House GOP has nothing better to do than try to rename Gulf of Mexico
As Americans grow more fearful that President Donald Trump’s nonsensical tariffs will lead to needless economic hardship, House Republicans are not trying to fend off that economic doom—instead, they’re passing a bill to formally rename the Gulf of Mexico.
The House passed Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “Gulf of America Act” on Thursday by a vote of 211-206, with every Democrat and just one Republican voting against it.
The bill “renames the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America and directs federal agencies to update their documents and maps to incorporate the new name”—as if it matters to most voters what that body of water is called.
Greene, who stood alongside an image of the Gulf of Mexico with a giant “Gulf of America” text over it, said on the House floor that she introduced the bill because “[t]he American people deserve pride in their country, and they deserve pride in the waters we own.”
In the real world, voters don’t give a shit what the Gulf of Mexico is called.
A February poll from Marquette University Law School found that 71% of Americans opposed renaming the Gulf of Mexico, as Trump said he wants to do. Instead, voters desperately want Trump to lower inflation—the most important issue to voters, according to a new YouGov poll—and disapprove of Trump’s tariff plan, which is expected to do the opposite.
In fact, Greene’s bill to rename the Gulf of Mexico is merely an effort to curry favor with Dear Leader, who is so hell-bent on getting everyone to call it the Gulf of America that he banned the Associated Press from the White House press pool because the outlet won’t change the name.
Democrats made that point during the debate.
“This bill has been called a joke more than once in committee. I even offered an amendment to rename the entire planet ‘Trump’ just to underscore the absurdity of their sycophantic bootlicking,” Rep. Jared Huffman, Democrat of California, said on the House floor. “But now, after seeing this bill advance not only through committee but all the way through to the House floor for a final vote, it’s getting a little bit harder to laugh.”
Other Democrats, while mocking the legislation, said that even though Republicans were wasting their time on this bill, it’s a better alternative to the GOP passing their tax legislation that would rip Medicaid coverage from millions of Americans.
“What Republicans have decided to spend this entire legislative day doing is to debate a bill to rename the Gulf of Mexico,” House Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a speech on the House floor. “Now, in some ways, I guess the American people can be thankful because this week what Republicans were going to try and do was visit upon the American people the largest Medicaid cut in American history.”
Even some Republicans say the whole gambit is ridiculous.
“It just seems juvenile,” Rep. Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska, told CNN. “We’re the United States of America. We’re not Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany or Napoleon’s France. I just—we’re better than this. It just sounds like a sophomore thing to do.”
Bacon was the sole House Republican to vote against the bill.
An unnamed House Republican told Fox News that the bill is a waste of time.
“This is a time where we should be in our districts, going to graduations, making sure that we’re listening to folks who have tariff issues,” the lawmaker said. “Instead, we’re going to spend time doing this. … It’s frustrating for somebody who’s got a lot of pragmatic legislation, waiting in the queue to be heard. Instead, we’re doing posture bills. It’s not what I came here to do”
Of course, the GOP lawmaker who had a problem with passing legislation meant to appease Dear Leader Don wouldn’t put their name to their criticism. Cowards.