Trump will rename Gulf of Mexico to ‘Gulf of America’ among 1st executive orders
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(WASHINGTON) — Among the first executive orders set to be signed by President Donald Trump will be an order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the newly named “Gulf of America.”
“A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” he said during his inaugural address at the Capitol Rotunda on Monday.
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. “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.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
This video — which was given to investigators, who are now reviewing it — shows the plane reach the ground, erupt in flames, bounce on the runway and then overturn.
The aircraft came to a stop upside-down on the snow covered Toronto runway.
The 76 passengers and four crew evacuated the plane, which originated in Minneapolis.
Everyone survived, but at least 21 people were taken to hospitals. As of Tuesday morning, 19 have been released, according to Delta.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is leading the investigation. Investigators from the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board are assisting.
The CRJ 900 aircraft was operated by Endeavor Air.
“Our most pressing priority remains taking care of all customers and Endeavor crew members who were involved,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian said. “We’ll do everything we can to support them and their families in the days ahead, and I know the hearts, thoughts and prayers of the entire Delta community are with them. We are grateful for all the first responders and medical teams who have been caring for them.”
(LOS ANGELES) — The fires blazing through Los Angeles County are the latest unprecedented natural disaster likely amplified by our changing climate. In the weeks and months to come, climate attribution science will determine by just how much.
However, we do know that heavy rains, followed by drought and mixed with winds and low humidity created a perfect storm of conditions — just weeks after Hurricane Helene ripped through North Carolina’s Buncombe County, with fatal floods and landslides 400 miles from where the storm made landfall.
Experts say that extreme weather events worsened by climate change are knocking on the doors of people across the country, and local officials must proactively prepare their regions before their residents become the next victims of tragedy.
“One of the things that every local government, every city government, should be doing right now, and the cost is well worth it, is investing in very comprehensive climate risk assessments,” Albany Law School’s climate policy expert Cinnamon Carlarne told ABC News.
These risk assessments look at the potential harms facing a community, their exposure level and vulnerability to disaster — properly setting regions up to plan for and minimize the destruction a disaster can cause.
If lawmakers don’t take action, the toll — both in human life as well as economic damages — will only compound, according to Thomas Culhane, a professor of global sustainability at the University of South Florida.
“I’m frustrated that my now cousin’s home may be lost, and her family was in jeopardy, and my family is in jeopardy because there hasn’t been enough good dialogue about all the incredible solutions that we’ve had for thousands of years, for hundreds of years, for decades, some brand new,” Culhane told ABC News. “We’re not getting together and discussing and then implementing so people can see with their own eyes.”
Los Angeles County is no stranger to extreme weather events. But according to California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, seven of the 10 largest wildfires in California history have occurred since 2017.
A recent assessment of LA County’s risk and vulnerability found that it was likely that wildfire conditions such as drought, high winds and extreme heat would compound.
The report found that areas between “urbanized land and undeveloped wildland vegetation” often sit within high or very high fire hazard severity zone. Notably, these hazard zones include the regions where the Palisades and Eaton Fires are burning.
It said that 19% of residents live in “Very High Fire Severity Zones” and developers continue to build in these areas despite concerns. The report noted that builders of new housing or infrastructure in such areas must follow requirements that “limit the impacts of wildfire on these properties,” including fire-resistant roofing, improved attic ventilation, tempered glass for exterior windows and maintaining 100 feet of “defensible space” between their structure and nearby landscaping or wildlands.
According to an October 2024 draft Climate Vulnerability Assessment from the office of LA City Planning, officials and researchers took the risk assessment back to communities to garner feedback about the best ways to implement mitigation strategies and create resilient infrastructure that stands strong in the face of climate disasters.
The draft assessment highlighted potential solutions to prevent against wildfire damage.
This included enforcing zoning restrictions to prevent new development in regions with high wildfire risk; requiring building codes in high hazard areas to include the use of fire resistant materials; ensuring reliable water sources and road access for emergency vehicles; and the installation of backup power in strategic locations to maintain essential services during outages.
Additionally, the draft also noted plans to “strengthen power lines, utility poles, and communication networks in wildfire-prone areas to withstand fire impacts” and “create and maintain fire defensible space around structures and infrastructure.”
The draft also encourages the use of indigenous fire risk reduction practices, such as intentional burns. It also suggests that community members can take part by clearing potential wildfire fuel such as dry underbrush, as well as restoring native habitat and plants.
The LA County Office of Sustainability and the LA City Planning office has not responded to ABC News’ request for comment about the climate assessments.
“When you look into indigenous practices or local practices, you see people dealt with these extremes by developing systems and then we ignored them,” Culhane said. “We set up systems that were bound to fail.”
He continued, “If you took seriously the catastrophic potential … put the money in because then we don’t have to pay later. The recovery costs are huge.”
This doesn’t take into account the cost of human life — at least 24 people have been recorded to have died thus far, according to officials.
If cities around the country can uncover and address targeted and individualized potential climate resilience techniques, they can save lives, according to Cinnamon Carlarne.
“We’re committed to a certain level of warming going forward, simply because greenhouse gasses are accumulating in the atmosphere, and we are not reducing our greenhouse gas emissions,” Carlarne said.
However, she argues, it’s vital to continue to do the work to ensure the climate does not worsen further and cause more damage.
“So you are starting to see, because the frequency and intensity of disasters is mounting, and the human and economic cost disasters are mounting, that more and more city and local governments are actually starting to engage in planning, to assess infrastructure and to create ways where they can learn from one another,” Carlarne said. “But we have more and more cities and local governments that are actually recognizing this is one of real, serious challenges for their government systems.”
(NEW YORK) — The so-called “murder hornet” has been eradicated from the United States, five years after the invasive species was first discovered in Washington state, officials declared Wednesday.
There have been no confirmed detections of the northern giant hornet — the hornet’s official name — for the past three years, the Washington State Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Agriculture said.
The eradication was the result of a yearslong effort to find and eliminate the hornets that involved state, federal and international government agencies, officials said.
“We are proud of this landmark victory in the fight against invasive species,” Dr. Mark Davidson, the deputy administrator at USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said in a statement. “The success of this effort demonstrates what’s possible when agencies and communities unite toward a common goal.”
WSDA Director Derek Sandison said in a statement he was “incredibly proud of our team, which has dedicated years of hard work to safeguarding our state and the nation from this invasive threat to our native pollinators and agriculture.”
The public also played a large part in helping eradicate the pest by reporting sightings, officials said.
“Without the public’s support for this effort, it is unlikely we would be announcing the eradication of northern giant hornet today,” Sven Spichiger, WSDA’s pest program manager, said in a statement. “All of our nest detections resulted directly or indirectly from public reports. And half of our confirmed detections came from the public. The people of Washington can be proud that we did this by working together.”
The northern giant hornet, which is native to Asian countries including China and Japan, was first detected in North America in August 2019 in British Columbia, Canada. It was confirmed in Washington state four months later when a resident in Whatcom County reported a dead specimen. That incident appeared to be a separate introduction originating from a different country than the British Columbia one, officials said.
Four hornet nests found inside alder tree cavities in Whatcom County were eradicated between October 2020 and September 2021.
Trapping efforts continued in Whatcom County through 2024, and no additional hornets have been detected in the area, WSDA said.
A community member reported a “suspicious hornet sighting” in Kitsap County in October, though WSDA was unable to obtain the hornet to confirm the species, the department said. Traps placed in the area and public outreach did not yield any additional evidence or reports of suspected sightings, it said.
“All we can say is that the image appears to be a hornet of some kind. How it came to be in Kitsap County, we don’t know,” Spichiger said.
WSDA said it will conduct trapping in the area in 2025 as a “precautionary measure.”
The northern giant hornet could have posed a “significant threat” to honey bees and other pollinators had it become established in the U.S., officials said. The hornets can kill an entire honey bee hive in just 90 minutes. Their sting is also more painful than that of a typical honey bee.
“By tackling this threat head-on, we protected not only pollinators and crops, but also the industries, communities, and ecosystems that depend on them,” Davidson said.
