The White House threw its weight behind a proposal on September 6, 2026, to rebrand New Mexico as “New America,” re-sharing an image from President Donald Trump’s Truth Social account in which the state’s name is scratched out and “America” written in its place. Democrats up and down the state — and the Republican running to lead it — want nothing to do with the idea.
The notion did not originate with the president. A fabricated executive order announcing that Trump had already renamed the state circulated on an X account on September 1, and the fact-checking site Snopes debunked it. Five days later, Trump floated the same idea himself, in earnest.
“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!!!”
In the map he posted, bright red slashed through “Mexico” on the Southwestern state, with “America” scrawled over the top. The White House later pushed the image out on its verified X account. Trump came back to the theme on Labor Day, Monday, September 7, with at least seven more posts, among them an artificial intelligence video of himself slapping “America” over a road sign. An explanation of the posts never came from the president, and the White House did not offer one either, nor did anyone say whether the idea amounted to an actual policy proposal.
New Mexico Officials Push Back
A Democrat who won re-election in 2022 and has held the office since January 1, 2019, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham shot the suggestion down outright.
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.” Democratic leadership, she said, has delivered free childcare and college, protected access to health care and put money into housing. “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 held back far less. “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” — a scoundrel, someone without shame, in Spanish. Blunter still was Rep. Melanie Stansbury, who wrote 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, who represents the state’s southern district, 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 affair 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 running to replace Lujan Grisham, who is term-limited, 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, rejected the idea as well; she is a former U.S. interior secretary, and the department she led houses the board responsible for federal place names. “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.” The two face each other on November 3.
From the Gulf to the Great Lakes
Trump had signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America” for federal use on Thursday, August 27, 10 days before the New Mexico post. Numbered 14422, the order gives the interior secretary, working in coordination with the Board on Geographic Names, 30 days to make the change — a deadline that falls on September 26 — and orders every reference to Lake Ontario stripped out of the Geographic Names Information System. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum had been instructed to carry it out, Trump said.
Much of that work was done within days. Mapmakers and agencies moved quickly: the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency made the change in the U.S. Geographic Names Server on August 29, Google Maps followed the same day, and Apple Maps did so on September 2, in each case for users inside the United States. Opposition stood at 63 percent in a Reuters/Ipsos poll of 1,023 adults taken August 28 to 30, which carried a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Republicans, too, tilted against the order rather than behind it, 43 percent to 33 percent.
The Associated Press said on Wednesday, September 9, that it would go on using the name Lake Ontario, “including the name Trump has chosen when relevant.” Spokesman Patrick Maks said the agency “must ensure that place names and geography are recognizable to broad audiences.” The Gulf of Mexico, which the president renamed the Gulf of America hours after returning to office in January 2025, drew the same choice from the AP. Denali did not: the wire service now calls it Mount McKinley because the mountain lies entirely inside the United States. Days before the New Mexico posts, Trump also floated renaming the Strait of Hormuz after himself.
Why a State Is Different
Executive action can rename lakes, gulfs and other geographic features, and even then the new name binds only federal purposes: no business, private organization or state agency is obliged to follow. A state works differently. The first line of Article I of New Mexico’s constitution reads, “The name of this state is New Mexico,” so a change would require an amendment — and a majority of all elected members of both chambers of the Legislature must clear that amendment before voters see it at a regular or qualifying special election. Congress has no role, since federal law requires congressional consent only to create a state, split one or merge two. Neither the president nor his White House has announced any formal push to change the name.
The name long predates the state. Spanish expeditions were already using “Nuevo México” for the territory by the 1560s. San Felipe del Nuevo México was the region’s formal christening by the Chamuscado and Rodríguez expedition of 1581 — a reference to the Aztec heartland far to the south, picked by explorers who anticipated comparable wealth and found none. That 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.
Other names came close. Congress and territorial boosters floated Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, Salado and Sierra between 1850 and statehood; Montezuma was the name a piece of legislation introduced in 1888 would have given the state, while Bernard S. Rodey, one of the territory’s last delegates to the House, pushed for Acoma. Congress came closest in 1906, passing a bill — signed by President Theodore Roosevelt — to admit New Mexico and Arizona as a single state under the name Arizona. Voters in the Arizona Territory rejected it.
The shortest rebuttal came from Rob Martinez, the state historian. “New Mexico is a beautiful name, it’s historic, it sounds beautiful,” he told Reuters, “and New America does not.”