On January 20, 2025, the first day of his current term as President, Donald Trump – to a great deal of disdain – issued an executive order that the Gulf Of Mexico be renamed the Gulf of America. He is now – again to a great deal of disdain – ordering that Lake Ontario be renamed Lake America.
Can Presidents (or, for that matter, other people/groups) really do this? Or is this some unique action by President Trump that hasn’t happened before?
The answer can be found in Tim Graham’s instructive article for townhall.com. Here are a couple of key excerpts:
As anyone who watches the “evolution” of what terms are acceptable, the Left regularly changes the terminology and expects everyone to follow their changes. Try to keep up with the Associated Press Stylebook, which calls the tune for the press.
These term tyrants routinely genuflect ethnic and LGBTQ pressure groups and their demands to remake the language we’re all supposed to use. They tried to force “Latinx” on people, but the Latinos seemed to hate it the most. Illegal aliens are “undocumented,” homeless people are “unhoused,” and gender is “assigned at birth.”
Describing a woman as a “birthing person” — to include “men” with a uterus — strikes most people as waging war on biological truth. The use of “pregnant person” instead of “pregnant woman” has caused some pushback from feminists.
But those aren’t on the map, the Left might suggest. OK, well they want to cancel and rename all kinds of landmarks to satisfy their urge for wokeness. Just in this decade, they’ve pulled down all kinds of statues. Last week, they removed three statues in Richmond to clean that Old South house: Confederate Generals Stonewall Jackson and “Extra Billy” Smith, as well as Confederate doctor Hunter Holmes McGuire.
President Joe Biden renamed nine major U.S. Army bases that honor Confederate leaders, including Fort Bragg, Fort Benning, Fort Pickett, Fort Hood and Fort Rucker. He also renamed nearly 650 geographic features across this country.
The woke police forced name changes for the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Indians and many college and high school athletic teams with “derogatory” mascots. But now they also seem to find the use of “America” on the map to be offensive.
Gee. I guess name-changes for a variety of reasons – some good/logical, some not – are nothing new. The only difference this time is who has done the name-changing.
Make of it what you will.
