The Gulf of America is Only the Beginning

One of President Donald Trump’s early initiatives is already bearing fruit: Google Maps said Monday that it would change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and Denali to Mount McKinley for users in the United States.

The new nomenclature is part of an ongoing Trump project to alter the names of global landmarks to better suit his political and cultural preferences. And so far in his second term, he’s had some measure of success — the Associated Press also noted it would honor the name change for Alaska’s Denali, the tallest mountain in North America, though not the Gulf of Mexico. He’s also insisted that he would change the name of the Army base, Fort Liberty, back to Fort Bragg — which is how it was known from its opening in 1918 until 2022, and how Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth referred to the North Carolina base on Monday (it was originally named after Confederate General Braxton Bragg).

But these early skirmishes are nothing compared to the semantic wars to come. Over the next four years — and especially in the ensuing years after Trump leaves the White House — the country is about to go through a smashmouth fight, state by state, over the renaming of landmarks and public utilities after the vainglorious president himself.

It’s already started.

A handful of streets and highways named after Trump are vestiges of his first term in the Oval Office. In 2021, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt approved legislation that named a stretch of highway after him. A year later, a rural Nevada county renamed a justice complex — complete with sheriff’s offices, courtrooms and a jail — after the president (it shouldn’t come as a shock that liberals thought it was funny he got a jail named after him). In 2023, the city of Hialeah, Florida — which has swung rapidly to the right — renamed a street after Trump, with members of its city council voting unanimously for the change.

Now, at the outset of Trump’s second term, the pace is picking up. Lawmakers in states as varied as Arizona, Missouri, Kentucky and Wyoming are among those where measures have been introduced to designate certain roadways as the “Donald J. Trump Highway.” Local lawmakers in Utah’s Garfield County recently turned down a proposal to rename a scenic byway after Trump.

There may be no greater suck-ups in politics than members of Congress — witness the starry-eyed scrum surrounding every president when they enter House chambers to deliver the State of the Union address — so naturally the efforts to venerate Trump in the U.S. House are even more ambitious.

Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) introduced a measure last year designating the exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, of the United States as the “Donald John Trump Exclusive Economic Zone of the United States.” Not familiar with the EEZ? It’s pretty much the entirety of the U.S. coastline. Both coasts.

Last week, Rep. Addison McDowell (R-N.C.) introduced a bill to rebrand Washington’s Dulles International Airport as Donald J. Trump International Airport after a similar effort in the House went nowhere last year.

Trump himself has never been shy about plastering his last name across anything he touches — apartment buildings, golf courses and casinos are his most famous endeavors. But he’s also affixed his appellation onto books, board games, steaks, vodka and a short-lived bicycle race, among other things.

Yet it’s not Trump who’s behind these efforts — it’s mainly MAGA lawmakers who are intent on getting in his good graces, memorializing his first-term, as well as the achievements they expect over the next four years.

“WHEREAS, President Trump’s actions during his first term had a positive effect on the American people and the resilience of American government; and WHEREAS, President Trump was elected to be President of the United States on November 5, 2024, becoming only the second president in our nation’s history elected to two non-consecutive terms in office; and WHEREAS, for his accomplishments in the past and for all the things he will do for our country over the next four years,” reads the resolution in the Kentucky legislature. “President Trump is worthy of tangible recognition by the Commonwealth of Kentucky.”

To date, partisan conflict over homage to Trump has been limited, largely because much of the action has been located in red states. But as efforts to memorialize the Trump name bleed across blue-state borders, they’re being met with resistance. Last year, before the various legal proceedings against Trump were derailed, a group of Democrats responded to the push to rename Dulles airport in Virginia by introducing a bill to rename a federal prison in Miami after Trump.

“I see no reason to wait. Donald Trump faces nearly 100 felony charges. He has been found liable of sexual abuse and, subsequently, for defaming the victim of that abuse. He has been fined hundreds of millions of dollars in a civil fraud case. It is only right that the closest federal prison to Mar-a-Lago should bear his name,” said Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-Va.). “I hope our Republican friends will join us in bestowing upon Donald J. Trump the only honor he truly deserves.”

In New York, liberal New York politicians have tried and failed for almost a decade to rename Donald J. Trump State Park, a park created in Westchester and Putnam counties in 2006 from land donated by Trump in return for a tax write-off.

On the heels of his popular-vote victory, congressional Democrats have insisted that Trump’s interest in renaming landmarks and GOP attempts to commemorate him aren’t a hill to die on, regardless of the animosity many feel toward the president. Still reeling from their November losses, the party has bigger problems at the moment. “The renaming of the Gulf of Mexico and other absurdities like that we just let go,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said.

But what happens when the Donald J. Trump Highway miles pile up? Or when the Trump federal buildings begin to accumulate?