New Mexico delivers inflation relief payments to residents — Associated Press
New Mexico is delivering the first in a series of direct payments to the state's adult residents to offset higher consumers costs amid inflation.
Individual taxpayers who get direct deposit rebates are scheduled to receive $250 and couples who file jointly are set to receive $500 as early as Thursday. Checks for another 200,000 taxpayers will arrive in the mail over the next few weeks.
The payments are among the $1.1 billion in tax relief and payouts authorized earlier this year by the Democratic-led Legislature and Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.
"Across the country, Americans are grappling with the high costs of essentials," Lujan Grisham said in a statement. "Here in New Mexico, we are doing all we can to provide relief to New Mexico's families."
Individual taxpayers will be eligible to receive up to $750 and couples are set to receive as much as $1,500 during three installments between June and August. That doesn't include a newly approved annual per-child tax credit of up to $175, depending on household income.
Residents who do not file taxes because of limited income can apply for one-time relief payments of $500 or $1,000 depending on family size. Undocumented immigrants are eligible for relief under the programs.
"Starting today and throughout the summer, we are putting nearly half a billion dollars back into the pockets of New Mexicans," Lujan Grisham said a statement.
High fuel prices are hurting household finances as the state government benefits from a
Supporters of the proposed payments, including the governor, have said the state has an obligation to help people suffering financial hardships because of inflation. Some Republicans legislators have warned that that rebates might make inflation worse.
The U.S. experienced a sharp increase in consumer prices of 8.3% in April compared with a year ago. The increase was just below a four-decade high reached in March.
Crews slow New Mexico fires, brace for dangerous conditions — Susan Montoya Brown, Associated Press
More than 2,000 firefighters battling the largest U.S. wildfire dug back-up fire lines and rearranged fire engines around homes in northeast New Mexico on Wednesday in anticipation of a return to windy, dangerous conditions in the days ahead.
After a break in the weather allowed for significant progress on the ground and from the air in recent days, forecasters issued warnings for high fire danger from southern Nevada through parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado starting Thursday.
"The next three days are going to be the giddy-up days," fire behavior analyst Dennis Burns said Wednesday.
"Crews are out there working as hard as they can to get in line as quickly as possible," he said during an afternoon briefing at the fire east of Santa Fe stretching northeast toward Taos.
Most of the large fires so far this spring have been in Arizona and New Mexico. The largest has raced across more than 471 square miles (1,220 square kilometers) of forest that many fire managers have described as "ripe and ready to burn" due to a megadrought that has spanned decades and warm and windy conditions brought on by climate change.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has said damage estimates for homes and structures could reach more than 1,000 by the time all the assessments are done.
On Wednesday, no new evacuations were ordered and some were relaxed. Burns said the biggest new concern was that thunderstorms packing lightning and strong down-draft winds would fuel the fire again Thursday.
Bulldozers and hand crews were building contingency lines near the town of Angel Fire east of Taos to make sure the flames don't reach U.S. Highway 64 within about 25 miles (40 kilometers) of the Colorado line.
"If we are fortunate enough to dodge that bullet, the cloud cover will actually shade out the fuels and moderate the fire behavior a little bit, which is a good thing," Burns said Wednesday. "But tomorrow will be the day to tell."
While the fire encompasses an area more than 1.5 times the size of New York City, fire managers said there are pockets of green within the perimeter that could still burn.
"We're trying to go all the way around the edge of the fire and we want to keep the fire where it is right now," Jayson Coil, an operations chief assigned to the blaze, said Wednesday of using bulldozers to cut wide lines that can block flames.
Fire managers also said not all areas have been burned severely, and crews have been able to protect many homes and structures by clearing out vegetation and using sprinklers and hose lays to knock down the flames as they approach populated areas.
Lujan Grisham spoke with President Joe Biden on Tuesday and underscored the impacts of the fires on communities and the need for ongoing partnership with the federal government as the drought-stricken state recovers and rebuilds from some of the most devastating wildfires on record in New Mexico.
Biden reaffirmed the support of the federal government and said every effort will be made to provide immediate help to people in the impacted communities. He also expressed his gratitude to the first responders, firefighters and other personnel who are battling the blazes and have come to the aid of residents.
Evacuation orders remain in place for residents near a handful of large blazes in New Mexico, Colorado and Texas, where three large fires were reported Tuesday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
Lujan Grisham has warned that many New Mexico residents, depending on where they live, should be ready for potential evacuations all summer given the likelihood for higher fire danger due to strong winds, warmer temperatures brought on by climate change and forecasts for little to no precipitation.
Another fire burning in the Gila National Forest in southern New Mexico had grown more than 57 square miles (148 square kilometers) overnight Tuesday into Wednesday, causing concern among state officials. Forest roads and trails in the area were closed, but officials said late Wednesday crews made good progress during the day that kept the perimeter from growing.
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Associated Press writer Scott Sonner contributed to this report from Reno, Nevada.
New Mexico court upholds $165M damage awards in FedEx crash - Associated Press
The New Mexico Supreme Court on Thursday upheld $165 million of jury awards against FedEx in a wrongful-death lawsuit stemming from a deadly crash involving a Texas family and a contract driver for the delivery company.
The 2011 crash on Interstate 10 west of Las Cruces killed Marialy Venegas Morga and her 4-year-old daughter and critically injured the El Paso woman's 19-month-old son when the family's small pickup was rear-ended.
According to testimony, the big rig didn't brake before the crash.
Truck driver Elizabeth Quintana also died.
A jury in Santa Fe awarded $93 million in compensatory damages to the estates of those family members killed and $72 million to other family members.
FedEx's appeal argued that the awards were excessive and that a state District Court judge should have granted the company's request for a new trial.
The Supreme Court declined to order a new trial in the case, concluding that "substantial evidence supported the verdict and that the jury's award was not the result of passion or prejudice."
State to provide rent money to tenants affected by wildfires – By Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
A state agency announced Wednesday that it would provide up to three months of rent and hotel stays for those who lose their rented homes or apartments in ongoing wildfires in New Mexico.
The Department of Finance and Administration said tenants who lost their housing due to the fires should apply for assistance on the DFA website. They’ll receive priority for temporary housing placement. People should be sure to provide contact information so that a staff member can call back to assist.
MAXIMUM INCOME FOR HOUSEHOLDS OF FOUR TO RECEIVE THE HOUSING ASSISTANCE:
- Colfax County: $43,900
- Lincoln County: $47,200
- Mora County: $43,900
- Sandoval County: $55,300
- San Miguel County: $43,900
- Valencia County: $55,300
Only those who earn less than 80% of the average median income for each county can receive the money, which will pay up to three months of future rent for a tenant and for temporary hotel/motel stays. And the funding is only available for renters whose housing was destroyed by wildfires.
Here's how abortion clinics are preparing for Roe to fall - By Emily Wagster Pettus And Rachel La Corte Associated Press
Leaders of a Tennessee abortion clinic calculated driving distances and studied passenger rail routes as they scanned the map for another place to offer services if the U.S. Supreme Court lets states restrict or eliminate abortion rights.
They chose Carbondale in Illinois — a state that has easy abortion access but is surrounded by more restrictive states in the Midwest and South. It will be the southernmost clinic in Illinois when it opens in August.
"I think at this point, we all know the stark reality that we're facing in Tennessee. We are going to lose abortion access this year," said Jennifer Pepper, chief executive officer of CHOICES: Memphis Center for Reproductive Health.
With the Supreme Court poised to let states tightly limit or ban abortion, reproductive rights advocates are planning to open new clinics or expand existing ones in states where lawmakers are not clamping down on access.
Some Democrat-led states in the West and Northeast also are proposing public money for an expected influx of people traveling from other places to terminate pregnancies.
When it opened in 1974, a year after the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide, CHOICES became the first abortion provider in Memphis, a commercial hub for rural Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and southern Missouri.
Carbondale is a three-hour drive north of Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee's two largest cities. It's also on a New Orleans-to-Chicago Amtrak route through areas where abortion access could disappear, including Mississippi, western Tennessee and western Kentucky.
"Its location and geography were the original reason that drew us to Carbondale, but the incredible heart of the Carbondale community is what led us to know we had found a second home for CHOICES," Pepper said in announcing the plan last week.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule in the coming months in a case directly challenging Roe. Justices heard arguments in December over a 2018 Mississippi law to ban most abortions after 15 weeks. The court has allowed states to regulate but not ban abortion before the point of viability, around 24 weeks.
A draft opinion leaked May 2 showed a majority of justices were ready to overturn Roe v. Wade. If the final ruling is similar, states would have wide latitude to restrict abortion. The Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights, says 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion if the Roe is weakened or overturned.
Diane Derzis owns Mississippi's only abortion clinic, Jackson Women's Health Organization. She told The Associated Press that the clinic, also known as the Pink House, will close if Roe is overturned because Mississippi has a "trigger" law to automatically prohibit abortion.
Mississippi is one of the poorest states in the nation, and women would face even steeper hurdles to have access to abortion — arranging time off work, finding ways to pay for travel and lodging and, in many cases, arranging for child care while they are gone.
"Mississippi is a prime example of what's going to happen to the women of this country," Derzis said. "Those who have the means will be able to fly to New York. The poor women and women of color will be desperately trying to find the closest clinic."
Derzis said an abortion clinic she owns in Columbus, Georgia, also would quickly close if Roe disappears, and she thinks a clinic she owns in Richmond, Virginia, might remain open for about another year.
Derzis said she plans to open an abortion clinic soon in Las Cruces, New Mexico, about an hour's drive north of El Paso, Texas. Since Texas enacted a law last year banning most abortions at about six weeks, women have traveled to New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana and other states to end pregnancies. Earlier this month, a Texas-style abortion ban that prohibits abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy took effect in Oklahoma.
"You can't stop a woman who's pregnant and doesn't want to have a baby," Derzis said.
An association of abortion providers, the National Abortion Federation, gives health and travel information as well as money to pregnant women who have to travel to obtain an abortion. The federation's chief program officer, Melissa Fowler, said many lives will be disrupted.
"The reality for many people in the country is going to be days of travel, days off of work," Fowler said. "Even if we fully fund someone's travel, some people's lives just don't allow them to make the trip."
Jennifer Allen, CEO of Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates, which covers Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky and Washington, said even in states like Washington, where there's strong support for abortion rights, "it's going to take a whole lot more to be ready for the future."
Washington has more than 30 abortion clinics, though just five are east of the Cascade Mountains, in the more conservative part of the state. Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee signed a measure this year authorizing physician assistants, advanced registered nurse practitioners and other providers acting within their scope of practice to perform abortions. Abortion-rights supporters said that will help meet the demand from out-of-state patients.
Allen said it's impossible to predict how many out-of-state residents will seek care in Washington, but the increase could be in the thousands. She said reproductive rights advocates are working to anticipate the needs.
"We are building this plane while we're flying it," Allen said.
In response to the leaked Supreme Court draft, Inslee promised Washington would provide sanctuary for those seeking abortions. His office said discussions are underway on a range of possibilities. But the Legislature is not likely to reconvene before its regular session begins in January.
Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed $57 million in abortion funding on top of $68 million proposed in January. The Democrat said the new proposals include $40 million to pay for abortions for women not covered by Medicaid or private insurance, $15 million for a public education campaign, $1 million for a website listing abortion services and $1 million for research into unmet needs for reproductive health care services.
Newsom has already signed a law to make abortions cheaper for people with private insurance. The Legislature is considering other bills to increase abortion access, including proposals to let more nurse practitioners perform them.
New York will make $35 million available for abortion services and security, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced last week. She said some of that money could be spent on abortions for out-of-state residents traveling to New York.
In March, Oregon lawmakers approved $15 million to pay for abortions and support services such as travel and lodging for in-state or out-of-state patients who travel long distances, and to expand abortion availability. Details are still being discussed, including the possibility of mobile clinics or hiring more workers for existing clinics.
"We do know that, likely, Oregon will be a place that people will be forced to travel to get care," said An Do, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon.
The Guttmacher Institute reported Oregon could see a 234% increase in women coming from other states, many from Idaho, if the court overturns Roe v. Wade.
Overwhelming Democratic majorities in the Illinois General Assembly have been preparing for a Roe rollback for years, particularly because the state would be an island amid neighbors with restrictions.
In 2017, Illinois approved public funding for abortion and repealed a 1975 "trigger" law. The state's Reproductive Health Act of 2019 established the fundamental right for people to make their own decisions about contraception and abortion. As of June 1, minors will no longer be required to notify a parent or guardian before getting an abortion, an action that abortion-rights proponents considered the last roadblock to unfettered access in Illinois.
"We have been preparing for the day Roe falls and we are ready," said Yamelsie Rodriguez, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri.
Fowler, with the National Abortion Federation, said even though providers in states without restrictive abortion laws "are doing all they can to preserve and expand access, the current system just does not have the capacity to handle the number of patients who will be without care."
"We need to be just as creative and robust in our solutions as our opponents have been in designing these terrible restrictions," she said.
Officials say woman set 12 fires in the bosque Wednesday morning – KUNM News; Elise Kaplan, Albuquerque Journal
After setting 12 fires over 5 acres of the bosque yesterday, an Albuquerque woman was taken to a hospital for a mental health evaluation after being charged with arson and battery on a peace officer.
The Albuquerque Journal reports 46 year old Cristina Castorena-Noble will be booked into jail once she is medically cleared.
Castorena-Noble's family said she has had a hard life, marked by tragedy, abuse, death, struggles with addiction, and previous run-ins with law enforcement, including May 2020 charges for setting fires.
16 crews were on scene for the multiple fires yesterday morning, arriving shortly after Castorena-Noble had been spotted starting the fires by both a family walking through the bosque, and by a police helicopter.
State Lawmaker accuses gas station of price-gouging – KUNM News; Mathew Narvaiz, Albuquerque Journal
Gas prices, and inflation overall, is putting the squeeze on many people's budgets lately, but one Albuquerque gas station took things too far for a state legislator.
The Albuquerque Journal reports Miguel Garcia, a democrat serving Albuquerque, filed a price-gouging complaint against a gas station near the Sunport that was charging $6.83 a gallon as of Wednesday.
The average price of gas in Albuquerque Wednesday was about $4.29 a gallon, according to AAA– a record high as is.
Murad Hijazi, the owner of M&M stores on Yale Boulevard north of Gibson Boulevard, declined to comment on his prices or the complaint, according to the journal.
Right to film cops weighed by US court overseeing 6 states — Colleen Slevin, Associated Press
U.S. government lawyers on Wednesday asked the appeals court overseeing four western and two midwestern states to recognize that the First Amendment guarantee of free speech gives people the right to film police as they do their work in public — a decision that would allow officers to be sued if they interfere with bystanders trying to record them.
Six of the nation's 12 appeals courts have recognized that right but the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has not and justices heard arguments in the case of a YouTube journalist and blogger who claimed that a suburban Denver officer blocked him from recording a 2019 traffic stop.
Natasha Babazadeh, an attorney for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, urged a three-judge panel from the court to rule in that filming police is a constitutional right and said there has been an increase in the number of lawsuits filed against police by people saying they could not record them in public. The appeals court has over Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Utah and the parts of Yellowstone National Park that lie in Idaho and Montana.
"This issue is timely and would give guidance to district courts," Babazadeh said.
The First Amendment issue intersects with the controversial legal doctrine called "qualified immunity," which shields police officers from misconduct lawsuits unless their actions violate clearly established laws. If the appeals court decides people have a right to record police, police departments and officers who work in the court's region would be put on notice that they could be sued for violating that right.
In the Colorado lawsuit, Abade Irizarry said he was filming a police traffic stop in the city of Lakewood when he claimed Officer Ahmed Yehia stood in front of the camera to block Irizarry from recording. The officer was on foot shined a flashlight into Irizarry's camera and the camera of another blogger. Then Yehia left the two, got into his cruiser and sped the cruiser toward the two bloggers, the lawsuit said. The cruiser swerved before reaching the bloggers and they were not hit, according to the lawsuit.
The case was heard in federal court in Denver, where a magistrate judge sided with lawyers for Yehia and dismissed it last year, agreeing with Yehia's lawyers, who contended the right to record police was not clearly established by the time of the incident in 2019.
Irizarry appealed and U.S. government lawyers joined the case to support the public's right to record police.
Alex Dorotik, the lawyer for Yehia and the city of Lakewood, said in court documents that the appeals court panel should uphold the lower court ruling.
Pointing out that Yehia allegedly drove towards Irizarry, appeals court Judge Carolyn McHugh said officers can be held liable for actions which are so egregious that all officers should should know that they violate people's rights.
Dorotik told the appeals court panel that the motivation for why Yehia drove toward Irizarry would have to be considered but later acknowledged that it would be fair to infer it was motivated by Irizarry's efforts to film the traffic stop.
The Justice Department lawyers did not take a position on whether Yehia should be granted qualified immunity.
But they said the appeals court can rule on the constitutional question of whether people have the right to record police regardless of whether the lawsuit against Yehia is reinstated. L egal documents filed by the Justice Department lawyers stressed the importance of eyewitness video in its investigations of police departments and for the investigative hunt for suspects who attacked police during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Alan Chen, a University of Denver law professor and one of the First Amendment experts who have also urged the appeals court to rule on the right of people to record police, said courts tend to address cases narrowly instead of weighing in on constitutional issues.
But the video of the killing of George Floyd brought national attention to the importance of people having the right to record police as they work, he said.
"The more uncertainity there is, the more people might be afraid to pull out their phones and record the police," Chen said.