President-elect Donald Trump has named a Florida lawmaker to be his ambassador to Panama, days after he threatened to take back the Panama Canal. Kevin Marino Cabrera, a Republican commissioner in Miami-Dade County,

Teddy Roosevelt once declared the Panama Canal “one of the feats to which the people of this republic will look back with the highest pride.” More than a century later, Donald Trump is threatening to take back the waterway for the same republic.

China does not manage the canal. Trump’s complaints on that relate to Panama having renewed, in 2022, a longstanding arrangement with a Hong Kong-based company to manage the two ports of entry to the canal. (The renewed deal has also recently drawn some ire in Congress.)