In an election year, Labor Day is not just another holiday. By tradition, it’s the inflection point in a campaign season — the point at which voters start to become more engaged and candidates and political parties intensify their efforts in the final eight weeks before Election Day.

With this in mind, Labor Day 2026 offered Americans a detailed look at what their president is prioritizing as the campaign season enters its home stretch. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

Over the weekend, Donald Trump used his social media platform to unveil unfortunate new Space Force uniforms, which coincided with an image generated by artificial intelligence showing him in a Space Command center apparently bombing Earth from the comfort of space. This was not to be confused with other sci-fi-related content, such as one showing him leading a pack of scary-looking robots in the nation’s capital and another featuring the Republican on patrol with some sort of robot police army with mechanical spiders.

The president declared that Earth’s moon belongs to the United States; he celebrated assorted statues and fountains, which he apparently wants credit for having cleaned up; and he offered fresh evidence that his obsession with Joe Biden and Barack Obama remains undiminished.

But of particular interest was Trump’s newfound goal: He wants to rename New Mexico.

The push began midday Sunday, when the president published an image showing a map of the state with an “x” drawn over the word “Mexico,” replaced with the word “America.” Hours later, he published a follow-up statement that suggested he wasn’t kidding. It read in its entirety:

Many people suggested changing the name of New Mexico, one of the great vote cheating states of all time, to NEW AMERICA. So much more prestigious and beautiful for the people of that potentially incredible State. Wow, I Love It!!! President DONALD J. TRUMP

A day later, Trump published seven different items to his platform, each of which pushed the idea of changing the name of the state.

This did not go unnoticed in Santa Fe. Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham issued a statement of her own, which read, “New Mexico’s name isn’t up for debate — it’s been ours since before the United States existed.”

To the extent that anyone is concerned about the practical implications of Trump’s latest fixation, it’s important to emphasize that the president cannot unilaterally change the name of a state on a whim. The New York Times reported, “Mr. Trump has no legal authority to rename any state, which in New Mexico’s case is written into its Constitution. Any proposed change would have to originate within the state, a prospect that New Mexico’s Democratic leaders rejected forcefully on Sunday.”

But this doesn’t necessarily make the president’s latest preoccupation irrelevant.

When the year got underway, national polling didn’t just show Trump’s approval rating having sunk to embarrassing lows, it also showed a more specific problem: Roughly two-thirds of Americans were convinced the president simply had the wrong priorities.

Last month, we saw fresh evidence that this impression had actually intensified. A CNN poll found that 73% of Americans — a record high — agreed that Trump hasn’t paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems. This dovetailed with a Quinnipiac poll that found 68% of Americans believe he’s not focused enough on “addressing the problems most Americans are facing.”

The president could take steps to change Americans’ minds, but it’s increasingly obvious that he doesn’t want to. He’s too busy obsessing over distractions and trivialities, from renaming Lake Ontario to building assorted vanity projects (the ballroom, the “triumphal arch,” the White House helipad, et al.).

In the spring, House Speaker Mike Johnson made a concerted effort to pitch the idea that the Republican Party is the party of “grown-ups,” which is why, as far as the Louisiana Republican was concerned, the GOP deserved voters’ support.

But Trump doesn’t just step on that argument, he also renders it hilarious. Americans looking for mature policymakers who are focused on tackling the nation’s real challenges in a serious and sober way have no reason to rally behind a fundamentally unserious party led by a guy who spends Labor Day focused on renaming New Mexico.

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