The Texas-born country singer defends his roots and Latino heritage while slamming President Trump’s decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico.
Charley Crockett, the Texas-born country singer-songwriter, stirred fresh debate this week when he publicly criticized President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order that rebranded the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”
Crockett’s reaction — posted while the musician is in the midst of a busy touring cycle supporting his album Lonesome Drifter — arrived roughly ten months after the change became public, drawing both applause and eye-rolls online.
“I was born on the Gulf of Mexico,” Crockett wrote in the post, adding that he doesn’t “recognize it by any other name.”
The singer emphasized his ties to the Rio Grande Valley — the South Texas region where he grew up and which he described as overwhelmingly Latino — and framed the renaming as at odds with the area’s history and identity.
He also quipped that if officials in Washington are intent on renaming places, “they can start with New England — because it ain’t new and it ain’t England,” a line that underscored the cultural and historical pushback behind his post.
Responses were swift. Fellow artists such as Brandi Carlile and Margo Price publicly backed Crockett’s sentiment with succinct endorsements — “Preach” and “Hell yes,” respectively — while other commenters mocked the timing, noting the post’s delayed relevance.
One social media user encapsulated the mood for some followers: “The post we didn’t need, 10 months after it was relevant.”
Crockett’s statement is consistent with his recent willingness to wade into cultural conversations. He has argued previously that country musicians occupy a unique perch from which to comment on societal issues, saying that artists who have traveled and seen more of the world are often dismissed as being “out of their place” when they voice opinions.
In his latest post he reiterated that stance, suggesting that those who have limited perspectives should not silence more worldly commentators.
It remains unclear why Crockett chose to address the Gulf renaming now. Touring demands and a packed performance schedule could explain delayed engagement with the news cycle, or — as some critics have speculated — the timing may be related to other public controversies surrounding the singer.
Whatever the motive, the post has added another chapter to the ongoing conversation about place names, identity and who gets to weigh in when cultural touchstones are altered by politics.
For Crockett’s fans, the post affirmed a musician taking a stand rooted in personal geography; for detractors, it was a late-arriving cultural critique that reignited an already-settled debate.
Either way, the response shows how place, politics and performance continue to collide in the public sphere.
