Who Is Renaming Everything on the Map? It's Not Just Trump

Tim Graham on Sep 4, 2026

In one of his Truth Social bombs, President Donald Trump insisted we should rename Lake Ontario to Lake America after Canada refused to accept his trade negotiation terms. It obviously echoes his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

It's easy to find these whole geographic kerfuffles unnecessary. But the media hated the first one so much that the Associated Press found itself restricted from the White House press poll for refusing to accept the new gulf terminology. What they hate is anything Trump does to add a patriotic pro-America tinge to something that they associate more with his ego than with patriotism. They see red -- as in a red MAGA cap.

On the Lake Ontario battle, HBO host Bill Maher joked: "The liberals are very pissed at this. They say you can't just go around changing things to fit your political agenda. Just ask any Latinx birthing person."

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 immigrants 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 Gens. 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.

Under Native American (or is that "indigenous"?) Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, they created a "Derogatory Geographic Names Task Force" and changed the names of things with offensive terms like "Squaw." None of this was considered controversial by our media elites because everything a Democrat renames in the cause of wokeness is good news. Or not news.

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.

Conservatives are usually the ones who like to stick with traditions and not rename things based on the newest ideological fads. Liberals can't seriously object to renaming things. They just want to be the only people who get to rename things.

Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.