#renaming
7 entries with this tag
The President Ran a Truth Social "Poll" to Rename "Artificial Intelligence" — Which He Called "Inaccurate, and Very Ineloquent" — Proposing the Grander-Sounding "Superior," "Supreme," or "Extreme" Intelligence, in a Post So Muddled It Argued AI Was Inaccurate "Relative to AI" and Offered Two Options Abbreviated the Same Way; the Same Day, He Announced He's Forming an "AI Force"
On September 19, 2026, Trump used Truth Social to run a "poll" asking his followers to help him rename artificial intelligence, which he declared "inaccurate, and very ineloquent." His proposed replacements: "Superior Intelligence (SI) or, Extreme Intelligence (EI) or, Supreme Intelligence (SI)." The post is a small monument to muddle. It argues that "Artificial Intelligence" is an inaccurate description "relative to AI, or Artificial Intelligence" — a sentence that compares the term to itself — and it offers three choices, two of which ("Superior" and "Supreme") carry the identical abbreviation, SI. More than 27,000 people voted. The same day, Trump announced in a second post that he is forming an "AI Force" and will name an AI czar. The episode fits a now-familiar pattern of renaming things he has no power to rename — the Gulf of America, "Lake America," New Mexico as "New America" — but this one adds a particular tell. His stated goal was a "more accurate" name, yet "artificial" is precisely the accurate word: the intelligence in question is machine-made, not natural. His alternatives — Superior, Supreme, Extreme — are not more accurate; they are grander, swapping a plain descriptor for superlatives. A president who is simultaneously standing up an "AI Force" and naming a czar to govern the technology cannot, in the same breath, articulate why it is called what it is called.
Denied His Name on the JFK Memorial by a Federal Judge, Trump Escalated: His Handpicked Board Voted to Close the Kennedy Center, He Warned It Would Be "Ripped Down" Unless He's Recognized, Fencing and a Forklift Appeared Outside, and He Was Photographed on Air Force One Reading a Placard Marked "Kennedy Center DEMOLISH" — Until a Judge Ordered He Give 30 Days' Notice Before Razing a National Cultural Landmark
In mid-September 2026, Trump's fight to stamp his name on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts escalated from a court argument into the brink of demolition. After U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper again rejected the Trump-controlled board's effort to add the president's name to the building's facade — following his May ruling that the earlier "Trump-Kennedy Center" rebrand was unlawful and the name had to come down — Trump's handpicked board voted on September 15 to immediately close the center, citing its "dire" financial and structural condition. Trump then said publicly that the complex "will end up being ripped down" if he is not properly recognized for a renovation, and that the renovation would not happen unless his name went on the building. Metal fencing went up around the center and a forklift appeared on the grounds; a photojournalist captured Trump aboard Air Force One reading a placard whose visible text read "Kennedy Center DEMOLISH." On September 17-18, Judge Cooper issued a protective order requiring the administration to give the court 30 days' advance notice before demolishing the building or constructing anything new — a measure a court only takes when it fears a landmark could be torn down by surprise. This is the same hostage demand documented earlier in this archive, now with the hostage shuttered and fenced: put my name on the memorial to a murdered president, or I close it and tear it down.
Amplifying a Satirical Hoax That Claimed He Had Signed Such an Order, Trump Spent Labor Day Posting Seven Times in an Hour to Rename the State of New Mexico "New America" — Crossing "Mexico" Off the Map of a Majority-Hispanic State Whose Name Predates the United States, Smearing It as "One of the Great Vote Cheating States of All Time," and Proposing Something No President Has Any Power to Do
Over the September 6-7, 2026 Labor Day weekend, Trump repeatedly posted that the state of New Mexico should be renamed "New America." He shared a map with "Mexico" crossed out in red and "America" written beneath it (reshared by the White House), an AI-generated video of himself slapping "America" over a "Welcome to New Mexico" road sign, and wrote: "Many people suggested changing the name of New Mexico, one of the great vote cheating states of all time, to NEW AMERICA." He posted about it seven times in a single hour. The spree was triggered by a satirical account's fake claim that he had signed an executive order to that effect — a hoax Snopes debunked — which Trump then adopted as his own. Two things are worth stating plainly. First, a president has no power to rename a state; that requires the state and Congress, so this is pure posting, not policy. Second, "New Mexico" is not named for the country of Mexico — the name predates the United States itself, and the state is majority-Hispanic — so crossing out "Mexico" and stamping "America" over it is a nativist gesture aimed at one of the most Hispanic states in the country, bundled with an evidence-free smear that it is a haven of "vote cheating." Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham responded that the name "isn't up for debate — it's been ours since before the United States existed," and that the stunt was an attempt to "distract Americans from his disastrous war in Iran" while "the price of gas — and everything else — keeps rising."
His Trade War With Canada Collapsing and His Talk of Annexing It as the "51st State" Going Nowhere, Trump Signed an Executive Order Renaming Lake Ontario — a Great Lake the United States Shares With Canada, Bearing a 400-Year-Old Indigenous Wendat Name That Predates Both Countries — to "Lake America," a Decree That Changes Nothing but a U.S. Federal Database and Which Canada Answered in Four Words: "Then, Now and Always"
On August 27, 2026, six days after trade talks with Canada collapsed and he slapped 50% tariffs on some $20 billion of Canadian goods, Trump signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario — one of the Great Lakes, shared along its entire length by the United States and Canada — to "Lake America," effective "immediately." The order directs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to update the U.S. Geographic Names Information System so that "the lake once known as Lake Ontario will, from this day forward, be known as Lake America." It is the second time Trump has renamed an international body of water for his own country, after decreeing the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America." The trouble is that a president can rename a shared lake only in his own government's databases; he cannot rename it in Canada, which owns the other shore, or anywhere else on Earth. Lake Ontario's name is more than four centuries old, derived from the Wendat word "Ontari'io" — "the lake is beautiful, the lake is big" — predating both the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Canadian Confederation. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney answered that his country will call it Lake Ontario "then, now and always"; Ontario Premier Doug Ford agreed. As CNN dryly put it, Trump couldn't make Canada the 51st state, so he settled for renaming its lake. It is statecraft as tantrum: unable to win the trade fight or the annexation fantasy, he reached for the one thing he could do with a pen — erase a neighbor's name from an American spreadsheet and call it a victory.
Told by a Federal Court That Only Congress Can Rename the Kennedy Center — the "Living Memorial" to an Assassinated President — Trump's Administration Filed a Court Argument Warning That if He Isn't Given Naming Recognition, the Building Will Become an "Unsafe, Decrepit Structure That Will Be Required to Be Taken Down," Possibly Replaced by an Amphitheater; the Financial "Death Spiral" It Cited Began the Day Trump Took the Place Over
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was created by Congress in 1964 as a "living memorial" to the assassinated president, and federal law bars naming it for anyone but him. That has not stopped Trump from trying to put his own name on it. After his hand-picked board voted in December 2025 to rebrand it "The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center," a federal judge, Christopher Cooper, ruled in 2026 that "Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it," and ordered Trump's name removed — it came off in June, leaving a tarp over the facade. The board then tried again, moving to emblazon the building "Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump" and rename the grounds "President Donald J. Trump Plaza" by September 8. And in an August court filing fighting to do so, the administration made a remarkable argument: without the renovation and the naming recognition, "the Center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down," perhaps to be replaced by "a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River." Critics called it what it looks like — a threat to damage a national memorial unless Trump gets his name on it. The filing's claimed "death spiral" of fleeing donors and collapsing finances is real, but its cause is inconvenient: the Kennedy Center ran a $6 million surplus in 2023, and the ticket sales and donations only dried up after Trump seized control of it, installed himself as chairman, and remade its programming. He is pointing to a fire he set as the reason he must be allowed to carve his name into the wall.
Trump Unveiled a $22.5 Billion Overhaul of Dulles Airport — and Around the Same Time Tried to Trade $16 Billion in Frozen Hudson-Tunnel Funding for Naming Rights, Offering to Unfreeze It Only if Dulles and New York's Penn Station Were Both Renamed After Him, While a GOP Bill Moves to Make Dulles the "Donald J. Trump International Airport" and the Cost per Passenger Jumps Nearly Ninefold
On August 6, 2026, Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced a $22.5 billion, decade-long overhaul of Washington Dulles International Airport — ripping out the widely disliked "people mover" mobile lounges in favor of a U-shaped passenger train, a central walking tunnel, new concourses and gates, and a 32,000-space parking garage, while preserving Eero Saarinen's landmark 1962 terminal. Parts of that are a genuine improvement, and the airlines, not federal taxpayers, would fund it through Airports Authority bonds. But two things wrap the project in the same self-dealing that defines this presidency. First: separately, Trump reportedly offered to unfreeze $16 billion in federal Gateway Hudson River tunnel funding — money he froze in October 2025, stalling one of the nation's most critical infrastructure projects and roughly 1,000 jobs — only if Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer would support renaming Dulles Airport AND New York's Penn Station after Trump. Schumer rejected it, saying he has no authority to rename them; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand called it "ridiculous," adding "these naming rights aren't tradable in any negotiations, nor is the dignity of New Yorkers." Second: a bill by Rep. Addison McDowell (R-NC), with GOP cosponsors, would rename Dulles — currently named for Eisenhower's Secretary of State John Foster Dulles — the "Donald J. Trump International Airport." And the overhaul's cost lands on travelers: Dulles' cost per passenger, about $10 today, is projected to reach $90.64 by 2035, a figure airlines typically pass through in fares. It is the Palm Beach airport playbook at national scale: a real project used as a stage for putting the president's name on the country's infrastructure — and, this time, holding a $16 billion tunnel hostage to get it.
Judge Orders Trump's Name Stripped From Kennedy Center Within Two Weeks — "Only Congress Can Rename It"
A federal judge ruled that Trump illegally put his name on the Kennedy Center and ordered all signage removed within two weeks. The 94-page ruling found that Congress named the center after JFK and only Congress can change it — the board cannot unilaterally rename a national memorial. The judge also blocked the planned two-year closure, finding trustees learned about it "by social media post" with "no meaningful opportunity" to consider it. Trump: the judge "should be ashamed of himself."