Amid unpopular Iran war and persistent inflation, governor says state has had its name since before US existed

Democrats have hit back against Donald Trump’s suggestion that the state of New Mexico should be renamed “New America”, accusing the US president of trying to distract from his war on Iran and rising prices.

The administration moved to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” hours after Trump’s return to office in January 2025. In August, as trade tensions escalated between the US and Canada, it moved to do the same with Lake Ontario, moving to rename it as “Lake America”.

Farewell, New Mexico. The war isn’t going well and nowhere on Earth is safe from the US president’s favourite displacement activity

Busy times for crayon-wielding US president Donald Trump, Earth’s most tireless freelance cartographer, who at the weekend celebrated the US labouring under the highest diesel prices in its history while his “two-week” Iran war edges into its seventh month with a social media spree in which he pushed renaming New Mexico as New America.

In some ways, it was a surprise to see Trump go for merely rebranding a state at this point, given that it was only so recently that he declared: “If you think about it, we have a gulf, and we have a lake. Now all we need is an ocean.” This is believed to be a reference to the Gulf of America, formerly – and indeed currently, in every meaningful sense – the Gulf of Mexico. It was also a nod to Lake America, as precisely no one calls Lake Ontario despite Trump supposedly retitling it by executive order last month, in another fit of pique over his trade war with Canada. Candidates for this heavily trailed American Ocean clearly include the Pacific and the Atlantic – though why the other oceans should be locationally ineligible increasingly feels unclear. At this rate, geography exams in the US are also about to get a whole lot easier.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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