Trump Called Apple About 'Lake America,' Burgum Says
Trump Called Apple About 'Lake America,' Burgum Says
The News
Burgum says the president called Apple himself
President Donald Trump personally contacted Apple to ask that its Maps app relabel Lake Ontario as "Lake America," Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Monday.
Burgum told Fox Business's "Mornings with Maria" that Trump "reached out to Apple directly," and said he was confident the "Lake America" name would appear on Apple's platform soon, according to an Associated Press account carried by the Chicago Tribune and The Washington Times.
Apple did not immediately comment Monday, the Tribune reported. As of Monday, Apple Maps had not changed the name.
Google moved first. Google Maps began showing "Lake America" to U.S. users over the weekend, citing Trump's executive order and its long-standing practice of following the U.S. Geographic Names Information System. Google said U.S. users see "Lake America," Canadian users see "Lake Ontario," and users elsewhere see both.
MapQuest said no and got a traffic spike
MapQuest, which publicly refused to make the change, climbed to the top of the App Store's navigation charts, The Independent reported.
The company reported a 50-fold increase in app usage and its highest App Store ranking in its 30-year history, according to The Independent.
CTV also reported that "Lake America" turned up on maps used by some provincially operated websites in Saskatchewan.
Timeline
Canadian governments are scrubbing it back out
Quebec's government is reverting "Lake America" to "Lake Ontario" on the online maps embedded in its websites, CTV News reported Monday.
Reactions
Ottawa cannot be forced to follow the U.S. label, and Canadian officials rejected the change immediately. The leader of the Seneca Nation in upstate New York said the renaming violates a treaty more than 225 years old and shows "blatant disrespect" for the Indigenous people who named the lake, the Associated Press reported.
It was filed by Reps. Debbie Dingell of Michigan and Timothy Kennedy and Joseph Morelle of New York. Kennedy called the renaming "unserious" and said it "adds insult to injury as Trump's tariffs drive up costs." Morelle called it "ridiculous."
What's Next
House Democrats file a bill to block it
Three House Democrats introduced legislation Monday to stop the renaming, The Hill reported.
The bill, called the "Hands Off Our Great Lakes Act," would bar the president, Burgum and federal officials acting under presidential authority from changing the names of any of the five Great Lakes, and would block the use of federal funds to carry out the executive order.
The bill faces a Republican-controlled House and no announced path to a floor vote.
More
Apple and Google both adopted "Gulf of America" after a similar Trump order last year.
The trade fight underneath it
Trump signed the order last week, in the middle of an escalating tariff fight with Canada. The order asserted that the deepest parts of the lake's waters lie in U.S. territory.
The Hill reported that Trump's 50 percent import taxes on $27.6 billion worth of Canadian goods took effect this month, and that Canada's dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs — rates of 15, 25 or 50 percent matching the U.S. levies — are set to start next week.
No, Canada is not blocking ships over the name
A claim spreading online that Canadian officials are refusing passage through the Welland Canal to ships that write "Lake America" in their paperwork is false.
Snopes traced the claim to an Aug. 28 post by an X user whose profile lists them as a comedian, and found no Fox News report matching the one the posts described. Many early versions of the post were labeled satire.
Nicole Giroux, a spokesperson for the St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corp., told Snopes that "Seaway operations are continuing normally and have done so throughout the weekend. Vessels are transiting the Welland Canal as usual." A Canadian Press fact file carried by CTV News quoted Serge Auclair, the corporation's vice-president of commercial and external relations, saying vessels are traveling the canal as usual.
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