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For Immediate Release
January, 25 2017, 10:00am EDT
Contact:
Email:,pressdesk.int@greenpeace.org
BREAKING: Greenpeace Activists Deploy "Resist" Banner Above the White House
Days after Trump’s Inauguration, Activists Call for a Sustained Movement
WASHINGTON
This morning, seven activists began deploying a 70-foot by 35-foot banner of the word "Resist" above the White House. The activists from around the country are still in place, calling for those who want to resist Trump's attacks on environmental, social, economic, and educational justice to contribute to a better America.
LIVE UPDATES:
https://www.facebook.com/greenpeaceusa
https://twitter.com/greenpeaceusa
PHOTOS:
https://media.greenpeace.org/collection/27MZIFJJH0FTS
"People in this country are ready to resist and rise up in ways they have never done before," said activist and Greenpeace Inc. Board Chair Karen Topakian. "While Trump's disdain and disrespect for our democratic institutions scare me, I am so inspired by the multigenerational movement of progress that is growing in every state. Greenpeace has used nonviolence to resist tyrannical bullies since 1971, and we're not going to stop now."
The Greenpeace USA activists say they are prepared to stay in position throughout the morning to reach as many people as possible through live broadcasts on Greenpeace USA's Facebook page, tweets from the activists' twitter accounts, and media interviews.
"The sun has risen this morning on a new America, but it isn't Donald Trump's," said Pearl Robinson, one of the activists who unfurled the banner. "I fear not only the policies of the incoming administration, but also the people emboldened by this election to commit acts of violence and hate. Now is the time to resist. We won't stand rollbacks on all the progress the people have made on women's reproductive rights, LGBTQIA rights, the heightened awareness of state-sanctioned violence on black and brown folks, and the progress we have made on access to clean and renewable energy, an issue I have personally worked on my entire adult life."
The action this morning comes after days of sustained protests against Trump, including the four activists who disrupted Rex Tillerson's confirmation hearing with "Reject Rex" signs earlier this month, the veterans arrested in Senator John McCain's office last week, and the hundreds of thousands of participants in Women's Marches across the country over the weekend.
Since Trump has taken office, his administration has removed all mentions of climate change and LGBTQ rights from the White House website, taken steps to bring back the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, and issued a press gag order on all employees of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture.
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For live updates, viewers can tune into the Facebook Live broadcast and follow tweets from the activists.
https://www.facebook.com/greenpeaceusa
https://twitter.com/greenpeaceusa
For interviews with the activists:
Cassady Craighill, 828-817-3328
For additional updates and visual requests:
Travis Nichols, tnichols@greenpeace.org, 206-802-8498
Jason Schwartz, jason.schwartz@greenpeace.org, 347-452-3752
Visual location: The Ellipse, White House South Lawn
Greenpeace is a global, independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.
+31 20 718 2000LATEST NEWS
Experts Warn of 'Disastrous' Climate Impacts If Trump Seizes Control of Greenland
"Trump's energy and climate policies, including his heedless preoccupation with exploiting Greenland and the rest of the Arctic for oil and gas resources, risk a far more rapid meltdown of the Arctic."
Jan 29, 2026
As warnings about the dangers of President Donald Trump's Greenland threats mount, experts are sounding the alarm over what his takeover of the self-governing Danish territory that straddles the Arctic Circle would mean for a world that is already heating up due to humanity's continued reliance on fossil fuels.
Since returning to office last January—in part thanks to campaign cash from fossil fuel giants—Trump has called climate change "the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world" in a UN speech and constantly prioritized big polluters over working people and the planet, including by ditching dozens of international organizations and treaties, such as the Paris Agreement. The president's first year back in power was also among the hottest on record, according to his own government and various scientific institutions.
"His fixation on Greenland is an admission that climate change is real," John Conger, a former Pentagon official in the Obama administration who is now an adviser to the Center for Climate and Security, a research institute, told the New York Times earlier this month.
The Arctic is warming 2-4 times faster than most of the Earth. As reflective sea ice melts and is replaced by darker land or water, more heat from the sun is absorbed, causing a temperature increase that further accelerates melting. Atlantic Council distinguished fellow Sherri Goodman recently told the Washington Post that "it's partly the melting of sea ice making it more attractive for the economic development that he'd pursue in Greenland."
"It's partly the melting of sea ice making it more attractive for the economic development that he'd pursue in Greenland."
Regional warming is opening up potential shipping routes and access to natural resources, from minerals needed for renewable energy technologies to oil. While the Trump administration is now engaged in talks with Greenland and Denmark, the president has said he wants the island—whose people don't want to join the United States—because of "national security" concerns, claiming that if he doesn't take it over, China or Russia will.
"Climate change is a significant national security risk," said Goodman, who was deputy undersecretary of defense for environmental security during the Clinton administration. "The openings of sea lanes, the changing ice conditions, are contributing to the intense geopolitical situations we're experiencing."
Fears eased a bit last week, when Trump backed off threats to impose tariffs on European countries opposed to his Greenland takeover and potentially use US military force to seize the territory. While in Switzerland for the Davos summit, he also announced the "framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region."
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen told reporters in Brussels on Thursday that negotiations between his country, Greenland, and the United States the previous day had a "very constructive atmosphere and tone, and new meetings are planned," according to CNBC.
"It's not that things are solved, but it is good because now we are back to what we agreed in Washington exactly two weeks and a day ago. After that, there was a major detour. Things were escalating, but now we are back on track," Rasmussen said. "It's not that we can conclude anything, but I am slightly more optimistic today than a week ago."
Even so, Trump has made clear that the plans to deliver on his campaign pledge to "drill, baby, drill," and as Politico detailed:According to an assessment by the US Geological Survey, Greenland "contains approximately 31,400 million barrels oil equivalent (MMBOE) of oil" and other fuel products, including around 148 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
"That's the kind of reserves that if they were discovered in Saudi Arabia or Qatar, businesses would be jumping for joy," said Ajay Parmar, a senior crude markets analyst with commodities intelligence firm ICIS.
"Of course, given it's in Greenland, there would be technical challenges putting in place the piping to extract it and get it around the world," he said. "But there's still a major commercial opportunity there, even if it would require a lot of time and effort to make it work."
However, in 2021, Greenland introduced a moratorium on oil and gas exploitation after the socialist, pro-independence Inuit Ataqatigiit party took power, vowing to "take the climate crisis seriously."
It's unclear whether that ban will survive current negotiations, or if Trump will return to threats of taking Greenland by force.
Paul Bledsoe a lecturer at American University’s Center for Environmental Policy who held various roles in the Clinton administration, wrote in a Thursday opinion piece for the Hill that "Trump's energy and climate policies, including his heedless preoccupation with exploiting Greenland and the rest of the Arctic for oil and gas resources, risk a far more rapid meltdown of the Arctic, with disastrous consequences for nations and people around the world."
"More than half of the Arctic's reflective ice has melted in the last 50 years, and a recent study in the journal Nature found that the Arctic will be free of sea ice entirely for at least a day before 2030," he noted. "Should Arctic sea ice be allowed to melt, which may happen within just two decades or even sooner, absorption of the sun's heat by the newly open northern ocean will add the equivalent of 25 years of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions, pushing already dangerous global temperatures of 2.7°F above preindustrial levels toward climatic instability."
"This loss of Arctic sea ice is just one of more than a dozen temperature-sensitive tipping points scientists have now identified, including in ocean currents and the Amazon rainforest, that risk unleashing super-heating around the globe," Bledsoe continued. He also highlighted that "huge new shipping traffic in the Arctic and industrial development of oil and gas in the region will greatly increase the amount of climate pollution, including from carbon dioxide, methane, and especially black carbon soot, which is already washing out onto Arctic ice and increasing melting rates tremendously."
"Huge new shipping traffic in the Arctic and industrial development of oil and gas in the region will greatly increase the amount of climate pollution, including from carbon dioxide, methane, and especially black carbon soot."
US planet-heating emissions "are now rising again under Trump," thanks to him abandoning key climate agreements and imposing policies on close coal-fired power plants, methane regulations, carbon dioxide standards, and more, the expert added. Given that the president's "anti-climate policies have already been damaging to the Arctic and global climate protection," Bledsoe warned against letting his quest for Greenland "increase the chances of disastrous, runaway climate change."
Bledsoe's warning coincided with a Thursday letter from over 120 civil society groups—including Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace International, Oil Change International, Public Citizen, and Zero Hour—urging European Union leaders to resist Trump's "fossil-fueled imperialism" in solidarity with Latin America and Greenland.
The coalition called on the bloc's leaders to introduce a United Nations motion condemning Trump's violations of international law, cancel the US-EU trade deal, renew the European Green Deal, end contracts for importing or financing US liquefied natural gas, create a roadmap to phase out gas, defend EU methane rules, and support for the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels.
"As long as the EU accedes to Trump's demands," the coalition wrote, "it will be switching one dangerous dependency for another, giving up its sovereignty bit by bit, losing the competitiveness battle, deepening the climate crisis which will be putting its own people's lives at even higher risk from extreme weather, and jeopardizing its ambitions to be seen as a global climate leader."
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Despite Vows on ‘Affordability,’ Trump Proclaims: ‘I Want to Drive Housing Prices Up’
We're not to going create conditions, said the billionaire president who inherited his wealth, "so that somebody that didn't work very hard can buy a home."
Jan 29, 2026
President Donald Trump in recent weeks has vowed to make living in the US more affordable, as polls have consistently shown voters are giving him low marks on both his handling of the economy and inflation.
However, Trump undercut this pledge during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday in which he said he wanted—despite a nationwide housing crisis—to actively make housing even more expensive than it is today.
"Existing housing, people that own their home, we're going to keep them wealthy, we're going to keep those prices up," Trump said. "We're not going to destroy the value of their homes so that somebody that didn't work very hard can buy a home."
Trump: I don’t want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people who own their homes. You can be sure that will happen pic.twitter.com/9BupkUmXss
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 29, 2026
Trump added that his administration wanted to "make it easier to buy" a house by lowering interest rates, but then reiterated that he wanted to make houses themselves more expensive.
"There's so much talk of, 'Oh, we're going to drive housing prices down,'" Trump said. "I don't want to drive housing prices down, I want to drive housing prices up for people that own their homes. And they can be assured that's what's going to happen."
The implications of the president's remarks were obvious to those concerned about the nation's affordable housing crisis and the struggle of working people trying to get by.
As Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director for the Campaign for New York Health, put it: "54% of Americans struggle to afford housing, and over 770,000 Americans are homeless—and Trump doesn't think those numbers are high enough."
A Fox News poll released on Wednesday found that 54% of Americans think the US is worse off now than it was a year ago, while just 31% say the country is in better shape. Just 25% of voters surveyed said they are better off now than they were a year ago, and more than 40% said that Trump's economic policies have personally hurt them.
Given Trump's already low numbers on economic performance, many observers were quick to ridicule him for his pledge to make existing houses less affordable for prospective buyers.
"Hello Donald this is your political strategist speaking," George Pearkes, global macro strategist for Bespoke Investment Group, sarcastically wrote. "I am advising you today to please keep saying this stuff."
Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.) argued that Trump's views on housing prices put him well out of touch with most US voters.
"Trump only sees the world as a rich developer," she wrote in a social media post. "He has never, and will never, care about creating affordable homeownership for working and middle class Americans."
Vox writer Eric Levitz posted a not-so-subtle dig at Trump for straying so easily off message.
https://t.co/qnR9wJiaBX pic.twitter.com/zrafC50Bea
— Eric Levitz (@EricLevitz) January 29, 2026
Polling analyst G. Elliott Morris, meanwhile, said that Trump's inability to stay on message was entirely predictable given his notorious unpredictability.
"Trump launched an affordability-focused midterm campaign for Republicans this week, traveling to Iowa to give a speech about how good his presidency has been for the cost of living," he wrote. "That's going about as well as you'd think. Here POTUS is saying he is going to keep housing prices high."
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How Much Federal Income Tax Will Elon Musk’s Tesla Pay on $5.7 Billion in 2025 Revenue? $0
The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress "have allowed a hugely profitable corporation to avoid paying even a dime of federal income tax on their 2025 US profits."
Jan 29, 2026
Tesla, the electric car company led by former Trump administration special government employee Elon Musk, released its annual financial report Thursday, showing that it doubled its yearly income in 2025 over the previous year and brought in $5.7 billion.
The company, whose CEO spent several months rooting out what he claimed was fraud and waste across the federal government, reported "precisely zero current federal income tax" on the billions it made, according to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).
The group explained that Tesla used accelerated depreciation, reducing the value of its capital assets, while also slashing its tax bill with tax breaks for its executive stock options.
Research and development tax credits netted $352 million in additional tax savings, and the company used "net operating losses stored up from previous years to offset current year income, although it’s hard to know how much of that affects US income rather than foreign income," said ITEP.
Analyzing the financial report, ITEP found that Tesla received over $1.1 billion in federal income tax breaks, paid for by US taxpayers, last year alone—after paying 0.4% of its US profits in federal income taxes over the previous three years.
Over that time period, said ITEP, "the Elon Musk-led company reported $12.58 billion of U.S. income on which its current federal tax was just $48 million... The company reported an effective federal income tax rate of 0.4%. This is a tiny fraction of the 21% tax rate profitable corporations are supposed to pay under the law."
The most it paid in taxes over the past three years was in 2023, when Tesla paid $48 million, at the federal effective tax rate of 1.2%. That was still just a fraction of the $823 million it would have paid if it had paid the federal corporate tax rate. In 2023, the company enjoyed $775 million in tax breaks.
The company's income tax payments worldwide in 2025 totaled $1.2 billion, with more than $1 billion going to China and other foreign governments. Tesla paid $28 million to the US government, "presumably related to tax years before 2025," said ITEP.
The organization noted that the "billion-dollar tax break" enjoyed by Tesla does not appear to be illegal.
However, ITEP said, it illustrates how the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress, by passing changes to corporate tax laws in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) last summer, "have allowed a hugely profitable corporation to avoid paying even a dime of federal income tax on their 2025 US profits."
The organization warned last summer that special business tax breaks included in the OBBBA, including a reinstatement of bonus depreciation and new international rules, would cost the US government $165 billion in revenue in 2026.
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