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FRI: What to expect in the New Mexico presidential and state primaries, + More

A ballot drop box awaits deposits at an early voting center in Santa Fe, N.M., on June 1, 2022.
Morgan Lee
/
AP
A ballot drop box awaits deposits at an early voting center in Santa Fe, N.M., on June 1, 2022.

AP Decision Notes: What to expect in the New Mexico presidential and state primaries - By Maya Sweedler Associated Press

New Mexico voters will be among the last to cast ballots for presidential nominees when the state holds its presidential and state primaries on Tuesday.

That day includes the final four contests on the Republican side and is the penultimate presidential primary day on the Democratic side. Both parties have had their presumptive nominees — former President Donald Trump on the Republican side and President Joe Biden on the Democratic side — since mid-March.

New Mexico has voted reliably Democratic in recent presidential elections, but its downballot contests have been more competitive.

In 2022, Democrats won all three of New Mexico's congressional districts, aided by a new map that shifted a Republican-leaning district to the left. In the fall, the most closely watched district will be the 2nd, a swing seat along the Mexican border where first-term Rep. Gabe Vasquez will face a rematch with the incumbent he defeated, former Rep. Yvette Herrell. Herrell is uncontested in the Republican primary.

The sole contested U.S. House primary is on the Republican side in the 1st District. Businessman Louie Sanchez and accountant Steve Jones are running in the Albuquerque-based district, the most Democratic-leaning in the state. The winner will face incumbent Rep. Melanie Stansbury, who has represented the district since winning a special election in 2021 to succeed current Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland.

Also on the ballot are 19 contested state Senate primaries and 22 contested state House primaries. All 42 state Senate and 70 state House seats are up for election this year, but many of the primaries are uncontested.

Here's a look at what to expect on election night:

PRIMARY DAY

The New Mexico state and presidential primary will be held Tuesday. Polls close at 7 p.m. MT.

WHAT'S ON THE BALLOT

The Associated Press will provide coverage for the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries, one U.S. House primary and 41 state legislative primaries.

The Democratic ballot includes Biden, Marianne Williamson and an uncommitted option.

The Republican ballot includes Trump, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Christie and an uncommitted option. For Trump, Tuesday marks the first primaries since he became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes.

WHO GETS TO VOTE

New Mexico has a closed primary system, which means that only voters registered with a political party may participate in that party's primary. Democrats may not vote in the Republican primary or vice versa. Independent or unaffiliated voters may not participate in either primary.

DELEGATE ALLOCATION RULES

New Mexico's 34 pledged Democratic delegates are allocated according to the national party's standard rules. Seven at-large delegates are allocated in proportion to the statewide vote, as are four PLEO delegates, or "party leaders and elected officials." The state's three congressional districts have a combined 23 delegates at stake, which are allocated in proportion to the vote results in each district. Candidates must receive at least 15% of the statewide vote to qualify for any statewide delegates and 15% of the vote in a congressional district to qualify for delegates in that district.

There are 22 delegates at stake in the Republican presidential primary. Since the Republican primary is taking place within 45 days of the Republican National Convention, the delegates will be considered unbound. However, a spokesperson from the state party told the AP that the party expects the delegates will vote at the convention in accordance with the results of its presidential primary.

DECISION NOTES

In the presidential race, Biden and Trump are the favorites in their primaries as neither candidate faces credible challenges. The first indications that they are winning statewide on a level consistent with the overwhelming margins seen in most other contests held this year may be sufficient to determine the statewide winners. There is an organized protest vote against Biden in New Mexico, which may be strongest in and around the cities of Santa Fe and Albuquerque. If there are protest votes against Trump, they are likely to be most evident in the same areas, as Haley's best performances in the campaign this year have come from states' Democratic areas.

The 1st District includes all of Torrance County and parts of Bernalillo, Sandoval, Santa Fe and Valencia counties. The bulk of the district's votes are concentrated in and around Albuquerque, about three-quarters of which falls in the district.

The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it's determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidates to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

In New Mexico, federal races with a vote margin of 0.25 percentage points or less are subject to an automatic recount. State legislative races are subject to a mandatory recount if the margin is within 0.5 percentage points. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is eligible for a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

WHAT DO TURNOUT AND ADVANCE VOTE LOOK LIKE

As of April 30, there were 1,336,178 registered voters in New Mexico. Of those, 43% were Democrats and 31% were Republicans.

In the 2022 primary election, turnout was 9% of registered voters in the Democratic primary and 10% in the Republican primary for the 1st Congressional District.

As of May 29, a total of 71,258 voters had cast ballots before Election Day. About 61% of ballots were cast in the Democratic primary and 38% in the Republican primary.

HOW LONG DOES VOTE-COUNTING USUALLY TAKE?

In the 2022 primary election, the AP first reported results at 9:11 p.m. ET, or 11 minutes after polls closed. The election night tabulation ended at 2:50 a.m. ET with about 99% of total votes counted.

ARE WE THERE YET?

As of Tuesday, there will be 41 days until the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, 76 days until the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and 154 until the November general election.

Ambulance services for some in New Mexico will rise after state regulators approve rate increase - Associated Press

Ambulance rates will rise for some in New Mexico, particularly those without health insurance after state regulators approved a rate hike for a Presbyterian-affiliated nonprofit ambulance company.

The Santa Fe New Mexican reported that Albuquerque Ambulance Service cited rising labor costs and inflation when it applied for the rate increase that resulted in 65% in service rate increases and 15% in mileage rate increases. It had initially applied for much higher increases.

The rate hike was approved Thursday.

Patients on Medicaid or Medicare, which make up about 77% of the patients that use Albuquerque Ambulance Service, will not see a rate increase, along with those on veterans health benefits, according to the New Mexican.

The patients most affected are those without health insurance, which makes up approximately 7% of the company's patients, according to the New Mexican.

Health care spending in the United States has more than doubled in the past two decades, reaching $4.5 trillion in 2022, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Albuquerque Ambulance Service operates nearly 100,000 transports annually in the counties with Albuquerque and Santa Fe, along with Sandoval and Rio Arriba counties, according to the New Mexican.

New Mexico judge grants Mark Zuckerberg's request to be dropped from child safety lawsuit - By Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press

A New Mexico judge on Thursday granted Mark Zuckerberg's request to be dropped from a lawsuit that alleges his company has failed to protect young users on its social media platforms from sexual exploitation.

The case is one of many filed by states, school districts and parents against Meta and its platforms over concerns about child exploitation. Beyond courtrooms around the U.S., the issue has been a topic of congressional hearings as lawmakers and parents are growing increasingly concerned about the effects of social media on young people's lives.

In New Mexico, Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued Meta and Zuckerberg late last year following an undercover online investigation.

While granting Zuckerberg's request, Judge Bryan Biedscheid dismissed Meta's motion seeking to dismiss the state's claims, marking what Torrez described as a crucial step for the case to proceed against the social media giant.

"For decades, Meta Platforms have prevented nearly every legal challenge against them from proceeding," Torrez said in a statement. "Today, the New Mexico Department of Justice brought that era to an end and is the first case by a state attorney general to raise child sexual exploitation claims, which can now be addressed. All social media platforms that harm their users should be on notice."

Separately, claims were levied in late October by the attorneys general of 33 states — including California and New York — that Instagram and Facebook include features deliberately designed to hook children and contribute to a youth mental health crisis.

As for Zuckerberg, Biedscheid said he wasn't persuaded by the state's arguments that the executive should remain a party to the New Mexico lawsuit, but he noted that could change depending on what evidence is presented as the case against Meta proceeds.

Torrez's office said it will continue to assess whether Zuckerberg should be named individually in the future.

Attorneys for Meta had argued during the hearing that prosecutors would not be able to establish that the company had specifically directed its activities to New Mexico residents, meaning there would be personal jurisdiction for which the company could be held liable. They said the platforms are available worldwide and that users agree to the terms of service when signing up.

Prosecutors told the judge that New Mexico is not seeking to hold Meta accountable for its content but rather its role in pushing out that content through complex algorithms that proliferate material that can be sensational, addictive and harmful.

The design features and how people interact with them are the issue, said Serena Wheaton, an assistant attorney general in the consumer protection division.

Earlier this month, Torrez announced charges against three men who were accused of using Meta's social media platforms to target and solicit sex with children. The arrests were the result of a monthslong undercover operation in which the suspects connected with decoy accounts set up by the state Department of Justice.

That investigation began in December around the time the state filed its lawsuit against the company.

At the time of the arrests, Torrez placed blame on Meta executives — including Zuckerberg — and suggested that the company was putting profits above the interests of parents and children.

Meta has disputed those allegations, saying it uses technology to prevent suspicious adults from finding or interacting with children and teens on its apps and that it works with law enforcement in investigating and prosecuting offenders.

As part of New Mexico's lawsuit, prosecutors say they have uncovered internal documents in which Meta employees estimate about 100,000 children every day are subjected to sexual harassment on the company's platforms.
 
Los Ranchos board OKs trying to stop partially-finished affordable housing complex - Albuquerque Journal, KUNM News

The Los Ranchos board of trustees voted last night to seek a court injunction to halt a three-story affordable housing complex that has gotten considerable pushback from village residents.

The Albuquerque Journal reports the meeting was the first since the death of Mayor Joe Craig, who won election in November as a proponent of open space and a staunch critic of the Village Center development.

The four-member board voted 2-1 to pursue the injunction, with Trustee Gilbert Benavides in opposition. Trustee George Radnovich [RAD-no-vich] recused himself due to his company’s past involvement in the project. Both men were on the board when the project broke ground.

Benavides said he believes the under-construction project would remain standing if the injunction was granted, and the village could open itself up to liability for millions in damages.

Earlier this month, a judge ruled a previous board violated the state's Open Meetings Act when it approved the project.

A moment of silence was held at the beginning of the meeting for Craig, who died last week. Village attorney Bill Chappell says it will be up to the board to appoint the next mayor.

CORRECTION, 6/4: This story has been corrected to reflect that Benavides and Radnovich were not on the Board of Trustees that approved the project.

AP analysis finds 2023 set record for US heat deaths, killing in areas that used to handle the heat - By Seth Borenstein, Mary Katherine Wildeman And Anita Snow Associated Press

David Hom suffered from diabetes and felt nauseated before he went out to hang his laundry in 108-degree weather, another day in Arizona's record-smashing, unrelenting July heat wave.

His family found the 73-year-old lying on the ground, his lower body burned. Hom died at the hospital, his core body temperature at 107 degrees.

The death certificates of more than 2,300 people who died in the United States last summer mention the effects of excessive heat, the highest number in 45 years of records, according to an Associated Press analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. With May already breaking heat records, 2024 could be even deadlier.

And more than two dozen doctors, public health experts, and meteorologists told the AP that last year's figure was only a fraction of the real death toll. Coroner, hospital, ambulance and weather records show America's heat and health problem at an entirely new level.

"We can be confident saying that 2023 was the worst year we've had from since ... we've started having reliable reporting on that," said Dr. John Balbus, director of the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Last year, ambulances were dispatched tens of thousands of times after people dropped from the heat. It was relentless and didn't give people a break, especially at night. The heat of 2023 kept coming, and people kept dying.

"It's people that live the hot life. These are the ones who are dying. People who work outside, people that can't air-condition their house," said Texas A&M climate scientist Andrew Dessler, who was in hard-hit southern Texas. "It's really quite, quite grim."

Dallas postal worker Eugene Gates Jr., loved working outdoors and at 7:30 a.m. June 20, the 66-year-old texted his wife that it was close to 90 degrees. He kept working in the heat that felt like 119 degrees with the humidity factored in and finally passed out in somebody's yard. He ran a fever of 104.6 degrees and died, with the medical examiner saying heat contributed to his death.

"The way that my husband died, it could have been prevented," said Carla Gates.

"There's just very low awareness that heat kills. It's the silent killer," said University of Washington public health scientist Kristie Ebi, who helped write a United Nations special report on extreme weather. That 2012 report warned of future dangerous heat waves.

Ebi said in the last few years, the heat "seems like it's coming faster. It seems like it's more severe than we expected."

DEATHS DOWN SOUTH

Last summer's heat wave killed differently than past ones that triggered mass deaths in northern cities where people weren't used to the high temperatures and air conditioning wasn't common. Several hundreds died in the Pacific Northwest in 2021, in Philadelphia in 1998 and in Chicago in 1995.

Nearly three-quarters of the heat deaths last summer were in five southern states that were supposed to be used to the heat and planned for it. Except this time they couldn't handle it, and it killed 874 people in Arizona, 450 in Texas, 226 in Nevada, 84 in Florida and 83 in Louisiana.

Those five states accounted for 61% of the nation's heat deaths in the last five years, skyrocketing past their 18% share of U.S. deaths from 1979 to 1999.

At least 645 people were killed by the heat in Maricopa County, Arizona, alone, according to the medical examiner's office. People were dying in their cars and especially on the streets, where homelessness, drug abuse and mental illness made matters worse.

Three months after being evicted from her home, 64-year-old Diana Smith was found dead in the back of her car. Her cause of death was methamphetamine and fentanyl, worsened by heat exposure, Phoenix's medical examiner ruled.

"In the last five years, we are seeing this consistent and record kind of unprecedented upward trend. And I think it's because the levels of heat that we have seen in the last several years have exceeded what we had seen in the last 20 or 30," said Balbus, of the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity at the Department of Health and Human Services.

UNRELENTING HEAT

Phoenix saw 20 consecutive days of extreme heat stress in July, the longest run of such dangerously hot days in the city since at least 1940, according to the data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Phoenix wasn't alone.

Last year the U.S. had the most heat waves since 1936. In the South and Southwest, Last year was the worst on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"It was crazy," said University of Miami tropical meteorology researcher Brian McNoldy, who spent the summer documenting how Miami broke its daily heat index record 40% of the days between mid-June and mid-October.

Houston's Hobby airport broke daily high temperature marks 43 times, meteorologists said. Nighttime lows set records for heat 57 times, they said. That didn't give people's bodies chances to recover.

Across five southern states, the average rate of emergency department visits for heat illness in the summer of 2023 was over double that of the previous five summers, according to an analysis of data from the CDC.

THE DEATHS

Experts warned that counting heat mortality based on death certificates leads to underestimates. Heat illness can be missed, or might not be mentioned.

They pointed to "excess death" studies for a more realistic count. These are the type of long-accepted epidemiological studies that look at grand totals of deaths during unusual conditions — such as hot days, high air pollution or a spreading COVID-19 pandemic — and compare them to normal times, creating an expected trend line.

Texas A&M's Dessler and his colleague Jangho Lee published one such study early last year. According to their methods, Lee said, about 11,000 heat deaths likely occurred in 2023 in the U.S. — a figure that would represent a record since at least 1987 and is about five times the number reported on death certificates.

Deaths are also up because of better reporting, and because Americans are getting older and more vulnerable to heat, Lee said. The population is also slowly shifting to cities, which are more exposed to heat.

THE FUTURE

In some places, last year's heat already rivals the worst on record. As of late May, Miami was on track to be 1.5 degrees warmer than the hottest May on record, according to McNoldy. Dallas' Murphy pointed to maps saying conditions with a broiling Mexico are "eerily similar to what we saw last June" so he is worried about "a very brutal summer."

Texas A&M's Dessler said last year's heat was "a taste of the future."

"I just think in 20 years, you know, 2040 rolls around ... we're going to look back at 2023 and say, man, that was cool," Dessler said. "The problem with climate change is if it hasn't pushed you over the edge yet, just wait."

RECA faces sunset June 10 while its future remains in limbo - By Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico

Republican House leadership flip-flopped on a program to compensate people the federal government exposed to radiation, as advocates held their stance that now is the best chance to adopt an expansion in the program.

On Wednesday, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-California) announced they intended to only continue the Radiation Exposure and Compensation Act for two years and would not support adding people from Missouri, New Mexico and elsewhere.

In a statement, Johnson said he would not support the expansion passed by the Senate because it was too expensive and didn’t include enough support from the Senate GOP.

“Unfortunately, the current Senate bill is estimated to cost $50-60 billion in new mandatory spending with no offsets and was supported by only 20 of 49 Republicans in the Senate,” a spokesperson for the Speaker’s office gave to Source NM.

Then, Johnson and Scalise walked back the decision to keep RECA as is and pulled a motion from the House calendar on Wednesday evening, citing conversations with Rep. Anne Wagner (R-Missouri).

However, it’s unclear from Johnson’s statements if any vote will be held on RECA before the fund is set to expire on June 10. His office did not respond to follow up questions clarifying his position on RECA.

Advocates meanwhile are reframing this latest hurdle as another opportunity that could actually lead to New Mexicans and others across the country joining the RECA program and receive some justice for the generational harms caused by the U.S. atomic program.

WHAT IS AT STAKE

Adopted in 1990, RECA is a fund set up by the federal government to pay lump-sum payments for people exposed to radiation and their descendents during decades of above-ground nuclear tests in the American West.

Currently, the program only applies to uranium workers before 1971. It also helps civilians in specific counties of Utah, Arizona and Nevada and federal workers at nuclear test sites.

A lot of people remain excluded.

This includesSt. Louis communities used as dumping grounds for Manhattan Project Waste, Southern New Mexicans who lived near the Trinity Site, uranium workers after 1971 or the others livingdownwind” of nuclear testing sites.

These communities, while experiencing cancers, diseases, deaths and more, have been neither recognized, nor compensated.

Their chance to be recognized is held in proposed legislation before the House which seeks to increase the scope and life of the program.

S. 3853 whichpassed the Senate in a 69-30 vote in March was carried by Missouri and New Mexico Congressmembers. The bill would incorporate the entire states of Nevada, Utah and Arizona, and further expands RECA to cover people in Idaho, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico and Guam. Uranium workers and their descendants on the Navajo Nation and Laguna Pueblo who worked after 1971 would also then be eligible for lump-sum payments for health care.

HOUSE SPEAKER PLAYS REVERSE CARD

The reversal by Rep. Johnson exposes a tension: do advocates who’ve been fighting for inclusion opt to keep the current limited program, or continue to fight for expansion?

It’s time to fight for a more-inclusive RECA, said Tina Cordova, a longtime advocate for Southern New Mexicans and their families suffering from radiation exposure after the first nuclear test at the Trinity Site.

“That two-year extension was going to do nothing, but take away that momentum we’ve built,” she said.

Advocates accepted a two year extension of the program in 2022, she said, because there didn’t feel like a better alternative. She said with bipartisan support, the stakes are higher in 2024.

“We can’t allow them to pass an extension and think they’re going to move us along,” she said. We knew what it was, it’s a further extension of the injustice done to so many people.”

Cordova, a cancer survivor, said that while the RECA fund is set to expire in June, that lawmakers said they can offer small extensions while negotiating the expansion under the Senate bill.

“In the last two years, we’ve lost so many people,” she said. “What’s worse is that more people are dying all the time, waiting.”

Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.) told Source NM Wednesday that Johnson’s move to pull the extension bill that excluded so many was the right thing. But that view relies on the House bringing forward the expansion proposal passed by the Senate.

“Let’s vote on the bipartisan expansion bill that gives all victims of radiation exposure compensation before any more die,” Leger Fernández said in a statement.

Leger Fernández said Johnson’s focus on costs ignores the injustice of harms caused by building and testing nuclear bombs, in New Mexico and elsewhere.

“Continuously pointing to the bill’s cost without good-faith negotiations is an additional insult on top of denying justice to radiation-exposed victims,” she wrote.

Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) said Tuesday that Congress cannot let the RECA program expire.

“The Tularosa downwinders and uranium miners have experienced the real-life costs of radiation exposure for generations. They don’t need lectures now on ‘costs’ from House Republicans; they need RECA reauthorized and expanded,” Heinrich said in a written statement. “It’s long overdue for the House to take up and pass our legislation to get this done.”

Last week, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) brought forward an extension which would have admitted New Mexico and Missouri communities into the program. It failed after theobjections of Republican Sen. Josh Hawley from Missouri and Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), who co-sponsored the RECA expansion bill.

“I want to be clear. I will not consent to any short-term stopgap, any half- way measure. I will not give my consent to it,” Hawley said on the floor.

Luján said Lee’s bill was an “attempt to undermine the strong bipartisan coalition,” which passed the RECA expansion, and said he believed there was support in the House.

Downwinders from Utah and beyond criticized Lee’s bill, saying that lawmakers were denying fallout had affected constituents across the state.

After the measure’s failure, Lee said “We have got to deal with this. I will be back.”

Cordova said she fully supported Luján and Hawley’s rejection of RECA expanding to only New Mexico and Missouri in Lee’s proposal, saying it is a point of solidarity with other downwinders.

“I fully trust that we will get the extension in the end, if necessary,” she said.

In a statement, Adán Serna, spokesperson for Luján said the Senator is considering “all possible options” to keep the RECA program alive, including potentially bringing an extension.

But focus is on what the House will do with the Senate legislation.

“The best possible option to strengthen RECA and provide justice for victims is for the House to pass the standalone bill,” Serna said.

BLM buys about 3,700 acres of land adjacent to Río Grande del Norte National Monument in New Mexico - Associated Press

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced the acquisition Thursday of about 3,700 acres (1,497 hectares) of land adjacent to the Río Grande del Norte National Monument in northern New Mexico near the Colorado border.

BLM officials said the agency plans to expand public access and recreation opportunities in and around the national monument that already spans more than 242,000 acres (97,934 hectares) and is home to critical wildlife habitat and special status species.

The property is located six miles (10 kilometers) southwest of Taos.

BLM bought the land from the Trust for Public Land nonprofit using funding from the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

The Trust for Public Land group said in a news release that the deal was for $16.6 million.

The Río Grande del Norte National Monument was proclaimed a national monument in 2013 by then-President Barack Obama.

The BLM manages more than 245 million acres of public land located primarily in 12 western states including Alaska. 

Stansbury outlines funding secured for early childhood and youth services programs - By Susan Dunlap, New Mexico Political Report

U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury secured $8.3 million for childhood development and youth services in the 1st congressional district through federal community project funding.

Stansbury, a Democrat, announced this funding during a press conference at Youth Development, Inc., one of the funding recipients, along with several Tribal leaders and a representative from the city of Albuquerque. The money will go toward supporting early childhood development projects and programs on some Tribal land, a youth intervention program in Albuquerque and to help youth transition out of institutional care through federal community project funding.

Stansbury said she requests federal dollars every year for 10 to 15 projects. This year she focused on early childhood education. She and other members of New Mexico’s congressional leadership realized that while there is more spending for early childhood education programs, there is not “sufficient funding for capital projects.”

Stansbury said one of the funding recipients will be the city of Albuquerque, which is planning a young adult campus to help youth transition out of transitional care. Gilbert Ramirez, Albuquerque director of Health, Housing and Homelessness, said the city purchased the new facility for the campus earlier in May.

He said the federal funding will help the young adult campus provide wrap-around services, including housing navigation and transitional support “to make sure they enter into a more stable pathway to adulthood.”

He said that when children grow up within institutionalized care, such as foster care or housing shelters or through incarceration, they often struggle when they age out of these systems.

Stansbury said the funding is important because one in five children in New Mexico face food insecurity and New Mexico, historically, has ranked at the bottom for child well-being and education for several years.

She said there is a renaissance of investment in children. The state created a government agency, the Early Childhood Care and Education Department, in 2020 to improve early childhood education. The legislature passed a bill in 2022, which allowed a constitutional amendment to go before voters. The amendment received voter approval in the 2022 election to increase the distribution of the Permanent Land Grant Fund to improve state funding for early childcare education.

“We have a lot of grit, determination and resilience. But what we don’t have a lot of is resources,” Stansbury said.

Robert Chavez, president of Youth Development, Inc., said the funding will also enable YDI to increase services for youth aging out of foster care or exiting out of incarceration or shelters who don’t have a place to stay.

Sandia Pueblo Governor Felix Chaves said the money Sandia Pueblo will receive will be used to build a new child development center for children who face challenges. He told NM Political Report that the original building to provide a day school was built in the 1950s and it provided an education to 10 children.

He said the pueblo grew into its current facility, which currently provides housing and education to 30 or more children. He said the Pueblo offers an emergent language program for the children to help the pueblo to keep its language alive.

“This investment is an opportunity to help us grow. We’re struggling like the rest of the world with regard to educating our children. We need that little bit of money to increase our children’s opportunity to compete in the world today,” he said.

Gabe Aquilar, Mescalero Apache tribal council member, said the funding Mescalero Apache will receive will help the tribe expand services to children who face learning disadvantages.

“This will help them in expanding in learning so they have all the tools they need to succeed,” he said.

Michael Canfield, president and chief executive officer of Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque—which is owned by 19 Pueblo communities— said the center looks at the funding opportunity from a workforce perspective.

He said the center is home to 600 people, many of whom need affordable daycare in order to join the workforce.

Stansbury said two groups that would receive funding but could not send a representative to the press conference are the Black Leadership Council, which would use its funding to help build a new center in the International District to serve young people. There is also funding for an educational development program to better serve young people in Lincoln County.

Public officials grapple with threats, raising questions about local democracy - By Justin Garcia, The Las Cruces Bulletin

This story was originally published by The Las Cruces Bulletin. 

A voicemail ends with a death threat. Racist hate spewed in a phone call. An unknown car parked outside the house. Social media posts calling for summary execution.

Threats of violence like these are well-suited for political thrillers. They evoke the high drama of a fictional character forced to choose between their safety and their beliefs. But it’s become something of a reality for public officials in 2024.

Elected officials interviewed by the Las Cruces Bulletin said they face a growing trend of threats and intimidation. The intimidation, which often comes via electronic media, is part of a nationwide drift toward political violence, national data shows. And the targets are most often against officials from marginalized communities.

With a growing specter of violence, questions about democratic participation emerge as well. Local officials told the Bulletin that the experiences have made them reconsider—or at least reassess—their position in government. The result, however, is a greater resolve and conviction.

“There’s definitely pieces of paranoia that are there,” said Johana Bencomo, a Las Cruces city councilor who recently received a death threat. “But I’m also feeling righteous anger. I’m not going to allow myself to be intimidated — because that’s what the intent is.”

INTIMIDATION AS POLITICS IN AMERICA 

A January report by the Brennan Center for Justice, which surveyed elected officials from around the U.S., shed light on the situation nationwide.

Researchers found that threats and intimidation of local officials had risen sharply. The report found that:

  • 43 percent of state legislators experienced threats.
  • 18 percent of local officeholders experienced threats.
  • 38 percent of state legislators reported that the amount of abuse they experience has increased since first taking public office, while only 16 percent reported that it has decreased.
  • 29 percent of state legislators reported that the seriousness of the incidents has increased, while only 12 percent reported that it has decreased.

The report also found women and people of color were experiencing more threats compared to their colleagues.

Intimidation and threats – especially against people from marginalized groups – reduce participation in democratic government in both historical and contemporary contexts, academic research shows. The Brennan Center report found that more than 40 percent of officeholders who’d experienced threats or violence were less likely to stay in office.

“For women, the rates of possible attrition are higher, with approximately half saying they were less willing to continue serving,” the report said.

The report also noted the downstream effects of intimidation. For example, about 20 percent of state officeholders and 40 percent of local officeholders acknowledged they were less willing to work on controversial topics because of fear.

Fifty-three percent of state legislators believed that abuse had deterred their colleagues from taking on controversial topics. About 23 percent of state legislators in the report said they were less likely to hold events in public spaces, limiting crucial public access to their representation.

‘AND I WILL KILL YOU’

This section discusses suicide. Help is available by calling 988 for the 24-hour Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Bencomo was targeted by a death threat on March 16. She’s been a Las Cruces city councilor since 2017 and told the Bulletin she’s experienced other forms of harassment before. But this experience was a benchmark.

Bencomo was out of town visiting family when police believe an El Paso man with Las Cruces ties left a death threat via her city hall phone. The voicemail automatically forwarded to her cell phone.

The man gave his name and number. He told Bencomo to “clean up her side of the street,” deployed homophobic slurs, and mentioned a person police said had a protective order against him.

“When you hear it, you can sort of tell he is in distress,” she said.

He then told Bencomo to kill herself. If she didn’t, he said, “And I will kill you,” before ending the voicemail.

Bencomo said the message felt off but didn’t immediately sink in. When she shared it with confidants, they told her she needed to go to the police.

Bencomo has advocated for poor and marginalized groups in Las Cruces as a councilor and in her career as a community organizer. This work has earned her the ire of some who oppose her approach to affecting change, her values and her beliefs about what government should do. The death threat rattled those values.

“I definitely started feeling myself doubt my whole approach,” Bencomo said.

Support from city leadership helped soften the blow, she said.

“I talked to other women in my circle of work who didn’t feel like law enforcement believed them,” Bencomo said. “And that just has not been my experience at all. Chief (Jeremy) Story took it very seriously.”

Bencomo said that Story and the detective assigned to the case, Peirce Wilber, reassured her with the investigation and advocacy.

“I’ll never forget what chief said: ‘When our elected officials don’t feel safe, the whole system falls apart,'” she recalled.

The voicemail led to a misdemeanor charge against the man. That case is pending.

‘THEY’VE GOT EYES ON ME AT ALL TIMES’

While Bencomo’s experience was acute, another councilor’s experience has been a protracted ordeal.

Becki Graham, a councilor since 2021, told the Bulletin she’s had a politically motivated stalker for three years. This wasn’t a surprise, as she was warned about them after she was elected.

“I would say that this person is very committed to making sure that I know they are watching me; they’ve got eyes on me at all times,” Graham said. “Not just in the typical government watchdog way, but I’ve received messages that let me know just small things alluding to details of my house, making sure that they know where I live.”

At times, Graham has seen the person driving by her house. On other occasions, the person sat near Graham’s driveway and drove away upon discovery.

Graham and Bencomo said they’ve taken steps to protect themselves and their families. But their experiences have also forced them to choose between yielding to intimidation and persistence.

“I’ve been doing so much internal wrestling the last few days that now I’m angry about it,” Bencomo said. “You will not intimidate me. I will keep doing the work that I have chosen to do.”

The experience has caused Bencomo to reevaluate her values. And she comes out with stronger beliefs.

“I’m now a victim, and I’ve definitely been (asking) do I believe justice is him being incarcerated? No, I don’t,” she said. “Do I believe nothing should happen? I also don’t.”

For Graham, the experience sparked questions about the long-term effects on democracy.

“Getting death threats, people are following me home, it’s just a huge loss in knowledge and dedication and experience in the whole democratic process,” Graham said. “This is something with local relevance. And whether you like your current elected official or whether you don’t, it’s something that you should be concerned about if it’s going to fundamentally affect the quality of government.”

ATTACKING DEMOCRACY 

The most well-known example of political violence against elected officials occurred up north.

Solomon Peña, 40, ran for an Albuquerque-area seat in the New Mexico House of Representatives during the November 2022 midterm elections. After his defeat, police said Peña organized four shootings at the homes of two Bernalillo County Commissioners and two state legislators.

Police also believe that Peña wanted the election he’d lost overturned. He believed it had been rigged, ensuring his loss. In reality, Peña suffered defeat to Bernalillo County Democrat Miguel Garcia by more than 3,500 votes.

Peña’s alleged violence struck a chord across the state, but it was felt uniquely by Doña Ana County Clerk Amanda López Askin. Before his arrest, Peña called for López Askin to be hanged on a fringe social media site.

“This man is alleged to have done this to these elected officials that he did not care for or you felt strongly about. And I just happen to live way south,” López Askin said.

López Askin said she’s been fielding intimidation against her and her office for six years. She became clerk in 2018, in one of the more memorable elections in southern New Mexico’s history.

That year, Republican Yvette Herrell narrowly lost to Democrat Xochitl Torres Small. A Democrat hadn’t held the seat in a generation. For New Mexico Democrats, the win was monumental. But the unusual flip, combined with a delayed result due to a historic number of absentee ballots, fed unsubstantiated rumors of something more sinister.

“That caused the whole storm of misinformation and malinformation. And unfortunately, I continue to combat that specific election to this day,” López Askin said.

Like other elected officials mentioned in the Brennan Center report, López Askin stepped away from social media as harassment online intensified. They poked fun at her appearance and called her names. It didn’t matter how she responded or what she did, López Askin said. The accusations against her often had no basis in reality. They were just things made up, put online and regurgitated by a mindless algorithm.

The posters crossed a line, she said, when they used photos of her family and children to create memes at her expense.

“That was a very, very tough professional time for me. It was really the point where I’d had to decide whether I was going to do this or not. And, obviously, I decided to,” López Askin said. “But I wouldn’t put my worst enemy in that position. It was really, really difficult.”

López Askin was, as she put it, new to elected office at the time. While she had held a position on the New Mexico State University Board of Regents as a student, the county clerk was something new. As part of that, she dove deeper into the history of elections and the election code.

The deeper she researched that history, the more righteous she felt about her office’s work regarding elections, aiming to impart this message and mission through her work.

“We cannot stop. They say there are no tears in baseball, but there is no relaxation in elections,” she said.

DISTRICT ATTORNEY UNDER THREAT 

For Doña Ana County District Attorney Gerald Byers, the question of threats and violence against political officials is a question of justice.

Byers was also the victim of a death threat. In 2023, an Ohio man left a racist voicemail calling for him to be killed. According to the FBI, the Ohio man believed that he had every right to threaten Byers’ life. That case also led to minor charges and remains pending.

Byers said local law enforcement sprung into action when the threats were delivered. He received police surveillance at his work and at home, for both him and his family.

“It is not common, it’s not usual, and it is not considered part and parcel of being an elected official,” he said.

But Byers, who also served in the U.S. Navy, said the experience has fortified his belief about public service.

“If I was going to quit just because somebody threatened my life, just because I’m an elected district attorney, then I would have had ample opportunity to quit for the last 26 years when I’ve been a prosecutor,” Byers said. “You don’t let that deter you.”

In some ways, Byers said the experience allowed him to step into the shoes of the crime victims who come through the prosecutor’s office. It provides a point of empathy, he said. But Byers also said he thinks the legislature play a role in protecting public officials and public servants.

“I believe that it’s important for the stability of our society and the state of New Mexico, for this matter to be brought before the legislature so that laws can be created that reflect the necessity of public safety for these times. The fact that so many public officials have been placed under threat speaks to that, and it speaks volumes,” he said.

Biden is said to be finalizing plans for migrant limits as part of a US-Mexico border clampdown - By Colleen Long and Seung Min Kim, Associated Press

The White House is finalizing plans for a U.S.-Mexico border clampdown that would shut off asylum requests and automatically deny entrance to migrants once the number of people encountered by American border officials exceeded a new daily threshold, with President Joe Biden expected to sign an executive order as early as Tuesday, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The president has been weighing additional executive action since the collapse of a bipartisan border bill earlier this year. The number of illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border has declined for months, partly because of a stepped-up effort by Mexico. Still, immigration remains a top concern heading into the U.S. presidential election in November and Republicans are eager to hammer Biden on the issue.

The Democratic administration's effort would aim to head off any potential spike in crossings that could occur later in the year, as the fall election draws closer, when the weather cools and numbers tend to rise, two of the people. They were not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing discussions and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The move would allow Biden, whose administration has taken smaller steps in recent weeks to discourage migration and speed up asylum processing, to say he has done all he can do to control the border numbers without help from Congress.

The talks were still fluid and the people stressed that no final decisions had been made.

The restrictions being considered are an aggressive attempt to ease the nation's overwhelmed asylum system, along with a new effort to speed up the cases of migrants already in America and another meant to quicken processing for migrants with criminal records or those who would otherwise be eventually deemed ineligible for asylum in the United States.

The people told the AP that the administration was weighing some of the policies directly from a stalled bipartisan Senate border deal, including capping the number of encounters at an average of 4,000 per day over a week and whether that limit would include asylum-seekers coming to the border with appointments through U.S. Customs and Border Protection's CBP One app. Right now, there are roughly 1,450 such appointments per day.

Two of the people said one option is that migrants who arrive after the border reaches a certain threshold could be removed automatically in a process similar to deportation and would not be able to return easily. Migrants were able to more easily return to the border if they were expelled under the pandemic-era policy known as Title 42. Under that arrangement, Mexico agreed to take back some non-Mexican nationalities, including migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Migrants, especially families, claiming asylum at the southern border are generally released into the U.S. to wait out their cases. But there are more than 2 million pending immigration court cases, and some people wait years for a court date while they live in limbo in the U.S.

Anyone can ask for asylum regardless of whether they arrive illegally at the border, but U.S. officials are increasingly pushing migrants to make appointments, use a legal pathway that avoids the costly and dangerous journey, or stay where they are and apply through outposts in Colombia, Guatemala and Costa Rica.

The Biden administration has grown ever more conservative on border issues as the president faces ceaseless criticism from Republicans and there are large numbers of migrants crossing into the U.S. from Mexico who are not easily returned, especially as global displacement grows from war, climate change and more.

The immigration authority that the administration has been looking to use is outlined in Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. It gives a president broad leeway to block entry of certain immigrants into the U.S. if it would be "detrimental" to the U.S. national interest.

Senate Republicans last week again blocked a bill that would have enshrined some of the same efforts into law. The vote was meant to underscore GOP resistance to the proposal even as Republicans have clamored for more restrictions and argued that Biden has not done enough to stem the flow of migrants entering into the U.S.

The bipartisan bill had been negotiated for months and appeared, for a moment anyway, to be heading toward passage. It was even endorsed by the National Border Patrol Council and its president Brandon Judd, an avowed supporter of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. But Trump, concerned about handing Democrats an election-year win, called on Republicans to tank it, and they did.

White House officials did not confirm the expected executive order.

White House spokesman Angelo Fernández Hernández said the administration "continues to explore a series of policy options and we remain committed to taking action to address our broken immigration system."

"While congressional Republicans chose to stand in the way of additional border enforcement, President Biden will not stop fighting to deliver the resources that border and immigration personnel need to secure our border," he said.

Congress this year approved funding for a total of 41,500 detention beds and increased money for immigration enforcement and removal operations by $1.2 billion over what the White House had initially requested. That included $106 million in more funding for programs that monitor immigrants in the asylum system through phone apps and ankle bracelets, rather than through detention.

Those increases, negotiated after the collapse of the bipartisan deal, could pave the way for the administration to ratchet up immigration enforcement.

Yet unlike legislative action that is binding, anything Biden does through executive action can be challenged in the courts, and will almost certainly be, so it not clear whether — or if — the clampdown on asylum would begin. The administration was weighing other actions too, including faster and tougher enforcement of the asylum process.

The administration has generally paired proposed crackdowns with an expansion of legal paths elsewhere and was also planning to do so in the future, but not at the same time the new restrictions were announced, the people said.

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Associated Press writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report.