Officials scramble to appease Trump while hurricane threatens Alabama

Isaias, rapidly intensifying into a hurricane, will hit the Gulf shore sometime today or overnight.

In Alabama, it is now law that the storm will strike from the Gulf of America rather than the Gulf of Mexico.

Of course, if you happen to be on the Mobile coastline, it hardly matters what name is used, what may matter more is whether this government engages with Federal Emergency Management Administration.

However, if you sit in the state Legislature, what you call the Gulf apparently is a matter of priority.

Alabama’s House Bill 2, which took effect last week, requires “all state and local entities and their employees” to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” following Donald Trump’s preference to reflect this “terminology in all newly created maps, documents, educational materials, websites, official communications, and other resources.”

Apparently, state is issuing instruction that the law covers anyone working in the state university system, journalists running WBHM, the University of Alabama at Birmingham-sponsored NPR affiliate radio station, or state working with a statement affecting, say, hurricane damage.

Republican lawmakers say faculty can call it the Gulf of Mexico “for historical purposes” during instruction.

Understandably, various university faculty have told publications like Inside Higher Ed this sounds, well, restrictive to academic freedom, though it is unclear just how often classroom professors talk about the Gulf with a label at all.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham has ordered journalists at WBHM, NPR affiliate, to comply, according to emails obtained. Neither the Associated Press nor NPR, which supply news information to the radio station, accept the name change, which came about by a Trump executive order based on, well, nothing. Workers at the radio station said they will follow the law, but don’t understand how they are supposed to monitor mentions of the Gulf, as suggested by the university’s top lawyer.

Do We Need a Law?

A spokesperson for Republican Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, said, “The state of Alabama refers to the Gulf as the Gulf of America, period. It is not hard to see that these so-called ‘free speech’ complaints are just a cover up for blatant bias against the Trump Administration.”

The law requires public employees to “make reasonable efforts to update all pre-existing resources owned by state and local entities” under their jurisdiction—including maps, educational materials and communications—to reflect the name change “where practicable,” making an exception if doing so “would impose an operational or financial burden.”

Jason Senkbeil, a tenured professor in the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa’s Department of Geography and the Environment, said “been calling it ‘the Gulf’ and not saying which one for years because I didn’t know where this was going.” Now he will do as ordered.

Others said if state professors can be mandated to use Trump’s name for the Gulf, why not for other elements of teaching and research? Indeed, is there a difference between a professor discussing some aspect of the Gulf environment and a state mapmaker? Is the extension to what the NPR station says on the air an abridgment of freedom of speech and of the press?

Mostly, the case raises the other question: Why is this the issue before a midterm election in which voters are angry about runaway prices from tariffs and the unwanted war with Iran, excesses in mass deportation, and concerns about government corruption?

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.