Donald Trump published this Sunday on his social media platform Truth Social a map of the state of New Mexico with the word "Mexico" crossed out and the term "America" written in red in its place, hinting at a possible name change for the state to "New America."
The message appeared at 1:48 PM Eastern Time, amidst a series of extravagant posts from the president that included images generated by artificial intelligence: Trump riding a horse alongside George Washington, both seated in the Oval Office, a soldier from a fictional "American Space Force," and a map of Iran with the outline of his head superimposed.
It was not immediately clear whether the post is a Sunday joke—a genre Trump is fond of—or a hint at future action.
The most recent precedent is the decree that Trump signed on August 27 to rename Lake Ontario as "Lake America", shared with Canada, in a gesture interpreted as pressure in the trade dispute with Ottawa.
Google Maps and Apple Maps adopted the change for users in the United States in the following days, while in Canada the lake continued to appear with its original name.
The obsession with renaming geographical locations began on the first day of his second presidency when he signed the Executive Order 14172 to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as "Gulf of America" in federal documents and to restore the name "Mount McKinley" for Denali.
Since then, Trump has hinted at renaming the Strait of Hormuz, shared maps of Venezuela as a potential 51st state, and proposed incorporating Canada and Greenland as new states in the Union.
The territory that today forms New Mexico passed into American hands in 1848, after the war with Mexico, and was admitted as the 47th state in 1912. It is the fifth largest state in the country by area.
Legally, renaming a state is a radically different process from changing the name of a body of water. A president can order the use of a geographical name in federal documents through an executive order, but altering the official name of a state would require legislative action at both the state and federal levels, something that is entirely beyond the unilateral authority of the Executive.
A legal analysis published in August on the Dorf on Law blog had already anticipated the possibility that Trump would attempt this provocation with New Mexico.
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