U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an event after signing an executive order renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 27, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci
It’s one thing for Trump to usurp powers that belong to Congress — quite another for him to usurp places that belong to all of us.
I’m talking about his renaming and demolishing what we share in common.
Trump said he “decided” to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America because he was pissed off at Canada.
How can one man decide to change the name of one of the Great Lakes — a name that we all learned when we were in elementary school? Not only is it part of our shared heritage; it’s part of our common reality.
Well-known place names anchor us. They provide a shared set of markers by which we navigate ourselves and situate others. By what right can he arbitrarily rob us of them?
He’s also changed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. He’s even considering renaming the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
A U.S. president has legal authority to instruct the U.S. Board on Geographic Names to update official maps and domestic databases. But that’s to maintain uniformity — quite the opposite of what Trump is doing.
And why the hell are Google Maps and Apple Maps following Trump’s arbitrary “decision” to change these place names? Good for MapQuest for refusing.
It’s not just place names that concern me. It’s also revered places we hold in common.
The building in Washington, D.C., called the White House is as much a part of our shared reality and common heritage as is Lake Ontario or the Gulf of Mexico.
How many of you have visited it? Taken photos of it? Seen pictures of it in books and on souvenirs?
Its “stately simplicity is … in accord with the purposes it was designed to serve,” President Theodore Roosevelt once said of the White House. Safeguarding it, he said, gives us continuity with our past. (Chief Justice John Roberts used this quote in his dissent from the Supreme Court majority’s recent opinion allowing Trump to continue to build his ballroom.)
After Trump has erected a giant ballroom in place of the East Wing, the White House will lose its continuity with our past. He’s robbing us of the White House we knew.
Same with the long pool extending eastward from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument, called the Reflecting Pool. He had its bottom painted dark blue (and is now claiming that vandals caused the paint to peel).
To the west of the Lincoln Memorial lies Arlington National Cemetery and the stately Lee-Custis Mansion. These are also part of our shared reality and common heritage. He wants to erect a giant arch that would block this view.
I’m not saying that our shared reality has to remain exactly the same through time. Place names we’ve relied on for our entire lives can be changed. Iconic buildings and monuments can be altered.
But one man should not be able to summarily and heedlessly change these places — Lake Ontario, the Gulf of Mexico, the White House, the Reflecting Pool, the view from the Lincoln Memorial.
No single person should be able to arbitrarily alter the place names and physical places that anchor us, orient us, provide us with a shared meaning — at least not in a democracy.
Trump’s place robbery is another way he is asserting his dominance. He wants us to know he has the power to alter our world at will — force us to call places whatever he decides they should be called, to accept whatever physical alterations he makes, and to abide one of the most intimate kinds of subservience: making us literally lose our place.
When sane people are once again in charge, I hope that among the first things they do is restore the names, demolish the impositions, and reclaim our common understandings of where and who we are.