When Donald Trump said on Jan. 7 that he’d rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” upon retaking office, the idea seemed to spring from the deeper waters of Trump’s mind.
But it hadn’t.
Amid a flurry of media requests about Trump’s proposal, government officials at the U.S. Geological Survey scrambled to keep secret a failed effort in 2006 to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America — seemingly to avoid exacerbating the situation already spiraling out of their control, according to internal records obtained by NOTUS via a Freedom of Information Act request.