In Denmark, Congress reckons with the power it gave away

IN THIS EDITION

In Denmark, Congress confronts the monster it helped create

Trump vs. Thune: POTUS blows up La. Senate race

The midterm messaging war so far

Premium+: Policy coverage you can’t miss

THE TOP

In Denmark, Congress confronts the monster it helped create

Happy Monday morning.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — A bipartisan group of lawmakers who traveled here on an urgent mission to reassure Danish leaders amid President Donald Trump’s escalating threats to acquire Greenland had a straightforward message.

In an interview between high-level meetings, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin summed it up this way: “Give us a chance to give [Trump] a way out of this that comes to the right ending.”

Durbin added: “I don’t know if that’s possible.”

The four-decade veteran of Congress, who’s been on dozens of CODELs, wasn’t just referring to Trump’s apparent determination to take over the Danish territory at all costs, or Republicans’ hesitation to openly defy him. Durbin was giving a sobering assessment of Congress as a supposedly coequal branch of government.

Over the span of several decades and under the leadership of both parties, lawmakers have ceded their authority to the executive branch on everything from war powers to tariffs to the power of the purse. Hill leaders have prioritized avoiding politically difficult votes or been slow to react – or done nothing – as presidents repeatedly pushed the limits of their own power at the expense of Congress.

“It’s not just this moment or this president,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who co-led the delegation. “What makes this moment so hard is, if Congress can’t stand up in the face of something where there is no strategic value and lots of strategic harm…is Congress really willing to exert its authority at all?”

That’s what made this particular CODEL so uniquely difficult — and surreal.

The two-day visit was intended to convey Congress’ and the American public’s opposition to Trump’s Greenland push. But lawmakers were openly grappling with whether they could credibly reassure an ally that the United States won’t violate the territorial sovereignty of a NATO member.

The consequences extend far beyond the potential unraveling of NATO. In many ways, this particular CODEL was an example of Congress trying to confront a monster it helped create: An institution so feeble that constitutional checks and balances are no longer an effective reassurance.

“Yeah, Donald Trump concerns me, but what really concerns me is our willingness to give it up because we don’t want to make hard decisions,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks (N.Y.), the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s top Democrat.

Their Danish counterparts are frustrated too. Flemming Møller Mortensen, one of the parliamentarians who met with the U.S. delegation, told us that while reassurances are meaningful, that’s far from a promise.

Next steps. As tens of thousands of people lined the streets of Copenhagen Saturday to protest Trump’s threats toward Greenland, the president announced he planned to impose new tariffs on Denmark and seven other European nations for opposing his drive to acquire Greenland.

It’s an example not only of Trump exploiting Congress’ decades-long ceding of power to the executive branch, but also of his own party’s unwillingness to push back on him, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said in an interview.

“You always rationalize the expedient when your person is in power. And we’re doing that now,” said Tillis, the co-leader of the delegation. “The Danes are relieved to know we’re here. But really, what can we do?”

Tillis, who’s retiring and has been at odds with Trump a lot lately, predicted that if the president follows through on the tariffs as a method of coercion, more Republicans will speak out.

But the jury’s still out on that. GOP lawmakers thinking of bucking Trump will certainly recall his targeting of the five Republicans who voted to advance a Venezuela war powers resolution.

Meanwhile, Durbin is wary at this moment of a congressional vote on a measure intended to rein in Trump on Greenland.

“It’s a high-risk strategy. If you try and it fails, it really opens the door for [Trump] to do unilaterally what he wants to do,” Durbin added.

A war powers vote on Greenland could also be problematic. Senate Republicans used a procedural tactic to kill the Venezuela war powers resolution last week by arguing that there are no active hostilities there.

“If you exercise a point of order first to say there’s no hostility here — which there isn’t, and we want to keep it that way — it’s now different, isn’t it?” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), one of just a few Republicans who joined Democrats on that vote, told us.

‘American Idiot.’ The issue is so intensely animating Danes that multiple people approached Tillis on the streets of Copenhagen and specifically referenced his Senate floor speech slamming Trump’s Greenland threats.

But the lawmakers witnessed a level of anti-Americanism that stunned and depressed them. Tillis warned it could lead to retaliatory measures aimed at the United States if Trump persists.

Durbin said they learned during a meeting with business leaders that there’s an app many Europeans are now using to identify which consumer products come from the United States so they can avoid them. “It’s not an unreasonable response,” Durbin added.

Tillis recalled listening to broadcast radio in his hotel room.

“You know what song they were playing? Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’ — which incidentally is a really good song,” Tillis quipped. “But I don’t think it was just because it was on the rotation.”

— Andrew Desiderio

New! Join Punchbowl News on Thursday, Feb. 5, at 8:30 a.m. ET for a conversation with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). We’ll discuss news of the day and federal funding for medical research and cures across diseases and conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease. Afterward, Russ Paulsen, COO of UsAgainstAlzheimer’s and executive director of United for Cures, will participate in a fireside chat. RSVP today!

SENATE SCREW UP

Trump vs. Thune: POTUS blows up La. Senate race

President Donald Trump has blown up another Senate GOP primary, throwing Republicans into turmoil and giving Senate Majority Leader John Thune a blistering headache.

Trump’s decision to endorse GOP Rep. Julia Letlow – who isn’t even formally in the Louisiana Senate race — over incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy (La.) puts the president at loggerheads with Thune, meddling in a safe Republican state. Thune has endorsed Cassidy, and the pair were in Baton Rouge together last week.

All signs indicate that Letlow is going to get in the race following Trump’s pronouncement. Several Senate GOP and White House sources say Letlow wanted the endorsement and made clear she wouldn’t get in the race without a public nod from Trump. The 44-year-old Letlow was elected in 2021 after her husband died from Covid-19 shortly before taking office.

Trump gave Thune a heads-up Friday night, telling the GOP leader that he was likely to back Letlow, according to two people briefed on the phone call. Thune said that would endanger the president’s legislative priorities, such as health care and confirming a new Federal Reserve chair, and noted Cassidy’s role as HELP Committee chair. Thune has his own politics to play and will surely stick by Cassidy.

But Trump clearly didn’t care about Thune’s entreaties.

Retribution. This is all part of Trump’s obsession with revenge. Cassidy voted to convict Trump in the Senate impeachment trial following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Even though Cassidy supported Trump’s controversial nominees — notably Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for HHS secretary — Trump hasn’t let that go.

The Senate Leadership Fund, Thune’s super PAC, hasn’t endorsed in the race. SLF has no plans to get involved, a source familiar with its decision-making told us. The seat will stay red anyway, and SLF doesn’t want to get in a spending war with the constellation of pro-Trump political entities during the GOP primary.

Now that Letlow is getting in, the race is thrown into flux in more ways than one. Seeing that there’s a fractured field, does former Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) jump in too? Will the other candidates in the primary – former Rep. John Fleming (R-La.), state Sen. Blake Miguez and state Rep. Julie Emerson – stay in?

Then there’s the 68-year-old Cassidy, who was elected to the Senate in 2014 after three terms in the House.

“I’m proudly running for re-election as a principled conservative who gets things done for the people of Louisiana,” Cassidy wrote on social media on Saturday. “If Congresswoman Letlow decides to run, I am confident I will win.”

As of his October filing, Cassidy had $9.5 million in the bank. Letlow had nearly $2.3 million. But cash won’t be a problem if Letlow gets in – she’s likely to get a boost from pro-Trump super PACs.

It’s hard to predict what this move by Trump could mean for other Senate races, namely Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-Texas) uphill battle to keep his seat in the Lone Star State. Thune said last week that Trump won’t make an endorsement in that primary.

But there are significant differences between Cornyn’s race and Cassidy’s. Republicans are confident that they will win Louisiana regardless of the GOP candidate. The same doesn’t go for Texas, where Republicans think Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton or Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) could lose to a Democrat. Trump and some of his political allies are close to both Paxton and Hunt.

— Jake Sherman and Andrew Desiderio

THE AIRWAVES

The midterm messaging war so far

2025 was a busy year on the political airwaves, with both Democrats and Republicans scrambling to shape voters’ early impression of the GOP reconciliation law.

We asked our friends at AdImpact to analyze every ad run in House and Senate races last year —from both candidates and outside groups. The disparity between the GOP and Democratic messaging was dramatic. Here are the top takeaways:

Democrats want to make 2026 about health care. Republicans don’t.

The AdImpact analysis found that 56% of Democratic ads run in House races in 2025 mentioned health care, outpacing the 17% figure for GOP-backed House ads.

We’ve reported on the trend of left-leaning outside groups spending heavily to slam hundreds of billions of dollars in looming Medicaid cuts mandated by the One Big Beautiful Bill. GOP pushback has centered on defending the policy changes as countering waste, fraud and abuse. But altogether, Republican groups are choosing to message less on the issue of health care.

In Senate ads, the disparity was smaller. Thirty-one percent of Democratic ads featured health care messaging, while 23% of GOP ads mentioned the topic.

Trump will dominate the midterms.

President Donald Trump continues to be the dominant figure in the Republican Party, and that’s reflected in how GOP groups are framing their ads. In GOP-backed House and Senate ads, Trump was the most featured topic — 63% for House ads and 83% for Senate ads.

Almost every Republican candidate running in 2026 wants voters to know they will stand with Trump. Interestingly, 58% of Democratic ads in Senate races featured Trump in 2025. This suggests Democrats will keep using Trump as a foil throughout the midterms.

Both parties want to talk taxes.

Sixty-two percent of House GOP ads mentioned tax policy, in addition to 29% of Senate GOP ads. No tax on tips and no tax on overtime pay are critical pillars of Republican messaging on the OBBB.

Democrats are also messaging on this: 49% of Senate ads and 41% of House ads mention tax policy. But the Democratic stance focuses on accusing Republicans of cutting taxes for wealthy Americans while ignoring the working class.

— Max Cohen

Premium+: Policy coverage you can’t miss

Every Sunday afternoon, our Premium+ members get exclusive policy reporting from our Defense, Tech and Vault teams.

Let’s take the opportunity on this cold holiday morning to cozy up with some of their top scoops and key insights from the weekend.

Defense. Briana Reilly and Anthony Adragna dug into how President Donald Trump is trying to reshape the government’s relationship with defense contractors. Trump wants these companies to spend more of their profits on increasing the industry’s ability to produce weapons in greater numbers and more quickly.

Some of Trump’s methods are counter to the GOP’s traditional free market approach. But Republican lawmakers fed up with weapon systems coming in late and over cost don’t care.

“Free-market dynamics left the defense industry long ago,” said Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.), who supports Trump’s efforts. “It’s become, essentially, this quasi-state-owned bureaucracy.”

Read more here.

Tech. Simmering tensions between national security hawks and proponents of allowing more AI chips to be sold to China burst into the open in recent days via House Foreign Relations Committee Chair Brian Mast’s (R-Fla.) social media.

Mast was unhappy with White House AI Czar David Sacks’ criticism of a bill the chair authored to give Congress more say in chip exports, Diego Areas Munhoz and Ben Brody report. Mast also took shots at Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

China hawks have been on the losing end of many battles over what technology can be exported to China during the Trump administration. But they’re looking to turn the tables on AI enthusiasts in 2026.

Read more here.

Vault. The crypto industry’s wish list is now taking a tortured route through Congress after Senate talks blew up last week.

The biggest question is whether there can be any compromise on the thorniest issue left on the table: whether crypto companies will be allowed to offer rewards that look anything like the interest bank depositors earn on savings accounts, Brendan Pedersen writes. The banking industry is using all its lobbying might to ensure this doesn’t happen.

Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) is more sanguine on the issue than most. But he’s facing increased pressure to deliver a bill.

Read more here.

You can subscribe to one or all of our Premium + newsletters here.

– Dave Clarke

… AND THERE’S MORE

The Campaign. An outfit called Michigan First Principles has a new ad up in Detroit criticizing Rep. John James (R-Mich.) for running for governor instead of staying in Congress, as the White House suggested James should do. The spot also brings up 2022 comments in which James criticized President Donald Trump as being unfit to lead. James is running in a primary against several candidates, including former Attorney General Mike Cox.

Downtown Download. The IMG Academy Foundation – associated with the powerhouse sports academy in Florida – has hired Invariant to lobby to expand college athletic rosters.

Anthropic has hired Kountoupes Denham Carr & Reid to lobby Congress on “[i]ssues relating to safety, development and use of artificial intelligence.”

– Jake Sherman

MOMENTS

CLIPS