Donald Trump made huge progress on Monday in making America great again. With the stroke of a pen, he revoked numerous executive orders from the Biden administration, and the impact was undeniable. He is wasting no time in getting the country back on course, which is a much-needed course correction. However, while many of his actions were awesome, there was one executive order that I found problematic.
The order I take issue with is the one that calls for renaming the tallest mountain in North America, Mount Denali, back to Mount McKinley.
“In 1917, the country officially honored President McKinley through the naming of North America’s highest peak,” Trump’s order notes. “Yet after nearly a century, President Obama’s administration, in 2015, stripped the McKinley name from federal nomenclature, an affront to President McKinley’s life, his achievements, and his sacrifice.”
Trump added, “This order honors President McKinley for giving his life for our great Nation and dutifully recognizes his historic legacy of protecting America’s interests and generating enormous wealth for all Americans.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) blasted the executive order in a post on X. “I strongly disagree with the President’s decision on Denali,” she wrote. “Our nation’s tallest mountain, which has been called Denali for thousands of years, must continue to be known by the rightful name bestowed by Alaska’s Koyukon Athabascans, who have stewarded the land since time immemorial.”
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I absolutely agree that Barack Obama shouldn’t have renamed the mountain but only because I disagree that it was his decision to make. Native Alaskans have used the name "Denali," which means “High One” or “Great One” in the Koyukon Athabascan language, for centuries.
While it’s understandable that this name has cultural significance, Obama’s decision to rename the mountain wasn’t a simple gesture of respect for indigenous heritage; it was a power play by Obama, who often abused his powers in office to do things he had no legal authority to do — like illegally ratifying treaties and legislating via executive action.
The name of the mountain has no impact on my life and I couldn’t care less what it is, but it seems to me that the decision about the mountain’s name should rest with the people of Alaska. While McKinley’s legacy may be respected, the mountain is part of Alaska’s land, and Alaskans — not politicians in Washington, D.C., whether it’s Obama or Trump — should have the final say.
If Alaskans support calling the mountain Denali, then Sen. Murkowski can propose legislation to have the federal government recognize the mountain’s name as Denali. But let’s stop playing games with silly matters like the names of mountains and let it be up to the whims of presidents to keep renaming it via executive action.
Presidents have bigger fish to fry than naming mountains.
