Trump wants to rebrand ICE to NICE. It’s destined to backfire

President Donald Trump’s latest idea to rename a government agency could give one of his most disliked policies a much more pleasant-sounding name. That might not work out as planned, though. Trump shared a social media post on Sunday highlighting a woman’s suggestion that he rename U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, as National Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or NICE, “so the media has to say NICE agents all day every day.” “GREAT IDEA!!! DO IT. President DJT” Trump wrote. The proposed rename goes against trend for Trump, who wants to formally rename the Department of Defense the Department of War. Trump’s branding instincts in office are towards toughness, not softness. Public opinion about ICE is firmly hardening against it, which may be why the new proposed name seems so obvious and smart. Nearly six in ten Americans disapprove of how ICE handles its job, according to a UMass poll released earlier this month, and Fox News polling shows the agency’s disapproval rising from 41% in 2018 to 58% today. Giving the agency a friendly backronym likely wouldn’t be a quick fix. An alphabet soup of names The U.S. government is filled with acronyms, and officials increasingly turn to backronyms, or acronyms that are reverse-engineered because of what they’ll spell out. No one loves them more than Congress. About 10% of bill and resolution names introduced in Congress over a two-year period were backronyms, according to a 2022 review by The Atlantic, and the proportion of backronyms in bill names has risen every Congress since at least 2001. There’s the $2 trillion pandemic stimulus and relief legislation called the “Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act” (CARES Act) in 2020, or the “Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors and Science Act” (CHIPS and Science Act) that funded semiconductors and other priorities in 2022. With a little creativi