President Donald Trump has called for the state of New Mexico to immediately change its name to “New America”, arguing that the state is part of the United States and should no longer carry its current name.
Trump made the remark Monday in a post on Truth Social, declaring, “We are not Mexico, we are the United States of America!”
He also claimed, without providing details, that renaming the state would increase property values and residents’ incomes.
The name New Mexico has been in use since the 16th century, according to the federal government’s archived “Origin of Names of US States” page, compiled in 1974. The name was used for a Western territory before New Mexico became a state in 1912.
Trump had previously floated the idea of changing the state’s name in September. His comments followed his administration’s moves to rename Lake Ontario as Lake America and the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
However, unlike geographical features under federal jurisdiction, the president does not have the constitutional authority to rename a state. Any change to New Mexico’s name would have to be undertaken through the state’s own legal and political process.
New Mexico lawmakers quickly pushed back against Trump’s latest remarks.
Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich criticised the president on social media, writing, “Stupid s–t POTUS says to distract you from the $6.29 diesel you just put in F-350.”
Another Democratic senator from the state, Ben Ray Luján, accused Republicans of failing to defend New Mexico against what he described as Trump’s disrespect toward its residents.
“Republicans keep showing their disrespect for NM. You can’t claim to stand for NM while staying silent when Donald Trump disrespects every single New Mexican,” Luján wrote.
Rhode Island is the only US state to have formally changed its name after achieving statehood. In 2020, voters approved a referendum removing “State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations” from the state’s official name, leaving it as “State of Rhode Island.”
Trump also used his post to question the integrity of New Mexico’s elections, writing, “Maybe even the Crooked Elections, that New Mexico is known for, would become honest again!”
Available election performance data, however, does not support the claim that New Mexico is known for election misconduct.
The state ranked seventh in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s 2024 Elections Performance Index, which highlighted its high levels of election transparency and security.
New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse also told the US House of Representatives in 2024 that the state had several safeguards designed to protect the integrity of elections.
“Post-election audits, air-gapped vote tabulators, 100% paper ballots, year-round voter list maintenance, and a variety of other security measures show our voters that we protect the integrity of their votes,” she said.
Toulouse also rejected claims of widespread noncitizen voting, saying, “Noncitizen voting simply does not happen in any systematic way in New Mexico or in the nation more broadly. A Heritage Foundation study, for instance, reported only 24 instances of noncitizens voting nationwide over a twenty-year period between 2003 and 2023.”
Although New Mexico, like other states, has recorded isolated cases of electoral misconduct, the US Department of Justice announced charges against 16 people on October 12 in various voter-fraud cases. One of those charged was from New Mexico.
