President-elect Donald Trump not only wants to make America great again, he appears to be angling to make America bigger.

Trump has turned up the volume in recent days on his calls to acquire Greenland, regain control of the Panama Canal and make Canada the nation's 51st state.

The president-elect on Tuesday night once again trolled America's neighbor to the north, posting on social media two doctored maps that showed Canada as part of the United States.

"Canada and the United States. That would really be something," Trump said hours earlier at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. "They should be a state."

WOULD CANADA BECOME A ‘BLUE-STATE BEHEMOTH’ IF IT JOINED THE U.S.?

A day earlier, the president-elect argued in a social media post that "many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st State."

While he said he would only use "economic force" to convince Canadians to join the U.S., he would not rule out military force when it comes to Greenland, the massive ice-capped island in the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans that for centuries has been controlled by Denmark, and the Panama Canal, which the U.S. ceeded control of to Panama over 40 years ago.

TRUMP POSTS MAPS OF A GREATER U.S.

"They should give it up because we need it for national security. That’s for the free world. I’m talking about protecting the free world," Trump said of his longtime ambitions to acquire Greenland.

His comments came as Donald Trump Jr., the president-elect's eldest son, made a day trip to Greenland, flying aboard Trump's campaign airliner.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen responded, saying Greenland had made it clear that it is not for sale. 

"There is a lot of support among the people of Greenland that Greenland is not for sale and will not be in the future either," Frederiksen said.

Pierre Poilievre, leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, also shot back at Trump's musings.

"Canada will never be the 51st state. Period. We are a great and independent country," he emphasized in a social media post.

Additionally, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also returned fire at Trump's threat to use "economic force" to absorb Canada, saying there is not "a snowball's chance in hell" of Canada becoming the 51st state.

Trump's recent mocking of the longtime Canadian prime minister, repeatedly referring to him as "governor" along with his threat to impose massive tariffs on Canada, was likely a contributing factor in Trudeau's resignation announcement earlier this week.

It was not just Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal.

Trump even pledged during his press conference to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America." 

While Trump's efforts at American expansion - which has a prominent place in the nation's history - may never come to fruition, they are immediately forcing world leaders to react and respond, and likely will foreshadow the blunt effect his second administration will have on the globe.

"I think what he's doing is setting the tone for the next four years, which is that America is the dominant superpower in the world. We're the protector of freedom and democracy across the world. We're the only country capable of pushing back against China, and it's time we started acting like we're that country," veteran Republican strategist and communicator Ryan Williams told Fox News.

Matt Mowers, a veteran GOP national public affairs strategist and former diplomat at the State Department during Trump's first administration, emphasized that "Donald Trump has adapted Teddy Roosevelt’s mantra for the 21st century and ‘speaks loudly and carries a big stick’. He recognizes that to change the paradigm and repel Chinese and Russian economic expansion in our own hemisphere, he needs to speak boldly about exerting American influence in the region."

"Already, you have seen just how his mastery of the bully pulpit has expedited a political earthquake in Canada. This ensures that America remains dominant in our own backyard, which puts America’s interests first, expanding our trade and security cooperation," Mowers argued.

Not everyone obviously agrees with Trump's muscular approach.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, America's top diplomat in President Biden's administration, appeared to take aim at the president-elect.

"I think one of the basic propositions we brought to our work over the last four years is that we're stronger, we're more effective, we get better results when we're working closely with our allies. Not saying or doing things that may alienate them," Blinken said Wednesday at a news conference.

Blinken predicted that "the idea expressed about Greenland is obviously not a good one. But maybe more important, it's obviously one that's not going to happen. So we probably shouldn't waste a lot of time talking about it."

Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, told Fox News Digital on Wednesday that he is "reviewing the opportunity" of possibly mounting a gubernatorial bid. 

The former House lawmaker noted that if he ultimately decides to throw his hat into the ring, he would need to engage in "active steps toward a run" toward the end of 2025.

Gaetz, who recently started hosting a One America News Network program, said that many Floridians have encouraged him to run, and while he believes it is a bit early to decide, he will pray about the prospect and discuss it with his wife.

He noted that he is "deeply concerned" about increasing prices for people in Florida, including property and casualty insurance. "I know how to fight the special interests who've increased prices in my home state," he said, noting that if he believes he could "make a positive change," then he will "significantly" contemplate the move.

TRUMP-BACKED CANDIDATE AIMING TO REPLACE MATT GAETZ WANTS FLORIDA TO ADOPT GOLD AND SILVER AS LEGAL TENDER

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who took office in early 2019 and was resoundingly re-elected in 2022, cannot seek re-election in 2026, which means the field will be wide open for candidates interested in vying for the job.

Responding to the Tampa Bay Times' report when Gaetz said he was "starting to think about running for governor," Florida state Sen. Jason Pizzo, a Democrat, responded by declaring, "And I will kick his ass."

On the heels of a 2024 re-election victory in Florida's 1st Congressional District, Gaetz swiftly resigned from Congress after President-elect Donald Trump announced the lawmaker as his nominee for U.S. attorney general. 

Later that same month, however, Gaetz withdrew himself from consideration for the role. 

"There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I'll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General. Trump's DOJ must be in place and ready on Day 1," he said in a post on X.

HOUSE REPORT ACCUSES MATT GAETZ OF PAYING WOMEN FOR SEX, USING ILLEGAL DRUGS, ACCEPTING IMPROPER GIFTS

Trump has endorsed Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis to fill Gaetz's former House seat — the GOP primary is later this month.

A House Ethics Committee report alleged that "the Committee determined there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress."

Gaetz declared in a post on X, "There is a reason they did this to me in a Christmas Eve-Eve report and not in a courtroom of any kind where I could present evidence and challenge witnesses."

TRUMP HAILS FLORIDA DEM'S DECISION TO DITCH PARTY, JOIN GOP: ‘THANK YOU HILLARY!’

Gaetz instigated the ouster of then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy from the speakership in 2023.

• Internal documents show Amazon workers in the UK can apply to work from home for up to two days a week.
• Staff in the Netherlands are following previous guidance for three days in the office, BI has learned.
• Amazon implemented a global five-day-a-week return-to-office policy on January 2.

Amazon's five-day-a-week return-to-office policy appears to be more flexible for some European employees than their US-based counterparts.

Employees in the UK can apply to work from home for one or two days a week, while Amazon workers in the Netherlands are currently following previous guidance allowing them to work from home for up to two days a week, Business Insider has learned.

A copy of Amazon's "Flexible Work Arrangement" policy document for the US, seen by BI, does not explicitly state that employees can request to work from home for one or two days a week. The document, last updated on December 17, states that Amazon "may grant exceptions for work arrangements" to staff in the US "who are in good standing on a case-by-case basis."

It follows Amazon's September announcement that employees globally would be required to work from the office five days a week, starting January 2. Some locations have delayed a five-day RTO policy because of insufficient office space, BI previously reported. In other cases, it appears to have been delayed by local employment requirements.

Amazon's management team in the Netherlands sent employees an email, seen by BI, on December 20 that says it entered into discussions with its works council — an organization representing employees — to define and introduce a flexible working arrangement.

It says, "Until further notice, while everyone is welcome and encouraged to work from the office for five days per week, you may continue to follow the current in-office guidance for your role and team into the new year."

Under that guidance, employees in the Netherlands can work up to two days a week from home until they have been notified of the outcome of ongoing discussions between the works council and management, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Nafsika Karavida, an attorney at law firm Reavis Page Jump, told BI that the differences between Amazon's RTO rollout in Europe compared to the US are "most likely due to cultural, legal, and operational differences" that could limit its "ability to act unilaterally."

Karavida added that employers in the Netherlands cannot legally enforce an RTO policy without the approval of a works council.

Like Amazon employees in Germany, staff in the UK can make a formal application to work from home for one or two days a week, according to an internal policy document seen by BI. It states employees based in the UK have a "statutory right to make a formal application" to change their work location, among other working conditions. If an application is approved, it will be subject to a three-month trial period, the document says.

Karavida said that Amazon's policy in the UK is shaped by flexible working regulations that took effect last April. "Although these regulations do not grant employees an automatic right to work from home, they obligate employers to consider such requests reasonably on a case-by-case basis," she said.

Amazon faces RTO delays

The UK, Netherlands, and Germany are the latest examples of Amazon's five-day RTO being implemented in different ways and at different speeds. An internal list shows more than 40 locations where Amazon's full five-day RTO policy is delayed, including Santa Clara, California; Hamburg, Germany; and Belfast, UK.

Amazon's CEO, Andy Jassy, said in a September blog post that the decision to return full-time to the office was to help the company "further strengthen" its culture and teams.

An Amazon spokesperson referred BI to that same blog post, in which Jassy also said "it was not a given" that staff could work remotely two days a week before the pandemic and "that will also be true moving forward."

In the US, Amazon employees can submit requests for offsite work for the entirety of a week or more than 90 days, which are also reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

However, unlike the policies for the UK and Germany, the US flexible working document does not specifically mention the option for employees to formally apply to work from home for one or two days a week. It only details the offsite work arrangements and part-time work arrangements.

An internal Amazon FAQ document circulated at the time of the RTO announcement last year says that employees with existing approval, such as a "Military Spouse Remote Work Exception," do not need to change where they work.

• Firestorms in Los Angeles have burned over 5,000 acres, destroying homes and killing two people.
• One of the two biggest blazes, the Palisades Fire, could turn out to be the costliest in US history.
• The fires have spread so fast in part because of a windstorm and flood-drought whiplash.

All was well in Los Angeles at around 10 a.m. on Tuesday.

Less than 24 hours later, 2,925 acres of the Pacific Palisades were ablaze in what is being called the worst wildfire in Southern California since 2011.

Three more blazes have ignited in the area, with one, the Eaton Fire, engulfing another 2,000-plus acres.

Firefighters were unable to contain any of the burning area as of Wednesday morning, the LA Fire Department reported.

More than 1,000 structures have burned, at least two people have died, and the blazes could get even worse in the coming hours.

California is no stranger to fires, but this situation is different and especially dangerous for a few reasons.

An 'urban firestorm' that could be the costliest in history

Few brush fires in California history have intruded into such vast areas of dense, urban housing.

The UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain declared it an "urban firestorm" as he assessed live imagery of the developing Eaton Fire on Tuesday morning.

Perhaps the best historical comparison, the 1991 Tunnel Fire that raged through more than 1,500 acres of Oakland, was smaller than either of the two giant blazes in Los Angeles. It killed 25 people and injured 150, and ranks as the third-deadliest and third-most-destructive fire in California history.

The true toll of this week's fires won't be clear until later.

Swain said that he and multiple colleagues have estimated that the Palisades Fire could turn out to be the costliest on record in the US, due to the number of structures burning and the fact that those homes are some of the most expensive in the world.

"We are looking at what is, I think, likely to become the costliest wildfire disaster in California, if not national history, along with a number of other superlatives," Swain said.

A historic windstorm spread the fire fast

A powerful windstorm buffeted the flames throughout Tuesday and into Wednesday morning, with gusts of wind reaching up to 90 miles per hour, according to the National Weather Service.

During a two-and-a-half hour period overnight, the Palisades Fire's size more than doubled, per the fire service's reports.

On Tuesday evening the winds were so powerful that water- and retardant-dropping aircraft could not fly.

It's a phenomenon that scientists have warned about: A deadly combination of high winds and dry, open land — such as the brushland currently being swept by flames in Los Angeles — amounting to fires that can move faster than emergency responders can keep up with.

"It's certainly unusual how fast it's grown," Douglas Kelley, an expert in wildfires at the UK's Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, told Business Insider. "It's definitely a lot faster than I guess a lot of people were expecting in the area at the time."

A study published in Science in October last year has found that while only about 3% of US fires over a nearly two-decade period could be considered "fast fires," they did disproportionate amounts of damage.

"The most destructive and deadly wildfires in US history were also fast," wrote the study's authors, led by University of Colorado Boulder's Jennifer Balch.

Between 2001-2020, fast fires accounted for 78% of fire-destroyed buildings and a full 61% of suppression costs — or $18.9 billion, the scientists wrote. And they are getting more frequent, the study said.

The windstorm was bad luck. But the other primary factor in the fires' rapid explosions — the fuel — is strongly linked to the climate crisis.

Weather whiplash made abundant fire fuel

The last two winters in Southern California have actually been quite wet with heavy rainfall and flooding, which is a huge part of the problem.

Abundant rainfall spurred an explosion of grasses and brush, which is the primary fire fuel in Southern California. Then the last few months saw very little precipitation in the area, flash-drying all that vegetation.

Kelley said those dry conditions made the Palisades especially susceptible to fast-spreading fire.

This is part of a growing phenomenon that Swain calls "hydroclimate whiplash" or weather whiplash. As global temperatures rise, many parts of the world, especially California, are seeing more violent swings between extreme wet and extreme dry conditions.

The same confluence of weather whiplash and extreme winds was behind the Camp Fire, Swain said. That November 2018 blaze in Paradise, California was the deadliest and most destructive in the state's history, destroying 18,804 structures and killing 85 people.

• Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says he's fine with renaming the Gulf of Mexico.
• Only, though, if Trump works with them to lower costs for Americans, he said.
• Schumer said it "may be a zany new idea" but it won't "help people save money at the grocery store."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Wednesday that Democrats were open to President-elect Donald Trump's idea of renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America."

However, he noted that he'd only do so if Trump works with Democrats on "an actual plan to lower costs for Americans."

"That is what the American people want us to focus on first, not on renaming bodies of water," Schumer said in a floor speech, adding that his party's priorities "are so much more closely aligned with the concerns of the American people than Donald Trump's seem to be."

Trump floated the idea at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, where he also refused to rule out the use of military force to take control of Greenland or the Panama Canal.

The Democratic leader's comments essentially amount to a challenge to Trump to focus on the economic issues that helped him regain the presidency, rather than merely changing names.

Over the next several years, Democrats will be making the case that their economic agenda is more beneficial for the working class than Trump's.

"Renaming the Gulf of Mexico may be a zany new idea, but it isn't going to help people save money at the grocery store. It's not going to make trips to the pharmacy more affordable," Schumer said. "If Donald Trump wants to rename a gulf to sound more patriotic, I'd say we will help him on one condition and only one condition: let's come up with a real plan first — not a concept of a plan — to lower prices for Americans."

• I spent two weeks on a luxurious Explora Journeys cruise exploring the Mediterranean with friends.
• When broken down, we spent about $480 a person per night for an ocean-view suite.
• The ports were great to explore, and we had delicious meals and fun experiences on board.

Having previously visited Greece and enjoyed it, I wanted to explore more of the Adriatic with some friends and family for my 40th birthday.

Since we'd be traveling during peak season, flights and hotel rates were quite high. So, I decided to look into a luxury cruise instead — it seemed like an especially good value if we wanted to see multiple places.

I ended up booking a two-week itinerary throughout Greece and the Adriatic Riviera with Explora Journeys, a luxury line from the MSC Group. Our ship stopped in places like Italy, Montenegro, and Croatia.

Unfortunately, this exact itinerary no longer seems to be available, though similar ones can be found on the Explora Journeys website.

I shared an ocean-terrace suite with one other person, and we each paid about $480 a night. Our fare included all of our food and drinks (except for one meal at a specialty restaurant), gratuities, and port charges.

Here's what our experience was like on a luxury sailing with Explora Journeys.

Magic star Paolo Banchero is expected to return to action in one of Orlando's back-to-back home games Thursday against Minnesota or Friday against Milwaukee, sources told ESPN.

Apple’s AirPods lineup is stronger than ever following the launch of , which now include many features formerly exclusive to AirPods Pro 2. But for me personally, there are still three key Pro-exclusive features that make the more expensive AirPods worth the upgrade.

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Since Tuesday, four wildfires have ignited in Los Angeles County. Combined, the flames are roughly 5,700 acres.

Neurologists hope this tongue-in-cheek study will spark serious conversations about AI's limitations and the benefits of a human touch in medicine.

The U.S. army has launched airstrikes in Yemen against underground arms facilities controlled by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

Two looters have been arrested during evacuation orders in Southern California due to the Palisades, Eaton, and Hurst fires.

Those living in the wildfire zone include millions of seniors, many of which rely on Social Security payments each month.

Biden and Trump put out vastly different statements about the spate of wildfires ravaging Los Angeles and the surrounding areas.

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The Biden administration last month announced sanctions on 35 companies and vessels over their involvement in Iran's shadow fleet

Over 30,000 people were told to evacuate on Tuesday as a wildfire threatens homes in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles.

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