Florida Republican to introduce bill to rename Lake Ontario after Trump executive order

Lake America. Say it out loud a few times and ask yourself if it sounds like a serious piece of legislation or a bit that got out of hand at a press conference. Jimmy Patronis, a congressman from Florida, wants to rename a lake that sits on the Canadian border, that Canada also relies on, that has been called Ontario since before the United States existed as a country. This is the kind of thing that makes people who actually like conservative governance wince.

There's a difference between national pride and national trolling. Renaming a shared border lake after a president, mid-term, isn't a tribute, it's a poke in the eye to a neighbor and ally we still need cooperating with us on trade, water rights and border security. Canada didn't do anything to us. Lake Ontario didn't do anything to us. This is a solution in search of a problem, dressed up as patriotism.

And practically speaking, what does this bill actually accomplish? Every map, treaty, water-management document, and legal reference involving the Great Lakes would need to account for a name nobody outside Congress uses. That's not "owning the libs," that's creating paperwork headaches for federal agencies and state governments who have actual work to do. If this is the executive order and the legislative energy Republicans want to spend political capital on, it tells you something about priorities.

We get wanting to honor a president plenty of Americans still support. But real strength doesn't need a name change on a body of water shared with a country we're not at war with. This is theater, not policy, and voters can tell the difference even when their representatives apparently can't.