NM Supreme Court lays out scope of legislative immunity in precedent-setting ruling - Dan Boyd, Albuquerque Journal
The motive behind New Mexico lawmakers’ official acts is irrelevant when it comes to determining whether they can be the target of lawsuits, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday.
The unanimous ruling by the state’s highest court establishes — for the first time — the scope of legislative immunity, a doctrine that protects legislators from facing legal claims over their job-related actions.
It comes nearly five months after the Supreme Court ordered the dismissal of a lawsuit filed against the state Senate’s top-ranking Democrat by a former senator who alleged he had been illegally retaliated against. The court indicated at the time it planned to issue a longer written ruling at a later date.
The top Democrat, Senate President Pro Tem Mimi Stewart of Albuquerque, had asked the Supreme Court to intervene after a state District Court judge denied Stewart’s initial motion to dismiss the case, saying her motives needed to be scrutinized.
The case was filed by ex-Sen. Jacob Candelaria of Albuquerque in April 2022, several months before he resigned from the Senate.
In his lawsuit, he argued Stewart violated the state’s Human Rights Act by moving his Senate seat and Capitol office location following his criticism of her behind-the-scenes handling of a personnel investigation involving a top legislative staffer.
However, the New Mexico Supreme Court in its Monday opinion ruled that Stewart was shielded by legislative immunity since her actions involved legislative resources and that her motive, or intent, for moving Candelaria’s seat and office location was not relevant.
“When legislative immunity applies, recourse is found not in the courts, but at the ballot box,” Supreme Court Chief Justice David Thomson wrote in the court’s ruling, which also cited cases in other states.
The Supreme Court also ordered District Court Judge Daniel Ramczyk of Albuquerque to dismiss Candelaria’s original complaint.
While New Mexico’s legislative immunity provision had been largely untested in the courts, the similar issue of presidential immunity has been a hot-button issue.
The U.S. Supreme Court in July 2024 ruled that former presidents can not be criminally prosecuted for acts taken while in office. The ruling hinged on the actions of Donald Trump, who then won election last November to a new four-year term.
Specifically, New Mexico’s Constitution says legislators shall not be “questioned in any other place for any speech or debate or for any vote cast in either house.”
The state Constitution also protects lawmakers from arrest during legislative sessions, with certain exceptions.
In all, 43 states including New Mexico have constitutions that provide legislative immunity by protecting legislators from executive or judicial action, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Trump’s budget agenda: Billions of cuts for conservation, public lands - Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico
Billions in proposed curtailment of federal conservation projects and land management programs would leave New Mexicans vulnerable to losing public lands access, worsen wildfire responses and water contamination, members of local conservation nonprofits said Monday.
The Trump Administration submitted a 46-page proposed budget to Congressional Appropriations Chair Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) on May 2, which includes reducing the budgets of the U.S. Department of the Interior and U.S. National Forest Service by a combined $5.1 billion.
The budget also proposes cuts to health, education and public safety budgets, prompting U.S. Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján, New Mexico Democrats, to issue a joint statement on Monday describing the budget request as one that “would drive up the cost of health care, groceries, housing, and utilities; gut public school and pre-K funding; defund cancer research; weaken law enforcement’s ability to fight drug trafficking; and strip resources from wildland firefighters, farmers, Tribes, and rural communities. It also threatens our public lands — paving the way for Republicans’ massive sell-off.”
In the case of public lands, the budget proposes broad cuts — such as ones to conservation programs — but does not drill down to list specific grants, facilities or staff positions that should be eliminated.
While a proposed budget is typically an aspirational document given to Congress,“what’s distinctive in this situation with the president’s budget here is that President Trump and his administration have been arrogating power to themselves to make budget decisions,” Western Environmental Law Center Executive Director Erik Schlenker-Goodrich told Source NM, pointing to cuts and layoffs implemented by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
“It’s the prospective implementation of this aspirational document that is a concern, given DOGE,” Schlenker-Goodrich said. “It looks less to me like aspiration and more like an intention of what they’re going to be doing relative to public lands, waters and conservation in general.”
Schlenker-Goodrich said cutting federal land agencies’ budgets will put “heightened pressure” on state government to try to fill the gaps, and might take the “public” out of public lands.
“We may see public lands closed down, national parks access limited,” he said. “It may impact all ability to get hunting access onto public lands, to be able to go fish on public lands, to be able to just walk on public lands — all these things are at issue.”
‘A middle finger to regular Americans’
The budget claims to eliminate federal funding “committed to radical gender and climate ideologies,” according to the accompanying letter from Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, which notes that reducing species conservation would further the “deregulatory agenda.”
Mark Allison, the executive director New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, said the Trump administration sees public lands as a profit-venture, including increasing large-scale logging and undermining environmental protections.
“These are his priorities, this is his vision and I think it’s a middle finger to regular Americans,” Allison, told Source NM. “It’s a fundamental uprooting of the park system, national monuments and how we care for our lands and waters.”
The proposed budget recommends cuts of $900 million to National Parks, claiming that many “receive small numbers of mostly local visitors” and should instead be managed by states. National Parks received 331 million visits in 2024, breaking the record for most visits set in 2016. The budget also proposes a $198 million reduction of Bureau of Land Management conservation programs, writing it will undo “excessive” protections from “development, recreation, grazing, hunting, mining, etc.”
The budget would further cut $73 million worth of construction of facilities at national parks and$170 million of U.S. Fish and Wildlife grants to local, federal and tribal communities.
Allison noted Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s April 17 order ceding authority to his senior advisor on policy, Tyler Hassen, who previously worked at DOGE. Hassen will oversee the “consolidation, unification and optimization” of Interior bureaus, including the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management.
“We would have a DOGE guy with zero experience, you know, with wildlife, wildfire, recovery assessment, protection, general firefighting — responsible for all that,” he said. “It’s dystopian.”
Allison said New Mexicans already experience impacts from climate change, including worsening fires, less land for cattle, and shrinking water resources.
“You can call it whatever, but it is getting hotter, it is getting drier, there’s less snowpack, and we have to figure out how to live with this,” Allison said. “Cutting all of these agencies that help with land management and climate resilience is exactly the wrong direction, we need to be doubling down our investments there.”
The proposed cuts would also impact more than $1 billion in U.S. Environmental Protection “categorical grants,” according to Rachel Conn, the deputy director of Taos-based water conservation nonprofit Amigos Bravos.
“Those are very much tied to public health, helping state employees on the ground monitor for water quality in our state’s river streams, lakes, reservoirs,” Conn told Source NM. “They help to understand if it’s safe to swim in these waters, if it’s safe to eat the fish that are coming out of our waters.”
If the federal program is cut entirely, it removes financial incentives for states to apply matching dollars, Conn said, and would mean water quality would suffer while states take the time to build up funding to run their own programs.
“It’s like yanking everything all out at once, you’re going to have programs across the nation that will collapse,” she said.
DHS offers $1,000 to immigrants without legal status who self-deport- Ariana Figueroa, Source New Mexico
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced Monday that the agency will provide $1,000 in what it called “travel assistance” to people in the United States without permanent legal status if they self deport.
It’s the latest attempt by DHS to try to meet the Trump administration’s goal of removing 1 million migrants without permanent legal status from the country. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem touted the option as cost-effective.
“If you are here illegally, self-deportation is the best, safest and most cost-effective way to leave the United States to avoid arrest,” Noem said in a statement. “This is the safest option for our law enforcement, aliens and is a 70% savings for US taxpayers.”
It’s unclear from which part of the DHS budget the funding for the travel assistance is coming, as it would roughly cost $1 billion to reimburse up to $1,000 to meet the goal of removing 1 million people.
DHS did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.
President Donald Trump gave his support for the move Monday afternoon, according to White House pool reports.
“We’re going to get them a beautiful flight back to where they came from,” the president said.
Self-deportation would be facilitated by the CBP Home app, which was used by the Biden administration to allow asylum seekers to make appointments with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The payment would apparently not be made in advance. DHS said that once those who use the app to self deport arrive in their home country, they will receive a travel stipend of $1,000.
According to DHS, the Trump administration has deported 152,000 people since taking office in January. The Biden administration last year deported 195,000 people from February to April, according to DHS data.
DHS said already one migrant has used the program to book a flight from Chicago to Honduras.
“Additional tickets have already been booked for this week and the following week,” the agency said in a statement.
The Trump administration has rolled out several programs to facilitate mass self-deportations, such as a registry to require immigrants in the country without legal authorization to register with the federal government.
Immigrants who don’t register with the federal government could face steep fines and a potential prison sentence.
20 attorneys general ask federal judge to reverse deep cuts to US Health and Human Services- Rebecca Boone and Amanda Seitz, Associated Press
Attorneys general in 19 states and Washington, D.C., are challenging cuts to the U.S. Health and Human Services agency, saying the Trump administration's massive restructuring has destroyed life-saving programs and left states to pick up the bill for mounting health crises.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Rhode Island on Monday, New York Attorney General Letitia James said. The attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia signed onto the complaint.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. restructured the agency in March, eliminating more than 10,000 employees and collapsing 28 agencies under the sprawling HHS umbrella into 15, the attorneys general said. An additional 10,000 employees had already been let go by President Donald Trump's administration, according to the lawsuit, and combined the cuts stripped 25% of the HHS workforce.
“In its first three months, Secretary Kennedy and this administration deprived HHS of the resources necessary to do its job,” the attorneys general wrote.
Kennedy has said he is seeking to streamline the nation's public health agencies and reduce redundancies across them with the layoffs. The cuts were made as part of a directive the administration has dubbed, “ Make America Healthy Again.”
HHS is one of the government's costliest federal agencies, with an annual budget of about $1.7 trillion that is mostly spent on health care coverage for millions of people enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid.
James, who is leading the lawsuit, called the restructuring a “sweeping and unlawful assault” that would endanger lives.
“This is not government reform. This is not efficiency,” James said during a press conference Monday.
The cuts have resulted in laboratories having limited testing for some infectious diseases, the federal government not tracking cancer risks among U.S. firefighters, early childhood learning programs left unsure of future funds and programs aimed at monitoring cancer and maternal health closing, the attorneys general say. Cuts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also have hampered states' ability to respond to one of the largest measles outbreaks in recent years, the lawsuit says.
“This chaos and abandonment of the Department’s core functions was not an unintended side effect, but rather the intended result,” of the “MAHA Directive,” they said. They want a judge to vacate the directive because they say the administration can't unilaterally eliminate programs and funding that have been created by Congress.
The restructuring eliminated the entire team of people who maintain the federal poverty guidelines used by states to determine whether residents are eligible for Medicaid, nutrition assistance and other programs. A tobacco prevention agency was gutted. Staff losses also were significant at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
The Trump administration is already facing other legal challenges over cuts to public health agencies and research organizations. A coalition of 23 states filed a federal lawsuit in Rhode Island last month over the administration's decision to cut $11 billion in federal funds for COVID-19 initiatives and various public health projects across the country.
Albuquerque BioPark building new endangered wolf facility - Cathy Cook, Albuquerque Journal
People living next door to the Albuquerque botanic gardens might hear howling wolves in their neighborhood come winter.
The ABQ BioPark is increasing its capacity to care for and breed endangered Mexican gray wolves with a new behind-the-scenes facility near the botanic garden and adjacent to the bosque. The BioPark has been working on Mexican gray wolf conservation since 1976.
“We want to be champions of New Mexico conservation, and the wolf is a keystone species here. It’s iconic,” said BioPark Director Brandon Gibson.
Seven of the endangered wolves call the zoo home, and 79 wolf pups have been born at the BioPark. The last litter of wolf pups was born at the zoo in 2020. The BioPark has a main wolf exhibit and two back holding areas.
The five-acre area will have several layers of fencing and three foot cement dig barriers. The initial habitat fence is under construction, and the facility is slated to be finished in August, said Lynn Tupa, BioPark associate director.
The $3.3 million facility is being funded by $400,000 from Fish and Wildlife and money collected from a gross receipts tax, which was approved by voters in 2016. The amount collected through the city-based tax varies depending on Albuquerque’s economy. The BioPark anticipates collecting $22 million this fiscal year, Gibson said, but a few years ago it was $16 million.
The wolf facility will have five large pens that could be further divided into eight holding pens, potentially allowing the zoo to house four to eight breeding pairs. Captive breeding of the wolves is carefully coordinated with U.S. Fish and Wildlife and other zoos to ensure any wolf pups born have adequate space and can potentially be released into the wild.
Fish and Wildlife has a cross fostering program where pups born in captivity are introduced to a wild litter of pups in the experimental population area, which straddles central New Mexico and Arizona, to help grow the wild wolf population.
“They’re finding it’s more successful that way than introducing adults, because adults, it takes a skill to learn how to hunt and kill. They get the natural learning from the ground up,” Tupa said.
Logistically, it’s easier to move wolf pups from the Albuquerque BioPark to the experimental population area than from other breeding zoos like the Brookfield Zoo Chicago, Tupa said.
The new facility is away from the public, because even hearing human voices can taint a wolf’s ability to succeed in the wild, Tupa said.
The holding pens will also provide more space for the BioPark to care for injured wolves. The BioPark’s veterinary team has treated four wild wolves since December. The most recent was a yearling female wolf who had been trapped in a leghold. Ranchers sometimes leave leghold traps for coyotes that the endangered wolves can inadvertently be caught in, said the BioPark’s head veterinarian Dr. Carol Bradford. The wolf’s leg had to be amputated.
“Amputated wolves have done successfully in the wild. They hunt in a pack, so they have their friends and family helping them hunt, and they’ve even reproduced after amputation,” Bradford said.
Unlike animals who call the zoo home, wild animals have to be released quickly, and balancing the need for speedy treatment with medical care can be a challenge.
“We understand the biologists’ need and desire to get them out as soon as possible, so that their pack doesn’t move on, or so that they’re not too accustomed to people,” Bradford said.
The yearling wolf was brought to the zoo in mid-March and was back in the wild by March 25.
“I love taking care of BioPark animals, but to be part of conservation projects and to contribute to a critically endangered species and to help them survive, to me, that’s extremely fulfilling and rewarding,” Bradford said.