Getting to 'no': Europe's leaders find a way to speak with one voice against Trump

LONDON (AP) — No more fawning praise. No more polite workarounds and old-style diplomacy. And no one is calling Donald Trump “daddy” now.

European leaders who scrambled for a year to figure out how to deal with an emboldened American president in his second term edged closer to saying “no,” or something diplomatically like it, to his disregard for international law and his demands for their territory. Trump's vow to take over Greenland and punish any country that resists, seems to have been the crucible.

"Red lines" were deemed to have been crossed this year when Trump abruptly revived his demand that the United States “absolutely” must rule Greenland, the semiautonomous region that is part of NATO ally Denmark. That pushed even the most mild-mannered diplomats to issue sharp warnings against Trump, whom they had flattered withroyal treatment and fawning praise.

“Britain will not yield" its support for Greenland's sovereignty, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said. Several of the continent's leaders said “Europe will not be blackmailed” over Greenland.

“Threats have no place among allies,” said Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.

The tough diplomatic talk around the showdown last week in Davos, Switzerland, was not the only factor pressuring Trump. U.S. congressional elections are approaching in November amid a sinking stock market and wilting approval ratings. European leaders also are not the first to stand in Trump's way during his second term — see Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

But the dramatic turnabout among Europe's elite, from “appeasing” Trump to defying him, offers clues in the ongoing effort among some nations of how to say “no” to a president who hates hearing it and is known to retaliate.

“We want a piece of ice for world protection, and they won’t give it,” Trump told his audience at the World Economic Forum. “You can say yes, and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no, and we will remember.”

In recent days, Europe offered abundant refusals to go along with Trump, from his Greenland demand and joining his new Board of Peace and even to what Canada's Mark Carney called the “fiction” that the alliance functions for the benefit of any country more than the most powerful. The moment marked a unity among European leaders that they had struggled to achieve for a year.

“When Europe is not divided, when we stand together and when we are clear and strong also in our willingness to stand up for ourselves, then the results will show,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said. “I think we have learned something.”

Federiksen herself exemplified the learning curve. A year ago, she and other leaders were on their heels and mostly responding to the Trump administration. She found it necessary to tell reporters in February 2025, “We are not a bad ally,” after Vice President JD Vance had said Denmark was “not being a good ally.”

Trump is transactional. He has little use for diplomacy and no “need (for) international law,” he told The New York Times this month. Therein lay the disconnect between typically collaborative European leaders and the Republican president when he blazed back into the White House saying he wanted the U.S. to take over Greenland, Panama and perhaps even Canada.

“In Trump's first term, Europe didn't know what to expect and tried to deal with him by using the old rules of diplomacy, with the expectation that, if they kept talking to him in measured terms, that he would change his behavior and move into the club,” said Mark Shanahan, associate professor of political engagement at the University of Surrey,.

“It's very hard for other leaders who deal with each other through the niceties of a rules-based system and diplomatic conversation," Shanahan said. "It is hard for them to change.”

Five months after Trump's inauguration last year, with his Greenland threat in the air, European leaders had gotten their heads around Trump management enough to pull off a meeting of NATO nations in the Netherlands. NATO members agreed to contribute more and widely gave Trump credit for forcing them to modernize.

Secretary-General Mark Rutte, known as the coalition's “Trump whisperer," likened the president's role quieting the Iran-Israel war to a “daddy” intervening in a schoolyard brawl.

Traditional diplomacy exists to preserve possibilities of working together. That often means avoiding saying a flat “no” if possible. But Trump's Greenland gambit was so stark a threat from one NATO member to another that Greenland's prime minister actually said the word.

“Enough,” Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a statement shortly after Trump's remarks Jan. 5. “No more pressure. No more hints. No more fantasies about annexation.”

That played a part in setting the tone. Denmark's leader said any such invasion of Greenland would mark the end of NATO and urged alliance members to take the threat seriously.

They did, issuing statement after statement rejecting the renewed threat. Trump responded last weekend from his golf course in Florida with a threat to charge a 10% import tax within a month on goods from eight European nations — Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland. The rate, he wrote, would climb to 25% on June 1 if no deal was in place for “the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland” by the United States.

Trump's fighting words lit a fire among leaders arriving in Davos. But they seemed to recognize, too, that the wider Trump world left him vulnerable.

“Trump was in a fairly weak position because he has a lot of other looming problems going on,” domestically, including an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court decision on his tariffs and a backlash to immigration raids in Minnesota, said Duncan Snidal, professor emeritus of international relations at Oxford University and the University of Chicago.

Canada's Carney said no by reframing the question not as being about Greenland, but about whether it was time for European countries to build power together against a “bully" — and his answer was yes.

Without naming the U.S. or Trump, Carney spoke bluntly: Europe, he said, should reject the big power's “coercion” and “exploitation." It was time to accept, he said, that a “rupture” in the alliance, not a transition, had occurred.

Unsaid, Snidel pointed out, was that the rupture was very new, and though it might be difficult to repair in the future, doing so under adjusted rules remains in U.S. and European interests beyond Trump's presidency. “It's too good a deal for all of them not to,” Snidel said.

Before Trump stepped away from the podium in Davos, he had begun to back down.

He canceled his threat to use “force” to take over Greenland. Not long after, he reversed himself fully, announcing “the framework" for a deal that would make his tariff threat unnecessary.

Trump told Fox Business that “we’re going to have total access to Greenland,” under the “framework," without divulging what that might mean.

Frederiksen hit the warning button again. In a statement, she said, “We cannot negotiate on our sovereignty."

In other words: “No.”

FILE - Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney delivers a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP, File)

FILE - President Donald Trump, right, meets with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on the sidelines of the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

FILE - French President Emmanuel Macron is seen during the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)

FILE - U.S. President Donald Trump, center, and Kate, Princess of Wales, listen to Britain's King Charles during the State Banquet in Windsor Castle, England, on day one of U.S. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump's second state visit to the U.K., Sept. 17, 2025. (Yui Mok/PA via AP, Pool Photo via AP, File)

FILE - President Donald Trump speaks before departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House, Jan. 20, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. (AP) — A man armed with a rifle rammed his vehicle into one of the nation’s largest reform synagogues in a Detroit suburb and was fatally shot by security Thursday, The Associated Press has learned.

The vehicle caught fire after crashing into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke to The AP.

The attacker drove through a set of doors and into a hallway where something in the vehicle ignited, a sheriff said.

“He was traveling with purpose down the hall, from my look at the video,” Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard said.

Investigators were still working to identify the man and a possible motive for the attack, said the person who could not publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity. The person cautioned that the investigation was still in the early stages.

In the minutes after the attack, smoke billowed from the synagogue, which also houses an early childhood center.

“No kids or no staff were injured whatsoever,” Bouchard said. He said one security officer was hit by the vehicle and knocked unconscious but did not suffer life-threatening injuries.

The synagogue has multiple security officers, he said, and at least one fired at the suspect, who was found dead inside his vehicle.

“We can’t say what killed him at this point but security did engage the suspect with gunfire,” the sheriff said, adding that it was possible the attacker killed himself or died some other way.

Synagogues around the world have been on edge and ramping up security since the U.S. and Israel launched a war with Iran with missile strikes on Feb. 28.

The FBI has warned that Iranian operatives may be planning drone attacks on targets in California. Two men brought explosives to a far-right protest outside the New York mayoral mansion on Saturday. Investigators allege they were inspired by the Islamic State extremist group. An assailant drove a car into people outside an Orthodox synagogue in Manchester, England, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. He stabbed two people to death before officers shot and killed him.

On Thursday, the Oakland County Sheriff’s office cleared the building and about a dozen parents sprinted to get their children from an early childhood learning center inside. West Bloomfield School District went on lockdown.

Authorities were working to reunite parents with their children at a nearby Jewish Community Center.

Samuel Bennett, whose wife was in the building, said he was deeply relieved to learn she and others were OK. “I don’t even know what the words are,” he told WDIV-TV.

Oakland County is Michigan’s second-largest county with roughly 1.3 million people. The majority of Detroit-area Jewish residents live there.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued a statement saying she was tracking developments.

“This is heartbreaking,” Whitmer said. “Michigan’s Jewish community should be able to live and practice their faith in peace.”

Temple Israel has 12,000 members. according to its website. It offers educational programs for families and adults.

The website says the synagogue is “passionate about helping Jewish communities across the globe” and that its mission is to “create a community building through the lens of Reform Judaism.”

The Jewish Federation of Detroit advised all Jewish organizations in the area “to go into lockout protocol — nobody in or out of your building.” The organization later lifted its advisory.

Durkin Richer reported from Washington, D.C. Associated Press reporters Ed White in Detroit; Todd Richmond in Madison, Wisconsin; and Eric Tucker in Washington, D.C., contributed.

Law enforcement respond to a call at Temple Israel synagogue Thursday, March 12, 2026, in West Bloomfield Township, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Law enforcement respond to a call at Temple Israel synagogue Thursday, March 12, 2026, in West Bloomfield Township, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Law enforcement respond to a call at Temple Israel synagogue Thursday, March 12, 2026, in West Bloomfield Township, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

A woman gathers children as law enforcement respond to a call at Temple Israel synagogue on Thursday, March 12, 2026, in West Bloomfield Township, Mich. (AP Photo/Corey Williams)

Law enforcement respond to a call at Temple Israel synagogue on Thursday, March 12, 2026, in West Bloomfield Township, Mich. (AP Photo/Corey Williams)

Law enforcement respond to a call at Temple Israel synagogue, Thursday, March 12, 2026 in West Bloomfield Township, Mich. (AP Photo/Corey Williams)

Law enforcement respond to a call at Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, Mich. (AP Photo/Corey Williams)

People gather near Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, Mich. (AP Photo/Corey Williams)