can a president all by himself decide

That’s a really good question about a lot of things this administration is doing. As always, it’s some variation of no, but does that matter if no one enforces it?

I don’t if there is specific law, but I read an article a few weeks back detailing the dual process. Name changes should start locally and work their way up to Congress, then to be signed by the president. Obviously the Gulf of Mexico doesn’t have locals, but what happened to Congress? For Denali, it not only overrides the locals but ignores all the due process that went into changing the name.

However, I can see some small amount of blame to Biden for setting a good/bad example. Apparently the change from McKinley to Denali was a local request, locally voted, passed by Alaska congress, an entire process of making sure locals are heard. Then it sat in our dysfunctional Congress for years without any action. Joe Biden signed and went ahead despite it not coming from Congress. He did the right thing for the local people who had been requesting the name change for so long, and Congress clearly abdicated their duty. However, technically he set a bad example proceeding with something that should have come through Congress