Regarding Denali, Alaskans of both parties have been requesting the federal government to change the official name to the one that was actually used locally since at least 1975 - and would have succeeded soon enough, if not for a few obstinate Ohioan politicians (also from both parties) who kept blocking it just because McKinley happens to have been from Ohio. When the change finally happened under the Obama administration, it was thanks to the decades-long lobbying of Alaskan politicians in Congress - most of which were Republicans, notably Don Young and Lisa Murkowski. Trump considered reversing the change already in his first administration, but didn't after both of Alaska's Republican senators told him they really wanted to keep Denali. I guess the second time around he didn't care so much about what the people of Alaska wanted anymore.

So looking at the reasons for and against and who was taking which position, yes, the change to Denali was absolutely a good one as that's what the people who actually live there have been calling it all along and they were almost unanimous in wanting the name officially changed (except Sarah Palin apparently), whereas the only real argument against the change was that Ohio liked the prestige of having the highest mountain in the country named after an Ohio president.

While on the other name changes mentioned here:

• Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm not aware of any significant number of people actually calling either the Gulf of Mexico or Lake Ontario by these names prior to Trump changing them, or campaigning to rename them like that. These are just Trump having idiotic ideas that make himself and the US look ridiculous on the international stage. Though if you like those changes, I'd certainly be interested to hear why.

• Department of War is much less absurd since that's merely reverting to the original historical name. At some point in the 20th century, the US and to my knowledge every other country in the world (or not?) made that name change from 'war' to 'defense' for political/propaganda reasons, making it sound like only their enemies were actually looking for war and they were merely looking to defend themselves. So sure, it's a legitimate political choice to say, we're reversing that. Whether the message that sends to all other countries is really one you want to be sending, that's another question.
  

  View original postWe can have a rule like "It's cool to have a landmark with no particular name re-named after someone who is liked locally" like Nashville Airport is about to be re-named Dolly Parton International, and Houston's Airport got re-named after George W. Bush. Maybe these are edge cases, since Sam Houston and Francis Nash existed. But I think it's fair to say that the Nashville and Houston airports got their names from the name of the cities, not directly from the people the cities were named after. Nobody said "We should name this the Nashville International Airport after Francis Nash" but instead it was "We'll name this the Nashville International Airport because it serves the city of Nashville"
  
  You can certainly argue about particular instances of this, but I want to point out that you're talking here about cities or states renaming their own airports (or bridges or whatever). The same goes for many of the geographical name changes that have happened internationally in recent years, such as:

• Countries trying to persuade the world to use their own name in their own language instead of the English version (Türkiye instead of Turkey, eSwatini instead of Swaziland)
• Indian cities doing the same (Mumbai instead of Bombay, Kolkata instead of Calcutta, etc)

Whereas in the Denali case it's Ohio insisting they get to decide the name of a mountain thousands of miles away in Alaska - and Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico are both international bodies of water shared by multiple countries and states.

True.