A Texas Energy Company, Dr Phil & Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ Friends

President Trump made one key motivation of his imperialistic ambitions in Greenland clear in a Truth Social post early this morning, claiming that a “massive oil, gas and mineral exploration” was set to begin in “our new and beautiful Greenland!”

He is referencing the paltry-for-the-U.S. security deal that he was able to eke out of Greenland and Denmark last month, which Trump has hailed as some sort of victory for his longtime vision of the U.S. taking Greenland under its control. In reality, Denmark, the U.S. and Greenland signed an agreement in September that allows the U.S. to expand its military presence on the semi-autonomous territory of Denmark. It appears as though the deal has, for now, quieted Trump’s broader ambitions to take the island by force.

The deal does not give the U.S. any new mining or drilling rights and Greenland banned all future oil drilling back in 2021. Greenland officials have already combatted Trump’s statement, according to CNN:

While Greenland’s deputy mining minister Jørgen Hammeken-Holm acknowledged that “there are activities by US companies,” he told CNN that “we are very far away from ‘massive’ exploration.”

“There are many smaller explorations underway but these could take years to become operational,” he added, echoing researchers who have pointed out the difficulties and enormous expense involved in extracting resources from Greenland.

I haven’t really seen anyone mention this in their coverage so I wanted to elevate some reporting I did a few months back about a Trump-linked Dr. Phil drilling project that is in the works in Greenland — and almost certainly what Trump is referring to here (Reuters does mention the project in passing in its coverage of Trump’s remarks). The connection becomes more explicit in this line of Trump’s Truth Social post:

There are Experts that are saying that the amount of easily available Oil is far greater than that of almost any land, anywhere in the World and, even more importantly, from a Security Purpose in the Defense and Offense of both the United States of America, and Europe, is second to none.

Trump is likely referring to the project that a Texas-based firm, Greenland Energy, is trying to embark on in Greenland’s remote Nunap Qeqqa, or Jameson Land. Greenland Energy executives have claimed they have reason to believe that $1 trillion worth of crude oil may lie beneath the surface of Jameson Land. 

Reports surfaced in August suggesting the company was readying resources to begin drilling in the region, even though it did not yet have permission from local officials or the Greenland government to do so. The government is currently still reviewing whether Greenland Energy has the right to drill in the area due to its partnership with a UK company that secured the rights to drill in Jameson Land before the 2021 ban.

I wrote about the whole thing extensively here. But in essence, the Texas-based Greenland Energy project had Trump’s finger-prints all over it before he made things so explicit in this post. Executives for the company have mentioned “disruptions to key shipping corridors, particularly around the Strait of Hormuz” as a motivating factor for embarking on the project and Dr. Phil’s media company has partnered with Greenland Energy to make a docu-series about the drilling venture.

Add to the fact that Greenland Energy personnel have close and obvious ties to Trump and his hegemonic salivating over Greenland, per my piece back in August:

The signs were all there before Trump shouted about them on Truth Social just after midnight last night.

— Nicole LaFond

Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) failed to answer a question about who won the 2020 election, said tariffs were making trade fair for Georgia manufacturers, and attempted to elicit sympathy for his own family when asked to condemn the white nationalist views held by his son-in-law during the first Georgia-wide U.S. Senate debate on Thursday night.

President Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire to exert control over the Federal Reserve’s economic policy. His primary demand? Cut interest rates. 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has already demonstrated his Department of Health and Human Services has no concern for disparities. 

A proposed change to a key tax form could help the Trump administration achieve new anti-immigrant policy objectives, including preventing undocumented immigrants from receiving federal tax benefits. But it could also be used to accomplish a more sweeping objective: Shifting the balance of power in Congress by excluding many classes of immigrants from apportionment, the process through which power in the House of Representatives is allocated.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has escorted his dangerous vaccine skepticism into the homes of every American through his role as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Now, public health experts and attorneys are worried that Kennedy might do away with effective federal vaccine recommendations altogether.

Right now, vaccines are recommended either on a universal basis, using a risk-based assessment for people with specific risk factors, or using what Kennedy’s HHS calls shared clinical decision-making, a controversial vaccine skeptical-adjacent category that the department has defined as an individualized process between a patient and physician. The comment period for an HHS request for information concluded on Sunday and sought comment on whether existing types of federal vaccine recommendations should remain in place. 

The request, posted to the Federal Register, also sought to consider “individual autonomy and religious freedom…and the communication practices necessary to earn and maintain public trust,” related to the federal childhood vaccine schedule.

But while shrouded in language implying greater freedom, pediatric health advocacy groups, health attorneys, and public health researchers said in public comments that further changes to vaccine recommendations will only jeopardize public health and child safety. 

And HHS’s apparent plan to change childhood vaccines is groundless.

““[T]here simply is no basis for the RFI’s implicit suggestion that the current recommendation framework produces unsafe results and needs fundamental revision,” wrote a group of health advocacy groups and scholars, including the American Public Health Association, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Bruce G. Gellin, former deputy assistant secretary of Health and director of the HHS National Vaccine Program Office. 

The HHS request poses its own potential vaccine categories, including vaccines that are recommended but not for babies, or recommended, but with other undefined caveats.

It comes as part of President Donald Trump’s August 2026 executive order, which required HHS to revive a defunct childhood vaccine task force and to reevaluate childhood vaccines.

“The arbitrary categories identified in the RFI without context, without accompanying evidence and without a clear communication strategy with medical professionals, the public health system, and the American public will inevitably produce widespread confusion and uncertainty,” the group of public health advocacy organizations and experts wrote in the public comment. “In the setting of such confusion, the principle of informed decision-making is at risk with the likely result that vaccine doses will be missed and diseases that are vaccine preventable will recur.”

Currently, America is experiencing its worst year for measles, the once all-but-eradicated viral disease, since 1991, according to the Associated Press. There have been 792 cases of the disease in Pennsylvania this year alone, and four people in the state have died of the illness since January. RFK battled Governor Josh Shapiro, claiming without evidence that state officials errantly attributed the deaths to measles. Kennedy had two of the Pennsylvania deaths removed from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention measles dashboard which, as of Sept. 18, did not have any measles deaths listed.

Echoing Trump’s executive order, the HHS information request emphasizes that evidence, alongside freedom and trust, are paramount when considering vaccine recommendations. A public comment submitted by members of Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, however, notes that patients overwhelmingly trust their personal healthcare providers. A July survey by KFF found 86% of respondents trust their own doctor compared to 51% who trust the CDC and 34% who trust RFK. Even MAGA Republicans are more likely to trust their healthcare provider than RFK, at 86% compared to 74%.

“Any change to the current categories could cause provider and public confusion, leading to greater mistrust and wider spread of misinformation,” Hannah Green, state health policy analyst, and Kelly Whitener, an associate professor, wrote in the Georgetown public comment.

The state of Missouri early this year sued the Department of Commerce to force something that would have once been considered radical: That the federal government exclude certain immigrants from the population count when apportioning political power and distributing federal funds. 

Less than a year after the lawsuit was filed, however, the Census Bureau has proposed to do just that. 

On Tuesday, a judge granted Missouri’s request to dismiss the case.

A senior judge for the Eastern District of Missouri ordered the case dismissed without prejudice, meaning plaintiffs can renew their suit against the government, on Tuesday afternoon.

Missouri’s notice of dismissal came only after the Census Bureau published its controversial new rule which takes the first steps to exclude millions of immigrants from the census count by changing how the Bureau defines a person’s usual residence and by pitching a future immigration status question. But the rule is far from finalized. It must first undergo a 30-day public comment period which is sure to yield strong opposition to the rule, feedback which federal agencies have previously considered prior to finalizing a new policy. 

Nevertheless, it appears the unfinished Census Bureau rule has satisfied Missouri’s dubious legal argument that undocumented and other classifications of immigrants should not count toward a state’s population to be used for congressional apportionment or for the distribution of federal funds. The rule cites and incorporates legal arguments from Missouri’s suit.

In a statement provided to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway’s office said it dismissed the case in light of the Census Bureau proposed rule.

“The proposed rule agrees with our understanding of the law and even cites our complaint,” Hanaway’s office told the publication in a statement. “Going forward, we will focus on assisting the Trump Administration defend what we anticipate will soon be a final rule. We will continue fighting to ensure citizens’ voices are never diluted in favor of illegal immigrant trespassers.”

In July and September, the Department of Commerce filed a motion to stay court proceedings in the case, suggesting its then-impending rule would address the plaintiff’s issues.

The Census Bureau’s latest moves represent an evolution of President Donald Trump’s unsuccessful first-term attempt to include a citizenship question on the census. Back then, the court found the administration lied about its reasons for wanting to include a citizenship question. The Trump administration maintained at that time that the question would be used to better enforce aspects of the Voting Rights Act.

This time, the mask is off. The Census Bureau in its new residence rule wrote that it found “merit in” legal argument that all immigrants except lawful permanent residents “should not be included in the apportionment count.” 

The rule would also dispense with recording race, ethnicity, and certain gender attributes. Race has been included on every census since 1790. 

Missouri filed its case in January to force the Department of Commerce and the Census Bureau to exclude undocumented immigrants and people with temporary visas from the census population count taken every 10 years. Including certain immigrants in that count, the suit argued, gave blue states with higher immigrant populations more seats in Congress and more Electoral College votes, and took away one congressional seat and an Electoral College vote Missouri would’ve otherwise received in 2020. The same harm, the suit alleged, would be perpetuated in 2030 unless the Census Bureau dramatically altered the way it counts U.S. residents by excluding a large swath of immigrants for the first time in history.

Missouri’s suit blames a 1980 policy by President Jimmy Carter which merely affirmed the historic practice of counting all residents of the country regardless of immigration status. The 1980 census sought to mitigate an undercount of these groups through intentional outreach, but not through the adjustment of any legal standard regarding the counting of all persons, as required by the 14th Amendment.

In moving to dismiss its suit even prior to the finalization of the Census Bureau’s embattled rule, attorneys for Missouri appear to expect that the rule will move forward in time for the 2030 Census.

The Missouri Attorney General’s Office did not immediately respond to TPM requests for comment. The Commerce Department, Census Bureau, and White House also did not immediately respond to TPM requests for comment.

Leadership at the Census Bureau has ordered staff to halt all external events related to the 2030 Census amid the agency’s release of a controversial, unprecedented rule proposal aimed at excluding immigrants from the U.S. population count, according to a copy of an email obtained by TPM.

Before the Trump administration issued its rule aiming to reshape the Census around accruing political power for the right, it had a problem: internal dissent.

The Federal Reserve opted to raise interest rates by one-quarter of a percent, or 25 basis points, in a unanimous vote on Wednesday. It’s the first rate hike since 2023, when the Fed was responding to pandemic and supply chain disruption.

International companies are getting tariff refunds — with added, taxpayer-funded interest. People in America who have paid higher prices as a result of President Donald Trump’s relentless tariff maneuvering are stuck footing the bill.

As the Census Bureau wades deeper into politics, governance changes at an agency committee that handles data privacy, scientific analysis and stewardship issues have opened the door for Trump administration interference, current and former agency staffers told TPM. Some of the most significant changes have put President Donald Trump’s political appointees in leadership roles on the historically nonpolitical committee, just as the Bureau has emerged as a hot-spot for right-wing-driven policymaking.

A version of a federal rule proposing to exclude certain noncitizens from being counted in the 10-year Census was published to the federal register this morning, and is more aggressive in several ways than the draft version first revealed in full last month by TPM. The final version explicitly proposes a question about immigration status on the census, excludes refugees and asylees from the count, and changes how members of the military are to be tallied.

When longtime Indiana politician Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) lobbed a powerful allegation against the Census Bureau last October, what had been a low-profile, fringe GOP conspiracy theory burst to the fore. Banks said he believed the Census Bureau had injected errors in the decennial population count and survey which were so severe, they netted Democrats more representation in Congress at the expense of Republican seats.

“The Biden admin used a shady ‘privacy’ formula,” Banks wrote on X, adding that the 2020 census “scrambled the data and miscounted 14 states. It included illegal immigrants and handed Democrats extra seats.”