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Trump Trolls Canada by Renaming Lake Ontario to 'Lake America'; Trump to Skip Ceremony in NYC Marking 25 Years Since 9/11; Power Outages & Data Centers: Is Gary, Indiana, a Wake-up Call? Aired 6- 6:30a ET
Aired August 28, 2026 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right there?
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, if you want -- so, if you want, grab the -- grab that. I'll hold her beak.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's not deep, though. But she's going to freak out.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come up here.
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BRAD SMITH, CNN ANCHOR: I've gotten one of those stuck before. Not fun, I can say from experience.
They were able to safely remove the lure, and they got the duck back into the lake.
That does it for CNN HEADLINE EXPRESS. I'm Brad Smith. CNN THIS MORNING with Audie Cornish starts right now.
AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: Today in the group chat, President Trump sticking it to Canada. We're going to talk about him ordering Lake Ontario to be renamed "Lake America." So, is this the ultimate power move or a powerless gesture?
Plus, Republicans pushing state laws to restrict the rights of naturalized and dual citizens. Should there be any such thing as not American enough?
And the Lindsay Clancy case now in the jury's hands. Will they see murder, or a mother who was too mentally ill to be held criminally responsible?
And the power struggle that left Gary, Indiana, in the dark for two weeks. Why it should be a wake-up call about old infrastructure and the new push for A.I. data centers.
Good morning, everybody. Here is where we begin. I'm Audie Cornish. And the map maker in chief strikes again.
President Trump orders a name change. So, instead of Lake Ontario, it's going to be Lake America. He's been unable to make any progress on an actual trade deal with Canada, so the president has attempted to go for a symbolic win instead.
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DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: That's the purpose of this, more than anything else, is we're going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario, effective immediately, to Lake America.
We can't let the whole Canadian thing that's been going on for decades, and it has to come to a stop.
So, the lake change. The Lake of America was something I've been thinking about for a long time.
The Canadian officials have treated us very badly. They're nasty people.
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CORNISH: In a statement, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pointed out the name of the lake predates both countries, adding, quote, "Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario, then, now and always."
Joining me now in the group chat, Noel King, co-host and editorial director of the "Today, Explained" podcast; Jason Rantz, conservative radio host; and Sawyer Hackett, Democratic strategist.
All right. I want to turn to you, Noel. Is this -- it's giving "freedom fries."
NOEL KING, HOST, "TODAY, EXPLAINED": It's giving "freedom fries." It's giving "Gulf of Mexico."
CORNISH: But I want to be open-minded.
KING: Look, it's a -- it's a -- you referred to it as a symbolic win. A symbolic win in an economic fight is not a good win. You've got to win the economic fight if you want to win anything.
So, this is stupidity, but it's stupidity, I think, for a reason.
You know, the trade war with Canada is not something that anybody wants. It is not something that anybody is rooting for. It's been a very weird move from the beginning. It does nothing but drive up prices for Americans; obviously anger our neighbors to the North. And there's no constituency for it, right?
So, President Trump is President Trumping. It's just, you know, we have midterms coming up. Affordability is a problem. This is a stupid thing to focus on. I'll see you back here next Friday. Same time?
CORNISH: OK. So, "The Atlantic" said everything is called America now, which I find hilarious, referring to the "Gulf of America."
And then the Canadian Council is considering changing a street named after Trump to Taco Avenue, which the Canadians are really stepping up their trolling game.
Glenn Beck, however, says guys, chill on your derangement. Here's what he thinks is going on.
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GLENN BECK, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: I kind of feel sorry for Canadians, because they're not in on the joke. And -- and then again, I kind of feel sorry for us, because we may not be in on the joke either.
It's just that easy. It just requires a pen, and it's Lake America. And I'm thinking the guy is just trolling, just trolling Canada. It doesn't necessarily make me happy that he does.
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JASON RANTZ, CONSERVATIVE RADIO HOST: Yes, I think he's 100 percent correct.
CORNISH: Which part?
RANTZ: This is obviously trolling, and it's done not for you or for me or for any of us here. This is specifically to engage the base as we get into the midterms.
We've got the midterm convention coming up. He wants to garner some kind of excitement there, and it takes control of the news cycle.
CORNISH: Oh, yes.
RANTZ: It is intended to do just that.
There are some obvious issues with this trade war, that he's not doing as well as he would like.
At the same time, there is a constituency for the, specifically around dairy, which has been an issue that we've been dealing with, farmers here have been dealing with for a very long time.
The Biden administration was also trying to deal with this. They were successful initially in getting a panel for the USMCA --
CORNISH: Yes.
RANTZ: -- to look at this and say, yes, you guys are going too far.
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CORNISH: So, the act of talking about it is enough, you're saying, for the base, just the -- even though this thing, you know --
RANTZ: This is purely meant for the troll. CORNISH: It does not apply to anything but U.S. federal records.
RANTZ: Correct.
CORNISH: There is an actual treaty of 1909 -- I looked it up -- that says 52 percent of the lake lies within Canadian territory.
I just -- I don't -- what was the mandate for Canada to be our enemy in terms of the voters in the booth, in terms of the base?
RANTZ: What was the mandate for Canada to harm our --
CORNISH: Like, they were at the middle of right-wing movement.
RANTZ: Sure.
CORNISH: They were in the middle of -- even him going after Quebecois. Mistake.
RANTZ: Canada is a pretty liberal place. I mean, to be -- to be honest.
CORNISH: Was a -- there was a rising red populist movement --
RANTZ: There was
CORNISH: -- in Canada. It has been stopped in its tracks and near gutted by this.
SAWYER HACKETT, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Yes. And I think it's because, you know, Mark Carney clearly drew the ire of Trump.
And, you know, I agree that this does look like base politics to me. I'm not really sure how many people get that, you know, up in arms about Canada in the Republican base these days. But if they do --
CORNISH: This is funny. OK.
HACKETT: You know, I think Republican voters are pretty, you know, disillusioned right now. I think they're not very enthusiastic heading into the midterms.
We're 65 days out. You know, voters' top concerns are the price of gas, the price of groceries, the price of housing. And, you know, Donald Trump is focused on renaming Lake Ontario and waging trade wars with our top allies.
I think, you know, this may help with the base a little bit. Maybe it helps juice a little bit of enthusiasm --
CORNISH: Yes.
HACKETT: -- heading into a depressed midterm, but it hurts him with all the voters.
CORNISH: He is heading into Trump-a-palooza. OK? HACKETT: Right.
CORNISH: We're forgetting Trump-a-palooza is coming up.
HACKETT: Trump-a-palooza.
CORNISH: We're going to be talking about that.
Coming up on CNN THIS MORNING, should any U.S. citizen be considered -- I don't know -- not American enough? We're going to talk about the growing movement to change rights for naturalized citizens.
Plus, President Trump will not be at Ground Zero to mark the memorial of 9/11. It's been 25 years. We're going to tell you why.
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CORNISH: OK. Right now, we are two weeks away from the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
According to "The New York Times," President Trump will not be at the ceremonies at Ground Zero in Manhattan. He's going to be at a Pentagon event instead.
Now, according to "The Times" report, sources say the president initially intended to travel to Ground Zero, but because he won't be allowed to make a speech there, he changed his plans.
So, the group chat is back. I think we can say -- it's not biased to say that if Trump is going to be someplace, he wants to talk. And he wants to address the public directly.
That is not allowed at the 9/11 memorial anymore.
KING: Yes.
CORNISH: They changed the rules.
KING: When did they change that? Do you know?
CORNISH: It was -- I feel like it was --
RANTZ: 2012.
CORNISH: 2012. So, they called it.
KING: OK.
CORNISH: And they didn't change it for him. Is it -- should he have just gone with all the other ex-presidents who are going to be there?
KING: Probably, probably, yes. Twenty-five years. Probably.
CORNISH: Because I'm not saying the Pentagon isn't a good place to be. KING: Right.
CORNISH: The Pentagon was attacked.
KING: Also attacked on the same day.
CORNISH: Seeing that it's a very, like, important milestone-type --
KING: Yes.
CORNISH: -- memorial year.
KING: Yes.
CORNISH: And all the other presidents will be there. Mamdani is going to be there.
KING: Mamdani's going to be --
CORNISH: Is it weird that he would be, like, I'm going to go to the Pentagon, and then I'm going to golf in Ireland?
RANTZ: It doesn't have great optics. It really doesn't. And we don't know if he's going to stick to this. He might end up, because of some of the pressure, or maybe some of the reporting is not as accurate. Maybe it's still kind of on the fence.
I hope he does attend. I think it is an important moment. Twenty-five years is a long time for a lot of people to forget what actually happened. There's a generation of Americans who have no idea, no real connection to 9/11 at all and the implications that came with it. So --
CORNISH: The connection they do have is that they're anti-war, and they're anti-forever wars, right? Like, that is a legacy.
We've got Republican and Democratic lawmakers who are people who are service members who, in a way, still talk about the worry about being in a forever war.
HACKETT: And he could have easily just attended both of these events. I mean, it's in New York City. It's not far from here. He could have gone to New York, come back to the Pentagon and given a speech.
But I think everybody, all the families who are attending this event are kind of breathing a sigh of relief. I don't think that they want this ceremony to be entirely about Donald Trump. And anything that Donald Trump attends is entirely about Donald Trump.
And so, I think they're -- you know, maybe they're not as happy having to look up and see J.D. Vance's face. But you know.
RANTZ: But it does -- you know, one of the implications here, unintentionally, it does bring up the fact that Mamdani is there. And there was a lot of controversy behind Mamdani going, a lot of families saying they didn't want him there. And I do think that that brings a larger spotlight on that particular
issue.
CORNISH: Yes, it will be interesting.
RANTZ: Which is not good for Democrats or for Mamdani himself.
CORNISH: It will be -- but it's a moment. It's a test, right?
HACKETT: Mamdani is going to be --
CORNISH: Can 00 Mamdani is the mayor of New York. So, for him to attend, whether there was people frustrated or not --
RANTZ: There was a slight push-back.
CORNISH: -- he's got to meet that moment, right? He can't be like, oh, they don't want to say, I'm not going to go because I am --
KING: Yes. He's going to do his job.
CORNISH: He's going to do his actual job. I think I saw him jump into a swimming pool with a suit on, like he's committed to the bit.
One thing I want to reiterate is that things in Afghanistan, which is -- still remains a sore point in the U.S. military sort of history -- not great. And at one point, Trump even came up with a plan of maybe having Taliban come to Camp David, having some sort of negotiation there. It did not work out.
But what do you think the legacy is of this war, of -- of the war on terror that came out of 9/11?
RANTZ: The legacy is still being built. I mean, that's the issue here. What happened on 9/11 comes with, you know, a future forever in which we're always going to have to be on guard. We always have to understand the threat to not just the United States, but Western society, Western culture.
[06:15:09]
And I think that Republicans certainly know that. I think Democrats certainly know that. A lot of our lives have changed as a direct result.
We're starting to get some of that back.
CORNISH: Yes.
RANTZ: I mean, even just looking last year --
CORNISH: How we do that remains --
RANTZ: Sure. But that's always going to be the case.
HACKETT: That underscores the arrogance of the American perspective: that we can just bomb our way out of all of these problems; that we can enter into a country that we have, you know, no history with, no -- no military assets in, and decide to just blow things up and hope that it's going to fix everything.
Donald Trump clearly has not learned that lesson, and that's exactly what we're doing in Iran right now.
RANTZ: We were eradicating the evil that was responsible for 9/11. And we're going to eradicate the evil that's responsible for the death and maiming of Americans, not just here, but abroad.
CORNISH: OK. And I think Americans, as we said, are still debating whether we have achieved those aims.
You know, after the break on CNN THIS MORNING, we're going to talk about this: Where would we be today if Joe Biden had pardoned Donald Trump? A Republican governor claims Biden talked to him about it when he was president.
Plus, the power's back on in Gary, Indiana. But fear about a fragile power grid persists. So, what happens when A.I. data centers are added to the mix?
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CORNISH: All right. I want to talk about this. Should Gary, Indiana, be a wake-up call?
So, the lights are back on in the city. It had lost power for weeks because of a massive storm earlier this month.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We got areas here in Gary where seniors are stuck in their houses without any utilities.
Our seniors are begging for help. Disability. We have family members with disabilities around the city.
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CORNISH: And the city has a poverty rate nearly three times the state average; makes it that much harder for residents to endure a long outage.
Now, on top of that, their utility company, NIPSCO, has the highest rate of any utility in Indiana.
Now, it's also the company that's powering A.I. data expansion in the area. And that scenario is not unique to Gary, Indiana.
In Memphis, some residents are still without power this morning. Storms caused outages earlier this week. New Orleans, Houston, Jackson, Mississippi, all cities with strained power resources during storms. They're all cities in the middle of an A.I. data -- A.I. data center boom.
So, joining me now to discuss, I'm bringing in Denise Abdul-Rahman, founder of Black Sunlight Sustainability, also the state chair of environmental and climate justice for the Indiana state conference of the NAACP.
We also have Jacqueline Patterson. She's founder and executive director of the Chisholm Legacy Project, a resource hub for black frontline climate justice leadership.
Thank you so much for being here.
So, Jacqueline, I want to start with you, because I think for a long time, climate justice types were preoccupied with like, oh, there's going to be a toxic waste dump next to this urban community. There's going to be hazardous.
Why has data centers been folded into your mission? Because I'm not clear there's a connection.
JACQUELINE PATTERSON, FOUNDER/EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CHISHOLM LEGACY PROJECT: Yes. Thank you.
Because data centers have really exploded. Well, they've been around for a bit, but they're really exploded. And expected to -- to continue to build capacity significantly over the coming coming years.
And they -- they both -- they -- they strain the grid. They deplete water supplies. They cause air pollution. And they basically take up a lot of land and have used eminent domain to take over land and, therefore, compromise community stewardship over land.
CORNISH: Eminent domain. So, meaning they're going into industrial areas, which are often near urban communities. is there organized pushback in these areas, the way there is in a Utah or Kentucky or whatever, the way we're seeing it in red states?
PATTERSON: There is organized pushback in every -- every place, really, that that has these data centers coming in. It's been interesting to see the level of pushback.
I actually was watching CNN and saw a farmer -- farmer in Kentucky who was offered $25 million for her farm in order to -- to put in a data center, and she refused it. So, people are actively pushing back against data centers.
CORNISH: Can you help? When I was showing the map, the different places that are going through outages, also having -- even, like, Memphis has the Colossus, like a giant A.I. center nearby.
What happens in an outage? I assume the data center just goes to its own backup power. Is that a problem too, or --
PATTERSON: Absolutely.
CORNISH: Wait, why? PATTERS: Yes, because those diesel generators are the ones that are --
that are -- that are actually putting out particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, all of these toxins in communities.
In Virginia alone, there are 9,000 of those diesel generators that they use to make sure that they have a seamless supply of data for these for these data centers.
CORNISH: So, when the power's out, and they're in the dark, the centers keep going, but they're spouting some diesel into the air?
PATTERSON: Exactly. Exactly.
CORNISH: Can you talk about what it's like on the local level? There are lots of communities, like a North Dakota that has solar and gas and a bunch of other things. Their rates have gone down, right? They have welcomed data centers.
Near us in Virginia, it's data center alley. They have benefited from that. Why is there an argument out there that black communities and urban communities are not benefiting the same way?
DENISE ABDUL-RAHMAN, FOUNDER, BLACK SUN LIGHT SUSTAINABILITY: Well, data center, one, the job industry is very minuscule. So there's not really any job opportunities.
And then, like Jackie was mentioning, there's a lot of different hazards. You know, the noise hazard, the air pollution hazards. And then on top of that, as data centers continue to be able to function, you have communities like the city of Gary in my state of Indiana that are suffering from power outages. And they can continue to have to pay higher rates.
[06:25:16]
And not getting resiliency in their community, not getting, you know, reliant grid resiliency, and having to sustain 14 days, you know, of no energy.
And they -- Jackie did a report a while back called just energy reducing pollution and creating jobs and referenced that, you know, African Americans pay $41 million to the energy sector and only hold 1 percent of the energy jobs.
CORNISH: Yes.
ABDUL-RAHMAN: So, yes.
CORNISH: One of the reasons why I got interested in this story is because I remember back a few months ago, there was this -- a winter storm that was on the way.
And the head of the Department of Energy was like, Hey, A.I. centers, make sure you're not drawing. You know what I mean? Make sure you're not going into backup and causing problems when there are outages. And I thought that was really interesting. And I thought, well, that's probably the same in the summer.
So, help me understand. You get a data center in your town. It's not that somehow the center itself is causing the problem. Is it strain on the grid, or is it the power company isn't doing the rest of the upkeep on the grid so that you're OK?
PATTERSON: It is both. It is definitely strain on the -- I mean, the aging infrastructure is there in the first place. And then the -- and then the strain on the grid is significant from what the -- the data centers draw.
So, combined, it means that it's -- it's -- it's crippling -- it's further crippling an already crumbling system.
CORNISH: So, what would make the difference? There are some municipalities that are saying, if you come here, you've got to pay for all the upkeep as well.
Or if you come here, we're going to tax you.
What would make the difference for a community like Gary or some of these other places we're talking about?
ABDUL-RAHMAN: What would make the difference is building out with cleaner energy: solar and wind and geothermal.
What might actually also make the difference is ensuring that there are benefits to the community, such as providing energy efficiency housing, because African Americans tend to have the highest energy burden.
And so, a city like Gary, almost 80 percent African American could benefit from that. Weatherization programs. Better housing and things like that. And then being able to have access to these new jobs that, whether it's in clean energy or whether it's in A.I. data centers.
CORNISH: What are you fighting for? Now is the time. You've got all these people up in arms. They're going to meetings. They're going -- I mean, you have Abbott in Texas being like, hey, maybe a moratorium. This is the time to make an ask. What's the ask?
PATTERSON: Yes. I mean, unfortunately, I wish it was as easy as -- so, as Denise said, that would make things better. But it would -- but it wouldn't ease the total -- the totality of the challenges from the, you know, the land seizure, from the pollution from the diesel, the diesel generators. Like, none of this would ease.
Like even switching to clean energy and so forth, wouldn't ease the totalness of the challenge of the data centers. This is why you see people calling for moratoriums, because there are no easy answers. It would plug one thing, but it would -- but it would continue to cause multiple other challenges.
CORNISH: All right. Well, thank you both for being here. Appreciate you waking up for us. PATTERSON: Thank you.
CORNISH: Straight ahead on CNN THIS MORNING, I'm going to talk about this. You know that once you take an oath for citizenship, that should be enough, right?
But there are some Republicans who are questioning that, especially when it comes to those who are allowed to serve in public office.
And later on CNN, rescuers are still searching for more than 1,500 people missing in Nepal and China. Coming up at 7, how a rising lake is actually threatening to flood the disaster zone again.
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