On the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, he posted a mocked-up image of himself planting a large U.S. flag on Greenland alongside a sign stating “US TERRITORY EST. 2026,” Vice President J.D. Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. One year earlier, he had declared that “[t]he United States will once again consider itself a growing nation – one that … expands our territory … and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons.” With Trump’s future intentions for Greenland far from clear – and seeming to shift by the day – it’s a good time to closely examine the United States’ relationship with its territories and what lessons we can learn from Greenland’s relationship with Denmark. Spoiler alert: it’s not a good look for the United States.
One of us lives in Puerto Rico and the other grew up in Guam. We now co-lead an organization called Right to Democracy that seeks to advance democracy, equity, and self-determination in U.S. territories. In this essay, we’ll explain what everyone in the United States needs to know about U.S. territories in terms of what U.S. law requires and how territories and their inhabitants are governed in practice. Greenland’s relationship with Denmark provides a useful example of a markedly different approach from what people in U.S. territories experience. Rather than focus its energies on acquiring new U.S. territories, the United States should reckon with the colonial relationship it still has with its existing territories.
This conversation is especially important as the United States approaches two important anniversaries: the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence – and its express rejection of colonial rule – and the 125th Anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Insular Cases – and their explicit embrace of colonial rule. President Trump’s focus on Greenland and territorial expansion highlights how we are at a critical crossroads in determining which vision of the United States will govern in the decades to come.
U.S. Territories Under Colonial Rule: Taxed Without Representation, Denied Self-Government, Federal Benefits, and Self-Determination
The United States has fallen far short of its founding values of “consent of the governed” and “all created equal” for the 3.6 million residents of U.S. territories – Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands. They lack any voting representation in Congress and cannot vote for President. Their Delegates to Congress – currently three Republicans and two Democrats – can introduce legislation, but cannot vote on its final passage. Residents of U.S. territories also participate in the presidential primaries, but then are denied any say in the general election. Despite this fundamental denial of political rights, the federal government claims and regularly exercises near unlimited powers to govern their communities.
This across-the-board disenfranchisement is not necessarily standard practice for territories of other advanced democracies. Residents of Greenland, for example, enjoy self-government and broad autonomy from Denmark, and are fully represented by two members of the Danish Parliament who often play a critical role in forming the coalition government that selects the Danish Prime Minister.
At the same time, residents of U.S. territories pay over $5 billion in federal taxes each year, mostly in payroll taxes. Yet they are often excluded from or discriminated against in key social safety net programs like Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, and other programs most in the United States take for granted. As a result, in the aggregate, residents in U.S. territories miss out on billions of dollars every year.
The United States even prosecuted a low-income, disabled Puerto Rican man when he mistakenly continued receiving SSI benefits in Puerto Rico – taking his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court ruled 8-1 that Equal Protection does not prevent Congress from discriminating against residents of U.S. territories so long as it has a rational basis for doing so, the most deferential level of judicial review. It concluded that Congress does not have to extend SSI to Puerto Rico because Puerto Ricans do not pay all the same taxes as residents of the states, notwithstanding, as Justice Sonya Sotomayor pointed out in dissent, that SSI is a national program designed to benefit low-income individuals who do not generally pay any federal taxes.
Greenland is once again a useful contrast. Greenlanders have full access to Danish social safety net programs, even without any imposition of Danish taxes. On top of that, Denmark provides a guaranteed annual government subsidy to Greenland of about $600 million dollars a year – over $10,000 per resident.
Most U.S. territories have never been given the opportunity to decide whether they want to be part of the United States or not. The closest attempt was in 2022, when the U.S. House passed the bi-partisan Puerto Rico Status Act, which would, for the first time, bind Congress to Puerto Ricans’ choice between statehood, independence, and free association. The U.S. Senate failed to act, and Congress has yet to seriously consider giving residents of other U.S. territories a similar choice.
As a result, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa are listed by the United Nations as three of the seventeen remaining “non-self-governing territories” – a technocratic word for “colonies.” Puerto Rico was only removed from the list because the United States misrepresented its political status to the United Nations after it enacted a Constitution, claiming that Puerto Rico was fully self-governing when in reality the United States continued to view Congress as having near unrestricted powers to unilaterally govern the archipelago.
This ongoing denial of self-determination under international law is also a point on which Greenland provides a useful contrast. Today, Denmark expressly recognizes Greenland’s right to self-determination, with a legal right to pursue independence through a public referendum at any time. While Greenland’s relationship with Denmark has never been perfect, over time it has transitioned from colonial governance to a framework that centers autonomy and self-determination.
The Legal Framework and Lived Realities in U.S. Territories
The most direct historical comparison for President Trump’s attempt to acquire Greenland is the acquisition of the U.S. Virgin Islands, which the United States purchased from Denmark in 1917 for $25 million. Just as Trump argues the United States must acquire Greenland to secure shipping lanes and prevent Russia and China from taking it, the primary justification for purchasing the Virgin Islands was to safeguard access to the Panama Canal and avoid Germany acquiring a foothold in the Caribbean. The 1917 purchase came after the United States previously attempted to purchase the islands in 1867 and 1902. The agreement to sell was not without coercion, with then Secretary of State Robert Lansing responding to the Danish Minister that if Denmark refused to sell the islands he could foresee a “situation” leading to the “occupation of the islands” by the United States. Less than a week after acquiring formal sovereignty over the U.S. Virgin Islands, the United States entered World War I.
Citizenship Not Guaranteed
At various points the United States has denied recognition of citizenship to people born in each of the territories it acquired in the early 1900s. Today, it recognizes people born in Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands as “statutory” U.S. citizens, while continuing to label people born in American Samoa as so-called “non-citizen” U.S. nationals. But even for those who are considered U.S. citizens, that status is more precarious than one might assume.
Starting with the U.S. Virgin Islands, the treaty between the United States and Denmark promised that Virgin Islanders would be recognized as U.S. citizens. But the United States immediately back tracked on that commitment based on the Supreme Court’s decisions in the Insular Cases. In those cases, Justice Henry Billings Brown – author of Plessy v. Ferguson – expressed concern that the “children” of “savages” born in island territories would “immediately” be “entitled to all the rights, privileges and immunities of citizens,” while Justice Edward Douglas White fretted over the possibility of “the immediate bestowal of citizenship on those of “uncivilized race[s],” who were “absolutely unfit” to receive it. In 1904, the Supreme Court refused to answer whether people born in Puerto Rico were citizens, ruling only that they were not “aliens.”
The United States did not recognize Virgin Islanders as U.S. citizens until a decade later, in 1927. But the federal government continues to rely on the Insular Cases for the view that Virgin Islanders – and others born in U.S. territories – are “statutory” rather than “constitutional” citizens. That is, if Congress so chose it could begin denying birthright citizenship to people born in U.S. territories moving forward. Officials at the U.S. Justice Department and Congress have even said it’s an open question if Congress could retroactively revoke citizenship for people born in U.S. territories who, for their whole lives, have been recognized as citizens.
These threats to the unilateral denial of citizenship are not just a hypothetical concern. The federal government to this day does not recognize people born in American Samoa as U.S. citizens. The United States acquired these South Pacific islands in 1900 as a strategic “coaling station” for naval vessels. American Samoa’s leaders transferred sovereignty to the United States with the understanding based on their Deeds of Cession that they would be recognized as U.S. citizens and that control over their lands and culture would be respected. Instead, again relying on the Insular Cases, the United States unilaterally imposed the status of “non-citizen U.S. national” on American Samoans over their objections in the 1920s. This meant that they owed “permanent allegiance” to the United States, but did not enjoy the rights associated with citizenship.
Over the last decade, the Department of Justice – under both Democratic and Republican administrations – has relied on the Insular Cases to support the claim that Congress has the unilateral power to turn citizenship on and off in American Samoa and other U.S. territories. This has real consequences. As one example, eleven American Samoans in Whittier, Alaska (two of whom we represent) are facing up to 5-10 years in jail after confused state and local officials told them they could vote and should indicate they were “U.S. citizens” on voter registration forms in the absence of a “U.S. national” box.
In contrast, questions about citizenship are not in dispute in Greenland. Greenlanders – about 90% of whom are Indigenous Inuit – are recognized as full-citizens of both Greenland and Denmark, with recognition as well as citizens of the European Union.
Mineral Rights Exploited Without Consent
The United States has also not respected its agreement with American Samoans under the Deeds of Cession to protect their land and culture. In May 2025, the U.S. Department of Interior announced – without any prior consultation with American Samoa – that it would explore opening American Samoa’s waters to deep sea mining. American Samoa’s elected officials and community leaders unanimously objected to the imposition of deep sea mining, and their legislature expressed that such unilateral action would violate their original agreement with the United States.
In response, the Department of Interior nearly doubled the size of the proposed mining zone in American Samoa. Then, it announced new plans to open the waters off of the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam to deep sea mining, with both Republican and Democratic leaders in those territories uniting against this imposition.
At no point has the United States offered the residents of American Samoa or other U.S. territories any financial benefits to the proposed mining activities. Guam’s Governor recently emphasized during a meeting of its Commission on Decolonization that “because of our status, we are not even at the table to negotiate any of this.”
In contrast, Greenlanders have full autonomy and control over all mineral resource extraction activities in Greenland, with all revenue from such activities going to Greenland.
Commitments to Self-Governance Reversed
The United States has often made agreements and commitments to people in U.S. territories that suggest a grant of significant autonomy and local self-governance only to later change its tune and act unilaterally over the objection of local communities. For example, in the Northern Mariana Islands, the United States has consistently fallen short of the commitments to self-government and mutual-consent it made when the people of the Northern Mariana Islands agreed to join the United States in 1976. Fifty years later, the United States has acted unilaterally over the objections of the islands’ leaders to revoke local control of immigration, claim submerged lands and mineral resources, ban the local cultural practice of cockfighting, and much more. Recently, Republican U.S. Senators called on the Department of Homeland Security to make the “unilateral decision” to end the China Visa Waiver Program that has served as the foundation of the Northern Mariana Islands’ ailing tourism-based economy.
The same has been true in Puerto Rico, with the United States disregarding the commitments to self-government it made in the Federal Relations Act of 1950, which authorized Puerto Rico to create its own Constitution “in the nature of a compact.” In 2016, the United States imposed a financial oversight and management board on Puerto Rico, locally known as La Junta, which is appointed unilaterally by the President without any representation from Puerto Rico and has ultimate control over all of Puerto Rico’s budget and finance. Nearly ten years later, La Junta regularly invalidates laws passed by the Puerto Rico legislature and intervenes to decide budgetary, labor, contracting, and other financial questions large and small. Moreover, just when the board seemed close to resolving Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy process earlier this year, Trump purported to fire a majority of its members, creating even greater economic uncertainty, with courts reinstating several members who sued on the grounds that their firing was unlawful.
In contrast, Denmark does not have the power to remove Greenland’s powers of self-government and autonomy without the consent of Greenland’s legislature.
Still Waiting for “Consent of the Governed”
As the United States prepares to celebrate the 250th Anniversary of its own independence from colonial governance, the uncomfortable reality is that for the past 125 years the United States has embraced a colonial legal framework for people in the territories the Supreme Court has called “alien races” and “savages.” Rather than confront this undemocratic reality, most in the United States prefer to ignore it. Yet there is growing cross-ideological support for a reckoning over what U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch has called “American colonialism.”
Greenlanders are, of course, right to reject the notion that they might be coerced into becoming a U.S. territory against their will. The relationship between the United States and people in its island territories today should be deeply concerning to anyone who believes in the “consent of the governed” and the idea of “all created equal.” Colonial rule wasn’t just wrong in 1776, it’s still wrong now.
