ABC News' Karen Travers and Mick Mulroy break down what's in the agreement, how it came together and what it means.
Page A5From§Eachthe late evening edition — 29 September 2026
Trump signs "Infinite Life" Greenland deal he calls permanent control; Denmark and Greenland keep the word sovereignty
As it ran on the front
The word "free" is doing a quantity of work in this, and it is worth asking what work. It means no figure has been printed beside it. Nothing further.
This is a usufruct — the right to use and enjoy a thing another party owns, and to take the fruits of it, while the title stays where it was. Frederiksen says the agreement recognizes the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Greenland. Both hold at once. That is the drafting.…
…(cont) On 25 September, at United Nations headquarters, three governments signed. Trump calls it "permanent control over security, and all other needs." Permanent. Not durable, not renewable — permanent, and an "Infinite Life" agreement besides.
And what did Denmark and Greenland take for the use of the ground beneath them? Sovereignty. The word, intact, on the page ... and the title they held before Tuesday.
Greenland keeps the deed. Washington keeps the use.
“Free means no one has written the number down yet, and that number is coming to us — the bases, the fuel, the upkeep — while Denmark walks off with a compliment about sovereignty. Trump says he has permanent control over security and all other needs up there, and he put "Infinite Life" on it in writing. Permanent is a long time to be paying for the privilege of guarding somebody else's island.”
“It's a security agreement, it respects Danish sovereignty, the Prime Minister said so herself at the signing — she said it, not me. Permanent control? That's a characterization. Did I say permanent? That doesn't sound like me; the phrase is "Infinite Life," which if you actually read it is much less alarming.”
The receipts
· Trump didn’t ‘settle for less’ on Greenland. He got exactly what he wanted from the morgue, 25 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.