Donald Trump, the incoming president, declared Tuesday that he will rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
Texas, which has roughly 370 miles of Gulf shoreline, would be impacted by such a daring maneuver.
As he complained about Mexico and the perceived issues he usually blames on the neighboring country, such the drug problem in the United States, Trump announced the name change during one of his often expansive and unstructured news conferences.
The American Gulf. “What a lovely name,” Trump remarked.
However, is it possible for a president to change their name? Indeed. Sort of.
Jon Taylor, chair of UTSA’s Department of Political Science and Geography, stated, “He could actually direct federal agencies to use the name Gulf of America.”
Taylor continued by saying that while the name change doesn’t address any issues, it does suggest that Trump may be in favor of enlarging the US boundaries, as he has been noticeably doing lately.
According to Taylor, “it would be easy to discern a new and developing “kind of manifest destiny” when discussing invasions of Greenland, Panama, and Canada using economic force.
With an area of almost 600,000 square miles, the Gulf of Mexico is the tenth largest body of water in the world.
Throughout history, it has gone by a number of titles, such as “Golfo de Mexico,” which dates back to the middle of the 16th century, when Spain controlled parts of Mexico, Cuba, and the United States.
After the 2010 BP oil spill, talk show host and comedian Stephen Colbert once proposed changing the name. This incident occurred during the Comedy Central program “The Colbert Report.”
Additionally, the idea of renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America was put out at least once in recent years by Democratic state representative Steve Holland.
Support for the rebranding has already come from Trump supporters. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga) showed her support on social media. According to her, she has given her employees instructions to start drafting legislation to alter the name.
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