In early September 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to change the name of New Mexico to “New America.”
A claim that federal officials approved a plan to change the name of the state of New Mexico to “New America” spread online, with one popular post going so far as to claim U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order changing the state’s name in early September 2026.
The claim emerged following a real order Trump signed Aug. 27, 2026, to change Lake Ontario to “Lake America” in the United States.
X user @DailyNoud shared the claim on Sept. 1 that New Mexico’s name also would be changed (archived), writing: “Donald Trump has signed an executive order to change the name of New Mexico to New America.” The post received more than 2.7 million views, as of this writing:
Variations of the claim also spread on Instagram, Threads and Facebook. Some people seemed to interpret it as true, and Snopes readers contacted us in search of more information.
To investigate the claims legitimacy, we first used search engines such as DuckDuckGo and Bing. If officials in Trump’s administration had really approved plans to change the state’s name — or if Trump had signed any such executive order — these searches would have uncovered such evidence.
That was not the case. We did not find any credible reporting about an official move to change the name of New Mexico.
We identified the claim’s original source: satirical social media account Casper Planet, which describes its output as “Snews that doesn’t matter.” This post didn’t explicitly say Trump signed an executive order, rather — it claimed that “federal officials have reportedly approved plans to rename the state of New Mexico to New America.” (X user @DailyNoud also was a satire account.)
The Facebook page Casper Planet shared the related claim (archived) on Aug. 29, 2026:
New Mexico To Be Renamed New America Following Federal Geographic Naming Changes
WASHINGTON – Federal officials have reportedly approved plans to rename the state of New Mexico to New America, continuing a recent effort to update geographic names across the country.
According to officials familiar with the change, the word “Mexico” was identified during a routine review of American maps and was determined to be geographically confusing.
The change is expected to affect highway signs, government documents and approximately 14 million souvenir coffee mugs.
Residents will officially become New Americans, while people born there before the change will reportedly be allowed to continue identifying as New Mexicans during a two-year transition period.
Mexico has not been consulted.
In addition to a location tag on “Satire Street,” its Facebook bio reads (archived):
Delivering the Snews that doesn’t matter directly to your Snews feed. Did we say this is satire? Well it is, names/locations are made up
We reached out to the page owner for comment in January 2026 regarding a claim about AI-generated images of massive snow bank on Wyoming’s Devils Tower. The account’s administrator, Justin Hathaway, told Snopes over the phone: “I just love doing this satire stuff, it’s such an outlet for me.” He continued: “Another reason is people don’t really read things fully anymore, and it’s a good way to educate people on reading stories fully if they sound somewhat unbelievable.”
Other Casper Planet posts Snopes has debunked include a claim that Yellowstone National Park rangers warned the public that ravens had learned to open car doors and another that a man received a DUI while riding a bear.
Because the effectiveness of satire is subjective, we use “originated as satire” or “labeled satire” ratings based on creators’ description of their work.
