House moves to codify Trump's Gulf of America

The House passed legislation that would make the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America official, despite grumblings from Democrats that lawmakers should be doing more serious work. 

The legislation introduced by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican, would codify the president’s January executive order to rename the body of water. Her bill would instruct federal agencies to update all documents and maps to reflect the name change within six months of enactment. 

House Republicans vowed to codify many of Mr. Trump’s over 140 executive orders that he signed in his first 100 days in office. Ms. Greene’s bill is one of the first in which the House GOP has moved to turn the president’s executive action into law. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, argued this week that if Republicans didn’t move to turn the name change into law, future administrations could easily reverse course with executive action. 

“As the previous administration made it painfully clear, executive orders can be undone and overwritten, and that’s why we have to move it through the legislative process — and we are,” Mr. Johnson said. 

The measure passed 211 to 206 on Thursday, with only one Republican and all House Democrats voting against it. Now it goes to the Senate.

Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska was the lone Republican to vote against the measure. He told CNN this week that the move to codify the Gulf of America seemed “juvenile.” 

The White House strongly supports Ms. Greene’s bill and said in a statement of administrative policy that if the measure “were presented to the President in its current form, his advisors would recommend that he sign it into law.” 

However, the chances the legislation survives in the Senate are slim. While Republicans control the upper chamber, they would need to get at least seven Democratic senators on board for the name change. 

Much of the debate surrounding the bill, at least on the House floor Thursday morning, had little to do with the nature of Ms. Greene’s legislation, but rather over what Democratic lawmakers believe Republicans should be doing with their power as the majority party in the lower chamber. 

Ms. Greene, however, pitched her bill as an “important thing” for the American people and accused Democratic lawmakers of hating anything that would give Americans pride. 

“Democrats today are outraged because they love the cartels more than any other people in the world, more than the American people,” she said.  

House Democrats called the measure “deeply unserious” and wondered why Republicans weren’t devoting more time to passing the president’s “one, big beautiful bill.” 

“Is this infantile bill to rename the Gulf of Mexico really the House’s top priority,” Rep. Steny Hoyer, Maryland Democrat, said. “I heard the gentlelady say that this would solve all of our problems if we rename it the Gulf of America. Golly day, why didn’t we think of that?”

House Republicans have nearly wrapped up their work on the individual portions of the colossal filibuster-proof budget reconciliation package, save for the House Ways and Means, Agriculture and Energy and Commerce committees. 

Those panels are expected to hold markups on their bills next week.