Trump Says New Mexico Should Change Its Name to—Yep, You Guessed It

President Trump now wants New Mexico to change its name to something that doesn’t offend him. 

Just like with the Gulf of Mexico, Trump wants the state to be called “New America” instead, he wrote in a Truth Social post on Monday. 

“New Mexico should immediately change its name to New America. We are not Mexico, we are the United States of America! The name would add great value and prestige to the State! Home Values and Incomes would rise, and you would be even prouder while saluting our beautiful American Flag! Maybe even the Crooked Elections, that New Mexico is known for, would become honest again! President DONALD J. TRUMP,” the president ranted. 

Trump’s attacks on New Mexico are almost certainly because the state has voted Democratic in eight of the last nine presidential elections, and has always voted against him. Its entire congressional delegation is Democratic, as well as all of its statewide elected officials. Democrats also control both houses of its state legislature.  

But aside from Trump’s normal attacks on Democrats, he has fixated on unilaterally changing place names in his second term, possibly out of cognitive decline. He’s signed executive orders to change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and Lake Ontario to Lake America. His latest renaming is “Artificial Intelligence” to “Super Intelligence,” which isn’t sticking even in his own Cabinet. 

The people of New Mexico won’t take kindly to Trump’s suggestion, and the move will just invite mockery. Meanwhile, the midterms are approaching, and the president is supposed to be spending his time campaigning to save Republicans from getting shellacked in two weeks. It’s highly unlikely that changing a state’s name is going to win any votes. 

And the scandals keep coming: President Donald Trump’s close ally Ric Grenell, who has recently served as both special envoy to Venezuela and acting director of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, came under fire Monday for new evidence that he offered in a pay-to-play scheme with wealthy Turkish businessman Turhan Mildon. Mildon recently married former Trump attorney Alina Habba.

The accusations came to light on October 9, after Habba stormed into the Oval Office to tell the president that Grenell had never deposited a nearly $6 million donation her husband made to the Kennedy Center in 2025. Grenell and Mildon were in touch in early 2025, before Mildon and Habba met, because Mildon had business contracts in Venezuela and had also expressed interest in the Kennedy Center. According to documents from Mildon’s lawyers, Grenell offered to support Mildon in Venezuela, including making him the “American face down in V.”

Mildon eventually transferred $17.6 million to an account supplied by Grenell, purportedly for a deal involving a private Texas defense company and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with the understanding that $5.6 million of that sum would end up at the Kennedy Center. But according to Habba, the $5.6 million never made it there.

White House counsel Will Scharf is now investigating the donation, including texts from Grennell supplied by Mildon’s lawyers.

“Once the money comes to the company here, I will arrange the donation to Kennedy Centre, and you’ll be joining the VIP events and get close with the administration, even with POTUS,” a May 3, 2025, text from Grennell to Mildon allegedly said.

Grenell has vehemently denied the accusations. “I’ve never asked for one cent to be sent somewhere else pretending it was for the Kennedy Center, and I’ve never received any payment from him at all,” Grenell told Axios, referring to Mildon. “Make him give proof to what he is saying, not make these absurd allegations.”

“There’s no way this is true. This is crazy,” Grenell allegedly told the president.

A source told Axios that Grenell claimed he would never use the British English spelling “centre,” rather than “center,” so the text could not be legitimate.

Kennedy Center staff went looking for Mildon’s donation last year, but never found it. Instead, financial staffer Lisa Dale found that Mildon actually owed the center a pledged donation of $270,000. “There was nothing about $6 million,” Dale told Axios. “I would have heard about that.”

“POTUS doesn’t want to deal with this. Of course, he’s concerned, but if there is missing money, this is a big, big problem,” said another official with knowledge of the conflict.

“Nobody wants to get in the middle of Alina Habba and Ric Grenell going to war,” a different official said.

A Black MAGA influencer says she was booted from a Ken Paxton rally in Texas on Sunday.

Thelma Louise runs a large TikTok account in which she makes pro-Trump content, particularly from her perspective as a Black female conservative. On Sunday, she was excitedly documenting her experience at Paxton’s rally for his upcoming Senate race—before she was asked to leave without cause.

“And there’s no one that I can talk to about this?” Louise asks as she appears to be escorted out. “Wow. Oh my gosh. I cannot believe this.… Someone just came up to me and said that Ken Paxton’s campaign manager wanted me to leave. I am just—my mouth is wide open right now. I really can’t believe this.”

“I was just asked to leave this event, and I did nothing wrong,” she continued. “I was told that Paxton’s campaign manager didn’t want me here. I’m not making any of this up.… I have done nothing but support everyone on the Republican side, and this is how I get treated? I cannot believe the disrespect that I was just given. I left the Democratic Party two years ago, I have volunteered for President Trump’s campaign, and I have worked very hard promoting members of the Republican Party. I’m not quite sure what’s going on, but to be walked out of a room full of people and isolated as if I’d done something wrong—I cannot believe it.”

Louise noted that she drove two hours to get to the rally, and even showed her press credentials for Republicans’ midterm convention in Dallas over the summer.

Some online mused that the color of Louise’s skin may have had something to do with her unexplained removal—and noted that it might not have happened at a James Talarico rally because there would likely be more Black people there.

“‘Being MAGA while Black’ chapter 293,” Democratic strategist Ameshia Cross wrote.

“Conservative whites excluding black people? I’ve never heard of such a thing,” said another.

“Was I mistaken for someone else? I don’t know what it was. And I don’t blame any of this on the Republican Party. Because they have loved me, and they have welcomed me with open arms. But Ken Paxton’s campaign manager, that person is 100 percent responsible for the disrespect that I received this evening.”

President Donald Trump’s border czar, Todd Homan, seemed to suggest that the FBI was mounting its own investigation into Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar.

During an appearance on Fox News’s The Big Weekend Show Sunday, Homan was asked whether the Trump administration was investigating any other alleged misconduct by the congresswoman, in addition to immigration fraud allegations.

“I’m not gonna go there,” Homan said.

“Not even a little bit?” asked host Rich Edson.

“Not even a little bit. We’ll leave that up to—that’s a question for the FBI. I know things, but that’s a question for the FBI,” Homan said, smiling.

It was not immediately clear what the FBI would be investigating, or whether it was the same case being mounted by the Department of Homeland Security.

Homeland Security Investigations conducted a raid last week on Omar’s Washington, D.C., home as part of a racist campaign to get her denaturalized and deported. The probe ostensibly centers on whether Omar’s father put her age as 17 rather than 18 on her citizenship application to allow her to qualify immediately for citizenship alongside his own application. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin suggested that the government was building a RICO case against her and her family. It’s still unclear what, if any, evidence DHS has found to support its case.

In a letter to the Department of Justice Friday, Omar’s attorney asked for the return of her belongings seized in the raid, including a phone, and argued that there was “no legitimate basis for any suggestion that she has violated any law concerning her citizenship status,” Fox News 9 reported.

The apparently multiplying probes into Omar represent a lawless campaign by the Trump administration against one of the president’s most outspoken critics. The DOJ manual prohibits federal prosecutors from timing any action, including investigative steps, criminal charges, or statements, for the purpose of undermining a candidate in an upcoming election. Early voting in Minnesota began last week.

President Trump doesn’t want former special counsel Jack Smith to testify in a deposition as part of Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Company.

The BBC has subpoenaed Smith to defend itself from Trump’s accusations that the network defamed him with deceptive editing in a 2024 documentary about the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. In a court filing Friday, Trump’s lawyers tried to fight the subpoena by claiming that “Smith lacks any personal knowledge regarding the issues in this matter.

“He was not present when President Trump’s January 6, 2021, speech (the ‘Speech’) was made, nor did he participate in its preparation. Smith does not have any personal knowledge regarding President Trump’s state of mind at the time the Speech was given. Any evidence that Smith gathered during his investigation consists of secondhand knowledge based on materials that he and other third parties collected from various sources,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in their complaint.

In response, the BBC’s attorneys wrote, “None of [Trump]’s arguments for blocking the deposition of Mr. Smith can withstand scrutiny,” pointing out that Smith himself doesn’t object to testifying in the deposition and that Trump still has to prove that “he did not foment or incite the January 6 Capitol riot,” as he claims the BBC’s documentary falsely implied.

“No one forced Plaintiff to file this lawsuit and to dispute that his speech on January 6 incited the violence that followed at the Capitol. But as long as he chooses to maintain the case, he cannot commit the fundamental injustice of preventing the BBC from obtaining the evidence it needs to robustly defend itself on every element of his claim, including Plaintiff’s burden to prove falsity,” the BBC’s lawyers wrote.

This is only Trump’s latest attempt to dodge actually having to prove that the BBC defamed him. His attorneys are also fighting attempts to have Trump himself testify, to subpoena his children to testify, and to dive into his finances. Trump can’t force the BBC to pay a hefty settlement or back off of the coverage, as it is funded by the British taxpayer. Now he either has to give in to the BBC’s lawyers and drop the case or actually try to prove his point and deal with the consequences.