MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was elected as mayor in his home city by a landslide, official results showed Tuesday, despite his detention by the International Criminal Court.
The Davao election board proclaimed Duterte won the race for Davao mayor, with the official tally showing that he garnered over 660,000 votes, or eight times as many as his closest rival. Elated supporters chanted “Duterte, Duterte” when the result was announced.
His youngest son, Sebastian, the incumbent mayor of Davao, was declared Davao vice mayor. His eldest son, Paolo, was reelected as a member of the House of Representatives, and two grandsons won in local races, an indication of the family’s continued influence.
“Duterte landslide in Davao!” his youngest daughter Veronica posted on Facebook
Partial unofficial results showed at least five candidates backed by the Duterte family were also among those leading the race for 12 Senate positions, in a stronger-than-expected showing in Monday's midterm elections. Pre-election surveys had indicated only two of them would emerge victorious.
The results come as a boost for Duterte’s daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, ahead of an impeachment trial in the Senate in July over a raft of charges including alleged misuse of public funds and plotting to assassinate President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., his wife and the House speaker.
Sara Duterte is considered a strong contender for the 2028 presidential race. But if convicted by the Senate, she will lose her job and will be disqualified from holding public office forever. To be acquitted, she needs at least nine of the 24 senators to vote in her favor.
Results of the Senate race will be known in a week. Apart from the five Duterte-backed candidates, the others leading in the top 12 included five others endorsed by Marcos and two opposition candidates.
While the senate race outcome was encouraging for Sara Duterte, the jury is still out on how the impeachment trial will go for her, said Jean Franco, a political science professor from the University of the Philippines. If damning evidence were raised against her, Franco indicated it could hurt her chances of an acquittal.
The Senate race unofficial results also showed that support for Marcos, whose approval rating fell in April, is dwindling and could turn up surprises in the 2028 elections, Franco added.
In a statement, Marcos thanked Filipinos who voted, saying “our democracy has renewed itself — peacefully, orderly and with dignity.”
“We may not have won every seat, but our work and mission continue,” he added.
The impeachment and Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest and transfer to the tribunal in The Hague came after Marcos and Sara Duterte’s ties unraveled over political differences and their competing ambitions. Duterte supporters slammed Marcos’s government for arresting and surrendering the former leader to a court whose jurisdiction his supporters dispute.
Nicknamed “the Punisher” and “Dirty Harry,” Duterte served as Davao's mayor for two decades before becoming president. He has been in the custody of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, since March, awaiting trial for crimes against humanity over a brutal war on illegal drugs that left thousands of suspects dead during his 2016-2022 presidency.
Under Philippine law, candidates facing criminal charges, including those in detention, can run for office unless they have been convicted and have exhausted all appeals.
Sara Duterte had told reporters after voting Monday that she was in talks with her father's lawyers on how he could take his oath as mayor despite being behind bars. She had said the vice mayor would likely be the acting mayor.
Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, center, arrives to cast her vote at a polling center in Davao City, southern Philippines, Monday, May 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Manman Dejeto)
Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte gestures as she speaks to the media during a press conference after casting her vote at a polling center in Davao City, southern Philippines, Monday, May 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Manman Dejeto)
FILE - In this photo provided by the News and Information Bureau, Malacanang Palace, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, left, takes his oath before Philippine Supreme Court Associate Justice Bienvenido Reyes during inauguration ceremony in Malacanang Palace, June 30, 2016 in Manila, Philippines. Holding the bible is President Duterte's daughter Veronica. Others in photo are Duterte's children, from right, Paolo Duterte, Sarah Duterte and Sebastian Duterte. (The News and Information Bureau, Malacanang Palace via AP, file)
NUUK, Greenland (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump has made an American takeover of Greenland a focus of his second term in the White House, calling it a national security priority while repeating false claims about the strategic Arctic island.
In recent comments, he has floated using military force as an option to take control of Greenland. He has said if the U.S. does not acquire the island, which is a self-governing territory of NATO ally Denmark, then it will fall into Chinese or Russian hands.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
TRUMP, discussing the security situation in the Arctic: “We need that because if you take a look outside of Greenland right now, there are Russian destroyers, there are Chinese destroyers and, bigger, there are Russian submarines all over the place. We’re not gonna have Russia or China occupy Greenland, and that’s what they’re going to do if we don’t."
THE FACTS: Experts have repeatedly rebuffed Trump's claims of Chinese and Russian military forces lurking off Greenland's coastline. Experts say Russia instead operates in the Barents Sea, off the Scandinavian coast, and both China and Russia have a presence in the Bering Sea south of Alaska.
“That statement makes no sense in terms of facts,” said Andreas Østhagen, research director for Arctic and ocean politics at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Oslo, Norway. “There are no Russian and Chinese ships all over the place around Greenland. Russia and/or China has no capacity to occupy Greenland or to take control over Greenland.”
“The only Chinese I see is when I go to the fast food market,” Lars Vintner, a heating engineer told The Associated Press in Greenland's capital Nuuk. He said he frequently goes sailing and hunting and has never seen Russian or Chinese ships. Another Greenlander, Hans Nørgaard, told AP that Trump's claims are “fantasy.”
Lin Mortensgaard, an expert on the international politics of the Arctic at the Danish Institute for International Studies, said that while there are probably Russian submarines — as there are across the vast Arctic region — near Greenland, there are no surface vessels.
China has research vessels in the Central Arctic Ocean, and while the Chinese and Russian militaries have done joint exercises in the Arctic, they have taken place closer to Alaska, she said.
Asked about Trump’s claim that there are multiple Chinese and Russian ships and submarines around the island, Greenland business minister Naaja Nathanielsen responded Tuesday: "Not that we are aware of."
While Russia and China have an interest in the Arctic, “we don’t detect an actual threat," she said.
“America is still recognized as quite a big superpower,” Nathanielsen added, “and I don’t see any appetite from Russia or China to destabilize this.”
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TRUMP, discussing Denmark's defenses in Greenland: "You know what their defense is? Two dog sleds."
THE FACTS: The Sirius Dog Sled Patrol, an elite Danish naval unit that conducts long-range reconnaissance and enforces Danish sovereignty in the Arctic wilderness, is stationed in Greenland.
It's a key part of the Danish military infrastructure in the inhospitable Arctic terrain, experts say.
“Remember, transportation of the area is either by sea or by air. There are no highways,” said Steven Lamy, an international relations professor and Arctic security expert at the University of Southern California. “You can't basically get in a car or a Bradley vehicle or tank or anything and go up there. So they have dog sleds.”
In addition to these special elite forces, Denmark has several surface patrol ships and surveillance aircraft and the kingdom is moving to further strengthen its military presence around Greenland and in the wider North Atlantic. Last year, the government announced a roughly 14.6 billion-kroner ($2.3 billion) agreement with parties including the governments of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, another self-governing territory of Denmark, to “improve capabilities for surveillance and maintaining sovereignty in the region.”
The plan includes three new Arctic naval vessels, two additional long-range surveillance drones and satellite capacity.
Meanwhile, Denmark’s Joint Arctic Command is headquartered in Nuuk, the capital, and tasked with the “surveillance, assertion of sovereignty and military defense of Greenland and the Faroe Islands,” according to its website. It has smaller satellite stations across the island. Greenland also guards part of what is known as the GIUK (Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom) Gap, where NATO monitors Russian naval movements in the North Atlantic.
The U.S. Department of Defense also operates the remote Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, which was built after the U.S. and Denmark signed the Defense of Greenland Treaty in 1951. It supports missile warning, missile defense and space surveillance operations for the U.S. and NATO.
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TRUMP, discussing why Greenland is part of the Danish kingdom: “The fact that they had a boat land there 500 years ago doesn’t mean that they own the land. I’m sure we had lots of boats go there also.”
THE FACTS: The first humans arrived in northern Greenland circa 2,500 B.C., traveling from what is now Canada after the narrow strait separating the island from North America froze over. The Norse explorer Erik the Red arrived circa A.D. 985 with a fleet of Viking ships, according to the medieval Icelandic sagas.
In 1721, Lutheran missionary Hans Egede arrived in Greenland and ultimately began efforts to convert the Indigenous people to Christianity, marking the start of Denmark’s modern colonization of Greenland, which formally became a Danish colony in 1814. The U.S. government recognized Denmark’s right to the whole of Greenland more than a century later.
“It’s the same logic about the U.S. and sovereignty, right? You have a couple of boats arriving from Europe and now you own the United States of America,” said Østhagen, of the Fridtjof Nansen Institute. “The Indigenous population was there before you guys."
In 2009, Greenland became a self-governing country within the Danish kingdom. The island has a right to independence when requested by local voters.
International law has developed over the centuries, pivoting from land-grabbing colonial powers to modern-day treaties honoring borders largely developed after World War II.
Ulrik Pram Gad, a senior researcher and Arctic security expert at the Danish Institute for International Studies, said postwar it has remained important, especially to the U.S., for countries to refrain from exerting power over other territories.
“We shouldn’t just grab and go to war,” he said. “Rather, it should be peoples who have their self-determination.”
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Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.
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Dazio reported from Berlin and Zhang reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.
FILE - Coloured houses covered by snow are seen from the sea in Nuuk, Greenland, on March 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)
FILE - Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance tour the U.S. military's Pituffik Space Base in Greenland, March 28, 2025. (Jim Watson/Pool via AP, File)
Pituffik Space Base is pictured as Vice President JD Vance visits, Friday, March 28, 2025, in Greenland. (Jim Watson/Pool via AP)
Houses covered by snow are seen on the coast of a sea inlet of Nuuk, Greenland, on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
