Trump Sets Sights On US State For Next Geographic Rebrand
This story raises questions about governance, accountability, and American values.
New Mexico became a state in 1912. It has been called that for so long that most Americans don't even clock the "Mexico" in it as anything other than a name, the same way nobody thinks Indiana is a tribute to India. So when the president posts a map with the word struck through and "America" scrawled underneath, the honest reaction is to laugh, shake your head, and move on.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
President Donald Trump suggested Sunday that New Mexico could be next on his list of geographic rebrands, sharing a state map on Truth Social with “Mexico” struck through in red and “America” written beneath it — an unofficial stab at “New America.” The post arrived just days after Trump signed an executive order on August
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
New Mexico became a state in 1912. It has been called that for so long that most Americans don't even clock the "Mexico" in it as anything other than a name, the same way nobody thinks Indiana is a tribute to India. So when the president posts a map with the word struck through and "America" scrawled underneath, the honest reaction is to laugh, shake your head, and move on. It's a Truth Social doodle, not legislation.
But it's worth asking why this is where his attention keeps landing. We just watched him rename the Gulf of Mexico and float bringing "Cape Canaveral" back to its old name, and now a 113-year-old state gets the treatment too. Renaming things photographs well and costs nothing, which is probably the appeal. It lets him look like he's doing something bold about a country he thinks has lost its nerve, without touching a single line of a budget or a border policy that actually needs fixing.
The joke half-writes itself, and Democrats will happily run with it as proof he's unserious. Maybe. But there's a real instinct underneath the bit that shouldn't get laughed away with the map: a sense that this country stopped naming things after itself a long time ago, literally and otherwise. New Mexicans, plenty of them proud of a name tied to centuries of history, are not going to vote for "New America." Nobody expects them to. This was never a policy proposal. It's a mood, posted at Sunday-scroll hour, and it'll be forgotten by Wednesday.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.