US Labor Secretary tells Western governors she wants to streamline temporary farmworker visas — Austin Fisher, Source New Mexico
The Trump administration is planning to make it easier for employers to hire temporary migrant workers, U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer told attendees Tuesday afternoon at the Western Governors’ Association annual meeting in Santa Fe.
Chavez-DeRemer said due to the backlog of temporary work visa applications, she is establishing “an emergency agency” within her office to process the work permits “on the spot.”
The move comes as the administration resumes immigration raids at farms, restaurants and hotels, despite having previously said those would decrease due to concerns about worker shortages.
Chavez-DeRemer said she will be working with the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State and the Department of Agriculture “to understand the exact needs,” because as it stands, a work visa application must go through all three agencies.
“That’s where the hangup happened,” she said. “We’re going to do one dedicated, one-stop shop as I call it … and have a live dashboard to see exactly when those permits will be done.”
Chavez-DeRemer said she is often asked if visa applications can be done more quickly and cost less.
“Labor costs are always the highest in any business, and our farmers and ranchers know that food security is national security,” Chavez-DeRemer said.
Chavez-DeRemer told the governors the work visas for specialty occupations; temporary agricultural workers and temporary workers in industries like hospitality, landscaping or construction “are very important to a lot of your respective states and our rural communities.”
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat and the association’s outgoing chair, said the temporary work visas are critical to the agriculture sector. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, said most western U.S. states have significant agriculture industries that rely on migrant workers.
“I would love for Americans to want to do those jobs,” Cox said. “None of the Americans I know want to do some of these jobs.”
Cox expressed approval of Trump’s immigration agenda so far and asked Chavez-DeRemer for more information about changes to the visa system.
“I think we’ve all agreed that we need to stop illegal immigration and fix legal immigration, and get that piece right, and this sounds like a huge step forward in fixing that second piece,” Cox said. “I appreciate that the president is fixing the first piece — and we feel much better about where we are there — but that second piece of streamlining those visas, getting workers in here and doing that could be very key.”
The Department of Labor on Friday stopped enforcing a Biden-era rule that protected union organizing activities among temporary farmworkers. Chavez-DeRemer said the rule harmed farm employers and made it harder for them to hire people.
Chavez-DeRemer said the work visa changes will “come across fairly rapidly.”
“They want a solution, and they wanted it yesterday, and now we’re finally going to lean in,” she said.
North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong, a Republican, said the law around H2A visas, which permit people to do temporary or seasonal agricultural work, hasn’t changed since he was elected in 2018.
“There’s not been a single law passed but it’s a lot harder to get an H2A worker in 2024 than it was in 2018,” Armstrong said.
Later, Chavez-DeRemer said her department will work with Congress “on the longer-term issues of immigration reform as it needs to be addressed.”
New Mexico Smith’s workers reach deal to avoid strike over unfair labor practices — Andrea Vasquez, NM.news
The United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Local 1564, which represents thousands of grocery store employees in New Mexico, announced Monday afternoon that it has reached a deal on a new contract with Smith’s just days after 97% of its members at Albertsons and Smith’s Food and Drug Stores approved a strike authorization.
The Smith’s agreement requires a vote by union members before it becomes official. If it does, the preliminary deal would be for four years and raise wages by about $1 per hour for retail and meat workers
The union plans to work with Albertsons later this week to reach a similar deal.
Last week, workers at Albertsons and Smith’s locations in Albuquerque authorized the strike based on Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charges brought by the union earlier this month, citing ongoing contract disputes and alleged violations of labor law.
The vote followed formal charges filed by the union earlier this month, accusing both companies of delaying grievance and arbitration processes, withholding key bargaining information and colluding during negotiations.
“Our hard-working members love their customers,” said UFCW Local 1564 President Greg Frazier in a written statement. “They know them personally and every day they help them put food on the table. Our members shouldn’t have an expiring contract hanging over their heads as they do their jobs. They don’t want to strike, but they’re ready to if they don’t get the respect at the negotiating table that they deserve.”
The current contracts with Albertsons and Smith’s expired June 15 but have been temporarily extended through June 28 while union and company representatives continue negotiations.
UFCW Local 1564 represents approximately 2,500 Smith’s employees and 1,200 Albertsons workers across the state, including locations in Albuquerque with 14 Smith’s stores and 10 Albertsons.
The union had also criticized a previously proposed merger between Kroger, Smith’s parent company, and Albertsons.
The deal was blocked in 2022 by the Federal Trade Commission, with a federal court later upholding the decision.
UFCW Local 1564 opposed the merger, citing concerns about worker protections and market consolidation.
“We want to negotiate and come to an agreement, but we can’t do that if the employers are playing games. By sending this powerful message to both Albertsons and Smith’s, UFCW 1564 members are making clear that it’s time to negotiate in good faith and they’re united in that stance,” Frazier added.
UFCW Local 1564 is part of the UFCW International, the largest private-sector union in the U.S., representing 1.2 million workers across industries including grocery, retail, food processing and healthcare.
The union said it would withdraw its unfair labor practice charges against Smith’s after agreeing to the deal Monday but keep them in place against Albertsons.
For more information, visit www.my1564.com. Details on the 2025 negotiations can be found here.
Amid FEMA uncertainty, Western governors commit to more coordination on post-fire flooding — Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
Several governors of Western states on Tuesday endorsed formalizing a partnership to help each other deal with the aftermath of increasingly devastating wildfires, citing the long-term effects of post-fire flooding and also uncertainty about the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s future.
Governors from New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado attended a panel discussion on the topic of post-fire flooding at the Western Governors’ Association meeting in Santa Fe. The governors questioned experts — including state emergency response officials and a government landslide scientist — at a discussion called “Flood After Fire – Enhancing Safety in Post-Fire Landscapes.”
The governors described the phenomenon as increasingly urgent due to wildfires burning hotter and larger across the West. High-severity wildfires can change soil composition, converting even modest rainstorms that fall on burn scars into potential floods or debris flows.
In New Mexico, for example, post-fire flooding has impeded the recovery from the 2022 Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire, both for the City of Las Vegas as it tries to rebuild its water treatment facility and for smaller communities in and around the 534-square-mile burn scar. Other Western governors, including Spencer Cox of Utah, said they’re increasingly concerned about flooding after fires. That was the case when Cox came across the aftermath of a fire that burned this week.
“The first thing I thought when I drove into that community had nothing to do with the fire or the homes burned,” he said. “What I realized was, for the next five or six years, things are going to be pretty awful for those people because of the mudslides and the runoff, the sediment that comes down.”
The conversation occurred as at least six wildfires burn across New Mexico, and as burn scar areas in northern and southern New Mexico experience severe flooding or are warned to be on high-alert for it.
While no FEMA official sat on the panel, the agency’s past performance with post-fire flooding and its future loomed over the meeting. Participants mentioned the agency’s name more than 10 times, and speakers noted the challenges they’d face if the agency is dismantled, as called for briefly by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
While New Mexico’s United States Senators Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján say the agency should still exist, they recently called on FEMA to change the way it deals with post-fire flooding. The agency has “repeatedly struggled to respond effectively” to second-order effects from wildfires, including “cascading disasters such as landslides, flooding and water system failures that compound damage and slow recovery,” the senators wrote.
Collin Haffey, a Washington post-fire recovery leader who worked for New Mexico Forestry Division during the 2022 wildfires here, spoke on the panel and said there’s a “tremendous amount of uncertainty” about the federal government’s role in wildfire recovery going forward.
“If I’m trying to build my portion of the railroad track to meet them, I don’t know how far to go,” he said. “And I think that that lack of communication down to the local level is putting lives and recovery at risk.”
So he called on the WGA to create a formal agreement between Western states, one that could help states help each other deal with the aftermath of devastating wildfires amid uncertainty about what type of aid could come from the federal government.
“We have these peer-to-peer networks because I have their cell phone numbers,” Haffey said. “But that’s not necessarily the best.”
In response, Cox, who on Tuesday was named the new WGA chair, said he would spearhead an effort to create a regional partnership.
“Even if we weren’t, you know, seeing FEMA reform and changes happening there, we should have been doing this anyway,” he said. “And so let’s do it anyway.”
GOP plan to sell more than 3,200 square miles of federal lands is found to violate Senate rules- Matthew Daly, Associated Press
A plan to sell more than 3,200 square miles (8,300 square kilometers) of federal lands has been ruled out of Republicans’ big tax and spending cut bill after the Senate parliamentarian determined the proposal by Senate Energy Chairman Mike Lee would violate the chamber’s rules.
Lee, a Utah Republican, has proposed selling millions of acres of public lands in the West to states or other entities for use as housing or infrastructure. The plan would revive a longtime ambition of Western conservatives to cede lands to local control after a similar proposal failed in the House earlier this year.
The proposal received a mixed reception Monday from the governors of Western states. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, called it problematic in her state because of the close relationship residents have with public lands.
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, voiced qualified support.
“On a piece-by-piece basis where states have the opportunity to craft policies that make sense ... we can actually allow for some responsible growth in areas with communities that are landlocked at this point,” he said at a news conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where the Western Governors’ Association was meeting.
Lee, in a post on X Monday night, said he would keep trying.
“Housing prices are crushing families and keeping young Americans from living where they grew up. We need to change that,'' he wrote, adding that a revised plan would remove all U.S. Forest Service land from possible sale. Sales of sites controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management would be significantly reduced, Lee said, so that only land within 5 miles of population centers could be sold.
Environmental advocates celebrated the ruling late Monday by Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, but cautioned that Lee's proposal was far from dead.
“This is a victory for the American public, who were loud and clear: Public lands belong in public hands, for current and future generations alike,'' said Tracy Stone-Manning, president of The Wilderness Society. “Our public lands are not for sale.”
Carrie Besnette Hauser, president and CEO of the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, called the procedural ruling in the Senate “an important victory in the fight to protect America’s public lands from short-sighted proposals that would have undermined decades of bipartisan work to protect, steward and expand access to the places we all share.”
“But make no mistake: this threat is far from over,” Hauser added. “Efforts to dismantle our public lands continue, and we must remain vigilant as proposals now under consideration," including plans to roll back the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act and cut funding for land and water conservation, make their way through Congress, she said.
MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian, also ruled out a host of other Republican-led provisions Monday night, including construction of a mining road in Alaska and changes to speed permitting of oil and gas leases on federal lands.
While the parliamentarian’s rulings are advisory, they are rarely, if ever, ignored. Lawmakers are using a budget reconciliation process to bypass the Senate filibuster to pass President Donald Trump’s tax-cut package by a self-imposed July Fourth deadline.
Lee's plan revealed sharp disagreement among Republicans who support wholesale transfers of federal property to spur development and generate revenue, and other lawmakers who are staunchly opposed.
Land in 11 Western states from Alaska to New Mexico would be eligible for sale. Montana was carved out of the proposal after lawmakers there objected. In states such as Utah and Nevada, the government controls the vast majority of lands, protecting them from potential exploitation but hindering growth.
"Washington has proven time and again it can’t manage this land. This bill puts it in better hands,” Lee said in announcing the plan.
Housing advocates have cautioned that federal land is not universally suitable for affordable housing. Some of the parcels up for sale in Utah and Nevada under a House proposal were far from developed areas.
New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, the ranking Democrat on the energy committee, said Lee's plan would exclude Americans from places where they fish, hunt and camp.
“I don’t think it’s clear that we would even get substantial housing as a result of this,” Heinrich said earlier this month. “What I know would happen is people would lose access to places they know and care about and that drive our Western economies.”
Lawsuit challenges billions of dollars in Trump administration funding cuts- Michael Casey, Associated Press
Attorneys general from more than 20 states and Washington, D.C. filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday challenging billions of dollars in funding cuts made by the Trump administration that would fund everything from crime prevention to food security to scientific research.
The lawsuit filed in Boston is asking a judge to limit the Trump administration from relying on an obscure clause in the federal regulation to cut grants that don’t align with its priorities. Since January, the lawsuit argues that the administration has used that clause to cancel entire programs and thousands of grants that had been previously awarded to states and grantees.
“Defendants’ decision to invoke the Clause to terminate grants based on changed agency priorities is unlawful several times over,” the plaintiffs argued. “The rulemaking history of the Clause makes plain that the (Office of Management and Budget) intended for the Clause to permit terminations in only limited circumstances and provides no support for a broad power to terminate grants on a whim based on newly identified agency priorities.”
The lawsuit argues the Trump administration has used the clause for the basis of a “slash-and-burn campaign” to cut federal grants.
“Defendants have terminated thousands of grant awards made to Plaintiffs, pulling the rug out from under the States, and taking away critical federal funding on which States and their residents rely for essential programs,” the lawsuit added.
Rhode Island Attorney General Neronha said this lawsuit was just one of several the coalition of mostly Democratic states have filed over funding cuts. For the most part, they have largely succeeded in a string of legal victories to temporarily halt cuts.
This one, though, may be the broadest challenge to those funding cuts.
“It’s no secret that this President has gone to great lengths to intercept federal funding to the states, but what may be lesser known is how the Trump Administration is attempting to justify their unlawful actions,” Neronha said in a statement. “Nearly every lawsuit this coalition of Democratic attorneys general has filed against the Administration is related to its unlawful and flagrant attempts to rob Americans of basic programs and services upon which they rely. Most often, this comes in the form of illegal federal funding cuts, which the Administration attempts to justify via a so-called ‘agency priorities clause."
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said the lawsuit aimed to stop funding cuts he described as indiscriminate and illegal.
“There is no ‘because I don’t like you’ or ‘because I don’t feel like it anymore’ defunding clause in federal law that allows the President to bypass Congress on a whim," Tong said in a statement. “Since his first minutes in office, Trump has unilaterally defunded our police, our schools, our healthcare, and more. He can’t do that, and that’s why over and over again we have blocked him in court and won back our funding.”
The lawsuit argues that the OMB promulgated the use of the clause in question to justify the cuts. The clause in question, according to the lawsuit, refers to five words that say federal agents can terminate grants if the award "no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.”
“The Trump Administration has claimed that five words in this Clause—'no longer effectuates . . . agency priorities'—provide federal agencies with virtually unfettered authority to withhold federal funding any time they no longer wish to support the programs for which Congress has appropriated funding,” the lawsuit said.
US Education Secretary defends resumption of student loan collections in NM speech - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
Speaking at the Western Governors’ Association meeting in Santa Fe on Monday, United States Education Secretary Linda McMahon defended her agency’s return to collecting student loan payments from millions of borrowers, calling the pandemic-era pause “confusing” for students and their parents.
On May 5, the Education Department announced it would resume federal student loan collections after President Joe Biden’s administration paused them in March 2020. In a news release, McMahon said the resumption of collections meant that, “American taxpayers will no longer be forced to serve as collateral for irresponsible student loan policies.”
During her keynote address, McMahon said the Education Department had already received about $200 million in payments. The payments represent the first collection in more than five years and come after the Supreme Court stymied Biden’s efforts to forgive billions in student loan debt during his presidency.
McMahon said times have changed since March 2020, and resumption of collections, among other benefits, eliminates confusion borrowers face about whether and when to repay their loans with potential loan forgiveness hanging over their heads.
“One father told me: He said, ‘You know, my kids were covered under an educational trust fund that I set up for them, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to pay out that money, because if it was going to be forgiven, was that short changing them in the long run?’” she said.
More than 10% of New Mexicans have student loan debt, according to EducationData.org, which says that 226,000 New Mexicans in 2024 had an average debt of $34,071.
A spokesperson for the New Mexico Higher Education Department did not respond to a request for comment from Source New Mexico about McMahon’s comments.
In addition to her comments on student loans, McMahon defended President Donald Trump’s efforts to pare back the Education Department, saying she does not see what he’s doing as a “cut to education” but, rather, a means of reducing bureaucracy and empowering states to take the lead in their students’ education.
During her speech, protesters outside the Eldorado Hotel could be heard shouting “Not for sale! Not for sale!” More than 1,000 people protested the budget reconciliation bill making its way through the United States Senate that would mandate the sale of up to 3 million acres of federal public lands.
The chants echoing through the meeting hall prompted New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to explain the reasoning behind the protests and offer an apology “for the noise, [but] don’t apologize for community engagement.”
Albuquerque Public Schools will ask voters to approve $350 million in GO bonds. Here’s what that could fund- Noah Alcala Bach, Albuquerque Journal
Albuquerque Public Schools will be banking on voters this November to approve $350 million in general obligation bonds so it can take on major projects, improve cooling on campuses, complete construction projects in the face of skyrocketing costs and fund three new facilities tailored to student needs amid declining enrollment.
Part of that proposed bond package, if approved, will go to projects voters approved in previous years that have increased in cost, as $173 million would be allocated to “project budget shortfalls” across 13 campuses.
In 2019, the construction cost per square foot for the district averaged around $260.90; now, it’s priced at $542.95 and may continue to increase. The rise is due to supply chain issues, increased costs of building materials, labor shortages coupled with rising wages for construction workers and uncertainty around tariffs, according to Kizito Wijenje, executive director of the district’s capital master plan.
“You don’t wait till all the eggs are in one basket to start a project; you’ll never start anything, and inflation will kill you,” Wijenje said. “Our motto is promises made, promises kept.”
When it comes to the other improvements the district hopes to make, $40.2 million will be used to add refrigerant cooling to 20 campuses — five middle schools, 14 elementary schools and one alternative high school. The campuses selected either had the oldest or poorest-functioning cooling systems, according to Wijenje, who explained the selection process as “worst comes first.”
“The thing that I hear most about from the community is, honestly, HVAC air conditioning,” APS board President Danielle Gonzales said. “I think everyone knows that kids can’t learn unless they feel safe and comfortable, and that’s a big part of the air conditioning.”
The other large category the district will request funding for is $70.4 million for “right-sizing priorities,” which include building a special needs facility on the city’s West Side, a facility for career and technical education training and a classroom block at Taylor Middle School.
In December, the APS board voted to close Taft Middle School, which had about 200 students, according to the district’s dashboard. The majority of those students will go to Taylor Middle School.
To accommodate those students, the district plans to use a $30 million classroom block, and Wijenje describes it as a cost-saving measure since the cost to renovate Taft would be more than making improvements at Taylor.
About $15 million for “right-sizing” will be used for a new special needs education facility — the district doesn’t have such a campus west of the Rio Grande.
As for the technical education training facility, the district officials said it could alleviate increasing labor costs caused by labor shortages by training students who could someday take on contracting jobs. APS will spend $25.4 million on the facility.
“The idea is, there’s such a shortage everywhere, and so you’ve got to start somewhere,” APS spokesperson Martin Salazar said. “The idea here is, it’s a win-win; you basically get students, expose them to these various careers, get them started. They’re able to graduate, to go hit the ground running.”
In recent years, voters have consistently supported APS bonds, except for a February 2019 vote when they rejected them. However, the district put the items on the November 2019 ballot, and they passed. If voters don’t pass the bonds this November, Wijenje said the district will “make do with what we’ve got.”
“We’ll nickel and dime and use duct tape, but again, that’s what you get. The conditions will not be optimal,” he said. “Your taxes will go down, but you’re not going to be paying for much-needed services for your community.”