President Donald Trump ordered the renaming of Denali as Mount McKinley on Monday at the start of what is shaping up to become an ambitious red-white-and-blue rebranding of the U.S. landscape.
In one of a flurry of inaugural day executive orders, Trump sidestepped conventional practice to dictate quickly replacing the Native American name for North America’s highest mountain with that of a favorite Republican president.
“Under his leadership, the United States enjoyed rapid economic growth and prosperity, including an expansion of territorial gains for the Nation,” Trump stated in his executive order, adding that McKinley “heroically led our Nation to victory in the Spanish-American War” and “championed tariffs” before he was “tragically assassinated.”
Trump used the same document to order the renaming of a portion of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. With both Denali and the Gulf, the executive order gives Trump’s incoming Interior secretary 30 days to implement the name changes. In a possible sign of more to come, Trump said that future naming and renaming practices should “honor the contributions of visionary and patriotic Americans.”