# Lake America Renaming Executive Order On **August 27, 2026**, [[Donald Trump]] signed an executive order titled **"Honoring the American History of the Great Lakes and Renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America,"** directing Interior Secretary [[Doug Burgum]] to rename Lake Ontario within 30 days, to update the Geographic Names Information System accordingly, and to **remove all references to Lake Ontario** from that system. > [!note] Official title verified; no Executive Order number yet > The page title above is a short descriptive form. The order's **official name** is *Honoring the American History of the Great Lakes and Renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America*, dated August 27, 2026, published on whitehouse.gov. As of this page's `last_updated` it had **not yet been assigned a Federal Register EO number**, and the Federal Register is the only acceptable source for that number. When the number is assigned, add it here and consider a companion page under Policy/Executive Orders following the vault's numbered convention. --- ## What the order actually says The operative text is short and worth reading precisely, because most of the coverage covers the taunt rather than the instrument. - **Section 1** grounds the action in [[2025 Inauguration and First Wave EOs]] — specifically Executive Order 14172 of January 20, 2025, *Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness*, the Day One order that produced the Gulf of America and the Mount McKinley restoration. The new order explicitly presents itself as a continuation of that policy, not a novelty. - The stated justification is stewardship and volume: the United States supplies **9 of the 11** Coast Guard icebreakers on the Great Lakes, has invested "nearly $4 billion" in the freshwater ecosystem over a decade, and — the load-bearing claim — "the deepest parts of the Lake's waters" lie in U.S. territory, so "the United States claims most of the Lake's volume." - **Section 2(b)** gives the Secretary 30 days, acting with the Board on Geographic Names under 43 U.S.C. §§ 364–364f, and directs the Board to ensure every federal map, contract, document, and communication reflects the new name. - **Section 3(d)**, characteristically, assigns the cost of publishing the order to the Department of the Interior. The legal reach is exactly as far as the federal government's own paperwork. Trump can compel U.S. agencies to say "Lake America." He cannot compel Canada, New York State, private mapmakers, or anyone else. --- ## Context: the Canada trade war The order arrived mid-escalation. Fifty-percent tariffs on some Canadian imports took effect the preceding Saturday; 50% tariffs on Canadian steel and automotive imports were announced Monday for a January start; Canada announced matching tariffs of up to 50% beginning September 8. Trump had trailed the renaming on Truth Social days earlier, posting a map with "Lake Ontario" crossed out and saying the U.S. did not expect to be "doing much business with Ontario any longer." Asked what message the order sent to Canada, Trump said "No message," then added that "Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade… Even the military. You know, we defend Canada for nothing." He also floated the next escalation on the spot: "We took something called the Gulf of Mexico, we changed it. So if you think about it, we have a gulf and we have a lake, now all we need is an ocean. So maybe we'll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific." --- ## The response Canadian Prime Minister [[Mark Carney]] answered on the naming itself rather than the trade dispute, noting that "Ontari'io" is a Wendat word meaning that the lake is beautiful and big, that the name predates both Canadian Confederation and the Declaration of Independence, and that Canadians "know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario — then, now and always." New York Governor [[Kathy Hochul]], whose state is the only one bordering the lake, said New York would not use the new name. Ontario's premier said the same more bluntly. Trump later posted a letter from the director of the U.S. Geological Survey reporting the change had been made and would "begin occurring in printed documents over the next several days." --- ## The pattern this belongs to This is the third federal renaming of the second term, and the three of them form a single argument rather than three jokes. | Renaming | Instrument | Target of the claim | |---|---|---| | Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America | Executive Order 14172, January 20, 2025 | A shared body of water renamed for one of its littoral states | | Denali restored to Mount McKinley | Executive Order 14172, January 20, 2025 | A reversal of a 2015 restoration of the Koyukon name, re-honoring the president of the 1898 imperial moment | | Lake Ontario to Lake America | This order, August 27, 2026 | A binational lake renamed against the objection of the country on its far shore | [[Manifest Destiny]] is the file where this doctrine lives, and it already logs the first two. The through-line is not vanity: it is the assertion that American use, investment, and defense of a thing confer the right to name it — the McKinley-era premise restated in hydronyms. The volume argument in Section 2(a) is the tell. It reasons from *how much of the water is ours* to *whose name it carries*. The [[Associated Press]] precedent from the Gulf renaming is the other half of the pattern: when the wire service declined to adopt "Gulf of America," the White House restricted its reporters' access to presidential spaces. The naming order is nominally about federal documents; the enforcement reached private editorial judgment. --- ## Why it sits alongside the day's other stories The order was signed the same afternoon that the *Washington Post* published the [[Offshore Wind Lease Buyout Program]] story and the *Wall Street Journal* published the Abu Dhabi ownership of the Trump family's crypto bank. Heather Cox Richardson's letter of August 27, 2026 braids them deliberately: five stories about money and one about a lake, on the theory that the lake is what gets covered. The renaming is cheap, immediate, and photographable; the buyout is $1.22 billion moving through the Judgment Fund. Both are Interior Department actions signed within hours of each other. ## See Also - [[Manifest Destiny]] — the doctrine the renamings restate - [[2025 Inauguration and First Wave EOs]] — Executive Order 14172, the Gulf of America and Mount McKinley parent order - [[Doug Burgum]] — Interior Secretary directed to execute the change - [[Mark Carney]] · [[Kathy Hochul]] — the two officials who publicly refused the name - [[William McKinley]] — the president the parallel renaming honors - [[Offshore Wind Lease Buyout Program]] — the other Interior action of August 27, 2026 - [[Liberation Day Tariffs]] — the tariff architecture the Canada escalation extends