Illinois Governor JB Pritzker issued a mock proclamation renaming Lake Michigan as "Lake Illinois" and jokingly claiming Illinois would annex Green Bay, Wisconsin. The satirical move, reported by Audacy, appeared to parody President Donald Trump's recent renaming of the Gulf of Mexico.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker jokingly announced, "The world's finest geographers, experts who study the Earth's natural environment, have concluded a decades-long council and determined that a Great Lake deserves to be named after a great state." His remark was a dig at Trump's order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America." He later teased a similar move for the Mississippi River. The joke stemmed from tensions over Trump’s legal action against Illinois' sanctuary laws. Pritzker responded, "Maybe they put up with this kind of garbage in Florida, which is the home state of the head of the DOJ, but in Illinois, we have grit, we are tough, we are strong, and Donald Trump has no idea what he's up against when he attacks Illinois," as stated by CBS Chicago and Fox News.

Fox News covered Pritzker's staged video, which included fake camera shutter sounds as he announced the lake’s renaming. He stated, "I've also instructed my team to work diligently to prepare for an important announcement next week regarding the Mississippi River." The exchange is part of an ongoing history of disputes between Pritzker and Trump, including past disagreements over COVID-19 equipment distribution and constitutional interpretations.