In Renaming Denali for McKinley, Trump Invokes a Presidential Idol

President Trump announced on Monday that he would sign an executive order renaming the tallest mountain in North America as Mount McKinley, undoing a 2015 decision that had restored the peak’s Alaska Native name, Denali.

The decision appears to reflect Mr. Trump’s increasingly public admiration for William McKinley, the 25th president. In the final months of the campaign, Mr. Trump invoked Mr. McKinley and his support of high tariffs, calling him a “a great but highly underrated president.”

The name change is likely to face some pushback in Alaska, where politicians and Alaska Natives alike have long favored calling the mountain Denali. The name, given by the Koyukon Athabascans, translates to “the great one” or the “high one.”

Mr. McKinley first championed tariffs as a member of the House of Representatives in the late 19th century. He also oversaw the expansion of American territories, including through the forced annexation of Hawaii, as well as the empowerment of wealthy industrialists.

In 1896, as news spread that Mr. McKinley had won his first term, a prospector exploring the mountain range declared that the tallest peak should be named in honor of the new president — a decision codified in 1917. (Mr. McKinley, assassinated in the first year of his second term, never stepped foot in Alaska.)

The mountain, which stretches more than 20,000 feet high, has been informally known as Denali for decades and, in 1975, Alaskans began to push for a formal name change.

Lawmakers from Ohio, the home state of Mr. McKinley, repeatedly objected to efforts to legislatively change the name, until President Barack Obama used his executive power to restore the Denali name in 2015.

Both Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan have expressed support for calling the mountain Denali, according to The Anchorage Daily News.

“I strongly disagree with the President’s decision on Denali,” Ms. Murkowski, the chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, said in a statement on Monday. “Our nation’s tallest mountain, which has been called Denali for thousands of years, must continue to be known by the rightful name bestowed by Alaska’s Koyukon Athabascans, who have stewarded the land since time immemorial.”