Mexico’s President Amused by Trump’s Order to Rename the Gulf of Mexico

 Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum delivers a speech at the National Palace, in Mexico City, Mexico January 21, 2025. (Reuters)
Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum delivers a speech at the National Palace, in Mexico City, Mexico January 21, 2025. (Reuters)
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Mexico’s President Amused by Trump’s Order to Rename the Gulf of Mexico

 Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum delivers a speech at the National Palace, in Mexico City, Mexico January 21, 2025. (Reuters)
Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum delivers a speech at the National Palace, in Mexico City, Mexico January 21, 2025. (Reuters)

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has an answer for US President Donald Trump about his idea of renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”: he can call it whatever he wants on the American part of it.

Sheinbaum on Tuesday had been working through the raft of executive orders from Trump that relate to Mexico, emphasizing Mexico’s sovereignty and the need for dialogue, but when she got to the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, she couldn’t help but laugh.

“He says that he will call it the Gulf of America on its continental shelf,” Sheinbaum said. “For us it is still the Gulf of Mexico, and for the entire world it is still the Gulf of Mexico.”

Trump said in his inaugural address Monday that he will change the name, an idea he first brought up earlier this month during a news conference.

“A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” he said. Hours later he signed an Executive Order to do it.

Sheinbaum projected on a large screen at her daily press briefing Trump’s order called “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness.”

The order says that within 30 days, the US secretary of the interior will rename “the US Continental Shelf area bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the States of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and extending to the seaward boundary with Mexico and Cuba.”

Americans and Mexicans diverge on what to call another key body of water, the river that forms the border between Texas and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas. Americans call it the Rio Grande; Mexicans call it the Rio Bravo.

The first time Trump mentioned the idea of changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico, Sheinbaum responded sarcastically suggesting instead renaming North America as “América Mexicana” or “Mexican America.”

This time, she just briefly insisted: “For us and for the entire world it will continue to be called the Gulf of Mexico.”



North Korea Condemns Trump’s Gaza Takeover Proposal as ‘Bluster’ 

Palestinian youth watch the sunset from their destroyed house in the Jabalia camp, north of Gaza City, 11 February 2025. (EPA)
Palestinian youth watch the sunset from their destroyed house in the Jabalia camp, north of Gaza City, 11 February 2025. (EPA)
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North Korea Condemns Trump’s Gaza Takeover Proposal as ‘Bluster’ 

Palestinian youth watch the sunset from their destroyed house in the Jabalia camp, north of Gaza City, 11 February 2025. (EPA)
Palestinian youth watch the sunset from their destroyed house in the Jabalia camp, north of Gaza City, 11 February 2025. (EPA)

North Korean state media on Wednesday denounced US President Donald Trump's proposal to take over Gaza and relocate Palestinians as bluster and accused Washington of robbery.

The slim hopes of Palestinians for safety and peace are being crushed by the proposal, a commentary carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, without directly naming Trump.

"The world is now boiling like a porridge pot over the US' bombshell declaration," KCNA said.

The commentary is aimed at Trump's shock announcement that the US intends to remove Gaza residents and transform the war-ravaged territory into what the president billed as a "Riviera of the Middle East".

The KCNA commentary also criticized the Trump administration over its calls to take over the Panama Canal and Greenland, and its decision to change the name of the "Gulf of Mexico" to the "Gulf of America".

"The US should awaken from its anachronistic daydream and stop at once the act of encroaching upon the dignity and sovereignty of other countries and nations," the KCNA report said, while calling the US a "ferocious robber."

Trump held unprecedented summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his first term and has touted their personal rapport.

The US president recently said he would reach out to Kim again, though so far Pyongyang's state media has barely commented on Trump's second term while continuing to lash out at what it views as the grave security threat posed by Washington and its allies.

North Korea, which often argues against Western views on international issues, has been outspoken about the situation in Gaza, blaming Israel for the bloodshed and calling the United States an "accomplice."