President Trump is back on his renaming kick, and this time he’s coming for New Mexico. Trump posted on Truth Social calling on the state to ditch the word “Mexico” and go with something a little more patriotic. And you know what that means, right? Of course, if it’s patriotic and Trump, then the liberals of America are freaking out.
“New Mexico should immediately change its name to New America. We are not Mexico, we are the United States of America!” Trump wrote. “The name would add great value and prestige to the State! Home Values and Incomes would rise, and you would be even prouder while saluting our beautiful American Flag!” Real estate agents of New Mexico, start printing the new brochures.
Trump also couldn’t resist taking a shot at the state’s elections. “Maybe even the Crooked Elections, that New Mexico is known for, would become honest again!” he wrote. Because apparently a good rebranding fixes everything, including ballot boxes. You can read Trump’s push to rename New Mexico for the full rundown of what he posted and said.
This isn’t a brand new idea for Trump. He floated it last month with a map showing “Mexico” crossed out in red and replaced with “America,” a post the White House amplified on its official X account. He also pitched it at the RNC Midterm Convention on September 9, telling the crowd, “You have a neighboring state, New Mexico. We think it should be called New America.” He added, “I’ll tell you, the people love the idea,” and took a quick swipe at the left: “I don’t know about the radical left. I’m sure it doesn’t like it, but the people love it.”
New Mexico’s Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham was not exactly warming up to the pitch. She told Fox News Digital last month that the state’s name “isn’t up for debate, it’s been ours since before the United States existed.” She also accused the White House of cooking up distractions while her administration focused on child care, education, health care, and housing. Sure, Governor, how’s all that going?
“While the White House wastes time coloring on maps, Nuevo México is busy doing the work,” Lujan Grisham said. Classic Democrat move: call everything a distraction, then explain how busy you are doing government stuff that never seems to actually get done.
There’s one small legal wrinkle here. New Mexico’s name is written directly into Article I of its state constitution, which reads, “The name of this state is New Mexico.” Trump’s post does not lay out any formal process for changing that. This renaming push follows similar moves by Trump to rebrand Lake Ontario as “Lake America” for federal use and the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”
So what happens next? New Mexico’s constitution isn’t changing itself, and Governor Lujan Grisham has made clear she’s not interested. But Trump has a habit of pushing ideas until people are at least talking about them, and right now the whole country is talking about New Mexico’s name for the first time in, well, ever. Mission accomplished, maybe.
