New Mexico Supreme Court to take on redistricting case - By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
The New Mexico Supreme Court will take up a legal challenge over a congressional map that divvies up a conservative area of the state, ordering Friday that the parties prepare to make oral arguments in early January.
Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who is running for reelection, and her legislative allies had asked the Supreme Court to step in and stay proceedings that began earlier this year in state district court.
The Republican Party and several other plaintiffs had sued over the new map for the 2nd District in southern New Mexico, citing public comments by top Democratic legislators as evidence of partisan bias in decisions about the district's boundaries.
The case holds implications for the district where Republican Yvette Herrell ousted a first-term Democrat in the 2020 election to win back GOP control of the seat. It includes one of the most lucrative oil-producing regions in the U.S. and extends to remote stretches of the U.S. border with Mexico.
In a ruling in April, District Judge Fred Van Soelen denied a preliminary injunction that sought to set aside the map ahead of the June primary and the November general election. He said making changes "this late in the game" would result in chaos and would not be in the public's best interest.
He also noted that the map at issue could potentially be used for the next five elections, until the next redistricting process in about 10 years, so the case — which could affect elections after 2022 — would continue.
GOP attorney Christopher Murray had argued in court earlier this year that the congressional map approved in December 2021 by the Democratic-led Legislature and signed by Lujan Grisham was partisan, diluted the conservative vote and violated state constitutional rights to impartial government.
Attorneys for the Legislature and governor have defended the state's congressional map, saying it was vetted through the political process.
Democrats hold two of New Mexico's three congressional seats, command majorities in the state House and Senate, make up the five-member Supreme Court and hold every statewide elected office.
Governor may appoint a commission candidate to fill Couy Griffin’s seat - By Lissa Knudsen, Source New Mexico
Democrat Stephanie Dubois has been tapped by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to replace Couy Griffin on the Otero County Commission, according to the Alamogordo Daily News. The Governor’s Office, however, has not officially announced the appointment and says it is not yet finalized, as paperwork is still being completed.
“The review process is ongoing and is expected to be done shortly,” said Nora Sackett, the governor’s spokesperson.
Dubois is also a candidate for the District 2 seat on the commission, the position Griffin vacated.
If she fills Griffin’s seat — either by appointment or election — she might end up weighing whether to recover the salary he was paid as a commissioner over the last year and a half.
According to the District Judge Francis J. Mathew’s ruling on Sept. 6, 2022, the Cowboys for Trump co-founder was disqualified from holding public office by participating in the Jan. 6, 2021 siege on the U.S. Capitol.
As of that date, former Commissioner Griffin became disqualified under the U.S. Constitution from serving in any elected position, the ruling states.
At Thursday’s commission meeting, Otero County resident John Davis called on the officials to look into recouping Griffin’s salary for the time period between Jan. 6, 2021 and Sept. 6, 2022.
“Since he was not qualified to hold that office, during the time he was paid on Jan. 6 (2021) to Sept. 6 (2022) — a total of 20 months salary as a Otero county commissioner — that comes to $40,907.50 that he received that he was not qualified to receive,” Davis told the commission on Thursday.
Republican Commissioner Gerald Matherly said that they wouldn’t weigh in on the issue until after the appellate court ruled on Griffin’s appeal, but he added that he wasn’t inclined to support an effort to recover Griffin’s previous salary.
Despite not being qualified to hold the commissioner seat at the time, “he still took time off of his regular job to attend meetings and meet with residents,” Matherly said.
“He did work for the county during that time, which I think he needs to be paid for,” Matherly added.
Later in the meeting, Jessica Aguilar, also spoke against the push to recover the dispersed salary funds.
Despite Griffin’s engagement in the Jan 6 insurrection not being a part of his official commission duties, he requested the county provide him with legal representation, which the county declined.
He was “not treated fairly and was shut out by his fellow commissioners,” Aguilar said, reading from a prepared transcript on her mobile phone.
The commissioners called a special meeting to vote on an official position from Otero County, according to Aguilar.
“Instead of scheduling an executive session, a public meeting was scheduled, even when you said you weren’t going to take any public comments,” Aguilar said addressing the commissioners.
In addition to opposing the efforts to recover the money spent on the former commissioner’s salary, Aguilar said the money spent on the Otero County attorney was an even graver misuse of public dollars, adding that the lawyer “ doesn’t fight for commissioners’ or the people of Otero County’s rights,” Aguilar said.
Former Alamogordo Police Officer Bob Heisinger, also spoke against attempting to recoup the salary money.
“Couy earned those funds. He was rightfully employed, and did his job,” Heisinger said.
He added that he didn’t think this was a fight the county really wants to have.
“‘If you don’t start none, there won’t be none,’” Heisinger said. “If we don’t start a fight, we don’t have to contend with the battle, and I don’t think this is a battle the county or this commission wants to undertake.”
EXAMINING HIS VOTES
The county is also reviewing all issues where Griffin cast a deciding vote during the time period in which he was not a qualified commissioner, Davis said.
The Otero County Commission is made up of three members, so any 2-to-1 vote where Griffin voted in the majority could be subject to review. These votes include a lawsuit against the secretary of state, a vote to remove ballot drop boxes and a budget increase for the gun range ammunition.
Judge rules new DACA program can continue temporarily - By Juan A. Lozano Associated Press
A federal judge ruled Friday that the current version of a federal policy that prevents the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the U.S. as children can continue, at least temporarily.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen — who last year declared the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program illegal — said that the policy, which is set to proceed under new regulations at the end of the month, can continue with limitations that he previously set. Those limitations say there can be no new applicants for DACA and that those who are already in the program can continue to be in it and renew their applications.
During a court hearing Friday, Hanen ordered attorneys for the federal government to provide more information on the new rule and said he expects additional legal arguments related to it, but there was no timetable set for future hearings. It's also unclear when Hanen will give his final decision on the case, which is expected to end up at the U.S. Supreme Court.
"The legality of the new DACA regulation ... is now the task before this court," said Nina Perales, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF, who is representing DACA recipients, said after attending Friday's hearing.
Karina Ruiz De Diaz, one of the DACA recipients being represented by MALDEF, said she was relieved Hanen kept the program in place but upset the judge declined to open it up to thousands of new applicants who need its protections.
Ruiz was part of a group of more than 50 community activists and DACA recipients who gathered before and after the hearing in support of the program at a park next to the federal courthouse. They held up signs that said, "Judge Hanen Do the Right Thing Protect DACA" and "Immigrants Are Welcomed."
"It was important to show up to the hearing. We don't want the judge to think that this is just an abstract concept. I want him to see our faces, to see that it's impacting real people," said Ruiz, 38, who traveled from her home in Phoenix to attend the hearing.
The current version of DACA, which the Biden administration created to improve its chances of surviving legal scrutiny, is set to take effect Oct. 31.
The case went back to Hanen after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans said last week he should take another look at DACA following revisions adopted by the Biden administration.
Hanen last year declared DACA illegal after Texas and eight other Republican-leaning states filed a lawsuit claiming they are harmed financially, incurring hundreds of millions of dollars in health care, education and other costs, when immigrants are allowed to remain in the country illegally. They also argued that the White House overstepped its authority by granting immigration benefits that are for Congress to decide.
"Only Congress has the ability to write our nation's immigration laws," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Thursday in a statement.
Hanen found DACA had not been subjected to public notice and comment periods required under the federal Administrative Procedures Act. But he left the Obama-era program intact for those already benefiting from it, pending the appeal. There were 611,270 people enrolled in DACA at the end of March.
A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based appeals court upheld Hanen's initial finding but sent the case back to Hanen so he could review the impact of the federal government's new DACA regulation.
The new rule's 453 pages are largely technical and represent little substantive change from the 2012 memo that created DACA, but it was subject to public comments as part of a formal rule-making process.
During Friday's hearing, Hanen seemed hesitant about tackling the constitutionality of the DACA program with any ruling he would make and said he wanted all parties involved to initially focus on issues related to the federal Administrative Procedures Act in reviewing the new regulation.
Perales said the uncertainty about DACA's ultimate fate in the courts should be another signal to Congress that it needs to act to provide permanent protections.
After last week's appeals court ruling, President Joe Biden and advocacy groups renewed their calls for Congress to pass permanent protections for "Dreamers," which is what people protected by DACA are commonly called. Congress has failed multiple times to pass proposals called the DREAM Act to protect DACA recipients.
Whatever Hanen decides, DACA is expected to go to the Supreme Court for a third time. In 2016, the Supreme Court deadlocked 4-4 over an expanded DACA and a version of the program for parents of DACA recipients. In 2020, the high court ruled 5-4 that the Trump administration improperly ended DACA, allowing it to stay in place.
State to update water pollution plan, factoring in climate change — but not boosting wildfire response - Megan Gleason, Source New Mexico
It’s a yearslong process for the state to create a plan to protect water from pollution for federal approval, and the New Mexico Environment Department is prepping its 2024 strategy with a focus on climate change.
New Mexico’s plan, required by the Clean Water Act, aims to prevent and clean up pollution that doesn’t come from a single source, like one factory or plant, but from diffuse origin points in agricultural, residential and urban areas, or heavily mined rural regions. It’s called NPS, or Nonpoint Source pollution.
Rain and snow pushes the contamination — sediment, toxic chemicals, bacteria — into waters. NPS is harmful to drinking water sources and wildlife, and is the top cause of water quality problems in the U.S., according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
After New Mexico’s deadly wildfire season this summer, both northern and southern New Mexico are dealing with flooding off of burn scars on a daily to weekly basis, and rainflow can push ash, sediment and other contaminants into waters. Wildfires are increasing in frequency and severity, due to one of the worst droughts in centuries as a result of human-caused climate change.
But despite an intention to emphasize climate change in the next iteration, N.M. Environment Department spokesperson Matthew Maez said revisions likely won’t include additional wildfire considerations.
The EPA in 2019 approved the plan in place today, which allocates some funds from the Clean Water Act to restore and protect watersheds damaged by wildfires. Maez said that will remain unchanged in the new version.
The Hermit’s Peak Watershed Alliance is rolling out a project funded by the Clean Water Act, he pointed out, to identify and alleviate water quality problems following the largest-ever blaze in northern New Mexico. No funds have been specifically allocated through the management plan for damage done by the Black Fire, the second-largest burn in state history.
CLIMATE CHANGE HEATS NM’S STREAMS
The most common water quality problem in New Mexico is excessively high stream temperature, according to the state, as climate change warms up the globe. Maez said addressing heat will be a central part of the updated plan, with revisions prioritizing shade over streams to reduce temperatures in waters when possible.
Maez said NMED is also planning to include proposals focused on water flow improvements, such as reducing erosion to maintain the flow of waters without the aid of precipitation and, during floods, controlling the path the water travels along.
Abe Franklin, program manager for NMED’s Watershed Protection Section, told the Water Quality Control Commission on Tuesday that most of the other changes the department anticipates are superficial, like terminology updates to improve the plan’s comprehensibility for readers.
Maez said today’s plan already folds in a lot of this work, but revisions will more clearly lay out and prioritize climate change resiliency work.
The proposed plan can be added to or changed, he said, as NMED receives input from the public and officials throughout the ongoing drafting process.
Thousands of Native students attend Albuquerque schools. Most will never have a Native teacher — Bella Davis, New Mexico in Depth
Still, obstacles remain, like rising cost-of-living in Albuquerque, and a weak educator pipeline.
Growing up in Albuquerque, high school junior Brook Chavez, who is Diné, never had a Native American teacher until last year, when she took a Navajo language and culture class.
There, the 16 year old learned more about her culture and connected with other Diné youth, coming away prouder about who she is. She felt understood by her teacher, David Scott, also Diné, in ways she hasn’t always in the classroom.
“I learned a lot about my clans, my stories,” Chavez said, adding that at the end of the first semester, she and her classmates performed at Native American Winter Stories, an Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) event. “That’s one of my fondest memories because I got to dress up traditional with all my friends.”
Chavez just wishes she hadn’t had to wait so long.
There’s consensus among advocates and education officials that it’s important for teacher workforces to be representative of student populations, which research shows is linked to better student outcomes. Same-race teachers can act as important advocates and role models.
But Chavez’s experience is one that many Native American children attending school in Albuquerque are unlikely to have in the classroom, at least in the near future.
While parents of nearly 10% of APS students report they have tribal affiliations, only 1.2% of teachers the district employed during the last school year were Native American, according to district data.
The state Public Education Department identified increasing racial diversity among teachers as a priority in its draft plan released in May in response to Yazzie/Martinez v. State of New Mexico, a 2018 court ruling that found the state has failed to provide an adequate education to Native children, among other student groups.
And district officials in Albuquerque say they’re working to hire more Native American teachers. As part of that effort, they’ve started a state-funded pilot program this school year.
But challenges stand in the way, including increasing living costs in the city and a less-than-robust educator pipeline.
“Many of our children will never see a Native American teacher in their entire school career and that’s simply because the pipeline is not there to support Native Americans as they come out of high school,” said Rep. Derrick Lente, D-Sandia Pueblo, who for the past several years has sponsored legislation aimed at improving education for Native children.
DIVERSITY GAPS
There is a sizable Native American population in Albuquerque, New Mexico’s largest city and home to one of the largest school districts in the nation, with 73,346 students as of the last school year.
A significant number of those students are Native American.
When parents enroll their children in Albuquerque Public Schools, they report their children’s race and ethnicity to the district. During the last school year, 5.2% of students were recorded as being Native American, but 9.8% of students were reported by their parents as having tribal affiliations.
The latter figure is more representative of the actual number of students identifying as Native American, said Philip Farson, senior director of the district’s Indian Education Department. Many students are multiracial, Farson said, and end up being recorded as a race other than Native American despite their tribal affiliations.
A student census shows students from over 100 tribal nations and communities, the Navajo Nation accounting for the majority, with about 57% of Native students. There are significant populations from Laguna and Zuni Pueblos and a large number of students from tribes outside of the U.S., mostly in Mexico and Canada, according to the district.
In total, 7,192 students reported tribal affiliations. Meanwhile, the district employed 65 Native American teachers during the last school year. That means that for every Native teacher, there were about 110 Native children.
That gap has only slightly narrowed over the past decade. In the 2011-2012 school year, for every Native teacher, there were 117 Native children.
Having enough teachers that share the same race or ethnicity of students isn’t just a struggle involving Native students.
There are also significantly fewer Hispanic teachers than students – with 28% of teachers identifying as Hispanic compared to a student population that is two-thirds Hispanic.
“I think this is an unfortunate theme across the nation, really,” Lente said. “It’s not just in the Albuquerque public school system, it’s not just in New Mexico, but it’s across the nation.”
Indeed, gaps in racial diversity between teachers and students, as Lente pointed out, are both state and national trends.
During the last school year, 10% of students in New Mexico public schools were Native American while 3% of teachers were Native, according to the state education department. White students made up 23% of the overall population, while 59% of teachers were white.
Nationally, about 79% of public school teachers identified as non-Hispanic white during the 2017-2018 school year, while only 47% of students were white, according to a Pew Research Center analysis last year.
THE IMPORTANCE OF REPRESENTATION
Education officials, advocates and students alike agree that closing those diversity gaps is crucial in improving students’ overall experiences and boosting their academic achievements. There’s a substantial body of research that backs that up.
For instance, Black students are 13% more likely to graduate high school and 19% more likely to enroll in college if they had at least one Black teacher by third grade, according to a 2018 National Bureau of Economic Research study.
Researchers say there are likely a combination of factors that explain why teachers’ race, as well as their gender, matters, the New York Times reported, including that same-race teachers may introduce new material in a way that’s more culturally relevant.
Teachers who understand where their students come from can act as advocates, said Dr. Glenabah Martinez (Taos Pueblo/Diné), a professor in the University of New Mexico’s (UNM) Department of Language, Literacy and Sociocultural Studies.
As an example, Martinez cited Native American students possibly needing to be absent for a number of days to participate in ceremonies in their tribal communities.
“If a teacher is from that same community, that teacher completely understands why that student needs to participate and how that student isn’t just missing the white man’s school, the Western school, but they are getting a different type of education that is intensive in terms of the cultural knowledge,” Martinez said. “A Native teacher understands that and they can therefore advocate for that student.”
She also said it’s important for school districts to have Native American administrators who can guide the creation of culturally relevant curriculum and policies.
For Chavez, who’s in her junior year at La Cueva High School, having a Native teacher meant that she felt a level of support and acceptance she rarely felt in earlier grades.
She remembers other kids calling her “Indian” and “Pocahontas” in elementary school, and the climate at her high school — where 4.7% of students have tribal affiliations, according to district data for the last school year — isn’t much better, she said. Teachers sometimes single her out, turning to her during lessons that feature Native American cultures or historical figures — regardless of whether they have anything to do with the Navajo Nation — and asking her to weigh in.
“They’ll say, ‘Oh, you’re Native, you should tell us more about it,’” said Chavez, who’s a member of the Native American Student Union at her school.
Scott’s class was a reprieve. Two days a week, Chavez and a handful of other students from around the city rode buses to the classroom. She became close with some of her peers, who she stays in touch with despite no longer sharing a class.
“My students said they felt better coming in,” Scott said. “They felt like they belonged, as opposed to when they were at their school they were kind of ridiculed and ashamed to say who they were…I told them, you just have to stand your ground but be proud of who you are.”
Scott shared with his students that as a boy, he stayed with his aunt in Texas for the summer and other kids asked him how long it took him to set up his tipi. In college, his peers assumed he was getting a monthly check from the casino, he said.
“I just told them [his students], prepare yourself, educate them,” he said.
Chavez wouldn’t have had Scott as a teacher had she not made the effort to take a Navajo language course, which involved traveling to another campus twice a week.
Scott is one of six Navajo language teachers that APS employs.
To meet the language programming needs of the roughly 4,000 students affiliated with the Navajo Nation, Farson said the district would need to hire up to 100 Navajo language teachers over the next few years.
As of late August, about 200 Diné students are enrolled in language classes, according to district spokeswoman Monica Armenta, and 40 Zuni students are enrolled in language classes taught by the two Zuni language teachers the district employs.
Chavez desperately wants to keep learning the Navajo language, but there’s not a higher level class she can take this year. She worries she’ll never be fluent.
Part of why she opted to take Scott’s class was because it meant “keeping the culture alive.” Her grandma, who was sent to a boarding school as a child, is the last fluent Navajo speaker in her family, and her sister and cousins aren’t interested in learning, Chavez said.
The federal government, beginning in the early 1800s, removed Native children from their families and sent them to schools designed to strip them of their cultures. Abuse ran rampant and hundreds of children died, according to an investigative report the U.S. Department of the Interior released in May, although the department expects that number could rise to the tens of thousands with continued investigation.
“My grandma didn’t want to teach her kids Navajo because of what happened to her,” Chavez said. “She talks about it now but she still says she’s a little scared. She’s really traumatized by the boarding school.”
NOT ENOUGH
Albuquerque district officials said they recognize hiring more Native teachers is important but they’re drawing from a limited supply.
“The district could declare that 5% of our positions have to be filled by Native American educators but they’d run into the reality that there aren’t enough Native American educators to go around,” Farson, APS’s Indian Education Department director, said.
The department also struggles with retention because the pay, at least for leadership positions, isn’t competitive, Farson said.
“When we find qualified talent, how do we keep it? That’s our challenge.”
Some Native teachers the district does employ echo Farson, pointing to a lack of affordable housing in the city.
“I was looking but rent is so high and teachers’ pay is not enough to cover it, to even survive on,” said Scott, who began teaching the Navajo language in Albuquerque last year. He commuted the entire school year from Naschitti, which is north of Gallup. It’s more than a five-hour round trip. “A couple times, probably three times, I just slept in my vehicle.”
Mildred Chiquito, who teaches Navajo at Atrisco Heritage Academy High School, lives in Torreon, about 85 miles northwest of the school, with her elderly parents and her 17-year-old daughter.
She wishes there was teacher housing in Albuquerque.
“It’s hard paying for electricity, water and stuff in the city,” Chiquito said. “Some teachers are single parents and they’re just trying to make ends meet…I told my parents if I had teacher housing in Albuquerque, I would take them there and they would stay with me three days out of the week or something and then we go home, back on the reservation.”
The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies’ State of the Nation’s Housing report for 2022 indicates double-digit increases in Albuquerque area rents.
Some school districts across the country, including in California and Colorado, have recently asked parents to temporarily house teachers. One district south of San Francisco recently built a 122-unit apartment complex for teachers and staff on district property.
Chiquito said that while she would like to live in the city on weekdays, the drive is worth it.
“I love what I do and I love just giving back to the school and I don’t mind the sacrifices of driving,” she said.
She began over a decade ago when she received a certification that allows people who are experts in the language and culture of a specific tribe or pueblo but don’t necessarily have a college degree to teach in K-12 schools. In March, the Legislature passed a bill establishing equal pay for Native language teachers such as Chiquito.
When it comes to recruiting Native teachers, there’s also somewhat of an urban and rural divide.
Martinez, the UNM professor, is heading up a program that aims to help Native people become teachers and work in their home communities.
“We can’t forget that we need teachers who are committed to their own Native communities, to a Native community because they care about the community and it’s located in an area that’s maybe not close to the malls and the 24-hour coffee shops,” Martinez said. “I think we need teachers all over the place, rural and urban, but we’re doing a more concerted effort to recruit Native teachers to be teachers in their own communities so they don’t have to move to Albuquerque.”
PIPELINE FOCUSED ON NATIVE STUDENTS DOESN’T EXIST, YET
Earlier this year, APS received a $200,000 grant from the state education department’s Indigenous Education Initiative to place a teacher with experience working with Native students along with a coordinator for three years at Mission Avenue STEM Magnet School, where about 20% of students are Native.
“It’s trying to take an in-depth look at, not only how are students connected and represented within the curriculum of the school, but the staffing of the school,” Farson said, adding that by the end of the program, the school is expected to have a staff that’s representative of the student body. “My hope is that in that process we’ll really be able to surface the real issues and challenges and a plan for how to address them across the district and not just at one school.”
The district recently hired a teacher who’s set to start later this month. The coordinator position is still vacant.
In his experience with similar grant-funded programs, Farson said the first year “is always a bit rough” but the district eventually fills the positions.
Rather than trying to recruit teachers from around the state, Farson said the long-term solution is to build locally.
“Over time, our real solution is to figure out how to develop the interests of those 7,000 students who have tribal affiliations here in APS to want to become educators and stay here,” Farson said.
State and district education officials cite a number of programs centered around pipeline development, but none of them target Native people in particular, and most don’t target high schoolers.
There’s the district’s teacher residency program, which pairs people pursuing a degree in education with an experienced co-teacher at a high-need school for 15 months. Residents agree to teach within the district for an additional three years after completing the state-funded program, which the district runs in partnership with UNM and the Albuquerque Teachers Federation.
There’s also a residency program with Central New Mexico Community College specifically for special education.
The majority of residents across both programs — about 120 people — are still teaching in the district, according to Valerie Hoose, executive director of labor relations and staffing for the district.
The district also participates in the state education department’s two-year Educator Fellows program, geared toward educational assistants who want to become certified educators. Fellows receive hands-on experience, mentorship, and a stipend.
“We’re hoping to stop that bottleneck that happens in the teacher pipeline where we have a lot of people that graduate out of programs and don’t sustain in the field,” said Layla Dehaiman, director of the department’s educator quality and ethics division.
While people have to be over 18 to take part in the program, Dehaiman said department staff have been reaching out to high school seniors and have recruited several recent graduates.
Dehaiman said the department has also been holding a Native American teacher working group over the past year that’s focused on barriers to licensure and long-term recruitment strategies.
Hoose said that getting young people interested in becoming educators is challenging partly because there’s a lot of competition for workers, adding that a widely available internship program for high schoolers might be a useful tool.
“We have a lot of CTE [career technical education] around the state and I think if education was one of those, where students could have access to information and experiences around teaching, that would be helpful,” Hoose said.
One future teacher might be Chavez.
With high school graduation in sight, Chavez has been giving some thought to potential careers. While she’s concerned she wouldn’t make enough money in education, she said teaching’s always been an aspiration of hers.
“I want to be a supportive teacher that I didn’t have growing up,” Chavez said. “A lot of these Native kids are going unnoticed.”
New Mexico Licensing Department subject of cyber attack - Associated Press
The New Mexico agency that oversees professional licenses for thousands of businesses across the state has been the target of a cyber attack.
Officials said Thursday there is evidence of unauthorized access of the Regulation and Licensing Department and that some organizations and individuals had their records compromised.
They did not say how many people and businesses had their data accessed or if only certain areas of the department were targeted.
"For operational safety, we cannot comment further while the comprehensive investigation is ongoing," said Renee Narvaiz, spokeswoman for the Department of Information Technology.
Their cybersecurity office is still investigating. The office says it is also working with experts to ensure protection is in place for staff and customers of the Regulation and Licensing Department.
Those whose personal information was accessed will received data breach assistance and credit monitoring.
State officials say they are confident that it is an isolated incident that was stopped.
Anyone who believes their data was compromised can call a hotline set up by the department: 1-833-550-4100.
The Regulation and Licensing Department regulates more than 500,000 individuals and businesses in 35 industries, professions and trades.
Idaho resumes radioactive waste shipments to New Mexico - Keith Ridler Associated Press
Shipments of nuclear waste from the U.S. Department of Energy's site in eastern Idaho to a nuclear waste repository in New Mexico have resumed following three episodes that caused New Mexico officials to suspend them.
An Energy Department official told Idaho officials Wednesday that the New Mexico Environment Department last week gave the OK for shipments from the 890-square-mile site that includes the Idaho National Laboratory to resume to the department's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad.
The New Mexico agency suspended the shipments Sept. 14 following problems with three shipments. Officials said a drum leaking liquid in April caused a partial evacuation at the plant, but no contamination was reported. That was followed in July by another drum with a corrosion-like substance that escaped from the bottom, and in August by a shipment that appeared to have droplets on top.
Connie Flohr, manager of the Idaho Cleanup Project for the Energy Department's Office of Environmental Management, told Idaho officials during a Leadership in Nuclear Energy Commission meeting that additional steps are being taken to make sure the shipments don't leak or rupture.
"We've got to make sure that what we're sending down there is safe," she said. "Obviously, it doesn't do any good for any of us to send shipments down that have to be turned back. It's embarrassing for us, it's costly, it wastes time, and it doesn't help Carlsbad maintain their capacity of emplacement."
The commission makes recommendations to the governor regarding policies to support the viability and mission of the Idaho National Laboratory and other nuclear industries in the state. Commission members, appointed by the governor, include state lawmakers, local government elected officials, university officials and others.
The lab, one of 17 Energy Department national labs, is the nation's top advanced nuclear energy research lab and is one of the state's largest employers, with about 5,000 workers. It's a huge economic driver in the state, especially in eastern Idaho, bringing in millions of federal research dollars.
But the lab has a legacy of nuclear waste that the Energy Department is cleaning up. That includes about 40,000 barrels of transuranic waste composed of work clothing, rags, machine parts and tools contaminated with plutonium and other radioactive elements. Some barrels contain Cold War weapons waste generated at the former Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado that produced nuclear weapons.
The waste was exhumed, compressed and put into barrels for shipment. Some barrels weigh 700 to 1,100 pounds. But some of the barrels have been sitting for more than five years in a facility without heat or air conditioning. Flohr said that aging appeared to cause problems with the integrity of some of the barrels.
Ty Blackford, of the Idaho Environmental Coalition — the Energy Department contractor that manages cleanup operations at the Idaho National Laboratory site — said the protective cases used to ship the barrels worked to protect people and the environment from contamination. Workers are examining one of the failed barrels, he said.
"The drum looked good when it left (Idaho)," he said during the meeting. "But somewhere between here and there, bouncing down the road for 1,100 miles, something went wrong. So, we need to understand that in detail."
The Energy Department is required to remove the waste from Idaho following a 1995 agreement that was the culmination of a series of federal lawsuits. That agreement is viewed as preventing the Energy Department from converting the eastern Idaho site in high-desert sagebrush steppe to a high-level nuclear waste repository. The site sits above the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer, which supplies water to cities and farms in the region.
Flohr said the Energy Department could finish shipping the transuranic waste out of Idaho by late 2026 or early 2027. Other types of nuclear waste, including radioactive liquid waste, are also stored at the site.
Ribera teen will be tried in classmate's death elsewhere - Associated Press
A judge has agreed to a change of venue for the trial of a Ribera teen accused of shooting a classmate to death at a New Year's Eve party.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that Judge Michael Aragon, who presided over a hearing on the matter Wednesday, sided with defense attorneys for the 17-year-old suspect.
He will be tried in Guadalupe County instead of San Miguel County for second-degree murder.
Authorities say the teen shot and killed 17-year-old Joshua Vigil after a fight broke out at the party on Dec. 31, 2021. Both boys attended West Las Vegas High School and were on the football team.
Defense attorney Alan Maestas argued it would be difficult to find impartial jurors since the case had drawn a great deal of publicity. He pointed to a "Justice for Joshua" Facebook page and a billboard on Interstate 25.
Prosecutors countered a change of venue was pointless in the face of social media.
Racist remarks: Hurt, betrayal among LA's Indigenous people - By Amy Taxin And Brian Melley Associated Press
Bricia Lopez has welcomed people of all walks to dine at her family's popular restaurant on the Indigenous-influenced food of her native Mexican state of Oaxaca — among them Nury Martinez, the first Latina elected president of the Los Angeles City Council.
The restaurant, Guelaguetza, has become an institution known for introducing Oaxaca's unique cuisine and culture to Angelenos, attracting everyone from immigrant families to Mexican stars to powerful city officials such as Martinez.
But now after a scandal exploded over a recording of Martinez making racist remarks about Oaxacans such as Lopez, the 37-year-old restaurateur and cookbook author said she feels a tremendous sense of betrayal.
Martinez resigned from her council seat Wednesday and offered her apologies. But the disparaging remarks still deeply hurt the city's immigrants from Oaxaca, which has one of Mexico's large indigenous populations. Sadly, many said, they are not surprised. Both growing up in their homeland and after reaching the U.S., they say they've become accustomed to hearing such stinging comments — not only from non-Latinos but from lighter skinned Mexican immigrants and their descendants.
"Every time these people looked at me in my face, they were all lying to me," Lopez said. "We should not let these people continue to lie to us and tell us we are less than, or we are ugly, or allow them to laugh at us."
Following Martinez' departure, two other Latino City Council members also are facing widespread calls to resign since the year-old recording surfaced of them mocking colleagues while scheming to protect Latino political strength in council districts. Martinez used a disparaging term for the Black son of a white council member and called immigrants from Oaxaca ugly.
"I see a lot of little short dark people," Martinez said on the recording, referring to an area of the largely Hispanic Koreatown neighborhood. "I was like, I don't know where these people are from, I don't know what village they came (from), how they got here."
Lopez said she heard such racist comments growing up in California but had hoped they would be a thing of the past and that young Oaxacan immigrants would not have to hear them.
"I want people to look at themselves in the mirror every day and see the beauty," she said.
Oaxaca has more than a dozen ethnicities, including Mixtecos and Zapotecs. The southern Mexican state is known for famously hand-dyed woven rugs, pristine Pacific tourist beaches, a smoky alcohol called Mezcal and sophisticated cuisine including moles — thick sauces crafted from more than two dozen ingredients.
Los Angeles is home to the country's largest Mexican population and nearly half the city of 4 million people is Latino, census figures show. Informal studies indicate that several hundred thousand Oaxacan immigrants live in California, with the largest concentration in Los Angeles, said Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, director of the University of California, Los Angeles Center for Mexican Studies.
Demeaning language is often used against Mexico's Indigenous people. It is"the legacy of the colonial period," Rivera-Salgado said of Spanish rule long ago.
Racism, and colorism — discrimination against darker-skinned people within the same ethnic group — run centuries deep in Mexico and other neighboring Latin American countries. A few years ago, Yalitza Aparicio, the Oscar-nominated actress in "Roma" who is from Oaxaca, faced racist comments in her country and derogatory tirades online over her Indigenous features after she appeared on the cover of Vogue México.
Odilia Romero said the scandal doesn't surprise her. The Oaxacan community leader is among many who had been pressing for the resignation of Martinez, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, and the two other councilmembers on the recorded conversation.
Romero said she's also fielded calls since the scandal broke, including from someone urging her not to let the hurtful remarks distract from critical working aiding the immigrant community.
"That is a very paternalist comment," said Romero, executive director of the group Comunidades Indigenas en Liderazgo or CIELO and a Zapotec interpreter. "How dare you tell us Indigenous people that we are not understanding. Of course we understand — we see this every day."
Lynn Stephen, an anthropology professor at University of Oregon who researches Mexican migration and Indigenous peoples, said the concept of mestizaje — or being a mixed-race and non-racial unified nation — intended to erase Indigenous communities, not uplift them, and the discrimination persists to this day. It is carried to the United States with those who migrate, she said, while similar divisions also exist in other Latin American countries.
"These kinds of comments directed toward Indigenous people from non-Indigenous people from Mexico, Guatemala, etc., it's a different kind of layer of racism," Stephen said. "Folks from Oaxaca they have to contend with anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican backlash and racism often from non-Latino Americans, white Americans, sometimes other folks, and then within that, often where they're living or in school."
Ofelia Platon, a tenant organizer, went to the Los Angeles city council chambers recently to demand the officials step down. She said she hasn't experienced discrimination from within the Latino community as much as from outside it, but there's no place for such — especially coming from elected leaders the poor count on to help improve their lives.
"They think they have the power to step on people," she said. "They're two-faced."
It's not just the hurtful remarks that sting Xóchitl M. Flores-Marcial, a Zapotec scholar and professor of Chicana/o Studies at California State University, Northridge. She called it very telling about the officials who make decisions affecting her community. She said she grew up in the United States hearing hurtful words and still faces similar rejection whenever she travels to Oaxaca and people there are surprised she's the research team leader.
"It's so painful because those are consequential people," she said. "This is hurting us — not just our emotions, but our actual life in terms of our jobs and our opportunities."
Still she said she has hope for future generations in "Oaxacalifornia" — the tight-knit community that has maintained traditions while embracing life in Los Angeles.