Where’s the Gulf of America? Ask Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis | Opinion
No sooner had President Donald Trump put pen to paper on an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” than Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had jumped on aboard the renaming train.
With the ink barely dry on the Trump executive order Monday, the new president’s first day in office, DeSantis issued his own executive order warning about a “Gulf winter weather system” about to hit northern Florida. But the gulf in question? The Gulf of America, as he made sure to call it.
“Whereas, an area of low pressure moving across the Gulf of America, interacting with Arctic air, will bring widespread impactful winter weather to North Florida beginning Tuesday, January 21, 2025,” the order began.
A winter storm warning in the “Gulf of America?” Where? Imagine geography challenged Americans trying to find that one on a map.
In usual Trump fashion, the president casually threw out the idea earlier this month, saying he wanted to rename the Gulf, along with changing the name of Denali, America’s tallest peak in Alaska, back to Mount McKinley. As soon as he was in office this week, he signed the paperwork.
The name changes, he insisted, would help America “reclaim its rightful place... inspiring the awe, admiration of the entire world.”
But the potential name change is more likely to spread confusion than awe — especially if the same body of water is called different names by different countries. The basin has been known as the Gulf of Mexico for an estimated four centuries. Changing its name won’t be a snap. Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama all have gulf coastlines.
No doubt Trump and Congress working together could impose the new name on U.S. government agencies. But Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum had a few choice words on the topic. Trump, she said, can call it whatever he wants: “For us it is still the Gulf of Mexico, and for the entire world it is still the Gulf of Mexico,” she said in a Washington Post story.
Another complication: U.S. jurisdiction over the gulf only extends 12 miles from U.S. coastline. If a hurricane whips up in the waters more than 12 miles out, will we revert to calling the storm-generating waters the Gulf of Mexico so we can blame another country?
This isn’t about the name, of course. It’s about Trump’s long-running feud with Mexico, going back to his first term when he tried to build a wall on the U.S. southern border and make Mexico pay for it. (That didn’t happen.) More recently, he has clashed with Mexico on border security and tariffs.
He’s made no secret of the real reason, either. When he first proposed the idea at a a Mar-a-Lago press conference about two weeks before he was to take office, he made it abundantly clear he was doing this to tweak Mexico.
“We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring,” Trump said.
“And it’s appropriate. It’s appropriate,” he said. “And Mexico has to stop allowing millions of people to pour into our country.”
As for why DeSantis is such an early adopter, it’s pretty clear that he has decided he needs to make the “Ron DeSanctimonious” days of his relationship with Trump go away in order to have a second shot at the White House in 2028.
So he called a special session of the Florida Legislature for next week, bucking opposition in his own party, to push legislation that would support Trump’s immigration agenda. And now, it seems, he’s all in on the Gulf of America.
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