House Republicans want to ratify President Donald Trump’s efforts to rename the Gulf of Mexico. Democrats have other ideas.
At a House Natural Resources Committee markup Wednesday of legislation from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to formally redesignate the oceanic basin as the “Gulf of America,” Democrats threw out alternative suggestions, forcing Republicans to take amendment votes to name it something else.
One amendment would have renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of Ignorance.” Another would have dubbed it the “Gulf of Helene,” after a major hurricane that wreaked havoc off the coast of Florida last year.
In a similar vein, Democrats threw out calling it the “Gulf of American Should Rejoin The Paris Accord” — the global emissions reduction pledge from which Trump has on two separate occasions withdrawn the United States.
The most dramatic proposal from Democrats was to simply just rename the entire planet after Trump.
“Let’s skate to where the puck is going” said the committee’s ranking member, Rep. Jared Huffman of California, noting that Congress should forget about simply renaming one body of water and think bigger.
He said his amendment offered an opportunity for Republicans to “show how mindlessly cultish you are.” He offered these thoughts next to an illustration of a golden statue of Trump on horseback.
Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), the chair of the committee, suggested that that particular amendment was not germane. Huffman did not disagree.
