In a move that has drawn comparisons to his infamous Sharpiegate incident, President Donald Trump has signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America. The order, signed on Thursday in the Oval Office, directs the federal government to adopt the new name, although Canada is under no obligation to recognize it.
The renaming comes amidst a backdrop of strained trade relations between the United States and Canada, with Trump criticizing Canada’s trade practices. The president claimed that the name change had been something he had been considering for a long time, citing what he described as Canada’s unfair treatment of the United States.
Echoes of Sharpiegate
The use of a black Sharpie marker to alter a map in the Oval Office brought back memories of the Sharpiegate incident in 2019. At that time, Trump displayed an official hurricane forecast map that appeared to have been altered with a black marker to extend the storm’s projected path toward Alabama. The episode, which became known as Sharpiegate, turned an easily correctable presidential mistake into a dayslong spectacle over whether the government would alter reality rather than acknowledge Trump was wrong.
Seven years later, the Sharpie was back in use. Trump summoned the press pool to the Oval Office to witness him signing the executive order, using a Sharpie to cross out the name of Lake Ontario and replace it with Lake America. The image of Trump taking a Sharpie to a map and then having a more polished version of his alterations presented to the media echoed the 2019 incident.
The Associated Press and White House Press Relations
There was also an irony in the body of water Trump chose to rename on Karoline Leavitt’s last day as White House press secretary. Leavitt, who had attacked transgender people on her first day on the job, spent her tenure overseeing a White House press operation that punished The Associated Press (AP) for refusing to adopt Trump’s preferred name for another body of water.
In 2026, Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America for federal purposes. The AP acknowledged Trump’s action but continued to use Gulf of Mexico, the internationally recognized name for a body of water shared by the United States, Mexico, and Cuba. The White House responded by excluding AP journalists from some presidential events, including in the Oval Office and aboard Air Force One.
Leavitt then announced that the White House would take control of deciding which news organizations would participate in the presidential press pool, stripping that authority from the independent White House Correspondents’ Association. A federal judge later ruled that the administration violated the AP’s First Amendment rights by retaliating against the news organization over its editorial choice.
Leavitt’s Departure and Future Plans
On Thursday, the press secretary who helped oversee that transformation of White House press relations was leaving. Standing outside the West Wing, Leavitt offered reporters a surprisingly sentimental goodbye, expressing that it was very bittersweet and that she would miss them.
Leavitt said the televised briefings that made her one of Trump’s most visible defenders represented only about 10 percent of her job. The other 90 percent, she said, was taking all of their calls at five in the morning and 11:00 PM at night. Leavitt is not exactly leaving Trumpworld, as she has confirmed that she will return to MAGA Inc., Trump’s super PAC, in September, where she worked before joining Trump’s 2026 campaign.
