Politics

Trump reportedly isn’t sending a hospital ship to Greenland after all

Published

8 months ago

February 24, 2026

Early Saturday, Denmark’s Arctic Command made an important announcement: It had evacuated a crew member of a U.S. submarine in need of medical attention, transporting the sailor to Greenland for emergency care.

Soon after, instead of expressing gratitude, Donald Trump published a bizarre statement to his social media platform. According to the American president, he and his administration were deploying “a great hospital boat to Greenland to take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there.” The Republican concluded, “It’s on the way!!!”

No one seemed to have any idea what in the world he was talking about. When a BLN reporter asked the Pentagon for some kind of explanation, it referred him to U.S. Northern Command, which in turn referred him to the Navy, which in turn referred him to the White House, which didn’t want to talk about it.

Soon after, an apparent explanation for the confusion came into focus. The Wall Street Journal reported:

The Pentagon has received no orders to deploy any U.S. Navy vessels to Greenland, according to U.S. officials, despite President Trump’s claim that a hospital ship is ‘on its way’ to the self-governing Danish territory.

The U.S. has two hospital ships, the East Coast-based USNS Comfort and the West Coast-based USNS Mercy, which are designed as floating medical-treatment facilities. Both vessels are in a shipyard in Mobile, Ala., according to maritime tracking information. The Comfort is undergoing repairs that are expected to be completed in April, while the Mercy is in the middle of a one-year maintenance period that began last July.

Oh. So when Trump publicly declared that a U.S. hospital ship was “on the way” to Greenland (with three exclamation points), that apparently wasn’t true. (The Journal’s report hasn’t been independently verified by MS NOW, though several news organizations have reported in recent days that the Navy has two hospital ships, both of which appear to be in dry dock in Alabama.)

If the reporting is correct, it’s probably a good thing, for a variety of reasons, that there is no hospital ship en route to Greenland. It doesn’t appear to be necessary, and Greenland didn’t want it there anyway.

But the larger significance here is that yet again, there is no meaningful connection between what Trump says he’s going to do and what he actually does.

The incumbent president has earned his reputation as an unusually prolific liar, but this is a specific kind of mendacity. Trump isn’t merely peddling nonsense about his perceived enemies or his record; this is a kind of dishonesty rooted in a disconnect from future events: The American president keeps telling the nation and the world about steps he’s going to take, only to decide later not to bother with them, without offering any kind of explanation for the shift.

After his major defeat at the U.S. Supreme Court, for example, Trump said he’d impose global tariffs at a 15% rate. That wasn’t quite rightand when the policy was announced soon after, the actual rate was 10%.

The Republican said he was going to cap credit card interest rates, and then he didn’t. He said he was going to impose steep economic penalties on any country that does business with Iran, and then he didn’t. He even said he was going to decertify aircrafts made in Canada, and then he didn’t.

For Americans who want to know what’s likely to happen with their own government, it’s generally a good idea to pay more attention to what Trump and his team do than to what they saybecause what he says has little bearing on reality.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

Politics

Democrats eye state supreme court races — this year and beyond

Published

10 hours ago

November 1, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Liberal groups have spent millions in a handful of battleground state supreme court races ahead of Tuesday’s elections, looking to lay the groundwork for Democrats to win control of more courts ahead of a crucial redistricting cycle.

At the center of the fight are races for Republican-majority state supreme courts in North Carolina and Ohio, where this year’s results could set the stage for Democrats to flip the makeup of the benches in 2028. National groups are also spending to defend the liberal majority on Michigan’s court and on an open seat in Montana, where voters will also decide whether judicial elections remain nonpartisan.

The investments are yet another reflection of how state supreme court elections have become national political battlegrounds. The high court justices have become arbiters of major disputes, from abortion rights to election integrity and redistricting. Those who win in the coming cycles will likely preside over challenges to congressional and legislative maps that are drawn in a handful of states after the midterm election — and then nationwide after the 2030 census.

Nowhere are the contests more heated than in North Carolina.

Democrats’ defense of a seat currently held by Anita Earls is “step No. 2” to flip the North Carolina Supreme Court, said Anderson Clayton, the state’s Democratic Party chair. “In 2028, we’re looking at being able to take three Republican seats on that court.”

Democrats lost four seats on the state supreme court in the 2020 and 2022 elections, and the Republican majority cleared the way for a Republican-led gerrymandering in 2023.

Clayton said her group has spent more than $1 million on the state supreme court race. Earls has also drawn support from national Democrats like Pete Buttigieg and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore.

“If we had won a state Supreme Court race then in 2020 in our state, Hakeem Jeffries would be speaker of the House right now,” said Clayton, adding that her group is trying to build the foundation for congressional majorities “in 2032 and beyond.”

The ACLU is among the groups making long-term investments in state supreme court races. It has poured $8 million into state supreme court races in North Carolina, Michigan and Montana this year, in addition to Georgia and Wisconsin races earlier this year, said Deirdre Schifeling, the group’s chief political and advocacy officer, making it one of the top spenders in these contests.

The ACLU’s multi-cycle strategy to build “pro-civil rights, civil liberties majorities” is also targeting Arizona, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Ohio, Schifeling said. The group already set aside resources for supreme court races in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in 2027 and will begin fundraising for the 2028 races early next year.

More than $14 million has been spent on television ads in North Carolina, Michigan, Ohio and Montana, most of it benefiting Democratic and liberal-leaning candidates, according to estimates from the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice. Most of the liberal candidates have also outraised their conservative competitors.

Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Megan Cavanagh, foreground center, and Justice Noah Hood, left, walk together during the Michigan Democratic Party State Endorsement Convention on April 19 in Detroit.

By contrast, the electoral headwinds have forced Republicans to defend statewide offices and state legislatures they currently control, leaving fewer resources for the judicial races.

Republican-aligned groups like the Republican State Leadership Committee — the party’s chief downballot campaign organization — have largely stayed on the sidelines this cycle after warning for months they were being swamped by Democrats. The organization’s judicial affiliate reported more than $5 million in expenditures across 2024 and 2025.

“Democrats understand what is at stake, and have dumped massive amounts of resources into these contests,” said RSLC President Edith Jorge-Tuñón in a statement. “The RSLC is fighting back with smart and targeted spending because the investments we make today will determine whether we are positioned to protect our majorities, compete in the next redistricting cycle, and secure Republican victories for years to come.”

The National Democratic Redistricting Committee — the party’s main redistricting-focused group — declined to discuss this year’s total spending in judicial races this year, but NDRC President John Bisognano said in a statement that “the upcoming 2026 and 2028 state supreme court elections are critical to the long-term fight to protect democracy.”

And those involved in supreme court fights said they believed spending will only increase down the road, particularly from major industry players.

“I think that the money flowing into those races from external interests tells the tale of what big money, big pharma, big data recognize about the next areas that they can seek to leverage and control to their benefit,” said Tish Gotell Faulks, the state courts director at the liberal Alliance for Justice Action. “Those interests are now turning to the state courts and seeking to capture those courts as well.”

Politics

Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens endorses Republican Mike Rogers for Michigan Senate

Published

13 hours ago

November 1, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens endorsed Republican Mike Rogers in the Michigan Senate race on Sunday — a stunning break with her party that derails Democrats’ attempts to create a united front for Abdul El-Sayed.

Her endorsement comes just a few days after she said she was going to vote for El-Sayed.

The two former primary rivals have been locked in a public, escalating feud over El-Sayed’s and his allies’ criticism of Israel.

“Abdul said that I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away. And he’s right,” Stevens said in a video posted to social media on Sunday after she appeared at a Detroit church alongside Rogers.

“And that’s why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today,” she said. “I don’t belong in Abdul’s campaign.”