President Donald Trump’s suggestion that New Mexico be rebranded as “New America” has been rejected by Democrats up and down the state — and by the Republican running to lead it. The White House gave the idea a lift on September 6, 2026, by re-posting a graphic that had appeared on the president’s Truth Social account; on it, a slash crosses out the state’s name and “America” stands in its place.
The notion did not originate with him. A fabricated executive order claiming Trump had already renamed the state circulated from a satirical account on X on September 1, and the fact-checking site Snopes knocked it down. Five days later the president floated the idea himself.
“Many people suggested changing the name of New Mexico, one of the great vote cheating states of all time, to NEW AMERICA,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform. “So much more prestigious and beautiful for the people of that potentially incredible State. Wow, I Love It!!!”
He also posted an artificial intelligence video of himself slapping “America” over a state welcome sign. On Labor Day, Monday, September 7, he returned to the theme with seven more posts, all of them maps. Neither the president nor the White House offered any explanation, and neither addressed whether an actual policy proposal lay behind the idea.
New Mexico Officials Push Back
A Democrat who took the office on January 1, 2019, and won re-election in 2022, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham rejected the idea flatly.
The state’s name “isn’t up for debate — it’s been ours since before the United States existed,” she told Fox News Digital. “What is up for debate? Who’s showing up for working families.” “While the White House wastes time coloring on maps, Nuevo México is busy doing the work.”
Sen. Martin Heinrich, the state’s senior senator, went after the president’s wider renaming campaign. “Three things I will always call by their actual names,” he wrote. “The Gulf of Mexico. Lake Ontario. New Mexico.”
Sen. Ben Ray Luján showed far less restraint. “It’s New Mexico, always has been and always will be,” he wrote of the president. “Just like how you’ll always be a sinvergüenza and corrupt” — Spanish for a shameless scoundrel.
Rep. Melanie Stansbury put it more bluntly on X: “Oh hell no. Our state’s name carries generations of history, culture, and family — and it belongs to us. We’re New Mexicans. Period.” Rep. Gabe Vasquez, whose district covers the southern part of the state, wrote: “You don’t get to erase New Mexico. Not our name. Not our history. Not our culture.” Attorney General Raúl Torrez needed only one word the following day: “Pendejo.”
Democrats have cast the whole episode as a bid by the president to pull attention away from his war in Iran and from rising prices.
A Republican Nominee Breaks With Trump
Democrats were not alone in objecting. A statement from Gregg Hull, the Republican nominee seeking the seat of the term-limited Lujan Grisham, denounced the suggestion. “New Mexico does not need a new name,” Hull said. “This state carries the history of Native nations and Spanish explorers who named this land nearly five hundred years ago, and generations of families who built New Mexico into what it is today. That identity is not up for negotiation.”
The Democratic nominee, Deb Haaland, also brushed the idea aside; she once served as U.S. interior secretary, and the board responsible for federal place names sits inside that department. “You can’t be serious,” she wrote. “New Mexico is not for renaming. Not up for sale. My promise: I’ll always stand up for what makes New Mexico, New Mexico.” Hull and Haaland face each other on November 3.
From the Gulf to the Great Lakes
Trump’s New Mexico post came 10 days after he signed an executive order, on Thursday, August 27, that renames Lake Ontario “Lake America” for federal use. Numbered 14422, the order directs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, working with the Board on Geographic Names, to complete the switch within 30 days — a deadline that falls on September 26 — and to strip every mention of Lake Ontario out of the Geographic Names Information System.
Within days, most of that had happened. The change landed in the U.S. Geographic Names Server on August 29, entered there by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which made the change; Google Maps followed that day and Apple Maps on September 1, in each case for U.S. users. Opposition to the renaming ran to 63 percent in a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken August 28 to 30, with Republicans against it 43 percent to 33 percent.
The Associated Press said on Wednesday, September 9, that it would keep calling the lake Lake Ontario. The Strait of Hormuz drew Trump’s attention too: days before the New Mexico posts, he floated renaming it after himself.
Why a State Is Different
Executive action can rename lakes and gulfs, but only for federal purposes; no business, private organization or state agency has to follow. States work differently. The first line of Article I of New Mexico’s constitution sets the name down — “The name of this state is New Mexico” — so changing it would take a constitutional amendment passed by both chambers of the Legislature and then approved by voters. Neither the president nor his White House has announced any formal push to change the name.
The name is far older than the state itself. Spanish expeditions were already using “Nuevo México” for the territory by the 1560s, and the Chamuscado and Rodríguez expedition of 1581 formally christened the region San Felipe del Nuevo México, a nod to the Aztec heartland far to the south. The label outlasted the territory’s 1848 absorption into the United States. Statehood came on January 6, 1912, when President William Howard Taft signed Proclamation 1175.
Rob Martinez, the state historian, offered the shortest rebuttal. “New Mexico is a beautiful name, it’s historic, it sounds beautiful,” he told Reuters, “and New America does not.”
