Democrats across New Mexico — and the Republican running to lead the state — have rejected President Donald Trump’s suggestion that New Mexico be rebranded as “New America,” an idea the White House boosted on September 6, 2026, by re-sharing an image from the president’s Truth Social account in which the state’s name is scratched out and “America” written in its place.
The idea did not start with him. On September 1, an account on X circulated a fabricated executive order announcing that Trump had already renamed the state; the fact-checking site Snopes debunked it. Five days later the president posted the notion 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!!!”
The map he posted showed the Southwestern state with “Mexico” slashed through in bright red and “America” written over the top of it. The White House later put the image on its verified X account. He returned to it on Labor Day, Monday, September 7, with at least seven more posts, including an artificial intelligence video of himself slapping “America” over a road sign. Neither the president nor the White House explained the posts or said whether the idea amounted to an actual policy proposal.
New Mexico Officials Push Back
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat who has held the office since January 1, 2019, and won re-election in 2022, rejected the idea flatly.
New Mexico’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.” Under Democratic leadership, she said, the state is providing free childcare and college, protecting access to health care and investing in 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, took aim at the president’s broader 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 was less restrained. “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” — the Spanish word for a scoundrel, someone without shame. Rep. Melanie Stansbury was blunter still, writing 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 answered with a single word the following day: “Pendejo.”
Democrats have framed the entire episode as an attempt by the president to divert attention from his war in Iran and from rising prices.
A Republican Nominee Breaks With Trump
The pushback was not limited to Democrats. Gregg Hull, the Republican nominee running to replace Lujan Grisham, who is term-limited, denounced the suggestion in a statement. “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.”
Deb Haaland, the Democratic nominee and a former U.S. interior secretary — the department that houses the board responsible for federal place names — rejected the idea as well. “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
The New Mexico post landed 10 days after Trump signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America” for federal use, on Thursday, August 27. The order, numbered 14422, directs the interior secretary, in coordination with the Board on Geographic Names, to make the change within 30 days — a deadline that falls on September 26 — and to strip every reference to Lake Ontario out of the Geographic Names Information System. Trump said he had instructed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to carry it out.
Much of that work was done within days. 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 on September 2, in each case for users inside the United States. A Reuters/Ipsos poll of 1,023 adults taken August 28 to 30, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, found 63 percent opposed. Among Republicans, more opposed the order than supported it, 43 percent to 33 percent.
On Wednesday, September 9, The Associated Press said 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 AP made the same choice on the Gulf of Mexico, which the president renamed the Gulf of America hours after returning to office in January 2025, but not on Denali, which it now calls 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
Lakes, gulfs and other geographic features can be renamed for federal purposes through executive action, and even then only for federal purposes: no business, private organization or state agency is obliged to follow. A state is a different matter. New Mexico’s name is written into the first line of Article I of its constitution — “The name of this state is New Mexico” — so changing it would require an amendment, which must clear a majority of all elected members of both chambers of the Legislature before going to voters at a regular or qualifying special election. Congress has no role; 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 itself is far older than the state. Spanish expeditions were 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 reference to the Aztec heartland far to the south, chosen by explorers who expected to find comparable wealth and did not. The label survived the territory’s 1848 absorption into the United States, and New Mexico achieved statehood on January 6, 1912, when President William Howard Taft signed Proclamation 1175.
It very nearly went by something else. Between 1850 and statehood, Congress and territorial boosters floated Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, Salado and Sierra; legislation introduced in 1888 would have called the state Montezuma, and Bernard S. Rodey, one of the territory’s last delegates to the House, pushed for Acoma. The closest call came in 1906, when Congress passed and President Theodore Roosevelt signed a bill to admit New Mexico and Arizona as a single state under the name Arizona. Voters in the Arizona Territory rejected it.
Rob Martinez, the state historian, offered the shortest rebuttal on offer. “New Mexico is a beautiful name, it’s historic, it sounds beautiful,” he told Reuters, “and New America does not.”
