President Donald Trump signaled in his inaugural address that he wants to continue his plan to rename America’s tallest mountain. However, Republican lawmakers in Alaska, where the mountain is found, aren’t backing the name change.
“We will restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mt. McKinley –– where it should be and where it belongs,” Trump said. “President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent. He was a natural businessman.”
While the president is excited to rename Denali for former President William McKinley, lawmakers representing Alaska in Congress—all of whom are from the Republican Party—say Denali is the right name.
Sen. Dan Sullivan previously spoke out about the move. He told Politico he hoped the president had details on energy policy in his executive order instead.
And newly-elected Rep. Nick Begich said, “What people in the lower 48 call Denali is not of my concern.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who has a history of occasionally opposing Trump, told reporters she was adamant about keeping the Denali name.
It echoes her comments last month to Anchorage TV station KTUU.
“Awful, awful idea! We already went through this with President Trump back in the very, very beginning of his first term, when Sen. Sullivan and I went to his office, and we were talking about a whole range of things, and he raised that issue then,” Murkowski said. “And both Dan and I leaned into it and said, ‘No, bad idea.’ This is not only something Alaskans heartily endorse and support. It is a name that is, has been around for thousands of years.”
Denali officially received the name Mt. McKinley in 1917. Locals had called it Denali for centuries, but a supporter of then-candidate McKinley saw the mountain in 1896 and renamed it. McKinley never visited Alaska, let alone the mountain, before his assassination in 1901.
Alaska’s Board of Geographic Names changed it to Denali in 1975, but the federal government did not do the same until 2015 because a congressman from McKinley’s home state of Ohio blocked a similar proposal in the 1970s.
Trump has described removing McKinley’s name as an insult to Ohio.
