President Donald Trump on Monday escalated his push to reshape the American map, demanding that New Mexico “immediately” change its name to “New America,” arguing the current name is a liability for the state’s prestige and property values.
The proposal was swiftly rejected by New Mexico’s Democratic leadership, who accused the president of manufacturing a distraction from pressing national issues.
“New Mexico should immediately change its name to New America. We are not Mexico, we are the United States of America!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Monday morning. “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!”.
Trump, who has made renaming geographic landmarks a recurring feature of his second term, also linked the proposed change to his longstanding grievances about election integrity, claiming without evidence that a new name might ensure “the Crooked Elections, that New Mexico is known for, would become honest again”.
The post was not the president’s first foray into the idea. In September, Trump shared an altered map on social media showing the word “Mexico” crossed out with a red “X” and replaced by “America,” an image subsequently amplified by the official White House account on X.
He also used the invented name while endorsing a Republican congressional candidate in the state, referring to the district as “New America – formerly known as New Mexico”.
The pushback from New Mexico was immediate and pointed. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, responding to the latest post, dismissed the demand as a recycled diversion.
“This tired New America bit again? You have to ask — what policy failure is Trump trying to distract Americans from this time?” Lujan Grisham wrote on X. “I’ll say it again: New Mexico was New Mexico before the United States was even founded, and we will be New Mexico forevermore. Viva Nuevo Mexico.”
The governor’s historical claim is supported by the record. The name “New Mexico” – or Nuevo México – was applied to the region by Spanish explorers in the 16th century, decades before the founding of the United States or the modern nation of Mexico. According to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the name predates the American republic by more than two centuries.
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Historians note that Spanish explorers in the 1560s named the territory north of the Rio Grande after the Valley of Mexico, hoping the northern lands held similar riches.
New Mexico’s state constitution enshrines the name in its very first article: “The name of this state is New Mexico, and its boundaries are as follows”. Any legal change would require action within the state, not from the Oval Office.
The president’s authority to rename features extends only to federal geographic databases for landmarks and bodies of water – a power Trump has already used to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” and Lake Ontario as “Lake America”.
Fellow Democrats and state officials joined the governor’s rebuke. Rep. Melanie Stansbury offered a blunt “Oh hell no!” on X, adding that the state’s name “carries generations of history, culture, and family — and it belongs to us”.
Sen. Martin Heinrich listed “three things I will always call by their actual names,” including “the Gulf of Mexico, Lake Ontario” and his home state.
Even some Republicans in the state distanced themselves. Greg Cunningham, a GOP congressional candidate, said during a debate that the idea was a nonstarter. “It’s not something that’s legislatively possible, so nothing’s going to change,” he said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the governor’s remarks or the constitutional barriers to the proposal.
