Members of Congress Have Stepped Up Their Shadow Diplomacy As Trump Threatens Allies

Congress is usually viewed as a supporting player when it comes to U.S. foreign policy. But as President Donald Trump has doubled down on his interest in acquiring Greenland and his disdain for NATO and European allies, members of the legislative branch are stepping in as public and private diplomats: traveling abroad, working the phones and setting up meetings with foreign officials to tamp down simmering tensions.

“I think that it’s important that we do,” Rep. Gregory Meeks, top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told NOTUS on Thursday. “I mean, the State Department has been decimated, so we don’t have the kind of individuals on the ground, the diplomats that we’ve had … So I think it’s important for us to be in Europe, to be in Canada, to be in various countries, to show up.”

Meeks returned earlier this week from a congressional trip to Copenhagen, where eight congressional Democrats, plus Republican Sens. Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski, met with leaders from Denmark and Greenland. Meeks said he saw the trip as a way to reassure the Danes and Greenlanders that Congress is not in line with Trump’s public talk of “taking” Greenland or the dismantling of NATO.

Members from both parties and chambers have packed their schedules with time with foreign officials in recent days. Some lawmakers on key committees regularly focus on matters overseas. But Congress has mostly ceded its foreign-policy-making powers to the president over decades, making its current bipartisan upswing of active engagement on geopolitical issues all the more notable.

“I think it’s absolutely important that members of Congress fill in the gaps to show that the American people that we represent want to stand by our allies and want to maintain our relationship,” Sen. Peter Welch told NOTUS by phone after the trip.

Welch said he has been considering legislative tools to curb Trump’s actions that allies have opposed, like a joint resolution of disapproval on tariffs of NATO countries that he was confident some Republicans would back. As Trump has since backed down on the threats of tariffs or military force to take Greenland, Welch is putting the idea on pause for now.

Some members have regular meetings with their counterparts in foreign governments, as leaders of relevant committees or caucuses. But those conversations have taken on a new tone in the shadow of Trump’s latest push to acquire Greenland and renewed harsh rhetoric about NATO allies.

Rep. Keith Self, the Republican chair of the Europe subcommittee within the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told NOTUS he met Tuesday with representatives from two European countries, declining to give specifics.

“They’ve got legitimate questions, and we had open and frank discussions,” Self said. When asked what the Europeans were asking for, he said it was to “help them understand what’s happening in the world.”

Rep. Bill Huizenga is a Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee who chairs the U.S.–Canada interparliamentary group. He told NOTUS on Wednesday he just met with a group of Canadian members of Parliament to discuss the automotive industry. But the day before, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos, describing a “rupture” in the geopolitical order between great powers and middle powers.

So, Huizenga and the Canadians ended up discussing that.

He said he brought up Trump’s comments on Canada, and the delegation asked him if he caught Carney’s speech, which he missed. “What they’re trying to figure out is, their words, you know, ‘For us as a middle power, what do we do? You know, how do we view the world?’” Huizenga said.

Greenland didn’t come up in that meeting, Huizenga said. His calendar of events with foreign officials has been crowded. He noted he had to miss a dinner with the Danish ambassador because of a conflict hosting an event for supporters of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who herself spent several days in Washington earlier this week.

Republican Rep. John Moolenaar told NOTUS on Thursday that he’d met with several ambassadors from European countries, also declining to name names. Although he said he has these meetings regularly, he said current events were certainly a subject of conversation.

“Well, I think there was concern over Greenland, you know, that brought a lot to the forefront,” Moolenaar said. But he said he’d heard specifically that Trump’s Davos speech, in which the president ruled out military action in Greenland, helped reassure Europe.

“I think a mutual commitment to ensuring that NATO remains strong, and I think the president’s comments in Davos really have improved that situation,” Moolenaar said.

Rep. Blake Moore, a Republican, co-chairs the Congressional Friends of Denmark Caucus, and that position puts him in frequent contact with Danish officials, especially since the president’s fervor over Greenland began. He told NOTUS on Wednesday that he hadn’t spoken with any Danish or NATO officials in the last 72 hours or over the weekend, but that the president’s comments in Davos seemed to have made a difference.

“I think it’s helped,” Moore said of Davos. “I think it’s an obvious statement that we’re not going to attack an ally. We shouldn’t have to make that statement. But it’s good that it’s out there, the markets responded positively to it. It is a funny world we’re living in.”

Broadly, Moore said caucuses like his “flare up with necessity at different times,” and voiced confidence in Secretary of State Marco Rubio to lead U.S. diplomacy. Like many lawmakers, though, Moore said that while he supports Trump’s long-standing pressure on NATO countries to fulfill their commitments to defense spending, he sees how Denmark and other allies are doing so and wants that to be acknowledged.

“When a country like Denmark is doing all that, as well as purchasing F-35s, contributing over 3.5% of their GDP, like, we need to make sure that we’re recognizing the good that that is too,” Moore said. “Denmark’s a good ally. They’re doing their fair share in those types of situations. We need to be rewarding great behavior.”

Stressing the value of alliances is one role that NATO supporters in Congress are eager to play, especially for the public.

“Fair to say that for most of my constituents, NATO is probably not a daily thought,” Huizenga said. “Now, U.S. security is. Chinese threat is. Having properly funded military and defense systems is. And I think I can make a pretty strong case that NATO, both the U.S. being part of NATO and NATO engaged in the U.S., is good for the defense of the U.S.”

Although Trump’s meetings in Davos produced some progress at tamping down tensions with Denmark, the flurry of transatlantic dialogue is probably not over yet. Meeks said Thursday that a group of European ambassadors asked for a meeting. And some Democrats who went on the Denmark trip said that with Trump’s commitments constantly shifting, allies remain uneasy.

“I don’t trust him, because he’s already flip-flopped on that a couple of times, and even the idea that he’s still talking about needing to own Greenland, it’s really, really harmful to our national security,” Rep. Sara Jacobs told reporters Wednesday.

Despite their best efforts, lawmakers say there will likely be a continued need for Congress to have more back-channel conversations with allies because the president’s actions are so unpredictable when it comes to foreign policy.

“No one in the delegation, quite frankly, could say this absolutely wouldn’t happen, because they saw what took place in Venezuela, and they see what’s taking place and the threats in other parts of the world,” Meeks said. “So no, they were not assured that everything was going to be all right. They still are not sure that everything is going to be all right.”