President Donald Trump has made no secret of his ambition to annex Greenland while leading an administration that’s only the latest in a long list that wanted to do just that. To wit, in 1868, then-Secretary of State William Seward proposed acquiring the world’s largest island, by far, from Denmark to help “command the commerce of the world.”
By modern Greenland’s admission on its Visit Greenland website, Denmark was “unable to act” during the German occupation of World War II, and so “the USA took over the defence” of the icy north Atlantic island by establishing air bases there. After the war, the United States put up $100 million for the purchase of Greenland, an offer for Denmark’s then-colony, now a more self-governed entity, that the continental European nation rebuffed.
One can understand why Trump’s GOP supporters in Congress might move to encourage the president in this pursuit. One House bill was proposed with the Make Greenland Great Again Act. However, Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter (R-GA) chose an even more pointed way to go about it.
Carter introduced a bill titled the Red, White, and Blueland Act of 2025. The legislation is so named because it would “authorize the President to enter into negotiations to acquire Greenland and to rename Greenland as ‘Red, White, and Blueland,’” according to the bill’s description.
Further, upon annexation, Carter’s bill instructed that any “reference in a law, map, regulation, document, paper, or other record of the United States to Greenland shall be deemed to be a reference to ‘Red, White, and Blueland.’”
The bill had no co-sponsors. It was referred to the House committees on Foreign Affairs and Natural Resources on Feb. 10. No further actions have been taken, nor are they likely to move forward. That’s because most observers view the legislation as pure trolling in congressional bill form.
The proposed name change echoed Trump’s rechristening of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. The Trump administration used the Associated Press’s refusal to go along with the name change as justification for kicking AP reporters out of major presidential events.
George F. Will famously called the first Trump administration “one giant act of trolling.” Leading up to and during the second, nonconsecutive Trump administration, many elected representatives have picked up that trolling banner through House bills and amendments.
One way Republicans have hoisted the troll flag is with Trump-flavored proposals that are not likely to gain the assent of the entire Congress. These include proposals to formally rename the Gulf of Mexico, to put Trump on Mount Rushmore, and to allow Trump to run for a third term.
House Republicans’ trolling amendments are also attracting attention. For instance, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) proposed a rider to a Ukraine military aid bill that would require those who voted for the funding to enlist and fight in the Ukraine-Russia war.
Congressional Democrats have joined the trolling contest as well, and they are only likely to escalate the conflict as they look to improve on their minorities in both houses.
On Feb. 5, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) introduced the Eliminate Looting of Our Nation by Mitigating Unethical State Kleptocracy Act. The abbreviation for that is, of course, the ELON MUSK Act, named for the X owner and head of the Department of Government Efficiency who is very much the target of the legislation.
“After more than $20 billion in federal contracts, there’s no way Musk can be objective in what he’s doing,” Pocan said in a statement about the world’s richest man.
“Protecting the taxpayers,” Musk’s watchwords used political judo-style, “has to be our number one priority,” Pocan warned.
To a certain extent, this partisan squabbling builds on a bipartisan history of Congress using rules and legislation to troll other countries. For instance, in 2003, then-Reps. Bob Ney of Ohio and Walter Jones of North Carolina, among many other House Republicans, instructed House cafeterias to change the name of french fries to “freedom fries” and French toast to “freedom toast.”
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The reason for the sudden name change was France’s opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Jones, in particular, came to regret the freedom fries fiasco and the broader Iraq conflict it represented. The late lawmaker, in the following years, not only publicly recanted his support for the war but also personally wrote letters of condolence to all the families of fallen soldiers.
Jeremy Lott is the author of The Warm Bucket Brigade: The Story of the American Vice Presidency.