Three days after Donald Trump’s inauguration as president, a State Department official sent a seemingly exasperated email to Michael Tischler, director of the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Geospatial Program.
The problem: How to manage press inquiries “left and right” about Trump’s plan to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.”
“We seem to be caught in a circular messaging wheel,” the unidentified State Department official wrote Tischler on Jan. 23, describing how different government agencies kept referring press inquiries to others — and back again.
“I have asked for further guidance from DOI regarding implementation, but have yet to receive anything,” Tischler replied.
In the waning days of the Biden administration, after then-President-elect Trump declared his intention to rename the Gulf, Tischler appeared to play point person for a concerted government effort to say as little as possible about the proposed name change.
“We have been instructed not to respond — at all — to media inquiries about this topic at this time,” he wrote on Jan. 8 to various government colleagues, both within the U.S. Geological Survey and the State Department, Library of Congress and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which supports the Department of Defense and other intelligence agencies. “That guidance may change in the future, but that is our current direction.”
The emails, part of 109 pages of records NOTUS obtained this week through a Freedom of Information Act request, build upon previously obtained records describing a de facto “Gulf of America” media blackout at the U.S. Geological Survey, the agency primarily responsible for the naming of the nation’s geographic and geological features.
The new records also add to an earlier tranche the U.S. Geological Survey released to NOTUS in March, which detailed how government officials worked to keep secret a failed effort from 2006 — 19 years before Trump’s proposal — to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
After Trump signed an executive order mandating the name change, and media interest in the “Gulf of America” reignited, government agencies continued to muddle their way through the influx of press inquiries.
“We have been asked to defer all media inquiries to the Department of the Interior’s press office,” Tischler wrote on Jan. 23 to colleagues at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency while noting that he presumed the Department of the Interior was “working on a press release and comms strategy” but that he did not “have any details.”
The State Department also appeared to have received direction from an unspecified part of the Trump administration to not talk publicly about the Gulf of America.
“If there is any shift in guidance, please let us know,” an unidentified State Department official wrote Tischler, according to a Jan. 24 email. “We’ll continue providing the guidance to refer inquiries to DOI until we hear otherwise.”
Meanwhile, Tischler was attempting to gain clarity on the “Gulf of America” name change itself.
Trump’s executive order defined the “Gulf of America” as “the U.S. Continental Shelf area bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the States of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and extending to the seaward boundary with Mexico and Cuba in the area formerly named as the Gulf of Mexico.”
Noting this, Tischler on Jan. 21 wrote to an unnamed State Department official: “Does this definition constitute the entire Gulf? Or are we going to [be] splitting the feature into two — Gulf of Mexico in the southern portion and Gulf of America in the northern portion?”
The State Department official responded, but the person’s name and message text are fully redacted in the email obtained by NOTUS.
Tischler has not responded to messages from NOTUS. The U.S. Geological Survey referred questions to the Department of the Interior.
“Coordinating media strategy is a normal and appropriate department function, not a sign of restriction,” Department of the Interior spokesperson Elizabeth Peace told NOTUS in an email Thursday. “The department helps ensure communications are accurate, consistent and reflect official positions.”
During the early stages of the Gulf of America name review, U.S. Geological Survey staff “were referred to their public affairs office for media inquiries, which is standard practice,” Peace said. “This helps prevent the release of incomplete or conflicting information while decisions are still being evaluated.”
She added: “There is no blanket prohibition on USGS staff speaking to the press. Subject matter experts regularly engage with reporters on a wide range of topics. As with any bureau, public affairs coordinates responses to ensure accurate information and to protect the integrity of ongoing processes.”