Trump signs order to rename Lake Ontario as 'Lake America'
asserted
Trump → sign → America
Donald Trump summoned the press pool to the Oval Office to witness him signing an executive order that directs the Department of the Interior to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America”.
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that → summon → America
This comes after trade talks between Canada collapsed over the weekend and led to a fray of tariffs between Washington and Ottawa.
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talks → come → Washington
Trump claimed the name change was something “I’ve been thinking about for a long time”.
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I → claim → time
“Canada treats us very badly,” the president said.
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president → treat → us
“People oftentimes they’ll ask me who’s the worst to deal with on trade, and I said that’s easy.
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that → ask → trade
Canada, they are the worst, and they feel entitled, and just we can’t have that.”
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we → feel → that
A 50% tariff on several Canadian imports kicked in on Saturday, with Trump threatening another round of 50% duties on Canadian steel, trucks, cars and auto parts to take effect in the new year.
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Trump → kick → year
Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, hit back with 25-50% tariffs on hundreds of US goods.
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Carney → hit → goods
This, of course, is not the first time the president has made renaming a body of water a priority.
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president → make → water
At the beginning of his second term in office he issued an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”.
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he → issue → America
Trump appeared to joke that there could be more to come: “We have a Gulf and we have a Lake – now all we need is an ocean.
uncertain
we → appear → Lake
Maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific.
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we → have → Atlantic
Maybe we’ll change them both.”
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we → change → them
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day.
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This → conclude → day
Documents obtained by the Guardian and interviews with military leadership show the war in Iran has depleted the US Navy’s budget.
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war → obtain → budget
A senior Democratic senator is calling for a criminal investigation into the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, following reporting by the Guardian that indicated he lied during Senate confirmation hearings last year.
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he → call → hearings
Donald Trump called the media into the Oval Office to watch him sign an executive order to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America”.
“
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him → call → Ontario
The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big’, Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney noted.
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minister → come → word
“The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.”
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name → predate → America
Three journalists who were fired by the Pentagon from a US government-funded news outlet sued the US Department of Defense in federal court in Washington DC on Thursday arguing that their dismissals were illegal and violated their First Amendment rights to free speech.
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dismissals → fire → speech
Trump posts presidential rankings with himself at the top and 11 previous presidents missing
Two minutes before Air Force One landed in Houston on Thursday, Donald Trump posted a visual ranking of US presidents on his social media platform that described him as the “greatest” president, in a list that omitted, without explanation, 11 of his predecessors.
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that → post → predecessors
As critics of the president quickly pointed out, the illustrated ranking of presidents was an altered version of one published in Life magazine on 1 November 1948.
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ranking → point → November
The original illustrated an article about the rankings compiled by the Harvard professor Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. who polled 55 historians, journalists and political scientists and asked them to rate presidents in one of five categories: great, near great, average, below average and failure.
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who → illustrate → average
In the article published the day before the 1948 election, Schlesinger explained that he had left out three presidents, William Henry Harrison who died after a month in office; James Garfield, who was shot four months after his inauguration; and Harry Truman, who was still serving out the term his predecessor Franklin D Roosevelt had been elected to before his death.
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predecessor → publish → death
The date of the illustration explains why another eight presidents are missing from the list that puts Trump at the top.
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that → explain → top
Dwight Eisenhower, John F Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H W Bush and George W Bush all, of course, were elected after 1948.
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Eisenhower → elect → 1948
But the graphic was updated to add not just Trump, who was two years old when the original was published, alone in a new category “greatest” but also to add to the list of “failures” at the bottom the names and images of Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter.
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original → update → Obama
The only other president to serve since 1948 to be added to the list was Bill Clinton, who, perhaps by dint of having socialized with Trump, made his way into the “average” category, along with Herbert Hoover, whose reputation has fallen since 1948.
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reputation → serve → 1948
The original Schlesinger list was topped by six presidents: Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson.
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list → top → presidents
Only Lincoln was rated that way by all 55 of the experts.
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Lincoln → rat → experts
US Geological Survey changes Lake Ontario to Lake America at Trump's order
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Survey → change → order
, the US Geological Survey officially changed the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in its Geographic Names Information System on Thursday.
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Survey → change → Thursday
“The base maps for GNIS are in the process of being updated to reflect this name change,” the agency says on its website.
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agency → update → website
Trump's Great Lakes declaration echoes first-term 'Sharpiegate'
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declaration → echo → Sharpiegate
The Oval Office event on Thursday in which Donald Trump summoned the White House press corps and had them record him signing an executive order rebranding Lake Ontario to “Lake America” came one day after he first announced his intention to do so on TikTok.
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he → summon → TikTok
In that social media video, also recorded in the Oval Office, Trump scratched out the name of the lake and scrawled his preferred name in a black Sharpie marker.
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Trump → record → marker
By Thursday, that hand-drawn alteration to the map had been replaced by a more polished map with the new name displayed on an easel beside Trump’s desk as he signed his order, also using a Sharpie.
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he → draw → Sharpie
The image of Trump taking a Sharpie to a map, and then having a more polished version of his alterations presented to the media in the Oval Office, echoed an incident during his first term, when he insisted that a hurricane might hit Alabama, and then refused to admit that he had been wrong.
uncertain
he → take → Alabama
In that case, when Trump invited the press corps into the Oval Office, on 4 September 2019, he showed a forecast map that he had altered with a black marker, presenting it as proof that he had been right and the National Weather Service wrong, when he warned residents of Alabama earlier that week that they were in the likely path of Hurricane Dorian.
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they → invite → Dorian
…and 106 more, not listed.
