Tribal education trust fund is dead, legislative sponsor says - Bella Davis & Trip Jennings, New Mexico In Depth
This story was first published by New Mexico In Depth. It is republished here with permission.
The sponsor of a proposal to create a trust fund that would’ve given tribes in New Mexico millions of dollars to build education programs said Wednesday that he is pulling the bill from the Senate, meaning it is effectively dead.
With less than 24 hours in the 2024 legislative session, Rep. Derrick Lente, a Democrat from Sandia Pueblo, says he decided to pull House Bill 134 after learning a number of amendments were going to be introduced on the Senate floor.
The proposal would have created a trust fund with a $50 million appropriation, generating interest for the 23 tribes in New Mexico to spend on language programs and other needs related to education. It garnered bipartisan support in the House of Representatives, and a number of tribal leaders, Indigenous students, and educators spoke about how impactful it would be at committee hearings throughout the legislative session.
But how the money would be distributed was the source of significant debate this year — and in the 2023 legislative session, when Lente unsuccessfully pushed for the fund. The Navajo Nation in particular had concerns about how to ensure the funds were distributed equitably.
“As much as I thought that we were good to go and how it’s received so much support through the House process and even through Senate Finance,” Lente said, “we’ve come to a point where the discussion amongst tribes is a bit too great for me to want to comfortably have that discussion publicly in the Senate and I don’t think it’s fair for tribes to be put in that position.”
Lente would not say where the Senate amendments came from and what they would do. But he said he’s asked Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth to not pull it up for debate in the Senate “out of respect for the tribes.”
“I want to make sure that I respect 100% the tribal sovereignty of each pueblo, nation and tribe in New Mexico. And you can quote me on that,” Lente said.
Asked if he would bring the proposal back next year, Lente said he’s not sure.
Under the original version of the bill he introduced in January, a task force made up of nine members representing tribal communities would have crafted a distribution formula. That requirement was later taken out in response to concerns from the Navajo Nation Council.
Instead, an amendment required that the formula be “developed in a unanimous consensus process of consultation, collaboration and communication with New Mexico tribes” by June 2025.
The House passed the amended bill unanimously, with a 68-0 vote.
The state budget for next year is already on Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s desk, including the $50 million for the tribal education trust fund. But the use of that money by tribes was contingent on Lente’s bill passing the Legislature.
The governor’s office said earlier this month Lujan Grisham would back the fund at the urging of Pueblo leaders.
New Mexico's Democrat-led House rejects proposal for paid family and medical leave - By Morgan Lee, Associated Press
New Mexico's Democrat-led House of Representatives narrowly rejected a bill Wednesday that would have guaranteed paid time off for workers to cope with serious illnesses or care for newborns and loved ones, amid concern about companies' opposition in an election year.
The proposal failed 34-36 on a final vote that would have sent the bill to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, whose 2019 executive order established paid family leave of up to 12 weeks for state employees. Thirteen states and Washington, D.C. currently guarantee paid leave.
New Mexico already requires employers to provide paid sick leave to workers under a 2021 law. Employees accrue an hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked, ensuring up to about 8 days of leave annually.
The failed proposal for paid leave would have eventually provided workers with up to 12 weeks of medical and family leave — which would be extended to parents of adopted, foster and stepchildren. The bill also included paid leave guarantees for workers who are victims of stalking, domestic violence, sexual assault and abuse as they pursue a protection order, counseling or flee their home.
"My chamber is against it, the Albuquerque chamber is against it," said Republican state Rep. Alan Martinez of Bernalillo, who voted no. "How do I go back to my district and tell people, 'I know better?' ... Let businesses do what businesses do best."
On the House floor, bill sponsor and Democratic state Rep. Christine Chandler of Los Alamos pitched the initiative as a net-benefit to businesses who hope to retain loyal employees and cultivate a stable workforce. She highlighted an exemption on contributions to the program for organizations with fewer than five employees, and touted the intangible benefits of family leave.
"I think we all know the societal costs that we have to pay one way or another if we do not have those strong bonds," she said.
Republicans voted in unison against the bill, along with 11 Democrats.
Separately on Wednesday, legislators sent a bill to the governor to dissuade voter intimidation. The proposal would prohibit the open carry of firearms at voting locations and near ballot drop boxes, with exceptions for people who are licensed to carry a concealed handgun.
The restrictions would take effect ahead of New Mexico's June 4 primary election, banning guns within 100 feet (30 meters) of the entrance to a voting location. Guns already are prohibited at public schools that serve as voting locations.
A dozen states including Florida, Georgia, Arizona and Georgia prohibit guns at voting locations, as legislators in several other states grapple with concerns about voting access, gun violence and public safety in a polarized political climate.
New Mexico could also wade into whether to regulate artificial intelligence in the creation of political ads, under a bill passed by the Legislature on Wednesday with a 25-14 vote of the state Senate.
Campaign advertisement would have to disclose any deceptive "deepfake" synthetic images, audio or video created by artificial intelligence that depict someone doing or saying something that they didn't do or say, under the bill from Democrats including state Sen. Katy Duhigg of Albuquerque. The bill doesn't prohibit those ads as long as a disclosure is attached.
Willful violations would be punishable as a misdemeanor on first offense and felony on second conviction for people who create, produce or purchase a deceptive, deepfake campaign ad.
"In addition to making people believe they did or said something they did not, deepfakes also give people who really have said or done something deniability — they can claim that reality was a deepfake," Duhigg told Senate colleagues. "Deepfakes are insidious because they make the public question reality."
Lujan Grisham on Wednesday applauded passage of a $125 million appropriation to a revolving loan fund to spur housing construction and a companion bill that expands the mission of the New Mexico Finance Authority to support housing infrastructure and residential construction.
On Wednesday evening, legislators raced against the clock to complete their work before the end of a 30-day legislative session at noon on Thursday.
Affirmative consent bill passes New Mexico Legislature after five attempts - Megan Taros, Source New MexicoIn a dash to the finish line, House Bill 151, the 2024 session’s affirmative consent bill, passed the New Mexico Legislature after the House concurred with the amended bill on Wednesday in a 38-22 vote.
It now heads to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s desk.
The bill compels public colleges and universities to include material on affirmative consent for its students in its orientation packages, use trauma-informed policies when helping students who are a victim of sexual or domestic abuse and require those institutions to be connected with sexual violence resources.
“It’s hard to work so hard on creating a proposed bill that is really about moving culture shift and we’re leaving out with a much scaled down version of that,” said Alexandria Taylor, executive director of the New Mexico Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs. “But we’re still committed to finding avenues to implement the things that were in our original proposed bill.”
Bill sponsor Rep. Liz Thomson (D-Albuquerque) said it got cut down to only include public colleges and universities when the original proposal with K-12 components had a difficult time getting through the Roundhouse.
The reason for the higher education focus in this year’s version is, in part, due to the repeated alleged assaults on the New Mexico State University basketball team that resulted in an $8 million settlement and the disbandment of the team in the middle of last season.
Taylor said that while there are processes in place at universities, there needs to be accountability for institutions and staff to understand what their role is in helping students navigate the process of coming forward about sexual assault. Coming forward can be an isolating place for survivors, she said.
“This gets us into a starting place,” Taylor said. “I think the original fuller bill was really trying to make sure that we had a framework, some of that stuff got taken out, but I think we still have the foundation to say we have Title IX, but in New Mexico we need to make sure anybody coming forward has extra support around them.”
The bill died in 2023 as the last item on the schedule in the Senate Judiciary Committee when the committee did not reconvene after a Senate floor session.
Sen. Joseph Cervantes (D-Las Cruces) brought forth an amendment at the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday afternoon that struck “superfluous language.” After concerns about the accuracy of the amendment, the committee voted unanimously to send it to the Senate floor.
Supporters said in committee that it was time for a shift in addressing sexual violence on college campuses.
“I see this bill as planting the seed and starting the process for changes in our cultural behavior and our beliefs,” said Janet Gotkin, a member of the Santa Fe chapter of the National Organization for Women. “It is an important first step.”
During the Senate floor debate late Tuesday evening, Sen. Gregg Schmedes (R-Tijeras) introduced an unfriendly amendment targeting sex workers, which was defeated quickly. He continued to impede the bill by arguing against it for nearly an hour.
When the bill returned to the House floor on Wednesday, Rep. Stefani Lord (R-Sandia Park) spoke for more than 15 minutes claiming the bill went too far in certain circumstances such as married college couples needing affirmative consent. Marital rape has been illegal in all 50 states since 1993.
Taylor said there must be a willingness to speak frankly about healthy sexual relationships to prevent assault from occurring.
“It’s what keeps it so taboo and keeps it so shameful and is why it continues to perpetuate harassment and violence,” Taylor said. “Because it’s not something we can have agency around and talk about, and so by bringing it to the front and empowering young people to have agency, to have consensual relationships, it’s really not that hard.”
The bill has been a target of misinformation by Republican opponents that it would unfairly punish people who were falsely accused, and that it would compel students to sign a contract before engaging in sexual activity.
The bill does not prescribe punishment nor protocol for handling investigations other than offering resources to students.
Thomson said she hoped this version of the proposal would show skeptics that it helps prevent assault.
“Hopefully as people get used to the idea for older students they will realize that it’s not anything scary or horrible,” Thomson said in an interview last Wednesday after it passed its first Senate committee. “And we’re not teaching kids to have sex. We’re just teaching kids some rules around all kinds of physical contact.”
The bill was the result of a coalition of 16 sexual assault prevention organizations and universities. Taylor said she isn’t sure what the next bill will look like or if it will include K-12 schools, but stakeholders are working on the best steps forward.
“We’re going to debrief with all of our student organizers and follow their lead on that,” Taylor said. “Whether it’s a K-12 portion of this or something that encompasses more, we’ll take their direction.”
Tribal education trust fund is dead, legislative sponsor says - Bella Davis & Trip Jennings, New Mexico In Depth
This story was first published by New Mexico In Depth. It is republished here with permission.
The sponsor of a proposal to create a trust fund that would’ve given tribes in New Mexico millions of dollars to build education programs said Wednesday that he is pulling the bill from the Senate, meaning it is effectively dead.
With less than 24 hours in the 2024 legislative session, Rep. Derrick Lente, a Democrat from Sandia Pueblo, says he decided to pull House Bill 134 after learning a number of amendments were going to be introduced on the Senate floor.
The proposal would have created a trust fund with a $50 million appropriation, generating interest for the 23 tribes in New Mexico to spend on language programs and other needs related to education. It garnered bipartisan support in the House of Representatives, and a number of tribal leaders, Indigenous students, and educators spoke about how impactful it would be at committee hearings throughout the legislative session.
But how the money would be distributed was the source of significant debate this year — and in the 2023 legislative session, when Lente unsuccessfully pushed for the fund. The Navajo Nation in particular had concerns about how to ensure the funds were distributed equitably.
“As much as I thought that we were good to go and how it’s received so much support through the House process and even through Senate Finance,” Lente said, “we’ve come to a point where the discussion amongst tribes is a bit too great for me to want to comfortably have that discussion publicly in the Senate and I don’t think it’s fair for tribes to be put in that position.”
Lente would not say where the Senate amendments came from and what they would do. But he said he’s asked Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth to not pull it up for debate in the Senate “out of respect for the tribes.”
“I want to make sure that I respect 100% the tribal sovereignty of each pueblo, nation and tribe in New Mexico. And you can quote me on that,” Lente said.
Asked if he would bring the proposal back next year, Lente said he’s not sure.
Under the original version of the bill he introduced in January, a task force made up of nine members representing tribal communities would have crafted a distribution formula. That requirement was later taken out in response to concerns from the Navajo Nation Council.
Instead, an amendment required that the formula be “developed in a unanimous consensus process of consultation, collaboration and communication with New Mexico tribes” by June 2025.
The House passed the amended bill unanimously, with a 68-0 vote.
The state budget for next year is already on Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s desk, including the $50 million for the tribal education trust fund. But the use of that money by tribes was contingent on Lente’s bill passing the Legislature.
The governor’s office said earlier this month Lujan Grisham would back the fund at the urging of Pueblo leaders.
Judge denies requests to limit evidence ahead of armorer's trial in fatal 'Rust' shooting - Associated Press
A New Mexico judge warned special prosecutors and defense attorneys Wednesday that she will not consider any more motions as the court prepares for the involuntary manslaughter trial of the weapons supervisor on the "Rust" movie set when Alec Baldwin fatally shot the cinematographer during rehearsal.
State District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer was stern with her warning during a virtual hearing, saying the start of the trial next week would not be delayed. She considered a series of last-minute challenges by both sides that sought to narrow the scope of evidence that could be considered by jurors.
Defense attorneys for Hannah Gutierrez-Reed had accused prosecutors of compromising a crucial trial witness by handing over text messages about their case to an Albuquerque-based supplier for "Rust" — whom they contend is the source of live ammunition that made its way onto the set in place of dummy ammunition.
Prosecutors acknowledged during the hearing that others, including Baldwin's attorneys, also would have had access to the communications before they were deleted from a server that was meant to be used by defense attorneys.
Attorney Jason Bowles called the release of the information by prosecutors "cavalier and reckless" and suggested that the fact-finding process had been corrupted and that a key witness was now tainted.
"Out of fundamental fairness, how can a defendant have a fair trial when a chief adverse witness has all the attorney-client texts?" Bowles asked the judge.
In denying the plea, the judge pointed out that Gutierrez-Reed had earlier consented to authorities searching her cellphone and that it was her attorneys who needed to stipulate what, if any, information needed to be excluded from the search. The judge added that she reviewed the texts in question and that they were not material to Bowles' legal strategy.
The judge did side with the defense in denying a request by prosecutors to prevent jurors from hearing about a scathing report from state regulators about the "Rust" shooting. That report said the production company did not develop a process for ensuring live rounds were kept away from the set and that it failed to give the armorer enough time to thoroughly inventory ammunition.
Prosecutors had wanted the regulators' conclusions kept out of the trial because it might be used to argue that "Rust" management was responsible for safety failures and not Gutierrez-Reed.
Bowles argued that the report shows there were numerous instances of negligence on the set.
The upcoming trial is expected to revolve around the question of how live rounds ended up on the set. Authorities during their investigation recovered recovered six live rounds, including the round that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza.
Special prosecutors say they will present "substantial evidence" at the trial that movie armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed unwittingly brought live rounds onto the set when she first began to work on the film.
Defense attorneys said during Wednesday's hearing that they have "plenty of evidence" that it was somebody else who put those live rounds on the set.
Gutierrez-Reed has pleaded not guilty to the involuntary manslaughter charge. If convicted, she could face up to 1.5 years in jail and a $5,000 fine under New Mexico law.
The proceedings against the armorer hold implications for Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer on "Rust." He has pleaded not guilty to a charge of involuntary manslaughter and could face a trial later this year. Baldwin has said he assumed the gun had only inert dummy rounds inside the weapon that can't fire and that someone else is responsible.
A Texas law that would let police arrest migrants for illegal entry is going before a judge - By Acacia Coronado, Associated Press
A federal judge on Thursday will consider whether Texas can enforce a new law that gives police broad authority to arrest migrants who are accused of entering the U.S. illegally and empowers local judges to order them out of the country.
The hearing in Austin is the first legal test of what opponents have called the most dramatic attempt by a state to police immigration since a 2010 Arizona law that was partially struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Texas' new law is set to take effect March 5.
The lawsuit by the Justice Department is one of several courtroom battles Texas is fighting with President Joe Biden's administration over how far the state can go to try to prevent migrants from crossing the border.
It is unclear how quickly U.S. District Judge David Ezra, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, will issue a ruling.
For months, tensions have escalated between the Biden administration and Texas over who can patrol the border and how. The Justice Department has also taken Texas to court over a floating barrier in the Rio Grande and defended the ability of U.S. Border Patrol agents to cut through and remove miles of razor wire that the state has installed along the border.
Republican governors across the U.S. have backed Abbott's efforts. A heavy presence of Texas National Guard members in the border city of Eagle Pass has denied Border Patrol agents access to a riverfront park. The agents had previously used the park for monitoring and patrols, as well as to process migrants who made it across the Rio Grande to U.S. soil.
The new measure would allow any Texas law enforcement officer to arrest people who are suspected of entering the country illegally. Once in custody, they could either agree to a Texas judge's order to leave the U.S. or be prosecuted on a misdemeanor charge of illegal entry. Migrants who don't leave could be arrested again and charged with a more serious felony.
Civil rights groups have argued that the new law, known as Senate Bill 4, could lead to civil rights violations and invite racial profiling.
Republicans have defended the law by saying it would likely only be enforced near the U.S-Mexico border. They also contend that it would not be used to target immigrants who have long been settled in the U.S. because the statute of limitation on the misdemeanor charge is two years.