Trump renames Gulf of Mexico to ‘Gulf of America’ among 1st executive orders
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(WASHINGTON) — Among the first executive orders signed by President Donald Trump was an order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the newly named “Gulf of America.”
“President Trump is bringing common sense to government and renewing the pillars of American civilization,” the newly inaugurated president’s executive order said.
Trump also called for Alaska’s 20,000-foot mountain, Denali, to be reverted back to Mount McKinley, which was its name before former President Barack Obama had it changed in 2015.
Trump’s executive order calls for the U.S. secretary of the interior to change the names on federal maps.
He has appointed former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum for the position.
During his January press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump declared he would change the name, saying the gulf is currently run by cartels and that “it’s ours.”
“We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring that covers a lot of territory, the Gulf of America,” Trump said at the time. “What a beautiful name. And it’s appropriate. It’s appropriate. And Mexico has to stop allowing millions of people to pour into our country.”
Presidents do have the authority to rename geographic regions and features, but it needs to be done via executive order.
The U.S. Board of Geographic Names typically has the jurisdiction for geographic names.
The Gulf of Mexico is one of the largest and most important bodies of water in North America. It’s the ninth-largest body of water in the world and covers some 600,000 square miles.
Half of the U.S. petroleum refining and natural gas processing capacity is located along the Gulf of Mexico, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and it supplies about 40% of the nation’s seafood, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.
Following Trump’s inauguration on Monday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order on winter weather in the state that already refers to the gulf as the “Gulf of America.”
While referring to a weather system that could impact the state beginning Tuesday, DeSantis’ executive order said, “An area of low pressure moving across the Gulf of America, interacting with Arctic air, will bring widespread impactful winter weather to North Florida.”
“For us and the whole world, it is still the Gulf of Mexico,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Tuesday in a response to Trump’s various decrees.
Kīlauea volcano erupts in in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park on Jan. 22, 2025. Image via USGS.
(KILAEUA, Hawaii,) — The world’s most active volcano, located in Kilauea, Hawaii, resumed its latest eruption on Wednesday.
Volcanic activity was noted just before 3 p.m. local time in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
The activity marked the fifth episode from the Kilauea volcano since it started to erupt on Dec. 23, 2024.
“Weak, intermittent spatter” was observed earlier in the day, but it was not until 2:57 p.m. that “small spatter fountains” of lava could be seen, marking the beginning of a new phase of the eruption, according to the United States Geological Survey, which assesses the risk of volcanic hazards in the U.S.
Such activity can be monitored through the agency’s volcano livestream on YouTube.
“Small lava dome fountains in the north vent are feeding short lava flows in the southwest part of the caldera,” the USGS wrote in an Instagram post on Wednesday. “Volcanic gas emissions are elevated compared to during the eruptive pause.”
The USGS noted that observable lava flow began at 2:59 p.m. and “seismic tremor” increased at 3:00 p.m.
In an advisory notice posted Wednesday, the agency wrote that “significant hazards” of the eruption include “wall instability, ground cracking, and rockfalls.” It noted that these hazards could be enhanced by earthquakes, which would endanger members of the public that ventured too close to the volcano within the national park.
“This underscores the extremely hazardous nature of Kilauea’s caldera rim surrounding Halemaʻumaʻu crater, an area that has been closed to the public since late 2007,” the USGS wrote.
It also said that it “continues to closely monitor Kilauea and will issue an eruption update tomorrow morning unless there are significant changes before then.”
The fourth and most recent eruption episode began on Jan. 15, but it had paused over the weekend on Jan. 18.
“Each episode of lava fountaining since December 23, 2024, has continued for 14 hours to 8 days and episodes have been separated by pauses in eruptive activity lasting less than 24 hours to 12 days,” the USGS advisory said.
There are about 170 potentially active volcanoes in the U.S., according to the USGS.
ABC News’ Marilyn Heck and Jennifer Watts contributed to this report.
(LOS ANGELES) — California has just experienced one of its worst wildfire seasons in years, despite the Golden State’s ample resources to combat the blazes once they spark.
The Palisades and Eaton fires, while both mostly contained as of Wednesday, are still active in Los Angeles County after starting on Jan. 7 and burning through tens of thousands of acres and killing at least two dozen people — and new fires have popped up as the region’s landscape remains dry and filled with fuel.
California is the best-equipped state in the country to combat wildfires, experts told ABC News. But even with the availability of personnel, equipment and the most advanced technology, other factors — some exacerbated by climate change — often make it impossible to contain fires before they cause widespread destruction.
Firefighting resources in California are abundant
The state often experiences the most fire activity in the U.S., leading the country with the most wildfires and the most acres burned, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) says it responds to an average of 7,500 wildfire incidents annually.
But California contains a “spider web” of different fire control, fire management and fire agencies that all come together to combat large wildfires, like the fires that decimated large portions of Los Angeles and Ventura counties in recent weeks, Hugh Safford, a research fire ecologist at the University of California, Davis, told ABC News.
These agencies include local fire departments run by municipalities, which contain firefighters trained not only in urban, or structural, fires but wildland fires, as well. Combined with state and federal efforts — which include Cal Fire, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service — California contains not only the most firefighters in the country but also the most highly trained, Safford said.
“The Forest Service has, by far, the largest firefighting organization of all of those, because it manages most of the nation’s forests,” Safford said. “It deals with most of the areas in which fire risk to ecosystems and to humans is most extreme.”
Considering the wildfire risk to human lives, property and wildlands, California has a vast budget for fighting wildfires. Cal Fire was given a $4 billion budget for the 2025 to 2026 season, and operating budgets are always subject to increase in the event of a big fire year, Safford said. Of the Forest Service’s $3 billion annual fire suppression budget, most of it is spent in California, he added.
That budget allows for the best equipment, such as helicopters and other machinery, to be implemented during firefighting efforts, Safford said. With Silicon Valley in proximity, the latest technologies in firefighting are also readily available, he added.
“A lot of that new technology is being tested and used here to begin with,” Safford said.
Despite ample resources, putting out fires can still be difficult, experts say
Wildfires have been getting bigger and more extreme in the last several decades, research shows. The frequency and intensity of extreme wildfires have more than doubled in the last two decades, a study published last year in Nature Ecology & Evolution found. A climate that has caused warming and drying in regions already prone to wildfires is partly to blame.
In California, annual wildfires are burning five times more land than in the 1970s, according to a 2019 study published in Advancing Earth and Space Sciences.
“Climate change has made California hotter and drier,” said Emily Fischer, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University and a member of Science Moms, a nonpartisan group of climate scientists and mothers that says it aims to build a better future for kids. “That just makes it easier for fires to start and spread, and that means a larger area is burning every year,” she said.
While wildfires are a natural and necessary part of Earth’s cycle, climate change and other more direct human influences have increased their likelihood. Firefighters are battling blazes that could now be considered “unnatural” due to their severity, making them harder to contain before they cause widespread damage.
Safford, who used to work for the U.S. Forest Service, said he’s witnessed the rise in wildfires firsthand, in terms of cost. In the year 2000, fire suppression accounted for about 20% of the Forest Service’s annual budget, he said. Now, firefighting is taking up about 70% of the agency’s budget, he said.
That increase in fire suppression needs has taken away from the Forest Service’s other responsibilities, such as restoration, recreation, conservation and law enforcement, Safford said.
“We’re burning communities and forests down at a scary rate these days,” he said.
In the case of the Los Angeles wildfires, their inception was caused by a perfect storm of weather and climate conditions — including a Santa Ana wind event that brought hurricane-force winds to the region, as well as plentiful fuel left from two consecutive wet winters followed by months of drought conditions.
The co-occurrence of these events could potentially take place more frequently in the future, further increasing the risk of fires in California, Lei Zhao, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Illinois, told ABC News.
“Climate change trends, the extremes and climate variability contribute to this situation,” Zhao said. “All those things are likely to be exacerbated in the future.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Justice is preparing for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to begin working with the agency to identify “cost-cutting” measures, with Attorney General Pam Bondi this week establishing an internal DOJ team to help facilitate the review of the nation’s top law enforcement divisions, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
In an email to DOJ division leaders on Wednesday, Assistant Attorney General Jolene Ann Lauria announced the formation of a “JUST DOGE” team, which will work with White House officials and “DOGE counterparts” to identify “savings and cost-cutting measures” within the department, according to a copy of the email reviewed by ABC News.
The “JUST DOGE” team, formed earlier this week by the attorney general, is solely made up of senior DOJ officials, including “co-leads” AAG Lauria, Associate Deputy Attorney General James McHenry, Counselor to the Attorney General Sean Day and Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General Vetan Kapoor.
According to the email, the new team will oversee the internal budget reviews and identify potential efficiencies at the Justice Department — efforts that Musk’s own DOGE personnel have spearheaded at other federal agencies.
“The JUST-DOGE team will lead directed reviews and identify cost savings and other potential efficiencies in DOJ’s budget,” the email read.
A Justice Department spokesperson told ABC News, “President Trump and Elon Musk are doing historic work to identify and eliminate wasteful spending on behalf of American taxpayers, and JUST DOGE will advance this mission at the DOJ in order to ensure the Department’s resources are best utilized to Make America Safe Again.”
Besides leadership, key roles on the “JUST DOGE” team include Deputy Assistant Attorney General Michael J. Williams, who will oversee human resources; DAAG William N. Taylor II, who will be responsible for management and procurement; DAAG Christopher C. Alvarez, who will lead financial management and budgeting; and DAAG Meunda Rogers, who will head data and IT, according to the email.
The formation of the team has stirred unease among some DOJ officials who worry that Musk’s DOGE operatives could move aggressively to slash department personnel and programs, sources told ABC News. Meanwhile, others see the creation of the “JUST DOGE” team, which is composed entirely of current DOJ staff, as an attempt by department leadership to maintain control over the review process and create a buffer against Musk’s team, which has been granted broad access and power at other agencies.
Several of Musk’s DOGE representatives have been seen inside Justice Department offices in recent days, heightening concerns that the DOJ — the agency responsible for enforcing federal law — could become the next major target of Musk’s cost-cutting push.
Musk, who sources tell ABC News has been in direct contact with Bondi since joining the administration, previously joked in an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan about Biondi’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files in February, when she ruffled feathers in the White House by trumpeting the release of a binder of materials that contained almost no new information. Musk, who at times in the interview defended Bondi, also called the move by the attorney general “disappointing.”
