White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt snapped Thursday at a reporter who didn’t buy her attempt to dismiss President Donald Trump’s repeated mentions of canceling elections.

During a White House press briefing, a reporter asked Leavitt why the president kept mentioning canceling elections. Trump had pointed out while speaking to Reuters that presidents never do well in the midterm elections, and bragged that because his administration has already accomplished so much, maybe the democratic process wasn’t necessary at all.

“When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election,” Trump said. The president had made a similar remark while speaking to Republicans at the Kennedy Center last week.

“The president was simply joking,” Leavitt said. “He was saying, ‘We’re doing such a great job, we’re doing everything American people thought, maybe we should just keep rolling.’ But he was speaking facetiously.”

The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg posed a follow-up. “Are you saying the president finds the idea of cancelling elections funny?”

“Andrew, were you in the room? No you weren’t. I was in the room, I heard the conversation. And only someone like you would take that so seriously, and pose that in a question in that way,” Leavitt replied.

But Trump’s repeated threats to cancel essential democratic processes get more real all the time, as Democrats continue to gain momentum ahead of the midterm elections. Earlier Thursday, he threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which some have speculated he could use to seize control of the states—and even suspend elections.

NATO is rallying to protect Greenland from the United States.

Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, and Switzerland have all confirmed plans to deploy military personnel to Greenland, after diplomatic talks with the United States this week ended in disaster, CNBC reported Thursday. 

French President Emmanuel Macron announced on X Wednesday that the French military would “participate in the joint exercises” organized by Denmark in Greenland called Operation Arctic Endurance. The BBC reported that senior French diplomat Olivier Poivre d’Arvor confirmed that initial deployment of  just 15 service members was intended to “show the U.S. that NATO is present.”

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson also announced Wednesday that “several officers” from the Swedish Armed Forces had been sent “at Denmark’s request.” The BBC reported two Norwegian soldiers, one British military officer, and a Dutch naval officer had also been sent. 

Following a meeting Wednesday with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President JD Vance, and other U.S. representatives, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke said that he “didn’t manage to change the American position.” And Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who did not attend the meeting, said there was still a “fundamental disagreement” about the “American ambition to take over Greenland.”

Ahead of talks Wednesday, Trump proclaimed again that the United States “needs” Greenland in order to build his “Golden Dome” security system. 

President Trump wants to put U.S. boots on the ground in Mexico to fight drug cartels, once again reinforcing his complete disregard for the concept of state sovereignty.

According to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, Trump has been pushing for “the participation of U.S. forces,” even though Mexico says it’s not necessary.

Nonetheless, The New York Times has reported that the Trump administration prefers to send either Special Forces (green berets) or CIA officers to join Mexican forces while they raid suspected fentanyl labs. Trump first made the request early last year but raised the idea again after the U.S. military abducted Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.

The Mexican government remains staunchly opposed to the proposition.

“We have highly trained army units and special forces,” Mexico’s national security chief, Omar García Harfuch, said last month. “What would they be needed for? … What we need is information.” Harfuch has overseen what he says is a fourfold crackdown on labs and cartels since Sheinbaum came into power.

This has been a long time coming. Trump has floated bombing and invading Mexico

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