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Good morning, I’m Tim Walker with today’s essential stories.
Frederiksen says dispute will not harm ‘good relationship’ with US
The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has said she was surprised and disappointed by Donald Trump’s decision to cancel his visit to Copenhagen, after she dismissed his proposal to buy Greenland as “absurd”. Other Danes and Greenlanders echoed the sentiment, with one former minister calling the US president a “narcissistic fool”. Trump said he scotched the trip as he found the Danish leader’s remarks “nasty”, but she insisted her country’s “good relationship” with the US would be unaffected.
Putin’s influence? Richard Wolffe says Trump’s interest in Greenland might originate with Russia, which covets the arctic island’s unknown quantities of oil, gas and minerals.
‘Chosen One’. On Wednesday, the president doubled down on an antisemitic trope, saying Jewish Americans who voted for Democrats were “disloyal to Israel”. He also described himself as “the Chosen One” to fight a trade war with China.
US to remove limits on length of migrant child detention
The Trump administration has announced plans to eliminate a federal court agreement putting time limits on child detention, allowing the government to hold migrant children with their parents indefinitely. The longstanding Flores agreement says the government must release children as quickly as possible, generally after 20 days. But the administration’s new rule, to be published on Friday, would scrap the time limit and give officials more power to determine the standards of care for families in custody.
Birthright citizenship. Trump said on Wednesday that his administration was looking at ending birthright citizenship, saying: “You walk over the border, have a baby – congratulations, the baby is now a US citizen ... It’s frankly ridiculous.”
Abortion ‘gag rule’ leaves poor women with ‘nowhere to go’
Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest reproductive health provider, withdrew this week from Title X – the federal program which distributes grants to clinics – over the Trump administration’s new “gag rule” banning clinics from referring patients for abortions. That leaves low-income patients in states such as Utah – where Planned Parenthood is the sole Title X provider – with “nowhere to go,” as one Planned Parenthood executives tells Miranda Bryant.
The moral choice? Planned Parenthood was right to refuse federal funding, says Moira Donegan. The Trump administration had put the organisation in an untenable position.
Anti-abortion voters. A survey shows what really motivates anti-abortionists, argues Jill Filipovic: hostility to gender equality and a desire to control women.
Democrats to vote on climate debate as Inslee drops out
Jay Inslee, the Washington state governor who sought the Democratic presidential nomination on a platform devoted to tackling the climate crisis, has dropped out of the 2020 race saying it was clear he could not win. Yet his core issue may yet have its day, with the Democratic National Committee due to vote on Thursday as to whether the party’s remaining 2020 candidates ought to take part in an entirely climate-focused televised debate.
Mileage standards. Automakers are pushing back against the Trump administration’s loosening environmental rules because they want to be seen as on the right side of the climate crisis – and to avoid drawn-out court battles they would ultimately lose, a former senior Obama official has said.
Crib sheet
The US federal deficit is set to reach $1tn in 2020, according to figures released by the Congressional Budget Office. On current projections, the national debt will hit 95% of GDP within 10 years, its highest level since just after the second world war.
Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has claimed without evidence that environmental groups are responsible for a series of fires in the Amazon rainforest, suggesting the blazes were set in order to embarrass his government.
Officials in southern California have reopened an investigation into a group of Orange County high school students seen giving Nazi salutes on video, following the emergence of further videos showing students at the school engaged in hate speech.
Microplastics are increasingly found in drinking water, but there is as yet no evidence that such contamination poses a health risk to humans, a new WHO assessment has concluded.
Must-reads
The snake epidemic eating away at Florida
There are tens of thousands of Burmese pythons in the Florida wild, attacking other large animals and unbalancing ecosystems without a natural predator to stop them – until now. Lance Richardson joins members of the state’s Python Action Team on the hunt.
Trudeau: the rise and fall of a political brand
Justin Trudeau resuscitated Canada’s Liberal party and returned it to power in 2015 on the strength of his image as a rising progressive superstar. But with his government now mired in scandal, Ashifa Kassam finds Canadians beginning to see Brand Trudeau as “Welcome to the new politics, just like the old politics”.
Can Spider-Man survive outside the MCU?
Tom Holland’s friendly, neighbourhood Spider-Man was all set to take Iron Man’s place at the heart of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, until talks between Sony and Disney over the character’s future broke down. Now, as Gretchen Small writes, the web-slinger may be barred from the Avengers altogether.
Powerful Democrats face a looming primary threat
Inspired by the success of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley in 2018, a group of young, diverse, progressive candidates is challenging senior “corporate” Democrats for their safely blue congressional seats in 2020, as Lauren Gambino reports.
Opinion
Owen Jones suffered a violent attack that he believes was motivated by opposition to his leftwing views. Far-right violence is on the rise, he says, and the media is oblivious to the hate preachers who fuel it: the politicians and commentators to whom it offers a bullhorn.
As a white man with a media platform, what happened to me garnered far more interest than the racist murders or serious hate crimes that have far worse consequences than bumped heads and bruises.
Sport
Tom Brady has six Super Bowl rings and nothing left to prove, yet he shows little sign of slowing down. Ian McMahan looks at how the 42-year-old quarterback remains among the NFL’s best with a “Formula One approach” to fitness.
South Korea is considering feeding its own athletes at the 2020 Olympics amid concerns about food safety at next year’s Tokyo Games, after Fukushima city – close to the site of a 2011 nuclear meltdown – was chosen to host several softball and baseball games.
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