Latest news with #GeographicNamesInformationSystem
Newsweek
18-06-2025
- Politics
- Newsweek
Trump Mobile Removes Coverage Map Showing 'Gulf of Mexico'
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Trump Mobile, the newly launched company behind the "All American" mobile service and upcoming Trump-branded smartphone, swiftly pulled its service coverage map which labeled the area of the Atlantic off the coast of Louisiana as the Gulf of Mexico, rather than President Donald Trump's preferred label, the "Gulf of America." The move was first noticed by social media users before being picked up by outlets including Wired and Reuters. Newsweek reached out to Trump Mobile via email for comment. Why It Matters The president's decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico, a name it has held since the 16th century, has become a contentious political issue since it was announced during his inaugural address and subsequently formalized in an executive order, which argued that the body of water "will continue to play a pivotal role in shaping America's future and the global economy." Trump ordered that the government's Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) be updated to reflect the change, and that steps be taken to "ensure all federal references to the Gulf of America, including on agency maps, contracts, and other documents and communications shall reflect its renaming." The change resulted in significant pushback from Mexico. Other nations and intergovernmental bodies, such as the United Nations and the International Hydrographic Organization, continue to use the original name. The White House indefinitely barred the Associated Press from access to the Oval Office or Air Force One for continuing to refer to it as the Gulf of Mexico. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn at the White House on June 15, 2025. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn at the White House on June 15, To Know Government agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), assented to the "Gulf of America" change, as did Google Maps and Apple Maps despite calls for boycotts over the issue. According to Wired, which reported on the label before the webpage was taken down, the coverage map resembled that created and used by Ultra Mobile, a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) owned by T-Mobile, one of the three main carriers in the U.S. Reuters reported that the map was taken down "just hours" following the launch of Trump Mobile. Social media users who noticed the use of the Gulf of Mexico and Trump Mobile's subsequent decision to remove the coverage map were quick to note the irony. One person wrote on X, formerly Twitter: "The new Trump Mobile coverage map was released today. It features the Gulf of Mexico! @realDonaldTrump is not going to be happy with @EricTrump and @DonaldJTrumpJr." In a subsequent post, they included a screen grab of the Trump Mobile site showing the map "for the MAGA folks who say it's fake." For the MAGA folks that say it's fake… here is a video screen grab I personally took from — Travis Akers 🇺🇸 (@travisakers) June 16, 2025 What People Are Saying White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, in response to a question on the limitation of AP's press access, said: "It is a privilege to cover this White nobody has the right to go into the Oval Office and ask a president of the United States questions. That is an invitation that is given." An X user posted a screenshot of the map, writing: "lol, this is comical. @TrumpMobile announced their new phone and put out their coverage map showing 'Gulf of Mexico.' You really can't make this s*** up. But but Gulf of America!" What Happens Next The webpage meant to feature Trump's Mobile's coverage map remained unavailable as of press time. Users are presented with a "404 not found" message and redirected back to the homepage.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Five months after Trump order, most federal agencies are using ‘Gulf of America,' Mount McKinley
Denali, North America's tallest peak, is seen from Parks Highway on Sept. 20, 2022. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon) On Friday, the federal agency in charge of offshore oil and gas drilling announced that it will be rewriting its core regulations to replace all references to 'Gulf of Mexico' with 'Gulf of America.' The change by the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management is only the latest in a series of actions by federal agencies, and a review of the Federal Register — the official journal of the federal government — shows most agencies have already implemented President Donald Trump's Jan. 20 executive order, which instructed the federal government to replace the gulf's name in official records. That order also officially renamed Denali to Mount McKinley, the name used by the federal government between 1896 and 2015 for North America's tallest peak. In February and March, the domestic names committee of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names formalized the president's order and a subsequent one by the U.S. secretary of the Interior about the Gulf of Mexico and Mount McKinley. At Denali National Park, websites changed the name of North America's tallest mountain within 10 days; it was listed as Denali on Jan. 28, and by Jan. 30, it was 'Mount McKinley.' The printed brochures took longer but are now updated. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which handles ocean mapping, changed the gulf's name on ocean charts, and the U.S. Geological Survey changed the name in the Geographic Names Information System, the federal government's core database. Even the agency in charge of the nation's spy satellites altered its records. As the Atlantic hurricane season begins, the National Weather Service's National Hurricane Center has already updated its maps, and the U.S. Coast Guard changed its regulations in March. Other agencies, including the BOEM, have taken longer to act. In late May, the federal agency in charge of pipeline safety changed its regulations. More actions are coming, according to notices published in the Federal Register, the official daily journal of the federal government. In August, the Federal Aviation Administration will change parts of its aviation maps to account for the new names. Additional changes are expected in the coming months from other agencies and from states, which have been slower to act on the new names. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Straits Times
11-05-2025
- Politics
- Straits Times
Can Trump rename the Persian Gulf?
Mr Donald Trump has the power to order changes to geographical names as they are used in the US. But other countries do not have to honour those changes. PHOTO: EPA-EFE WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump has floated changing the name of the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Gulf ahead of a trip to the Middle East next week, a move that infuriated Iran and its people. 'I'll have to make a decision,' Mr Trump said in the Oval Office on May 7. 'I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. I don't know if feelings are going to be hurt.' This past week, The Associated Press reported that Mr Trump planned to announce the renaming on his tour of several Arab countries, which have been lobbying for the change for years. The turquoise blue water has been called the Persian Gulf since at least 550BC, when the Persian dynasty of Cyrus the Great ruled an empire that spanned from India to the edges of Western Europe. Ancient Persia is now modern-day Iran, and its entire southern coast stretches along the Persian Gulf. Iran's governments, going back to the prerevolution era of the shah, have stoutly defended Persian Gulf as the only legitimate name. So have Iranians inside and outside the country, who view the name as a core part of their national and cultural identity. By suggesting the name change, Mr Trump has seemingly done the impossible: Unite Iranians of all political, ideological and religious factions. They have spoken out in statements and social media posts, condemning Mr Trump's idea. Can Trump really rename the Gulf? Mr Trump has the power to order changes to geographical names as they are used in the US. But other countries do not have to honour those changes. In 2025, he issued an executive order to update the government's Geographic Names Information System in order to change all references to the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. On May 9, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said her government had sued Google over its decision to abide by Mr Trump's order. The US Board on Geographic Names currently mandates use of the Persian Gulf for official US business. Globally, the International Hydrographic Organization works to standardise and chart marine boundaries. But the organisation told The New York Times in 2205 that there was 'no formal international agreement or protocol in place for naming maritime areas'. How have Iranians reacted? Mr Trump's idea drew condemnation from a broad cross-section of Iranians, who are often divided on many topics. 'It goes beyond politics; it goes beyond religious divisions and ideologies – it's about the nation and its history, and it has hit a chord,' said historian Touraj Daryaee, director of the Centre for Persian Studies at the University of California, Irvine. 'Does Trump want to negotiate with Iran or does he want to take away its national identity?' Mr Daryaee said that since ancient times, Iranians have referred to their nation as 'ab o khakh' which means 'water and earth.' Two bodies of water – the Persian Gulf in the south and the Caspian Sea to the north – are deeply intertwined in the Iranian psyche as symbols of nationhood. Mr Ahmad Zeidabadi, a prominent analyst in Tehran, Iran's capital, posted on social media, 'Just because of Trump's wishes and whims, the Gulf of Mexico will not become the Gulf of America, Canada will not join the United States, Greenland will not become a possession of the United States, and the Persian Gulf will not take on a fake name.' Iran's national soccer team weighed in with a map of the Persian Gulf and a trending hashtag #ForeverPersianGulf on its official Instagram page. Even Iranian opposition figures expressed their displeasure. Mr Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed Shah of Iran who supports Mr Trump and encouraged him to abandon diplomacy with the government in Tehran, said on social media, 'President Trump's reported decision to distort history, if true, is an insult to the Iranian people and our great civilization.' What's the history of the Persian Gulf? The Persian Gulf name has been used throughout history, in maps, documents and diplomacy, from the time of the ancient Persians, whose empire dominated the region, to the Greeks and the British. The push to call it the Arabian Gulf gathered steam during the Pan-Arab nationalist movement of the late 1950s. The United Nations uses the term the Persian Gulf. A 2006 paper by a UN working group found unanimity in historical documents on the term, which it said was coined by the Persian king Darioush in the fifth century BC Will this affect the Iran-US nuclear talks? Iran and the US have held three rounds of negotiations, mediated by Oman, on Iran's advancing nuclear program, and they were scheduled to meet again May 11. The US wants to prevent Iran from weaponising its nuclear program, and Iran wants to remove sanctions that have hobbled its economy. Mr Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian senior diplomat and member of the country's nuclear negotiating team in 2015, said if Mr Trump renamed the Persian Gulf, it would deliver a blow to the negotiations. 'It will just create mistrust and embolden the hard-liners in Iran who say you can't trust America,' Mr Mousavian said in an interview. NYTIMES Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Engadget
10-05-2025
- Politics
- Engadget
Mexico is suing Google over 'Gulf of America' name change for US users
The Mexican government has filed a lawsuit against Google for renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America in Maps within the United States. Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum said during a press conference that the lawsuit has already been filed, but as The Guardian notes, she didn't say when and where it was submitted. Sheinbaum argued that the Trump administration's order for a name change only applies to the US portion of the oceanic basin and that the US government doesn't have the authority to rename the whole body of water. "All we want is for the decree issued by the US government to be complied with," she said. Google renamed the Gulf of Mexico into the Gulf of America for users who open Maps in the US back in February. It first announced that it was going to do so the previous month and said it was only waiting for the US government to make the change official in the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), which serves as the "federal and national standard for geographic nomenclature." BBC said the Mexican government wrote to Google at the time to get it to reconsider before eventually threatening legal action. When Google announced the name change for US users, it explained that it was following a longstanding practice to show official local names for places in Maps when they vary between countries. In Mexico, the basin is still called the Gulf of Mexico, while it shows up as "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)" for users outside both countries.
New York Times
14-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Denali Will Always Be Denali
In 1896, a gold prospector named William Dickey led a journey through what he called the 'wonderful wilderness' of Alaska, where he glimpsed an enormous mountain that compelled his 'unbounded admiration.' When he emerged from the Alaskan interior, the first news he heard was that William McKinley, the former governor of Ohio, had received the Republican nomination for president. And so, in the kind of random act that so often accompanies the colonial naming of geographic 'discoveries,' Dickey and his comrades decided to bestow the name McKinley upon the huge peak. It caught on enough that Congress made the name official in 1917 when it created Mount McKinley National Park. But the mountain — the tallest in North America, scraping the sky at 20,310 feet — had already held another name for centuries. In Koyukon, a language of the Athabaskan people for whom the mountain plays a central role in their creation story, it is known as 'the high one' or 'the great one': Denali. In 2015 President Barack Obama officially restored that name, noting that McKinley had 'never set foot in Alaska' and that 'Denali is a site of significant cultural importance to many Alaska Natives.' What to call the mountain had been a matter of debate even before Congress officially named it 108 years ago. The British-born mountaineer Hudson Stuck, an Alaska transplant who was a leader of the 1913 expedition that first summited the peak, called for 'the restoration to the greatest mountain in North America of its immemorial native name' in his 1914 book, 'The Ascent of Denali.' He pointed out 'a certain ruthless arrogance' that 'contemptuously ignores the native names of conspicuous natural objects' that are 'almost always appropriate and significant, and overlays them with names that are, commonly, neither the one nor the other.' Now President Trump has done exactly that. In one of the first acts on his return to the White House, he issued an executive order restoring McKinley as the mountain's official name. (The national park that surrounds it will remain Denali National Park and Preserve; changing it would most likely require Congress to amend the law that gave the park that name in 1980.) The McKinley name change was recently entered into the government's Geographic Names Information System, which lists the official names and locations of geographic features in the United States. Which raises a question: Do we really need another mountain named McKinley? In addition to what used to be called Denali, there are at least a dozen other mountains or ridges in the country named McKinley, including in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Montana, New York, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee and Washington, according to the Geographic Names Information System. Then again, William McKinley is a favorite of Mr. Trump, who has lauded that president's championing of tariffs and expansionism. During his tenure, Hawaii was annexed and Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines were seized by the United States. 'He should be honored for his steadfast commitment to American greatness,' Mr. Trump asserted in his executive order. The president noted the name change in his recent address before Congress, adding, 'Beautiful Alaska, we love Alaska.' But Mr. Trump's decision has not gone over well with his crush. Even before he changed the name, a poll found Alaskans opposed it by a 2-to-1 margin. The State Legislature passed a resolution last month urging the president to reverse the decision. And the state's two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, are sponsoring legislation to rename the mountain. 'In Alaska, it's Denali,' Senator Murkowski said in a statement, Emily Edenshaw, president and chief executive of the Alaska Native Heritage Center, said that the name Denali 'reflects a profound spiritual and cultural relationship with the land' and 'recognizes the enduring contributions of Alaska Native peoples.' Before Mr. Obama's 2015 declaration, lawmakers in Alaska had been pushing for Denali as the mountain's official name for decades. In 1975, the governor and State Legislature formally requested that the Interior Department name the mountain Denali, but that effort and subsequent requests were blocked by the members of Congress from Ohio, McKinley's home state. Mr. Trump's decision to return to the McKinley name is a slap in the face of recent efforts to acknowledge America's history of colonialism and restore Indigenous place names. Mr. Trump's executive order also ignores the history that cemented the mountain's original name in our lexicon. Over the last century, the name Denali became entwined with mountaineering, the pursuit that made the peak famous outside Alaska, embossing its Koyukon Athabaskan name on American minds. General Motors even named one of its vehicles Denali. In June 1913, the Athabaskan Walter Harper became the first person to stand on Denali's summit as part of Stuck's expedition. The endeavor took three months, starting with dog sledding through subzero temperatures; navigating the thick boreal forest, braided rivers and huge glaciers that had stymied the expeditions that came before; and climbing the flanks of the mountain that rises 18,000 feet from its base — 6,000 feet more than Everest from its base. In 1970, the first all-women's team to ascend the mountain carried a flag to the summit emblazoned with the moniker 'Denali Damsels.' When President Obama used his executive power to officially call the peak Denali, he was only confirming the long reach of its Indigenous name. Regardless of Mr. Trump's efforts to force upon it the name of a president who had never even visited Alaska, the mountain has always been, and will always be, Denali.
