signalmankenneth
Verified User
The president, who spent much of the past year renaming things, demonstrated again that he’s more interested in decreeing than governing.
One of the worst trends of 2025 started with “Gulf of America.” President Donald Trump, who spent much of the year renaming things, at times after himself, said in his Jan. 20 inaugural address that he’d be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico “a short time from now,” and hours later he signed an executive order to do just that. That executive order also changed the name of the highest peak in North America from Denali back to Mount McKinley, an unmistakable insult to the Alaska Natives who sought and received a restoration of the mountain’s ancient name under Barack Obama’s administration.
Trump was only beginning. While much of his renaming spree served his narcissistic tendencies and backward-looking views, some moves set the stage for more menacing and autocratic actions. For example, there was an instant leap from absurdity to authoritarianism when he barred Associated Press journalists from White House news conferences because the AP didn’t stop referring to the “Gulf of Mexico.” (MS NOW also doesn’t use “Gulf of America.”)
At the end of Trump’s first term, Congress stripped the names of Confederate traitors from U.S. military bases. Trump vetoed that bill, but Congress overrode the veto. Upon his return to the White House, the president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth effectively pulled an end-around on Congress by cynically finding non-Confederates named Benning, Bragg, Ford, Hood, etc. to name the bases for. And he and Hegseth have embarked upon a $2 billion campaign to rebrand the Department of Defense as the Department of War. No such name change has been approved by Congress. Trump also had the U.S. Institute of Peace renamed the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace.
The president, who regularly extols the virtues of what he calls “beautiful, clean coal” and believes windmills cause cancer, renamed the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado to the National Lab of the Rockies.
https://www.ms.now/opinion/trump-kennedy-center-renaming-gulf-america
One of the worst trends of 2025 started with “Gulf of America.” President Donald Trump, who spent much of the year renaming things, at times after himself, said in his Jan. 20 inaugural address that he’d be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico “a short time from now,” and hours later he signed an executive order to do just that. That executive order also changed the name of the highest peak in North America from Denali back to Mount McKinley, an unmistakable insult to the Alaska Natives who sought and received a restoration of the mountain’s ancient name under Barack Obama’s administration.
Trump was only beginning. While much of his renaming spree served his narcissistic tendencies and backward-looking views, some moves set the stage for more menacing and autocratic actions. For example, there was an instant leap from absurdity to authoritarianism when he barred Associated Press journalists from White House news conferences because the AP didn’t stop referring to the “Gulf of Mexico.” (MS NOW also doesn’t use “Gulf of America.”)
At the end of Trump’s first term, Congress stripped the names of Confederate traitors from U.S. military bases. Trump vetoed that bill, but Congress overrode the veto. Upon his return to the White House, the president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth effectively pulled an end-around on Congress by cynically finding non-Confederates named Benning, Bragg, Ford, Hood, etc. to name the bases for. And he and Hegseth have embarked upon a $2 billion campaign to rebrand the Department of Defense as the Department of War. No such name change has been approved by Congress. Trump also had the U.S. Institute of Peace renamed the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace.
The president, who regularly extols the virtues of what he calls “beautiful, clean coal” and believes windmills cause cancer, renamed the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado to the National Lab of the Rockies.
https://www.ms.now/opinion/trump-kennedy-center-renaming-gulf-america
