Trump renames Lake Ontario 'Lake America'; Google updates the map before any trade deal moves.

As it ran on the front

Let's be clear about what happened here, because the coverage has gotten predictably hysterical. The administration renamed a body of water. That's it. Google Maps reflected the change for US users, which is simply responsive cartography — the map should say what the President says it should say, and if that sounds like something out of a comedy sketch, well, Premier Ford said that too, actually, word for word, 'something out of Saturday Night Live.' Okay. Point taken. But the substance here is sovereignty, is presence, is — Ontario's premier is calling a trade war with Canada 'devastating,' and I want to say that's separate from the lake thing, that these are unrelated news items that happen to involve the same lake and the same week, but I'm looking at my notes and they are, in fact, the same story.

Here's the actual defense, if I can find it: renaming Lake Ontario projects strength. It says something to Canada, an ally and, per the current framing, occasionally a punchline. It costs nothing — no legislation, no vote, no bill — which is efficient, frankly, compared to trade negotiations, which take actual work and actual concessions and actual math. A rename takes an app update. So if you're asking which one got finished first, that's not a gotcha, that's just how fast branding moves versus policy, and I don't see why that has to reflect badly on the policy side, which is still, in theory, being worked on, somewhere, by someone.…