Trump to use executive order to rename Gulf of Mexico, ‘Gulf of America’
(The Hill) — President-elect Trump is set to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Mount Denali as part of a surge of Day 1 executive orders, his incoming press secretary shared on the social platform X.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition team, shared a New York Post report on Trump’s plans to rename the major body of water as the “Gulf of America,” as well as revert the Alaskan mountain’s name to Mount McKinley.
Trump earlier this month floated changing the name of the gulf during a press conference that also explored possible expansion of U.S. control into Greenland, the Panama Canal and Canada.
“We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” Trump told reporters. “What a beautiful name. And it’s appropriate. It’s appropriate. And Mexico has to stop allowing millions of people to pour into our country.”
As for Mount Denali, former President Obama changed the label of the nation’s highest peak to reflect the name that nearby Native Americans have long used. But the move faced opposition from Ohio lawmakers as they pushed to preserve the nod to former President McKinley, the 25th president and a Buckeye State native.
Trump last month reportedly promised that he’d revert the name.
“They took his name off Mount McKinley, right? That’s what they do to people. Now, he was a great president, very good president. At a minimum, he was a very good businessman. He was a businessman, then a governor, very successful businessman,” Trump said at a Turning Point USA event in December, as reported by Alaska Public Media.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum pushed back when Trump initially raised the gulf issue, noting the body of water has been internationally recognized as the Gulf of Mexico, and adding that North America was historically marked on maps as Mexican America.
“I mean obviously ‘Gulf of Mexico,’ the name is recognized by the United Nations, an organism of the United Nations. But next, why don’t we call it ‘Mexican America’? It sounds nice, doesn’t it?” Sheinbaum said, waving to a historical map projected on a screen.
