Trump adviser faces possible disbarment over his efforts to overturn 2020 election - By Stefanie Dazio, Michael R. Blood And Alanna Durkin Richer Associated Press
Attorney John Eastman, the architect of a legal strategy aimed at keeping former President Donald Trump in power, concocted a baseless theory and made false claims of fraud in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election, a prosecutor said Tuesday in arguing that Eastman be disbarred.
Eastman's attorney countered that his client never intended to steal the election, but was considering ways to delay electoral-vote counting so states could investigate allegations of voting improprieties. Trump's claims of fraud were roundly rejected by courts, including by judges the Republican appointed.
Eastman faces 11 disciplinary charges in the State Bar Court of California stemming from his development of a dubious legal strategy aimed at having Vice President Mike Pence interfere with the certification of President Joe Biden's victory. If the court finds Eastman culpable of the alleged violations it can recommend a punishment such as suspending or revoking his law license. The California Supreme Court makes the final decision.
Duncan Carling of the office of chief trial counsel — which is seeking Eastman's disbarment — said Eastman's legal theory was "unsupported by historical precedent and law and contrary to our values as a nation." Eastman continued his efforts to undermine the election even after state and federal officials publicly rejected Trump allies' claims of fraud, Carling said.
"All of his misconduct was done with one singular purpose: To obstruct the electoral count on Jan. 6 and stop Vice President Pence from certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the election," Carling said. "He was fully aware in real time that his plan was damaging the nation," he added.
Eastman's attorney, Randall A. Miller, told the judge that Eastman "was not there to steal the election or invent ways to make President Trump the winner." Miller argued Eastman was merely engaging in what he said was a serious debate at the time about what authority the vice president had concerning the certification of the election.
"The facts will show that the purpose of Dr. Eastman's eventual assessment here was to delay, to delay the counting of the electoral votes so that there could be reasonable investigation undertaken by those states," he said.
The proceedings are expected to last at least eight days. The California State Bar is a regulatory agency and the only court system in the U.S. that is dedicated to attorney discipline. Eastman is expected to testify later Tuesday.
Others who will testify in the hearing in the State Bar Court of California include Greg Jacob, a former attorney for Pence. Jacob had pushed back against Eastman's plan to have Pence stop the certification of Biden's victory. Pence didn't have the power to overturn the election and has said so.
The State Bar alleges that Eastman violated California's business and professions code by making false and misleading statements that constitute acts of "moral turpitude, dishonesty, and corruption," and in doing so he "violated this duty in furtherance of an attempt to usurp the will of the American people and overturn election results for the highest office in the land — an egregious and unprecedented attack on our democracy."
Eastman has been a member of the California Bar since 1997, according to its website. He was a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute. He ran for California attorney general in 2010, finishing second in the Republican primary.
Eastman retired as dean of the Chapman University law school in Southern California last year after more than 160 faculty members signed a letter calling for the university to take action against him.
Eastman's disciplinary hearing comes as special counsel Jack Smith continues his investigation into efforts by Trump and his Republican allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
A federal grand jury in Washington has been meeting behind closed doors for months to hear testimony from witnesses, including Pence, who has publicly described a pressure campaign by Trump aimed at getting him to halt Congress' certification of the election results and the win by Biden, a Democrat.
Federal agents seized Eastman's cellphone last summer as he was leaving a restaurant, he said in a court filing. That day, law enforcement officials conducted similar activity around the country as part of their probe.
Since Smith's appointment in November, he has cast a broad net in demanding interviews and testimony related to fundraising, Trump's rally that preceded the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, and communications between Trump associates and election officials in battleground states. Eastman spoke at the rally.
In December, Smith subpoenaed local election officials in Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania, asking for communications with or involving Trump, his 2020 campaign aides and a list of allies — including Eastman — who were involved in his efforts to try to overturn the results of the election.
The investigation is separate from another probe by Smith into classified documents found at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, that led this month to felony charges against Trump. Trump pleaded not guilty last week to 37 felony counts, including conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Forest officials decide to contain rather than extinguish small northern NM wildfire — By Nash Jones, KUNM News
The U.S. Forest Service announced Tuesday that it will allow a lightning-sparked wildfire in northern New Mexico to “play its natural role.” Rather than attempt to extinguish the blaze, crews are employing a strategy focused on confining and containing it, according to a news release.
Forest officials say the Comanche Fire was first detected on June 8 and has so far burned around 40 acres in the Carson National Forest west of El Rito. The fire is 1% contained as of the latest update.
Since lives and homes are not presently under threat, officials say crews began Tuesday to manage the fire within a selected area, attempting to slowly bring the flames to the containment line using firing operations.
Some of that firing is being conducted using drones, according to Incident Commander Luke McLarty.
Forest officials are warning residents of El Rito, Abiquiu and surrounding areas that they may be impacted by smoke from the fire.
Community members interested in an update on the fire and the strategies fire managers are implementing to fight it can attend an open house on Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m. at the El Rito Community Center, with a presentation at 6 p.m.
Opioid Settlement Payouts to Localities Made Public for First Time, Aneri Pattani, Kaiser Health News via Source New Mexico
Thousands of local governments nationwide are receiving settlement money from companies that made, sold, or distributed opioid painkillers, like Johnson & Johnson, AmerisourceBergen, and Walmart. The companies are shelling out more than $50 billion total in settlements from national lawsuits. But finding out the precise amount each city or county is receiving has been nearly impossible because the firm administering the settlement hasn’t made the information public.
Until now.
After more than a month of communications with state attorneys general, private lawyers working on the settlement, and the settlement administrators, KFF Health News has obtained documents showing the exact dollar amounts — down to the cent — that local governments were allocated for 2022 and 2023. More than 200 spreadsheets detail the amounts paid by four of the companies involved in national settlements. (Several other opioid-related companies will start making payments later this year.)
For example, Jefferson County, Kentucky — home to Louisville — received $860,657.73 from three pharmaceutical distributors this year, while Knox County, a rural Kentucky county in Appalachia — the region many consider ground zero of the crisis — received $45,395.33.
In California, Los Angeles County was allocated $6.3 million from Janssen, the pharmaceutical subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, this year. Mendocino County, which has one of the highest opioid overdose death rates in the state, was allocated about $185,000.
Access to “this information is revolutionary for people who care about how this money will be used,” said Dennis Cauchon, president of the nonprofit advocacy group Harm Reduction Ohio.
Some states, like North Carolina and Colorado, have posted their distribution specifics online. But in most other places, tracking payment amounts requires people to make phone calls, send emails, and file public records requests with every local government for which they want the information.
Thus, gathering the data across one state could mean contacting hundreds of places. For the country, that could translate to thousands.
Cauchon has been seeking this information for his state since April 2022. “Opioid remediation work is done at the local level, at the individual level, and, now, for the first time, local people working on the issues will know how much money is available in their community.”
CURIOUS TO SEE HOW MUCH THE DOCUMENTS REVEAL YOUR LOCALITY HAS RECEIVED SO FAR?
The state of New Mexico and local governments are set to receive more than $57 million from the opioid overdose settlements. Click here for more detailed information.
The national opioid settlements are the second-largest public health settlement of all time, following the tobacco master settlement of the 1990s. The money is meant as remediation for the way corporations aggressively promoted opioid painkillers, fueling an overdose crisis that has now largely transitioned to illicit drugs, like fentanyl. More than 105,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year.
So far, state and local governments have received more than $3 billion combined, according to a national summary document created by BrownGreer, a settlement administration and litigation management firm that was court-appointed to handle the distribution of payments. In each state, settlement funds are divided in varying percentages among state agencies, local governments, and, in some cases, councils that oversee opioid abatement trusts. Payments began in 2022 and will continue through 2038, setting up what public health experts and advocates are calling an unprecedented opportunity to make progress against an epidemic that has ravaged America for three decades. KFF Health News is tracking how governments use — and misuse — this cash in a yearlong investigation.
The latest trove of documents was obtained from BrownGreer. The firm is one of the few entities that knows exactly how much money each state and local government receives and when, since it oversees complex calculations involving the varying terms and timelines of each company’s settlement.
Even so, there are gaps in the information it shared. A handful of states opted not to receive their payments via BrownGreer. Some directed the firm to pay a lump sum to the state, which would then distribute it to local governments. In those cases, BrownGreer did not have figures for local allocations. A few states that settled with the opioid-related companies separately from the national deals are not part of BrownGreer’s data, either.
Roma Petkauskas, a partner at BrownGreer, said the settlement agreement requires the firm to send notices of payment amounts to state and local governments, as well as to the companies that settled. It shared documents when KFF Health News asked, but it is not clear if the firm will continue doing so.
Petkauskas wrote, “Settlement Agreements do not provide that such notices be made public,” indicating such disclosure was not a requirement.
People harmed by the opioid crisis say they want more transparency than the bare minimum requirements. They say, currently, it’s not only difficult to determine how much money governments receive, but also how those dollars are spent. Many people have reached out to local officials with questions or suggestions only to be turned away or ignored.
Christine Minhee, founder of OpioidSettlementTracker.com, found that, as of March, only 12 states had committed to publicly reporting the use of 100% of their settlement dollars. Since then, just three more states have promised to share detailed information on their use of the money.
Legal and political experts watching the settlements say the lack of transparency may have to do with political leverage. State attorneys general have touted these deals as achievements in glowing press releases.
“Attorney General [Daniel] Cameron today delivered on his promise to fight back against the opioid epidemic by announcing a more than $53 million agreement with Walmart,” read one press release issued late last year by the state of Kentucky.
“Thousands of our neighbors have buried their loved ones throughout the opioid epidemic” and “I am proud to have delivered this great agreement to them,” said Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, in a July 2021 announcement when one of the earliest settlements was finalized.
Greater transparency, including the specific payment amounts for each local government, may take the wind out of some of those press releases, Minhee said. “It’s hard to politicize things when you can’t present the numbers in a vacuum.”
If one community compares its several-hundred-dollar payout to another community’s multi-thousand-dollar payout, there may be political fallout. Concerns have already arisen in rural areas hit hard by the crisis that the distribution formula weighs population numbers too heavily, and they will not receive enough money to address decades of harm.
Still, experts say making this data public is a crucial step in ensuring the settlements fulfill the goal of saving lives and remediating this crisis.
Solutions have to be community-led, said Regina LaBelle, director of the addiction and public policy initiative at Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute. “In order to do that, the communities themselves need to know how much money they’re getting.”
If their county is receiving $5,000 this year, it wouldn’t make sense to advocate for a $500,000 detox facility. Instead, they might focus on purchasing naloxone, a medication that reverses opioid overdoses. Knowing the yearly amount also allows people to track the funds and ensure they’re not being misspent, LaBelle added.
For Cauchon, of Harm Reduction Ohio, the local-level payment data is key to ensuring settlement dollars are put to good use in each Ohio county.
“Knowledge is power and, in this case, it’s the power to know how much money is available to be used to prevent overdoses,” he said.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Native American tribes say Supreme Court challenge was never just about foster kids - By Michael Warren Associated Press
Native American nations say the Supreme Court's rejection of a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act has reaffirmed their power to withstand threats from state governments.
They say the case conservative groups raised on behalf of four Native American children was a stalking horse for legal arguments that could have broadly weakened tribal and federal authority.
"It's a big win for all of us, a big win for Indian Country. And it definitely strengthens our sovereignty, strengthens our self-determination, it strengthens that we as a nation can make our own decisions," Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said Monday.
In fact, the 7-2 ruling released Thursday hardly touched on the children, who were supposed to be placed with Native foster families under the law. The justices said the white families that have sought to adopt them lack standing to claim racial discrimination, in part because their cases are already resolved, save for one Navajo girl whose case is in Texas court.
Instead, the justices focused on rejecting other arguments aimed at giving states more leverage, including sweeping attacks on the constitutional basis for federal Indian Law.
"This was never a case about children," Erin Dougherty Lynch, senior staff attorney for the Native American Rights Fund, told The Associated Press. "The opposition was essentially trying to weaken tribes by putting their children in the middle, which is a standard tactic for entities that are seeking to destroy tribes."
Justice Amy Coney Barrett's majority opinion said these plaintiffs wrongly claimed that "the State gets to call the shots, unhindered by any federal instruction to the contrary."
"This argument runs headlong into the Constitution," Barrett wrote. "The Supremacy Clause provides that 'the Laws of the United States ... shall be the supreme Law of the Land.' ... End of story."
Justice Neil Gorsuch spent 38 pages explaining how up to a third of Native children were taken from their families and placed in white homes or in boarding schools to be assimilated. In response, the 1978 law requires states to notify tribes if a child is or could be enrolled in a federally recognized tribe, and established a system favoring Native American families in foster care and adoption proceedings.
"In adopting the Indian Child Welfare Act, Congress exercised that lawful authority to secure the right of Indian parents to raise their families as they please; the right of Indian children to grow in their culture; and the right of Indian communities to resist fading into the twilight of history. All of that is in keeping with the Constitution's original design," Gorsuch wrote.
The ruling leaves an opening for another challenge that could fundamentally undermine the status of federally recognized Native American and Alaska Native nations — the idea that Natives should be treated as a racial group, not as citizens of sovereign governments with rights that derive from treaties, acts of Congress and other federal action.
The conservative Goldwater Institute had invoked "the Constitution's nearly absolute prohibition on race-based differential treatment" in its brief, saying that the act "imposes a racial category, not a political classification" on adoptees, unconstitutionally treating them differently based "not on their religious, cultural, or political tribal identity, but on genetics."
But Lynch, whose brief represented nearly 500 tribes, told the AP that "there is nothing racial about the law."
"There's no mention of blood quantum, or anything that hints at race. It's all about citizenship in a tribe," Lynch said. "If that was to be rewritten and understood by the court as racial in nature, literally every other law for tribes would be racial in nature."
Attorney Matthew McGill said he'll return to Texas courts on behalf of Chad and Jennifer Brackeen of Fort Worth, who adopted a Native American boy after a prolonged legal fight with the Navajo Nation, and are trying to adopt his 5-year-old half-sister, who has lived with them since infancy.
"We took this case for one reason only: to help our foster-parent clients and their foster children whose adoptions are frustrated by ICWA," McGill's Gibson Dunn law firm said in a statement to the AP.
But had the conservative groups prevailed, states might have gained more leverage in disputes with tribes over oil and gas pipelines and leases, social services, law enforcement, education, contracting and many other areas now governed by federal laws that define tribes as political sovereigns, Native American attorneys said.
"If Indian Law was just race-based law — if it's just affirmative action — practically every federal law that's ever been passed" would be struck down, said Robert Miller, an Eastern Shawnee tribal citizen and law professor at Arizona State University. "You would be stunned — it's thousands and thousands and thousands of laws."
Some states have long sought control over tribal matters, and they've been particularly anxious since the court's 2020 McGirt decision clarified that tribal jurisdiction still applies to much of Oklahoma, Miller told the AP. "Oklahoma is in shock now because they found out 43% of their state is Indian Country under the federal definition. So I think that's a little bit that's behind all of this."
The Wisconsin-based Bradley Foundation, known for bankrolling conservative causes, granted $250,000 in 2014 to support the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute's efforts to "restore the rights of states to exercise their authority to check federal power," according to its news release.
The case kicked off around 2017, when Gibson Dunn, working pro bono, filed a complaint in federal court in Texas. At the time, the firm was opposing tribal objections to the Dakota Access Pipeline and preparing to win a landmark Supreme Court case that enabled states to legalize sports betting, potentially drawing business away from tribal casinos.
Attorney Mary Kathryn Nagle, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, said she considers it no coincidence that groups opposing the pipeline protests of 2016-2017 took a "profound interest in the welfare of Indian children, and decided that this fancy law firm, that invests lots of time and resources into making money from oil and gas companies, all of a sudden really cared about Indian children, and wanted to all of a sudden get involved in custody disputes."
This was the child welfare act's third Supreme Court challenge, and though Justice Brett Kavanaugh sided with the majority this time, he invited another case with prospective foster or adoptive parents claiming they've been denied equal protection because of race.
Miller thinks Kavanaugh won't get the votes now that Barrett and Gorsuch have so firmly endorsed Indian Law as fundamental to the U.S. Constitution, which he said the founding fathers drafted in part because states were ignoring federal treaties and fomenting wars.
This historical record is hard for "originalists" to deny, Miller said: "There's no principled way they could come to a conclusion that it's race and not a political relationship with your tribal nation."
Still, this fight is far from over, "and probably never will be," said Nagle, whose sister, investigative journalist Rebecca Nagle, explored the case in her "This Land" podcast. "That's the sad thing about being Indigenous in the United States. Here it is, it's 2023. And in some ways, we're still fighting some of the same fights we fought since 1492."
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Associated Press journalist Hallie Golden contributed to this story.
Looming Otero hospital merger with Catholic group could slash reproductive health access - Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico
Otero County commissioners voted unanimously against sending a letter to the New Mexico Attorney General in the wake of a potential merger between Alamogordo’s sole hospital and a Catholic medical network.
The decision at the June 7 Otero County meeting overruled staff and community concerns about impacts to reproductive health care, other potential gaps in care and possible price hikes.
On May 5, Gerald Champion Regional Medical Center and Christus Health announced an intent to merge. In the announcement the companies said they hoped to broker a deal by early summer. Gerald Champion is a 98-bed hospital and Level III Trauma hospital. The next nearest hospitals are in Las Cruces, and El Paso, each more than a hour drive.
Gerald Champion revenues are declining, CEO Jim Heckert told commissioners, and with expensive machine upkeep, supply chain issues and healthcare worker shortages, joining a large hospital is the option to keep care open for the future.
He said the merger would bring a $100 million capital investment over the next decade and more specialized services. However, women in the community raised concerns about losing reproductive care such as contraception, tubal ligations and referrals to other care which would contradict Catholic morals.
ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS DIRECTIVES
Christus Health is a Catholic nonprofit organization, based in Irving, Texas, with 600 health care facilities — including one in Santa Fe. Catholic hospitals are bound by a series of Ethical and Religious Directives (sometimes called ERDs) which prohibit a wide range of reproductive health services – such as abortion and contraception – and limit some end-of-life care.
These are guidelines, not clear-cut rules, and different bishops can have competing interpretations and some secular hospitals have leeway, a ProPublica article found.
With mergers, Catholic hospitals account for one in six hospital beds across the country, up from one in seven two decades ago, a 2020 study funded by the Tara Health Foundation found, a reproductive health nonprofit.
A Christus Health spokesperson acknowledged Source NM’s request for comment, but did not provide any answers for what the merger could mean for contraceptives access, or if the group plans to address the community directly.
In 2008, Santa Fe women raised similar concerns about access to reproductive health care.
When asked if contraceptives are available now, Christus St. Vincent spokesperson Arturo Delgado hedged, saying while oral contraceptives are available, they cannot be used solely for birth control.
“There are a variety of medical indications for oral contraception in which birth control is not the primary intention, and these medications will continue to be available in the pharmacy,” he said.
Delgado told Source NM that an ethics committee at the hospital conducts education or gives consultations when issues arise in patient care.
“Ethicists and ethics committees in Christus Health, and Catholic health care generally, assist with the interpretation and application of the ERDs and extensive Catholic teaching to specific issues and situations,” Delgado said, emphasizing that “treatment and care is determined between the patient and the health care provider.”
Marylouise Kudi, a licensed master social worker who lives in Alamogordo, wrote in a letter she also read to the board that these mandates can conflict with living wills or advanced directives, contraceptives, abortion, some miscarriage management, and referrals for gender-affirming care.
“Physicians practicing with Christus Health must adhere to the Catholic religious rules dictated by non-medical people, who will dictate and determine accessibility to care for everyone in our community,” Kudi wrote.
CONCERNS FROM COUNTY STAFF
Amber Mayhall, the health care services director for Otero County, drafted the letter to N.M. Attorney General Raúl Torrez, and presented it for consideration at the June 7 commission meeting.
“I understand that Gerald Champion wants to bring in more services and bring in more doctors, but at what cost?” Mayhall asked. “Are we going to have that provided to us, and is that caused by the unnecessary suffering of women who may become pregnant and who are pregnant?”
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
In documents submitted with the proposed letter to Torrez, Mayhall included multiple studies interviewing providers and patients from 2006, 2015 and 2018 about their experience in miscarriage and reproductive care in Catholic hospitals, along with peer-reviewed studies examining potential anticompetitive impacts from hospital mergers, and a path for how states can challenge them. Also included were three anonymous letters of concern.
She acknowledged that the issue was not easy to consider, but urged bringing in oversight, saying the community was blindsided by the merger of a hospital not in dire financial straits.
“We do not deserve to have such a large consequential economic decision made in the dark,” Mayhall said.
That supervision cannot come from the county, she said. That’s limited to the attorney general at the state level and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on a national level, which she said would not apply in this cross-market merger – meaning health systems that operate in geographically separated areas.
‘When women suffer, the entire community suffers’
Jacquelyne Nichols from La Luz, who is married to R.B. Nichols — the Otero County attorney — appeared virtually to give testimony to the board opposing the merger. She emphasized they were her opinions, and not the opinions of her husband.
Jacquelyne was a helicopter pilot in the Marine Corps, where she met R.B. They waited to start a family after ending tours overseas and transferring to reserves. She said after unsuccessful tries, she returned to the doctor. She’s received an acknowledgement from the Department of Defense that her infertility is directly related to her military service.
“That was the beginning of what has become a more than five-year journey of loss, grief, frustration and continually holding out hope that one day, we will have our own children,” she said.
She described the long travel to an in vitro fertilization clinic in Phoenix, the multiple injections of medication until her “stomach was black and blue with bruises,” the endless vials of blood, and the emotional loss after failed procedures. Her voice only shook when she said she “felt like a failure,” after a loss.
But her personal journey would be directly impacted by a merger, she said.
An article for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops states that in vitro fertilization is “clearly and unequivocally judged to be immoral.”
Jacquelyne said that was a personal affront.
“Just because I need medical assistance to start the family of my dreams, does not mean that I’m any less worthy of human dignity or that I’m any less human,” Jacquelyne said.
She called the directives “theocratic medical tyranny.” She pointed to the rollback of the constitutional right to seek abortion that has restricted maternal health care — leaving people in Otero County vulnerable.
“If this hospital merger moves forward, I fear that women in this community — military women, veteran women, Indigenous women, women of color, disabled women, rural women, and low-income women — will all suffer unnecessarily when they are denied life-saving medical procedures by Christus,” she said. “When women suffer, the entire community suffers.”
The hospitals owe the community an answer for what care would be curtailed under the merger, leaving people on Holloman Air Force Base or in Alamogordo to travel further to seek it, she said.
“If this merger will cause unnecessary pain and suffering, changes to currently available medical treatment options, procedures or medications, increased medical expenses, or compromised medical treatment for members of this community due to its religious affiliation, then it is not the right decision for this community,” she concluded.
RESPONSE FROM GERALD CHAMPION
After more than an hour, CEO Jim Heckert took the microphone.
“I absolutely firmly believe that this is going to bring incredible opportunities to our community, and serving the health needs of our community,” Heckert told commissioners.
Joining a for-profit hospital isn’t an option, he said. “They would come in, and they would slice and burn, this hopital would become a shell of what it is today.”
Addressing community concerns could weaken the bargaining position during negotiations, he told Otero commissioners.
Heckert said it would be impossible to answer all of the concerns raised in the meeting. He said under the merger, IVF ancillary tests would continue, that “elective abortions” have never been a service at Gerald Champion, and that tubal ligations would be done “if there’s a medical reason for it.” He did not address contraception.
Heckert dismissed the concerns from Mayhill and others, saying they oversimplify how much power the directives have.
“And the truth is there is interpretation based on the clinical judgment of that provider,” he said.
An ask for oversight from the New Mexico attorney general would jeopardize the merger in its final weeks, he said.
“Christus isn’t coming here if you guys don’t want it to. That’s a fact,” he said.
Before the vote, R.B. Nichols asked to speak, not as the county attorney. He asked that the concerns with the merger be discussed in public at another time.
“I will say that I’m not satisfied with the answers that they were able to provide today, and that may simply because they can’t [due to] the deal right now,” he said, adding that the hospital was “glossing over” some of the controversial issues, such as ectopic pregnancies.
He repeated that his wife has a higher chance of pregnancy complications and miscarriage, if she does get pregnant.
“If she’s in the throes of an emergency, and I have to go to what would be Christus, and she does not receive timely care, I will say that hospital administrators are going to have an unpleasant experience,” he said. “I’ll litigate the hell of it afterwards, just because I have a license to do so.”
The panel of three commissioners had to vote on the measure multiple times. They attempted to gut the letter and instead send a letter of support about the merger.
Radically changing the item presented on the agenda would violate New Mexico transparency laws, R.B. Nichols told them. The board set a special meeting for June 22 at 9 a.m. offering that they would provide their support for the merger. As of Sunday, there is not an item related to the merger on the draft agenda for the June 22 meeting.
Las Cruces narrows school board race to three candidates - Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico
The Las Cruces Board of Education announced a narrowed list of three candidates for the superintendent position after a series of closed-door interviews with seven semi-finalists over the weekend.
The finalists are Debra Elder, Monica Mesa and Ignacio Ruíz, according to a press release. The eliminated candidates included the sole candidate applying from within the district.
Las Cruces Public Schools has a population of nearly 24,000 students, and the last superintendent had a starting salary of $180,000.
There will be a final round of one-on-one interviews in closed session next week. If the search remains on track, the board has a meeting planned for 10 a.m. on Saturday, July 1, to name a new superintendent.
Elder is the only candidate with New Mexico experience. She’s been an administrator in Los Lunas and Albuquerque school districts.
Most recently, Elder has been the interim superintendent of Los Lunas Schools (8,500 students), where she has been the chief academic officer for curriculum since 2021. Before that, Elder led the office of innovation and school choice in Albuquerque Public Schools. She was also a principal, staff developer and elementary teacher in Albuquerque schools.
Elder is married to outgoing APS Superintendent Scott Elder.
Mesa is an assistant superintendent in Mesa Public Schools in Mesa, Arizona – a district of approximately 64,000 students, overseeing 26 elementary schools. Her career in Arizona started more than 30 years ago, as a teacher. Mesa has also been a principal, university instructor and principal coach.
Ruíz is the assistant superintendent in Clark County Schools District in Nevada. Before that, he was an administrator and principal at Tucson Unified School District. He has worked as an assistant principal, facilitator and teacher in Sunnyside Unified School District outside Tucson, Arizona. In 2021, he was a finalist in the APS superintendent search.
Albuquerque celebrates Juneteenth - KUNM News
The city of Albuquerque celebrated today’s Juneteenth holiday over the weekend. The now federal holiday has long celebrated the proclamation of freedom for enslaved people in Texas on June 19, 1865 — two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
New Mexico Juneteenth 2023 included three days of events on Civic Plaza beginning Friday, with the debut of the short film Being Black in New Mexico by Janae Heffenger and numerous musical acts.
Saturday’s festivities included a performance by the Grammy-nominated jazz duo The Baylor Project and a drag show by The Chocolate Factory during what event organizers dubbed “Black Pride Hour.”
The New Mexico United soccer team also held a Juneteenth celebration game that evening. The team tweeted that it was “celebrating black joy and liberation.”
The weekend-long event wrapped up yesterday with a Father’s Day tribute featuring gospel music from Healing Waters Ministry, God’s House Church, the NM Mass Choir and others.
The event also included soul food and vendors set up on the plaza.
Juneteenth National Independence Day became a federal holiday in 2021. Albuquerque’s city council passed a resolution the year prior recognizing it as a city holiday.