With federal government shut down, New Mexico Democrats advance special session bills - Dan Boyd and Natalie Robbins, Albuquerque Journal
The federal government might have been shut down Wednesday, but the halls of the Roundhouse buzzed with a level of activity that’s rarely seen in fall.
New Mexico lawmakers moved quickly to advance bills focused on food assistance, health care coverage and rural hospitals as a special session called by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham got underway.
The rapid movement on bills crafted in closed-door meetings during recent weeks put legislators on track to wrap up the special session by as soon as Thursday — or just in time for the start of the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.
Majority Democrats described the special session proposals as necessary to protect state residents from the impacts of a federal budget bill signed this summer by President Donald Trump.
“New Mexico is ready for this fight,” said House Speaker Javier Martínez, D-Albuquerque, during a news conference before the start of the special session, citing the state’s ample budget reserves.
But he and other leading Democrats said the special session bills, even if approved, would only partially address the impact of the federal budget changes that are slated to be phased in over the next five years. U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., said last week those changes could lead to $4 billion in annual spending shortfalls for the state.
“The reality is we’re not going to be able to backfill all of that,” said Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe. “There are going to be some tough choices.”
In all, five bills were introduced Wednesday and sent to committees for debate. Other bills were filed by Republican legislators dealing with judicial crime, child welfare and the state’s medical malpractice laws, but those bills will not move forward since they do not fall under the governor’s special session proclamation.
While it often takes weeks for bills to get a hearing during New Mexico’s regular legislative sessions, the measures authorized for consideration by Lujan Grisham moved to the House and Senate floors in a matter of hours.
Some of the bills advanced with bipartisan support, including a measure expanding the uses of a rural health care fund that passed the Senate on a 39-0 vote. But other measures moved forward on party-line votes.
Republican lawmakers, especially in the House, objected to some Democratic-backed bills and reiterated criticism that they had been largely shut out of the pre-special session negotiations, though House Speaker Martínez said they had not asked to be involved.
“We can do better when we do it together,” said Rep. Cathrynn Brown, R-Carlsbad, during a Wednesday committee hearing.
In addition, some GOP legislators expressed concern that proposed changes to New Mexico’s health insurance exchange — intended to lessen the impact of looming cost increases — could lead to a state health care affordability fund being depleted.
“It seems like we’re opening the floodgates here,” said House Minority Whip Alan Martinez, R-Bernalillo.
But Democrats described the health care coverage bill, House Bill 2, as urgently needed to ensure middle-income state residents don’t face hefty insurance cost hikes at the end of this year.
“It’s in everyone’s interest to have as many people as possible covered by health insurance,” said House Majority Leader Reena Szczepanski, D-Santa Fe, who is one of the measure’s sponsors.
A call for civility
The special session began with top-ranking Democrats and Republicans in both legislative chambers calling on members to dial back the political rhetoric.
“We’ve had victims and perpetrators on both sides, and the result is a country that is closer to mass violence than we’ve seen since the Civil War,” Senate President Pro Tem Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, said Wednesday morning.
The exhortations came after the recent assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and other instances of political violence, including bomb threats targeting top-ranking Democrats in the New Mexico Legislature.
State senators held moments of silence for Kirk and for Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, who was killed in an act of political violence in June.
“We all commit to reject the language that has created such a divide and a dangerous environment for all of us,” said House GOP floor leader Gail Armstrong of Magdalena.
Most of the 112 legislators were present for the start of the special session on Wednesday, though four Republican lawmakers were absent.
Those legislators — Sens. James Townsend of Artesia, Larry Scott of Hobbs and Nicholas Paul of Alamogordo, along with Rep. Jimmy Mason of Artesia — were either dealing with scheduling conflicts or illness, according to GOP legislative staffers.
Meanwhile, protesters showed up at the Roundhouse for at least two different causes. One group built a mock prison cell to show its opposition to New Mexico’s three federal immigration detention facilities, while another group criticized Israel’s military actions in the Gaza war.
But no disruptions or incidents were reported inside the Roundhouse.
Bills could take effect in short order
If approved by lawmakers, at least some of the special session bills could take effect immediately upon the governor’s signature.
That includes a bill authorizing $144 million in new spending, House Bill 1, that would earmark funding for food banks, public radio and television programs and a state rural health care delivery fund.
But House Republicans expressed fierce opposition to a $3 million earmark in the bill for nonprofit health care providers. That funding could flow in part to Planned Parenthood, which performs abortion services and has seen its federal funding cut by the Trump administration.
“You can do what you want with your body, just don’t ask taxpayers to pay for it,” said Rep. Rebecca Dow, R-Truth or Consequences.
After a lengthy debate, the House voted 43-24 late Wednesday to approve the bill, sending it to the Senate.
The other special session bills filed at the Roundhouse require a two-thirds majority vote in order to take effect immediately upon the governor’s signature. If that vote threshold is not met, they would take effect in January.
One proposal that barely met the two-thirds vote requirement was Senate Bill 3, which passed the Senate on a 26-13 vote and now moves on to the House.
The bill would shift the standard for children’s immunization requirements, as well as recommendations for the statewide vaccine purchasing program and mandatory insurance coverage, away from federal bodies like the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, to state authorities like the New Mexico Department of Health, and physician groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics.
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who made sweeping changes to federal vaccine policy this year — fired all 17 members of ACIP in June and replaced them with his own appointees.
The legislative measure faced opposition from some Republicans, including Sen. Jay Block, R-Rio Rancho, who told the Senate that conflicting data from multiple authorities would increase vaccine skepticism.
“This is going to leave parents not knowing who to trust,” Block said.
However, the bill ultimately won approval after Democrats like Sen. Cindy Nava of Bernalillo argued that it would not fully eliminate insight from federal vaccine authorities, but would instead give lawmakers the opportunity to consider additional opinions from physicians and from state authorities.
Immigrant advocates: NM ICE detention ban should have been on special session agenda - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
Immigrant advocates staged a small demonstration Wednesday morning at the New Mexico Roundhouse, criticizing legislative leaders and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham for not including in the special session legislation banning immigrant detention centers from operating in the state.
Amid President Donald Trump’s mass deportation push, three New Mexico detention centers are facing increasing scrutiny for contracting with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold detainees. The number of detainees has steadily increased in the facilities in Torrance, Cibola and Otero counties since Trump’s second term began, according to the latest data.
A measure to prohibit ICE from holding detainees at New Mexico detention centers failed during the session early this year after passing the state House but not the Senate. Last month, Lujan Grisham excluded it from the agenda for the session beginning Wednesday, saying through a spokesperson that she left it out after Democratic leaders requested a “scaled-back session agenda that did not include the immigration detention center bill.”
That said, the governor’s Communications Director Michael Coleman said in prior statements the governor is “committed” to legislation banning ICE detention centers in the state, and “hopes that lawmakers will pass the strongest bill possible.”
Fernanda Banda, one of more than a dozen advocates who gathered in front of the Roundhouse on Wednesday morning, told Source New Mexico that potentially waiting until January is “not good enough,” with people being detained in New Mexico and across the country “left and right. “
“If the governor doesn’t want to put us on the agenda, we’ll bring detention to her,” she said.
The protest featured a handful of demonstrators sitting in a makeshift jail cell. They read statements they had collected from ICE detainees held in the Torrance County Detention Center, most of them during Trump’s second term, which described being separated from their families and held in poor conditions, including dealing with a sewage backup and water shortage earlier this year.
Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth (D-Santa Fe) told Source New Mexico after a news conference Wednesday morning that he and other lawmakers have already committed to making ICE detention a piece of priority legislation that the Legislature takes up during the first half of the session.
But he said he’s still not sure whether it will pass the Senate. “I don’t know yet,” he said. “That’s why we need the time to get it right.”
NM congressional delegation say Republicans could have avoided shutdown — if they had wanted to - Julia Goldberg, Source New Mexico
New Mexico’s five-member Congressional delegation on Wednesday during a virtual news conference described the federal government shutdown as “entirely preventable,” an “elaborate smokescreen” and proof of Congressional Republicans’ “failure to govern.”
All five members — all Democrats — said they remained in Washington, D.C., prepared to find a bipartisan agreement that would allow the government to operate. The federal government started shutting down early Wednesday after Congress failed to approve a funding bill before the new fiscal year began.
Affordable Care Act tax credits, set to expire at the end of the year without congressional intervention, became a sticking point in negotiations. New Mexico lawmakers intend to address that issue during a special legislation session that also kicked off Wednesday. The session also will focus on shoring up Medicaid and federal food assistance due to cuts made to both in the Republican federal budget bill.
U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich called the impasse and shutdown “entirely preventable” during Wednesday’s news conference.
“Republicans obviously are in control of the House,” Heinrich said. “They’re in control of the Senate, and they hold the White House. They had every single lever that they needed to negotiate a deal, and all Democrats have asked for was to protect New Mexicans and Americans across the country from higher health care costs.”
Heinrich noted that during events in Las Cruces last week he heard “from doctors and community leaders and parents…that if we don’t do something right now, hard working New Mexicans will be forced to choose between paying rent, paying utility bills, paying their car payment, or paying for their health care.
In other words, “hardworking people are going to suffer,” he said. “It’s irresponsible…Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress have spent the last nine months driving up health care costs and fueling inflation, and now they’ve manufactured a new crisis, the shutdown of our federal government, and the effects will be devastating.”
U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján emphasized that Trump is “making a choice to fire hard working employees and make this as painful as possible for the American people. It’s his choice. The president could choose not to do the things that he’s doing today, or he can choose to inflict pain, and he’s been clear that he’s going to choose to inflict pain on the American people.”
U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury, who represents the state’s 1st Congressional District, noted the contrast between Washington, D.C. and New Mexico.
“New Mexico is really a split screen right now,” she said. “In Washington, D.C., you have a Republican-controlled Congress and White House that is refusing to negotiate, to keep the government open, to keep our federal workers employed, and refusing to fix the health care of millions of Americans who will lose health care in the coming weeks if they don’t act. Meanwhile [in New Mexico], you have a Democratic-led state Legislature and governor who have called a special session today to try to fix what Republicans broke at the federal level.”
As for the shutdown, Stansbury, added, Republicans “wanted” it to happen. “They have been planning for this for months,” she said, “but they are trying to create an elaborate smoke screen that makes the American people think that they’re trying to act when everything that they’ve done has set the mechanics up for a shutdown so that they can carry out their policies that they laid out in Project 2025 — that is what is actually happening here.”
Project 2025 refers to a conservative roadmap to Trump’s second term that U.S. Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought played a key role in creating.
“Part of what the OMB director is doing is using this as an opportunity to shut down work in offices that they don’t support,” Stansbury said.
All five members said New Mexico will feel the impacts of the federal shutdown.
“Almost 18,000 service members in New Mexico are at risk of not getting paid on time,” Heinrich said. “The same goes for our nearly 30,000 government employees who are at risk of not being paid until the shutdown is over and we don’t know how long this is going to be. Farmers won’t be able to access new loans. Families living in rural communities will not be able to get loans either. During hunting season, when many of you have already planned your annual fall harvest to fill your freezer, our public lands employees will be limited in the services that they can provide, or even the maintenance that they can complete. For most people, these are scary prospects. That’s part of the point: They want to sow fear and confusion, but the bottom line is that people are going to get hurt.”
All the members reiterated their commitment to finding common ground with their Republican counterparts, but “I’m not going to bend the knee or sell our New Mexicans,” U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez, who represents the southern part of the state in Congressional District 2, said.
Bottom line, U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, of the 3rd Congressional District, said: “Republicans control the government…their failure to pass a funding bill is the Republicans’ failure to govern. I know people keep asking: Who will be blamed for the shutdown? I think that’s the wrong question. I think the real question is: Who feels the pain? And who will feel the pain if we don’t address the healthcare crisis?”
By the numbers: International hot air balloon fiesta to lift off in Albuquerque - By Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press
It's the largest ballooning event in the world and one of the most photographed spectacles, drawing hundreds of thousands of spectators over nine days to watch as pilots from around the globe take to the skies in colorful hot air balloons.
The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta kicks off Saturday with a mass ascension at Balloon Fiesta Park.
Fiesta attendees can walk among the inflating balloons and talk to pilots while scarfing down breakfast burritos and sipping piñon coffee. The roaring propane burners are not enough to drown out the cheers and whistles as the balloons drift upward.
The show is made even better by a combination of clear and cool mornings and a phenomenon known as the Albuquerque box: Different wind directions at different elevations allow pilots to adjust their flight patterns to stay close to the launch field, saturating the view for those on the ground.
The annual show has become quite a production over the last five decades. Here's a by-the-numbers look:
53
Years the balloon fiesta has been held, having grown from a modest launch of 13 balloons in 1972 at a shopping mall parking lot.
543
Pilots registered to fly this year. More than 40 U.S. states and a dozen countries are represented, ranging from Belgium and Brazil to Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand and China. For 59 pilots, it will be their first time.
102
Specially shaped balloons, nearly a dozen of which will be making their debut. Fan favorites include Darth Vader, Smokey Bear, a family of giant bees and Airabelle the cow.
5,073
The elevation at Balloon Fiesta Park, in feet. At takeoff, balloons already are nearly a mile (1.6 kilometers) above sea level. Few if any rise above the nearby Sandia Mountains, which border the city's east side and top out at 10,678 feet (3,255 meters).
61
Launch directors, affectionately referred to as zebras for their black and white striped uniforms. Like referees, they're not shy about blowing their whistles as they check the airspace above the balloons to ensure it's safe to ascend. Zebras go through three years of training, including two years spent on the field.
78
Acres of grass that make up the launch area, equivalent to 56 football fields. There are 208 launch sites within it from which balloons are rolled out, inflated and set soaring. As for landing, it can be a challenge when balloons drift. Pilots scan for any open spaces within the city where they can safely touch down. Sometimes it's grassy park, other times it's a parking lot or an empty patch of dirt.
838,337
Guest visits during the 2024 show, with 85% of them coming from outside of New Mexico. Spending on lodging, food, rental cars and other expenses resulted in an estimated $216 million economic impact for the metro area.
40
Food vendors, some of which stock up on tons of tortillas to dish out an unfathomable number of breakfast burritos. For pilots, the grab-and-go bundles often double as hand warmers as they prepare to take flight. Green chile cheeseburgers are another favorite, and a seemingly endless flow of coffee and hot cocoa fuels spectators in the predawn hours. The concession area stretches more than a third of a mile (half a kilometer).
375
Portable toilets. They're a necessity with that much coffee and green chile going around.
60,000
Collector pins for sale. They come in all sizes and shapes, and there are days set aside just for trading among collectors.
3,000
Volunteers needed to produce the event. For some the work begins months in advance. Their wide range of duties include mailing event posters, staffing ticket booths, installing flags, charging batteries for the evening drone shows and managing the temporary RV lots and coveted, luxurious "glamping" tents. Volunteers also coordinate and serve in chase crews that help with balloon landings.