Trump Calls on New Mexico to Rename Itself New America

President Donald Trump called on New Mexico to change its name to "New America" in a Truth Social post on Oct. 19, writing that "New Mexico should immediately change its name to New America. We are not Mexico, we are the United States of America!"

He said the switch would add "great value and prestige" to the state, and that home values and incomes would rise as a result. He offered no evidence for that. He also claimed, again with nothing to back it up, that the state's elections are crooked and would become honest again under a new name.

The post went up shortly before he left the White House for a midterm rally in Kansas.

A president cannot rename a state

Trump has the authority to change the names of geographic features such as bays, lakes and mountains through the federal naming system. States are a different animal. Changing New Mexico's name would require amending the state constitution, a process that has to go through the state legislature and the voters who live there. Congress would likely have a say too, The Washington Post has reported.

What he can do is order federal agencies to use whatever name he prefers in their own paperwork and maps, the same mechanism he used on the Gulf of Mexico. That does not change the name on the state's own seal, letterhead or license plates, and nobody in Santa Fe has shown the slightest interest in going along with it.

The name is older than the United States

Spanish explorers were already using "Nuevo México" for the territory before Mexico existed as an independent country, which knocks out the premise that the name points to a foreign allegiance. The name traces back to the 16th century, according to a Bureau of Indian Affairs fact sheet.

Santa Fe is the oldest state capital in the country, with an origin date of 1610. That is 166 years before the Declaration of Independence.

The governor was not impressed

Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham swatted the idea down the same day. "This tired New America bit again?" she told HuffPost, adding that people have to ask "what policy failure is Trump trying to distract Americans from this time?"

"New Mexico was New Mexico long before the United States existed and we'll be New Mexico forevermore," she said, closing with "¡Viva Nuevo Mexico!"

She had already said in September, the first time Trump floated this, that "New Mexico's name isn't up for debate," pointing out that the region carried the name Nuevo México for centuries before the modern nation of Mexico was founded.

Luján and Haaland pile on

Sen. Ben Ray Luján posted on October 19 that the state's name carries generations of history, culture and traditions. "We are New Mexicans. We're proud of our name, proud of our home, and we're keeping both," he wrote. "Long after Donald Trump is out of office, we'll still be New Mexico."

Deb Haaland, the former interior secretary now running as the Democratic candidate for governor, was blunter. "New Mexico is New Mexico, and you lost here three times because you're corrupt and don't care about working people," she wrote on social media, telling Trump he should be focused on ending the war, stopping the tariffs and making things less expensive instead of renaming her state.

Republicans in the state are not signing on either

Gregg Hull, the GOP gubernatorial nominee, said in September that New Mexico "does not need a new name" and that its identity "is not up for negotiation."

Greg Cunningham, the Republican trying to unseat Rep. Gabe Vasquez in New Mexico's 2nd Congressional District, put it in procedural terms at a debate on Oct. 16. He said the change is not legislatively possible, so nothing is going to change. That is notable because Trump had recorded a video endorsement for Cunningham on Oct. 3, and opened it by greeting New America, formerly known as New Mexico.

This is the third run at it

On Sept. 6, Trump posted that "New America" was "so much more prestigious and beautiful for the people of that potentially incredible State. Wow, I Love It!!!" He shared an edited map of New Mexico with "Mexico" crossed out in red and "America" written in its place. The official White House account reposted the image to X.

He also shared an AI-generated video of himself changing the name while dancing to the Village People's "Y.M.C.A."

In the Oct. 3 Cunningham endorsement video, he called the renaming a beautiful change but said he was not going to push it, adding that a lot of people like it a lot. Monday's post, with the word "immediately" in it, is the most forceful version yet.

Gulf of America and Mount McKinley came first

On January 20, 2025, the day of his second inauguration, Trump signed Executive Order 14172, titled "Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness." It directed federal agencies to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America and to go back to calling Denali, the highest mountain in North America, Mount McKinley. That had been its federal designation from 1917 to 2015.

The order argued that stripping McKinley's name from federal nomenclature in 2015 was "an affront to President McKinley's life, his achievements, and his sacrifice," and said the new order "honors President McKinley for giving his life for our great Nation."

On the Gulf, the order went long on economics. It called the body of water "the largest gulf in the world" and noted that the United States coastline along it "spans over 1,700 miles and contains nearly 160 million acres."

Lake America drew a treaty objection

In August, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to refer to Lake Ontario as "Lake America," a move tied to his trade fight with Canada.

Seneca Nation President J. Conrad Seneca called on Trump to rescind that order, saying it violated the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua, which describes the Seneca Nation's boundaries as beginning on Lake Ontario. Canadians objected on different grounds: the Province of Ontario is named after the lake, and the lake's name comes from an old Native American word meaning roughly beautiful lake.

The oceans are on the list too

At the signing of the Lake Ontario order in late August, Trump said he might have to change the name of the Atlantic, or the Pacific, or possibly both.

At an October 10 rally in Clarksville, Tennessee, he floated calling one of them "Trump Ocean" or "Ocean of the Americas." At an Oct. 16 rally in Dalton, Georgia, he said he had jokingly asked Google about renaming the Atlantic or Pacific "Trump Ocean." He has also repeatedly raised the idea of renaming the Strait of Hormuz the "Trump Strait."

The replies did the rest of the work

Paul Tassi posted the question a lot of people were apparently thinking: "why would New America be inside Regular America."

Max Flugrath framed the timing as a distraction, pointing to a ProPublica report out the same day that Trump appointees had asked a federal cybersecurity agency to secretly acquire a voting machine and hack it. ProPublica said the request was not acted on.

What actually changes

Nothing, for now. No bill has been introduced in Santa Fe. The governor, one of the state's Democratic senators, the Democratic candidate for governor and the Republican nominee for governor have all said the name stays. The Republican running in the state's most competitive House race has said the change is not legislatively possible.

The one lever the president actually holds is the federal one. He could tell agencies to print "New America" on their own maps and documents, the way he did with the Gulf. On the ground, in a state whose capital was founded in 1610, the name on the welcome signs is the one that has been there the whole time.