Monday marked a significant point in U.S. history, with President Donald Trump staging a triumphant return to the White House and following his inauguration with a slew of executive actions aimed at furthering his MAGA mission.
One issue he had been discussing at length in recent weeks involved renaming the Gulf of Mexico, and an announcement on the first day of his second term confirmed that he was already in the process of ordering its named changed to the Gulf of America.
Another natural feature, the nation’s tallest mountain, was also included in the statement, as Fox News reported:
The orders direct the Secretary of the Interior to make the name changes. The changes will apply to official federal documents and maps, though it is unclear whether the order also requires schools to use the new terminology.
Trump has repeatedly mentioned renaming Alaska’s Mount Denali as well, pointing out that it was originally named after President William McKinley.
“McKinley was a very good, maybe a great president,” Trump said at a December rally. “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.”
President Obama renamed the mountain to Denali in 2015, in keeping with a request from the Alaska legislature.
The renaming effort was among many topics of social media discussion on Inauguration Day:
Libs made us change the name of Mount McKinley, I see no problem with making the Gulf of Mexico be the Gulf of America. Make bodies of water great again!
pic.twitter.com/jicIHhcq6r— Enguerrand VII de Coucy (@ingelramdecoucy) January 7, 2025
For his first day in office Trump will be renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and he will rename Mount Denali to Mount McKinley, which was its original name before Obama decided to make it woke.
pic.twitter.com/O0tjOih1Jk— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) January 20, 2025
The mountain has long ceased to identify as Denali, which is now its deadname.
The mountain now identifies as Mount McKinley.
Deal with it. https://t.co/GeCbs8FXTF
— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) January 21, 2025
Although restoring the Mount McKinley name resonated with many of Trump’s supporters, Alaska’s RINO U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski was compelled to speak out against it.
As Politico reported:
“I’m totally against that,” Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski told reporters. “It is called Denali, which means the great one. So I would just suggest to President Trump, who wants to make everything great, they already have a great name for it.”
Murkowski said she spoke to Trump on Sunday about his plans to change the mountain’s name and that she plans another conversation on the matter with Trump.
In his speech Monday, Trump signaled his mind was made up, saying he would “restore the name of a great president … where it should be and where it belongs. President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent.”
Murkowski’s Alaska colleagues, while not enthusiastic about the move, were not as adamant about it Monday. Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), who spoke out against the name change as recently as last month, said he hadn’t seen the executive order to rename the mountain.
“We’ll see,” he said. “You never know, but there might be some important stuff in there for energy for America.”
And here’s a clip of failed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s reaction to Trump’s announcement of the name changes:
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