WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican North Carolina Rep. Chuck Edwards implored House colleagues to reconsider an Ethics Committee report that found he engaged in persistent, unprofessional and inappropriate conduct toward two female aides and recommended his censure.
Edwards' letter asks representatives to distinguish between unconventional conduct and sexual harassment.
“An affectionate friendship is not a sexual proposition. A gift is not sexual misconduct,” he wrote. “A compliment is not sexual misconduct. Poetry is not sexual misconduct.”
Edwards' letter, dated Tuesday, was first reported by the news outlet NOTUS.
The Ethics Committee on Thursday declined to comment in response to Edwards’ letter.
The committee’s report, which came nearly three months after it announced it was investigating Edwards, found that both women were uncomfortable with his behavior but found themselves in a difficult position because he was their boss and a member of Congress.
The report continued: “Rep. Edwards was at minimum blind to that reality, and at worst, dismissive of the impact his inappropriate conduct had on the careers and well-being of two women on his staff.”
One aide worked for the congressman’s office for about 2 1/2 years and the other for about three years. They no longer work there. The Ethics panel said the women left due to conduct described in its report, although they provided other explanations to Edwards at the time of their departures.
Edwards has denied that any of his conduct was intended as a sexual or romantic advance, but the committee said his behavior would “lead a reasonable observer to interpret it as such.”
It also described his actions as “beyond inappropriate.”
The report detailed numerous gifts that Edwards gave the two aides, calling the gifts “beyond norms of professional behavior.” The women received jewelry totaling more than $1,000, designer purses, guns, shoes, flowers, a laptop and cellphone, as well as vacations, tickets to performances, and one-on-one dinners.
The committee earlier this month recommended censure, which registers the House’s deep disapproval of a lawmaker’s conduct that doesn’t meet the threshold for expulsion.
Edwards, who was elected in 2022, dropped his reelection bid two days after the committee recommended he be censured.
The committee’s investigation came at a time of heightened scrutiny of lawmakers’ behavior toward female staffers following the resignations of Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell and Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales. Both faced calls for their expulsion before they stepped down.
FILE - Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., asks questions before the House Appropriations Committee, June 2, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday he is renaming Lake Ontario to be known as “Lake America” in the United States as he exacerbates his trade war with Canada.
The Republican president signed an executive order directing the Interior Department to update the lake's name in the U.S. geographic naming service. Trump cannot force Canada to follow his preferred naming convention, however.
Trump has been floating the idea of the name change in recent days as the U.S. announced it was imposing 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods over the weekend after talks between the countries broke down. Trump has been needling America’s northern neighbor since he returned to the White House last year, suggesting the ally with whom the U.S. once had warm relations should instead be absorbed as the 51st state.
Canada responded to Trump’s import taxes this week by imposing retaliatory tariffs on $20 billion worth of American goods, including steel, dairy products, appliances and farm equipment.
Trump, who signed the order as he was sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, had a large sign behind him propped on a stand with a map of the Great Lakes. Over Lake Ontario, in big red letters, the map read “Lake America.”
On the other wide of the president was another map with the words, “MAKING THE GREAT LAKES EVEN GREATER.”
The lake is one of multiple Great Lakes that the U.S. and Canada share borders along.
The office of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
There is no single international body that determines names of international bodies of water and Trump has wide latitude over how the U.S. government recognizes geographic places and landmarks.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who has traded insults with Trump, this week brushed aside the prospect of Trump changing the lake's name as “a lot of rhetoric."
The name Lake Ontario comes from the Huron Indigenous people’s word “oniatarí:io,” that means “lake of shining waters.” The province of Ontario, founded in 1867, took its name from the lake.
Trump said that while his action was not meant to send any particular geopolitical message, “Canada’s been ripping us off for a long time” on trade and military issues.
“They wanted to be treated like a state and they’re not a state,” the president said. “We just can’t do that anymore.”
“We love the people of Canada,” Trump added. “I don’t think their representatives do, an appropriate job. Maybe they’ll change. I really don’t know. It doesn’t make much difference.”
The move is reminiscent of his move last year to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America."
Trump scribbled his name with a Sharpie pen on the executive order then held it up for the cameras, offering, “And we filed all the necessary papers, documents, everything else.”
“We’ve notified all of the various people that we have to notify. So, we’ve done everything that you have to do,” he said. “And this is official, effective immediately.”
He also suggested his push to rename bodies of water may not be finished.
“So, if you think about it, we have a gulf and we have a lake. Now, all we need is an ocean,” Trump said. “So maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and or the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them.”
Associated Press writer Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
President Donald Trump holds up a signed executive order in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
City Councillor Renaldo Agostino looks at the Detroit skyline across the Detroit River Monday, Aug. 24, 2026, in Windsor, Ontario (AP Photo/Mike Householder)
People look out across Lake Ontario from the harbor in Toronto, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026. (Keito Newman/The Canadian Press via AP)
President Donald Trump listens to a question from a reporter in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
