This article has been republished from Autonomy News, a worker-owned publication covering reproductive rights and justice. Follow Autonomy News on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok, Threads, and LinkedIn. At the very end of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s Wednesday confirmation hearing, Texas Senator Ted Cruz got Blanche to commit to taking a step that could upend abortion access in […]
A sitting senator proposed annexing Greenland on the wild assumption that Denmark may, in the coming decades, become an Islamic theocracy.Republican Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri appeared Thursday on The Charlie Kirk Show, where he supported President Donald Trump’s ongoing ambitions to take over Greenland. The subject shot back into the news cycle this month when the president reiterated that he believes the Danish territory “should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark” while at the NATO summit.Among the reasons Schmitt gave for backing Trump’s pipe dream: “I don’t know what Denmark’s government looks like in 50 years. It could be run by a bunch of radical mullahs or something, I don’t really know.”Sen. Eric Schmitt says he supports annexing Greenland because Denmark might be run by "radical mullahs" in 50 years pic.twitter.com/bRgKjtmNvl— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 16, 2026The prediction exemplifies just how commonplace wingnuttery has become among even the Republican Party’s most prominent and powerful members.Schmitt may have cribbed the theory from crank conservative commentator Glenn Beck, who expressed support for U.S. control of Greenland earlier this year because, by his lights, Europe is on course to become “a nuclear-armed Islamic caliphate in 10 years,” in which “Denmark’s not Denmark anymore.”
The ICE agent who shot and killed a 26-year-old in Biddeford, Maine, is a former police officer who his ex-wife says was abusive.David Michael Brouillette was identified by his ex-wife, Ashley Brouillette, as the ICE agent who fatally shot Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, the Portland Press-Herald reports. Ashley told the newspaper over the phone Thursday afternoon that her former husband had called her admitting to the shooting and defending his actions.“He was asking me to lie for him and to cover for his character,” Ashley Brouillette said to the Press-Herald. “I told him that I was not going to lie for him. And then he tried to say that it was a justified shooting because the guy tried to hit him with his car.“In his head it’s justified. He’s unusually calm about it,” she said, adding that she had seen videos of the incident and did not believe his story.David Brouillette is a licensed real estate agent and veteran who has worked for law enforcement and public safety agencies in the past. His former wife said that she had warned his military superiors about his mental health, and that he was abusive to her. ICE reportedly hired Brouillette earlier this year.Brouillette previously worked as a police officer at a Department of Veterans Affairs facility in Chelsea, Maine, in 2021. As an Army veteran, he had been receiving disability benefits through the VA, and told a judge he had to resign as a truck driver before January 2025 due to health concerns.In 2024 and 2025, he was a volunteer firefighter in Manchester, Maine, only working there for two short stints before being removed due to disputes with department leadership, including a shouting match and refusing to follow superiors’ orders.