The Chamber led by the Republicans voted Thursday to encode the executive order of President Donald Trump in the executive order of the Gulf of America.
It was approved with a vote from 211 to 206 with representative Don Bacon as the only Republican to vote against the measure.
The legislation, presented by Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, encodes an executive order of President Donald Trump to change the name of the body of water.
His destiny in the Senate is more a challenge, since he will need a bipartisan cooperation to overcome a filibuster. The leader John Thune has not indicated if he will put the measure on the floor for a vote.
“Any reference in a law, map, regulation, document, document or other registration of the United States to the Gulf of Mexico will be considered as a reference to the ‘Gulf of America’,” says the text of the bill.
The historic sign of Penacola Beach has changed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America in Gulf Breeze, Florida, April 22, 2025.
Gregg Pachkowski/Pensacola News/USA Today Network
The measure also instructs each federal agency to update each document and map according to the change of name, that the Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum will supervise.
“Codifying the legal change of the Gulf of America is not just a priority for me and President Trump is a priority for the American people. US taxpayers finance their protection, our military defend their waters and US companies feed their economy,” Greene argued in an X publication.
One of Trump’s first executive orders when his second term began was to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico.
The speaker Mike Johnson has supported the bill.
“We have been working 24 hours a year to code so much what President Trump has been doing … to ensure that we put them in the legal law so that he cannot be reversed and erased by an upcoming administration,” Johnson said at a press conference on Tuesday.
You can see a sign that says “Gulf of America” at the entrance of the US President of the Mike Johnson House in El Capito, on May 7, 2025.
Oliver Contreras/AFP through Getty Images
Chamber Democrats, including leader Hakeem Jeffries, have criticized the measure.
“Why is it the best that Republicans of the House of Representatives are going to do this week in their legislative agenda that renowned the Gulf of Mexico?” Jeffries said at a press conference on Monday. “Because Donald Trump and the republicans of the camera are fleeing. They are fleeing.”
