Dear President Trump and Vice President Vance,

Thank you for your kind invitation to take us over and subjugate us as a colonial state.

We will pass.

We like our national health care system, and are not interested in learning the finer points of medical bankruptcy, insurance denials, unaffordable medications, and lack of access. We respect science and would prefer to hang with other nations that do so too. In fact, lots of your best scientists will probably be relocating to Europe soon. We ourselves would be happy to offer asylum to the well-trained doctors your states chase out with abortion bans. Abortion has been legal here since 1975.

We like our national education system. Sure, it can be improved, but our population is nearly 100% literate and many of us are multilingual. We can go to college for free both here and in Denmark, so no one is still paying off student loans when they are ready to retire.

Speaking of retirement, we see that Americans are starting to be alarmed at your administration’s efforts to undermine social safety net programs like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. Here in Greenland, we follow the Nordic Model. Qualifying citizens are entitled to income-replacing benefits in case of unemployment, disease and maternity. Persons with low or no income, who do not meet regularities, are entitled to public benefits. Low-income families also have the right to housing subsidies and child benefits. Residents with reduced work ability can apply for early retirement pension, if younger than 67 years. If 67 years or older, residents are always entitled to age pension. In addition, early retirees and senior residents may receive help and care in their home. If necessary, a nursing home place is offered. Disabled residents are entitled to relief measures to compensate for the disability, including help in daily life from a support person, being accompanied when travelling or full-time stay at a residential institution. Disabled residents may also be offered a protected workshop job.

Yes, all this requires we pay higher taxes. But the trade-off of everyone getting to live a life free of profound hardship is a basic moral value we believe in. It’s not an accident that countries in our area are considered the highest in overall happiness, while the U.S. clocks in at #24, behind your neighbors Canada and Mexico.

We will mention here that we are not impressed by how you treat your territories. No one has forgotten how you tossed paper towels at Puerto Ricans traumatized by a hurricane, after which you and your administration essentially abandoned them. Now we watch your new administration destroy NOAA, which helps alert people to potential disasters, and FEMA, which helps afterward, along with your efforts to extort states who’ve suffered terrible losses with voting restrictions to get funding. You do not treat people well.

We like voting, by the way, and notice that your country doesn’t let your territories vote for president or have voting representatives in Congress. Heck, you don’t even let Washington DC residents have voting federal representatives. Your efforts to suppress voting nationwide to rig the game for your own party have not gone unnoticed. Why would we sign up for similar mistreatment?

We are also dismayed to see your emphasis on removing all historical references to your Brown and Black citizens, removing competition for incompetent white men (like that Hegseth person), and the naked racism of your legislators and border police. This does not seem like a good fit for a country whose population is almost 90% Greenlandic Inuit.

Our countries are also traveling in different directions on other kinds of discrimination. In fact, in 2024, Greenland’s parliament passed a Law on Equal Treatment and Anti-Discrimination that prohibits all discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, [and] gender characteristics,” among other characteristics. This seems to be a problem for you and your Project 2025 bosses and we don’t want to march backwards in time with you.

Greenland is not perfect, we will admit. We’re a small country, and there aren’t a lot of highly-paid jobs. Also it’s really cold here, as you, Vice-President Vance, noted. None of these things can be changed by you, but your policies can make our lives more difficult. The climate change that you and your legislators are determined to both ignore and make worse, is particularly threatening to us as a nation of coastal dwellers. We depend on the sea for much of our livelihoods, and the melting of our glaciers is disrupting this connection, along with our shipping patterns.

You claim that “it’s not possible to properly defend a large section of this Earth, not just the United States” without owning us. But the world already knows you don’t care a fig about NATO or defending democracies in general, and that your friend, Putin, wants you to take us over to legitimize his own attempted seizure of Ukraine. The fact you keep dissing Denmark, a longtime ally, makes this whole argument moot. Also, America’s history of trying to buy us in the past does not give you some type of special permission to keep on doing it. (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/27/trump-reiterates-us-must-have-greenland-ahead-of-jd-vance-visit)
(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/28/putins-endorsement-of-trumps-greenland-takeover-reflects-their-vision-of-a-new-world-order)

For all these reasons and more, we must sadly decline your offer to steal our natural resources.

Also, we have all the red hats that we need, thank you.

Sincerely,

(If we were) Greenland

P.S. On the other hand, if the American people, upon reading this letter, decide that becoming an extension of Greenland would be in their best interests, we’d be happy to have them.

P.S.S. No need to for either of you to visit us anymore. We’re good!

(https://www.csis.org/analysis/seizing-greenland-worse-bad-deal)