Monsoon rains headed to Albuquerque this week - Karmina Conde, Albuquerque Journal
The first storms of the monsoon season are on the way. Expect more moisture and lower temperatures this week, according to the National Weather Service.
The Albuquerque area could see “small hail, gusty winds and flash flooding … with stronger storms,” NWS reported.
Wednesday’s forecast includes a 36% chance of rain. Chances of precipitation drop to 20% on Thursday.
It ramps up again Friday with a 37% chance of rain. The forecast calls for a heavy storm in the afternoon.
Chances of a storm decrease over the weekend, with a 30% chance of rain on Saturday and 20% on Sunday.
Arroyos and roadways can rapidly fill with water even from storms miles away. The NWS recommends tracking weather alerts, using caution when walking on wet surfaces, and learning which roadways are likely to flood.
Energy expert tells NM lawmakers Project Jupiter could roll back air quality progress by 20 years - Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico
Environmental advocates on Monday told New Mexico lawmakers that power plants built specifically for large data centers such as Project Jupiter could undo more than 20 years of progress on air quality.
David Baake, an attorney and energy policy consultant for the regional conservation nonprofit Western Resource Advocates, told lawmakers on the interim Water and Natural Resources Committee that data centers seeking to build “microgrids” — power sources that do not connect to the existing grid — often utilize natural gas or fuel cell technology, both of which emit significant amounts of greenhouse gases into the air.
He specifically pointed to Project Jupiter, the Oracle and OpenAI data center campus under construction in Doña Ana County. The project’s developers initially sought permitting to build two natural gas plants to power the facility, but later revised their proposal to instead rely on fuel cells, which convert natural gas, biogas or hydrogen into electricity.
Documents filed with the New Mexico Environment Department show that while the revamped proposal would emit fewer pollutants than two natural gas plants, it would still be sizable. In fact, Baake told lawmakers Monday, it would emit more than all of the existing power plants in New Mexico combined.
“Basically that one project would put us back at 2005 levels of CO2 from the electric sector,” he said.
The state Environment Department will hold a public hearing on Project Jupiter’s pending air quality permit application, but has yet to schedule it.
Baake’s remarks came at the end of a day of hearings revolving around grid modernization, emissions and other energy challenges facing the state. Throughout the day, discussions often pivoted to hyperscale data centers and their potential effects on the state’s environment.
Committee members said each of their remaining meetings throughout the interim session will include hearings on data centers.
Earlier in the day, one lawmaker and a representative from PNM, the state’s largest electric provider, said they believed a 2025 law exempted microgrid developments from the Energy Transition Act’s requirements for utilities to use 50% renewable energy in 2030 and 80% in 2040. Baake reiterated that point during his presentation.
“Hyperscale data centers were just kind of unheard of” in 2019 when the ETA was unveiled, he said.
Microgrids are also exempt from certain state-level regulations, too. Cholla Khoury, chief of staff for the Public Regulation Commission, spoke alongside Baake and told lawmakers that the PRC only regulates public utilities.
“If it’s not tied into the grid at all, they can do whatever they want back there as far as PRC is concerned,” she said, adding that microgrid developments would become subject to commission regulation if they sought to tie into the existing grid.
Mirroring a national trend, lawmakers from both political parties questioned how to ensure such developments support the state’s renewable energy goals.
“The majority of these facilities being built nationally right now…originally came up with the concept of using alternative energy. All of them converted to natural gas,” Rep. Randall Pettigrew (R-Lovington) said during Monday’s hearing. “How do we fit this into the ETA?”
Pettigrew wondered if data center developers ought to consider building near the Permian Basin and relying on the area’s natural gas.
Rep. Micaela Lara Cadena (D-Mesilla), who has long been critical of Project Jupiter, said she believed the 2025 law governing microgrids “blew up” the Energy Transition Act. She is part of a group proposing a large-scale data center moratorium in next year’s legislative session.
Baake, for his part, recommended that lawmakers revive the Microgrid Oversight Act, state legislation proposed in the session earlier this year that would have more closely regulated microgrids and required them to comply with all of the ETA’s requirements. It died after clearing the Senate.
Pat Oliphant, fearless Pulitzer-winning political cartoonist, dies at 90 - By Wufei Yu, Associated Press
Pat Oliphant, an influential political cartoonist known for creating caricatures of U.S. and world leaders, died Monday. He was 90.
Oliphant died at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from age-related issues, said his son, Grant Oliphant.
A multidimensional artist who also created sculptures, lithographs and oil paintings, Oliphant was widely considered the most syndicated editorial cartoonist in the U.S. During the 1980s, his daily political cartoons appeared in more than 500 publications in the country and around the world.
For over five decades, Oliphant's work ridiculed powerful figures — from President Lyndon B. Johnson to Donald Trump — with a blunt and meticulous stroke. He drew Jimmy Carter with large teeth and lips, alluding to his background as a farmer and the cultural stereotype of adaptation to rural work, and depicted Ronald Reagan, whom he thought was uninterested in the suffering of the American people, with a cork in his ear.
Those who knew Oliphant said his gift was to merge the shrewdness of an observer of the political scene with a witty sense of humor into art.
"He redefined what it meant to be a political cartoonist and to be fearless in his work," said Bill Banowsky, director of the documentary A Savage Art: The Life & Cartoons of Pat Oliphant. "His work has a fierce pursuit of bringing injustice to light. And he was very effective."
Oliphant tackled controversial subjects that were largely deemed unacceptable by the establishment at the time. That included the Catholic Church and its pedophilia scandals in 2002 and Israel's offensive against Hamas in Gaza in 2008. But his ethnic caricatures also drew complaints about false stereotypes and racism from organizations like the Asian American Journalists Association and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
Born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1935, Oliphant started as a copy desk aide at a local newspaper, where he discovered his interest in art while seeing a cartoonist at work. His first in-house cartoonist job was at The Advertiser in his hometown.
"He decided cartooning could merge his interests in art and commentary," Grant said. "He wanted to be the best in the world."
About a decade after he moved to the U.S., Oliphant joined The Denver Post in 1964 and won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1967. He thought the prize committee had honored the weakest piece of work he'd submitted for consideration, and criticized the prize process itself afterward.
He later joined The Washington Star and moved to Santa Fe in 2002.
Oliphant began losing his eyesight due to glaucoma around the age of 80 and had to retire from professional cartoon work, Grant said. Still, he painted at home in Santa Fe.
"He loved the creative ferment of Santa Fe. We had constant parties at his house far into the night with a wide range of thinkers, musicians and writers," said Hampton Sides, a Santa Fe-based writer and friend of Oliphant. "He enjoyed the constant interplay of ideas."
With the current political environment, Grant said it seems society has lost the capacity to receive humor and debate and contrary opinions.
"My father challenged the idea of the political establishment being sublimely serious as it is," Grant said. "We really need that in today's America."
New Mexico environmentalist group on ‘high alert’ after Trump’s shrinks Utah national monuments - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
A New Mexico environmentalist group is sounding the alarm about what President Donald Trump’s decision to dramatically reduce the footprints of two national monuments in Utah could mean for several “beloved” national monuments in New Mexico.
Trump on Monday signed a pair of executive orders to shrink Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah by about 3 million acres or 90% of their original size. The decision drew outrage across the West from environmental advocates and Indigenous organizations, including the Navajo Nation and Zuni Tribe, who said they were not consulted in the decision.
Trump and Utah’s top Republican leaders said the reduction will allow the remaining protected lands to be better managed and preserved while also enabling better public access.
But Mark Allison, executive director of New Mexico Wild, told Source NM on Tuesday that Trump’s move was a “travesty” and illegal, in his opinion. And he said the move opens the door for Trump to keep stripping protections from national monuments across the country, including three in New Mexico that he said might be next on Trump’s list.
Allison noted that the monuments — Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, Río Grande del Norte,and Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks — all have similarities with Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.
Democratic presidents designated all three monuments relatively recently, and leaked U.S. Interior Department documents have listed those monuments as potential targets for reductions.
Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks was one of six the Trump administration identified as targets, along with the two Utah mountains that lost protections Monday, according to a Washington Post report in April 2025.
Also, when he was a member of Congress representing New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District, newly confirmed U.S. Bureau of Land Management Director Steve Pearce opposed the designation of the Organ-Mountains Desert Peaks monument near Las Cruces.
“So all that means we’re on high alert,” Allison said.
If Trump comes next for any New Mexico national monument, Allison said, New Mexico Wild would prepare to fight any reductions in court and mobilize New Mexicans in opposition.
A Trump rollback of any New Mexico site will be met by “fierce opposition by the overwhelming majority of New Mexicans,” Allison said. “These are places that we know and love, and we would be united as New Mexicans opposing that.”
Albuquerque Hispano Chamber taps South Valley native as new leader - Kylie Garcia, Albuquerque Journal
The Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce has named a new leader.
Roberta Ricci, the chamber’s chief experience officer, will become its new president and CEO starting Monday. She succeeds Ernie C’deBaca, who has held the position for nearly a decade and announced in April his plans to retire.
“(W)e look forward to Roberta leading our chamber into its next chapter with vision and strong commitment to our business community,” said Casey Anglada DeRaad, chair of the chamber’s board of directors, which conducted a weeks-long national search before choosing Ricci.
The announcement follows 50 years of operation for the chamber, which offers resources and support to Albuquerque entrepreneurs and businesses, particularly in the Hispanic and small-business communities.
Ricci has been with the chamber as its chief experience officer for the last four years, helping shape the organization’s membership engagement, strategic partnerships, and programs and events.
A native New Mexican, Ricci was born and raised in Albuquerque’s South Valley and launched her professional career in higher education at the University of New Mexico after returning to school later in life, she said.
After years of working at UNM’s Alumni Relations Office, she moved to the Central New Mexico Community College’s foundation as its director of development for four years. She then served as executive director of the National Hispanic Cultural Center Foundation for three years before joining the Hispano Chamber.
When offered the top role, Ricci said she felt inspired to accept because the chamber’s mission of contributing to a greater cause aligns with her personal values.
“I really think that the chamber is a heartbeat of our community,” Ricci said. “We’re there to support our businesses, our artists, our performers and our local community to make sure that we’re all growing and thriving.”
In her new role, Ricci is tasked with leading chamber initiatives aimed at supporting local entrepreneurs and small businesses, advocating for pro-business policies in local government, strengthening partnerships in the public and private sectors, and expanding opportunities for businesses throughout Albuquerque and New Mexico.
Ricci said she also looks forward to continuing and expanding the chamber’s international trade partnerships that C’deBaca helped cultivate.
C’deBaca, whose last day with the chamber is Friday, is optimistic about the chamber’s future.
“(Ricci) knows this organization, understands our mission and has dedicated her career to creating opportunities for businesses and our community,” C’deBaca said. “I have every confidence she will lead the Hispano Chamber to even greater success, and I look forward to seeing all that she and the team will accomplish together.”
Ricci said she is stepping into the role with “tremendous excitement” but also “a profound sense of responsibility,” as the appointment comes at a time when Ricci would describe New Mexico’s business landscape as “hurting.”
“It’s been really difficult for (local businesses),” Ricci said, citing inflation, scarce resources and staffing difficulties. Longtime local businesses are shutting their doors as a result — an issue Ricci said she wants to address through outreach, planning and execution.
“We need to figure out how to make this work for our community,” Ricci said.
Federal judge tosses DOJ suit seeking state voter list - Olivier Uttyebouck, Albuquerque Journal
A federal judge in Albuquerque dismissed a lawsuit on Tuesday filed by the Trump administration demanding that New Mexico turn over detailed voter registration data to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Judith C. Herrera adds New Mexico to a growing list of states where federal judges have tossed similar suits filed by the DOJ requesting state voter registration rolls and personal voter information.
The DOJ filed the lawsuit in December asking a federal judge to order the state to turn over an electronic copy of New Mexico's voter registration list, including names, dates of birth, addresses and other data.
The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico against Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver by attorneys in the DOJ's Civil Rights Division.
Toulouse Oliver on Tuesday cheered Herrera's decision to toss the suit.
"Federal and state legal guardrails on social security numbers and dates of birth exist for the identity protection of every voter in our state,” Toulouse Oliver said in a statement.
“I absolutely will not risk any disclosure of voters’ private data, as it could carry very real and severe consequences for the personal lives of New Mexicans participating in our democratic process,” she said.
The DOJ's lawsuit alleged that former-U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi's office sent a letter to Toulouse Oliver in September seeking information "regarding New Mexico's compliance with federal election law."
The letter demanded a current electronic copy of its computerized statewide voter registration list. Information requested in the letter included each voter's full name, date of birth, residential address, state driver's license number and the last four digits of the registrant's Social Security number.
Toulouse Oliver responded in a Sept. 23 letter refusing the request.
Herrera noted in her order that the DOJ sent similar demand letters to 48 states and the District of Columbia.
"After thirty states and D.C. did not comply with the DOJ's request, the DOJ sued each state to compel production," Herrera wrote. "To date, twelve of those cases have been dismissed."
All the DOJ lawsuits alleged that the federal government is entitled to personal voter data under the 1960 Civil Rights Act, the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993.
In her ruling, Herrera found that the DOJ failed to show that New Mexico violated federal laws as alleged in the suit.
"Nowhere does the DOJ articulate any factual suggestion that New Mexico has violated the NVRA or HAVA," Herrera wrote. Nor did the DOJ show that New Mexico has a pattern of noncompliance with the laws, she said.
New Mexico advocates back effort to expand federal radiation exposure compensation program - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
A bipartisan group of congressional lawmakers announced Tuesday they will soon seek to further expand the 2025 federal Radiation and Exposure Compensation Act to include more communities sickened by historic nuclear tests and production.
The virtual news conference featured elected members of Congress from Missouri and Nevada, as well as U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.), and advocates including New Mexico’s Tina Cordova, who founded the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium. The consortium has advocated for federal compensation for those exposed to radiation from the 1945 Trinity Test.
Last year, Congress greatly expanded RECA to include Downwinders and post-1971 uranium miners in New Mexico, along with Downwinders in the states of Idaho and Utah, and portions of Nevada and Arizona. But Cordova and Vasquez said the bill still does not go far enough, and the application period’s 2027 expiration date comes too quickly, to fully compensate those who can trace their radiation exposure to various cancers and other ailments in the decades since.
“I think that it’s high time our government realizes that we are not going to stand for justice for some,” Cordova said. “We are in favor of justice for not just a few, but justice for the many, and we will continue to fight until we receive justice for all.”
Cordova said two close friends who have joined her in the roughly two-decade fight for compensation do not qualify for RECA because they have prostate and bone cancer, diseases ineligible for compensation. Her brother and sister have skin cancer and kidney cancer, which also do not qualify, she said.
Vasquez and other speakers Tuesday said the legislation will extend eligibility to additional qualifying illnesses, allow the parents of radiation victims to apply and expand geographic eligibility. The bill, the Radiation Exposure Reauthorization Act of 2026, is expected later this summer.
In addition to expanding qualifying illnesses, the bill would allow the use of affidavits in cases in which claimants, predominantly in rural and Indigenous communities, are unable to collect what are often decades-old medical records.
The bill would also increase compensation from $100,000 to $150,000, Vasquez said.
States that would be fully eligible under the proposed expansion include Arizona, Colorado, Guam, Montana and Nevada, and the bill would cover communities in St. Louis, Missouri, Washington, Ohio, and elsewhere whose residents were exposed to waste from the Manhattan Project.
Finally, the bill would extend the application period by 15 years, which Vasquez said will enable more eligible people to apply and also potentially decrease fraud.
Shortly after the 2025 expansion went into effect, the New Mexico Department of Justice warned about potential fraud by organizations and attorneys soliciting paid work filing claims for recipients.
“The sense of urgency around filing has opened the door to rampant fraud in communities across New Mexico,” Vasquez said. “Bad actors are preying on our communities because of this short timeline, because folks are very eager and desperate to get their rightfully owed compensation.”
According to data from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Division, which is administering the RECA funds, the division has received roughly 4,400 claims for RECA under the 2025 expansion. Of those, 558 have been approved, amounting to $55.8 million in compensation. About 3,800 claims are still pending, and three have been denied.
This story was updated following publication to add information about which states were added in the 2025 RECA expansion.
