump actually tried to use military action against Greenland, that there could be a veto-proof invocation of the War Powers Act. Thom Tillis, incidentally, is not running for re-election, which might free things up. I think that there's a high level where this is quite threatening.

If you look also at the tools that Europe has, a lot of them are economic. Not everybody in the Republican Party wants the stock market to really suffer if there's uncertainty over Greenland. There are a lot of reasons. It also separately plays to an existing division even within the MAGA movement about what it means to be America First. There's a strong isolationist wing in that movement that's unhappy with foreign entanglements.

Taking on an Arctic colony would be a foreign entanglement in that way. I think that a lot of people are still getting their minds around this and waiting to see in what way he would enforce his opinion on this in terms of people who have primary challenges, all of that, but there does seem to be some unusual pushback within the Republican Party on the idea of invading NATO. [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: Right. [chuckles] Neil in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with Amy Davidson Sorkin from The New Yorker. Hi.

Neil: Yes. Hi, Brian. Hello, Ms. Sorkin. I am a School of Foreign Service of Georgetown-trained foreign policy analyst. You have alluded to the fact that many of the European leaders are agreeing that Greenland is under-defended and needs more arms and military fighters from Europe and the United States. Also, people have pointed out that there's already that treaty that gives the United States access to Greenland.

It could expand the base. It could bring in soldiers. Anything and everything Trump thinks is important for the defense of Greenland and the European leaders think is already there in this existing treaty. The big mystery is, why is Trump creating chaos to ask for things he may already do? Because maybe his ego, he likes the idea of buying it, but that's not a military issue.

Amy Davidson Sorkin: Absolutely. I believe it's the 1951 treaty where we could put a lot more there. The answer, such as it was that he had in his speech this morning, was, "Why would we care about something that's not ours in the same way?" He said, "Are we really going to want to defend something psychologically that isn't ours, and we should have it anyway?" I'm not saying for a second that his position is really consistent, because you're exactly right. Everything that we logically might have an interest in here, we have better ways to get.

Brian Lehrer: Neil, thank you for your call. I want to move from Greenland to Minnesota. You write in your article about, of course, Trump sending an estimated 3,000 ICE officers. 3,000 according to Politico. You write, "Depending on what Trump does next, Minneapolis may become the scene not only of passing chaos, but of a breakdown in the relationship between Americans and their government." "A breakdown in the relationship between Americans and their government." Why did you put it that way?

Amy Davidson Sorkin: Look at the streets of Minnesota right now. There's so much uncertainty. There are so many different ways this can go. Today, there were the political leader, the mayor of Minneapolis, got subpoenas from federal investigators, from a grand jury. There's this breakdown of federal power, state power, local power, and just the lives that people live in the city. All of those things seem to be at odds. Really, any miscalculation right now, I think, could bring us in a really dangerous direction, very uncharted. For all of that about the political meaning of Minnesota, I don't want to lose sight of just how hard it is for people there now to think about what it means to be a member of that community.

Brian Lehrer: In your own opinion, Amy, is the way they're using the Justice Department perhaps the single biggest move into authoritarianism of the last year? Anyone whose political or policy positions Trump doesn't like, if they're prominent enough, seem to suddenly be under criminal investigation. The mayor and governor of Minnesota, most recently relevant to that issue, the head of the Federal Reserve, Senator Mark Kelly, for saying the military should disobey illegal orders. James Comey, Letitia James, all of that.

Amy Davidson Sorkin: Let me say two things. First, I think it's hard to rank all of these. For me, the most pernicious move, attempted move has to do with Trump trying to get rid of birthright citizenship. Hopefully, that won't succeed. In terms of attempts, that's so pernicious. In terms of using the justice system, I know a lot of people feel really, "What can you do?" So helpless.

One thing I always say is that one thing that people can do is keep serving on juries. A couple of those attempts that you've mentioned, there's been pushback from the grand juries themselves that have declined to go along with prosecutors. It is very dangerous. We haven't yet seen that all of the tools that we have as democratic citizens, they have not yet been and hopefully never will be rendered inert. We do still have real tools, so I wouldn't give in to doom just yet.

Brian Lehrer: Well, spoiler alert. This is how your article ends that people horrified, I guess you might say, by the MAGA vision of executive power, that for those people, 2026 will be the year for pushing back against Trump with a ballot in one hand and a lawsuit in the other. On the lawsuits, a listener writes, "Can the guest address how the expected Supreme Court decision on tariffs generally would impact the so-called 'Greenland tariffs'? Alternatively, what is the justification used by Trump in this instance to impose additional tariffs?" Maybe the question should be more broadly stated, even than that, that he's using tariffs not just as trade policy, but as pressure against all kinds of countries to do all kinds of things that he just wants them to do. That seems authoritarian to people. We will find out any day if the Supreme Court thinks it is.

Amy Davidson Sorkin: I would say a couple of things to that. One is, yes, we're going to find out a lot from the Supreme Court in the next couple of months. They have a lot of things on their plate that they stalled a lot in the first year of Trump, sent things back to lower courts. Now, they're going to have to make some decisions. Depending on what they decide, the answers to that question about tariffs in particular is going to be really different depending on what the decision looks like.

The other thing I'd say on tariffs is that although Trump-- the Supreme Court will say, but seems to have overstepped his authority, his authority is substantial. I think one of the important things that we've learned this year is that even within the limits of the law, the presidency has too much power. That's something we're really going to want to think about as we move on from Trump, as I believe we will in one way or the other, in a good direction, in a darker direction. The presidency itself has lost some limits along the way.

There's too much discretion, too much deference to the president's judgments, too much that goes into effect when the president says there's an emergency going on. We really need to do some recalibration there. One of the problems with Trump and the courts is that some of what he does is lawful but awful. Not everything that's terrible is actually a violation of the law that the courts can correct, which is where the ballot comes in as well. That's why the midterms are going to be so important, too.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, that's why you wrote, "A lawsuit in one hand, but a ballot in the other." To that point, listener writes, "ICE and border protection are being used as a domestic army and federal police force that can be deployed for any mission, legal or illegal, by the president at will, and yet Democrats are still talking about increased training and refused to talk about disbanding the Department of Homeland Security and making immigration enforcement a more limited task under an agency with greater accountability to Congress." That critique of the Democrats from a listener in a text. You did mention in your article that the Democratic hopefuls for senator for Minnesota are quarreling over how to talk about ICE. Is that the question of whether to abolish it like that listener wants, or just curb its abuses?

Amy Davidson Sorkin: Not exactly those questions, but similar questions in that general divide. Remember, though, that Minnesota is a complicated place right now. It's going to have an open Senate seat because Senator Tina Smith is retiring. Whenever there's an open Senate seat, there's just a lot more uncertainty in the election. There's also been the social services fraud scandal. There are a lot of moving parts here, and a lot of distrust all around.

It's also, though, as you're suggesting, a place where the divide between the more centrist Democrats and the more progressive Democrats is going to come into play. Just as an example of how much is going on in Minnesota right now, Michele Tafoya, the football commentator, just entered the race as a Republican this morning for that Senate seat. It's going to be really interesting. I think so much of what we're thinking about on a national level is going to play out in Minnesota in one way or the other.

Brian Lehrer: Before you go, and this also relates to Minnesota, but really on the personal level for so many families in this country and individuals and way beyond Minnesota, you write about how, "Cruelly, sadly it is not necessarily unconstitutional," you put it, "to remove temporary protected status," or what they call humanitarian parole, "for people from countries in crisis, including Venezuela, Somalia," of course, Somalia is the most relevant to Minnesota, "Nepal, and others without regard to how settled in their communities or law-abiding they may be, or the dangers to them in their home countries."

To me, and we've talked about it here, it's a tell that it's not just about removing violent gangs or individuals. They just want to keep the country demographically more like it is, meaning mostly more white. Do you think that subtext has become text for many Americans in those applications of immigration law that you cited?

Amy Davidson Sorkin: There's a lot to that. The other text and subtext thing is that it's been a long time since we've really managed to, with Congress, have real progress on immigration and on recognizing the fact that there are families who lived here for a long time with status that's not bulletproof, let's say. This goes back to the powers, though, of the president and our willingness to let those expand.

Biden did use the powers of the president to designate people for temporary protected status and humanitarian parole without having the protection or an act of Congress. That left people vulnerable. We need to do more than that. We need to do more than rely on this. Right now, we have a sympathetic president. Right now, we have a cruel president. We need to think about where political power lies in the country and how to balance the different branches and the different interests.

Brian Lehrer: Let me go back to Davos for just one second and Greenland, because the listener wrote-- Knowing that you watched the Trump speech there this morning, I gather the Canadian Prime Minister Carney also gave a speech. Listener writes, "Can your guest comment on Prime Minister Carney's Davos speech, which earned a rare standing ovation, and his use of the word 'hegemons' as a stand-in for Trump?" Did you happen to see it before you came on?

Amy Davidson Sorkin: I read about it, but I also did see Trump mocking the speech in his own speech. It's interesting that Canada has taken this. Canada has really done some self-examination and is becoming an international actor in a different way, I think it's fair to say, than a few years ago. It was interesting also that Trump responded. That did seem to nettle him because he did take some time in his speech to push back against it.

Brian Lehrer: Just a correction, I said that speech was this morning. Actually, Carney spoke yesterday. There we leave it with Amy Davison Sorkin, staff writer at The New Yorker. Her latest article is titled An Unhappy Anniversary: Trump's Year in Office. Always great to have you on, Amy. Thank you very much.

Amy Davidson Sorkin: Thanks so much, and all best wishes with your parents, too.

Brian Lehrer: Very nice of you to say. Thank you.

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