US government
Trump’s name idea for the state of New Mexico: “New America”
Updated on 09/07/2026 – 03:06 amReading time: 2 minutes
Trump repeatedly flirts with ideas of renaming places or bodies of water. He wants to place the name “America” as prominently as possible. Now he looks at the name of a US state.
The Gulf of Mexico has US President Donald Trump already renamed, also a lake on the border Canadanow he is targeting a state in the southwest of the United States: New Mexico should become “New America”. At least that’s what Trump’s post on social media suggested, showing a map of the state with the word “Mexico” crossed out and replaced with “America.”
The response from the state came promptly. “The name New Mexico is not up for debate,” wrote the state’s governor, Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham, on Platform X. It existed before the United States even existed.
She accused Republican Trump of wanting to distract from the Iran war and the sharp rise in gasoline prices. While the White House wastes its time coloring maps, her team in “Nuevo México” is making progress, for example in health care or free health care Child careshe wrote. With the Spanish-language name of the state, the governor probably underlined the deep roots of the Spanish-speaking population and their history in New Mexico.
Does Trump really want to rename an ocean too?
Trump has already ordered several name changes in his second term since the beginning of 2025. First he named the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America”. He recently ordered the renaming of Lake Ontario, through which the border with Canada runs, to “Lake America.”
Trump mused as he signed the executive order renaming the border lake: “We have a gulf and a lake. Now all we’re missing is an ocean. So maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific.”
