PNM, private equity firm extend merger deadline to mid-2027 after regulators deem stock sale illegal
—Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico
The parent company of New Mexico’s largest electricity provider and the private equity firm looking to acquire it are extending the deadline for their pending merger to mid-2027.
The announcement came weeks after state regulators found that TXNM Energy Inc., which owns PNM, and private equity firm Blackstone Infrastructure violated state law by conducting a $400 million stock sale in 2025 without first gaining approval from the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission. After the commission’s decision on the stock sale earlier this month, neither PNM nor Blackstone officials would say if they intended to continue pursuing the merger.
However, in a joint announcement Friday, officials for TXNM and Blackstone said they extended the deadline for the acquisition to May 31, 2027.
“We remain committed to our proposed partnership with Blackstone Infrastructure because it is critical to TXNM Energy’s long-term ability to provide clean, affordable and reliable power to the customers we serve,” TXNM Energy President and CEO Don Tarry said in a statement. “We appreciate the NMPRC’s careful review of this case and look forward to further demonstrating why this partnership will strengthen the grid, support long-term investment and deliver meaningful benefits for customers and communities across New Mexico and Texas.”
Officials with PNM and Blackstone had long said the deal adhered to state law and contended the pending $11.5 billion merger, first announced in 2025, presented an efficient way to quickly infuse much-needed cash into the state’s aging electric grid.
TXNM has taken out a $400 million loan to undo the 2025 stock sale, according to the joint announcement. The PRC also imposed $300,000 in penalties against the companies in its early July decision.
“Blackstone Infrastructure’s extension of our merger agreement is a sign of our commitment to continue to work collaboratively with stakeholders as we demonstrate the significant benefits of the proposed merger,” Sean Klimczak, global head of Blackstone Infrastructure, said in a statement.
Uranium mining pitch near Canjilon has locals on edge as feds say application still incomplete
—Santa Fe New Mexican
In northern Rio Arriba County, locals remain uneasy regarding a proposal from a Canadian mining company to conduct exploratory drilling north of Abiquiú.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that there is no timeline yet for the Forest Service to approve or reject Gamma Resources Ltd.’s application for a permit.
The Vancouver-based company has proposed drilling for uranium in the Carson National Forest near the community of Canjilon.
The New Mexican reports that the Carson National Forest has not yet received a completed plan of operations from the company, but would begin review of the proposal when the application is complete.
County commissioners in Rio Arriba County as well as Santa Fe County have voted to condemn the proposal.
Inmate dies at hospital after medical episode at county jail
—Gillian Barkhurst, Albuquerque Journal
An inmate at the Metropolitan Detention Center died at a hospital Sunday, marking the jail’s eighth in-custody death of the year.
The man, James Gonzales, 45, was found in medical distress at 11:12 p.m. on Friday, six days after he was booked into jail, said MDC spokesperson Daniel Trujillo in a news release Monday. In response to the emergency, the jail’s staff and medical team rendered “successful life-saving measures.”
Approximately 35 minutes after his medical episode, Gonzales was transported to the University of New Mexico Hospital where he died two days later.
According to the release, Gonzales had no next of kin.
Local authorities are investigating the jail death, including the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office and MDC Office of Professional Standards. The New Mexico Office of the Medical Examiner will determine the official cause of Gonzales’ death.
Gonzales is the eighth inmate to die while incarcerated at MDC in 2026. The sixth and seventh were 18-year-old Derrick Benavidez and 36-year-old Julian Wilgress, who died within 48 hours of each other in late April. What caused their deaths is still under investigation and has not been publicly released.
New Mexico implements new strategies to expand free childcare system - Esteban Candelaria, Searchlight New Mexico
The state Early Childhood Education and Care Department wants to make it easier for new childcare facilities to get up and running to fulfill its promise to provide free childcare to all New Mexico families.
The department has rolled out two initiatives in recent weeks to streamline the licensing of new facilities, which are needed to fill a shortage of childcare spots.
The first is the Infant Toddler Contract Slots program, which has provided contracts with over a dozen providers to open hundreds of new slots for underserved children. The second is the implementation of Senate Bill 96, a new law allowing providers to operate home-based childcare facilities in residential areas without facing local zoning fees or other requirements.
"Those policy reforms and those strategic investments are working," Early Childhood Cabinet Secretary Elizabeth Groginsky said in an interview. "More families are getting access to care; more providers are able to expand their programs."
The state has "still a lot of building to do, but we're heading in the right direction," she said.
Slots for underserved kids
New Mexico has made strides in increasing the capacity of its childcare system since it expanded the subsidized program to families earning an annual income over 400% of the federal poverty level, the previous limit for no-cost care.
When Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced the expansion in September 2025, her administration set goals: 1,000 more registered childcare homes, 120 more licensed homes and 55 new licensed centers.
So far, Groginsky said the state has added only 106 more registered homes, while it increased licensed homes by 48 and licensed centers by 17.
In May, the early childhood agency's data showed the state was short by thousands of seats, and growth largely had been fueled by increasing the number of licensed facilities, The New Mexican reported.
The agency hopes to turn that around with its Infant Toddler Contract Slots program. The strategy, launched in June, so far has expanded the capacity of 13 providers by a total of 441 new slots. The program offers one-year contracts for providers to serve children who have developmental delays, live in rural or otherwise underserved areas, or who come from families earning 200% or less of the federal poverty level.
The state has awarded more than $1.1 million in contracts so far, spokesperson Julia Sclafani wrote in an email.
Groginsky said the program is considered a pilot and could be expanded next year.
One of the providers who received a contract is Kelli Sheldon, owner and director of Ms. Kelli's House Inc. in northwestern Albuquerque, a facility that provides childcare and preschool services.
The facility has a long waitlist, which families sometimes stay on for years, Sheldon said. However, the new contract has allowed her to add up to 18 slots, expanding her continuous services from early childhood through preschool to more families.
"For me to be able to offer those programs and open that up was a big relief for them," she said.
Easing government barriers
Expanding statewide childcare capacity will also depend on making it easier to open new facilities.
SB 96, which was signed into law by Lujan Grisham in March and went into effect July 1, reflects an effort to streamline the approval of home-based childcare facilities by placing the oversight of safety and other regulations solely with the state, Groginsky said.
Previously, cities and counties often required providers to go through zoning approval processes and meet other standards, such as for fire safety. That often led to duplicative requirements at the local and state levels, creating miles of red tape that slowed or discouraged some childcare providers from opening facilities, Groginsky said.
"We're reducing some of the bureaucratic and the administrative burden," she said. "This law is critical because home-based childcare is an essential part of our childcare sector."
It remains to be seen how much SB 96 will increase the rate at which providers are approved for operation or shorten the application process — which can stretch for months. Groginsky said the early childhood department will track those changes in the coming months.
Lowering administrative barriers has encouraged providers to open more facilities in the city of Santa Fe, Assistant Land Use Director Maggie Moore said.
Before SB 96 before it went into effect, the city had addressed the issues as part of an effort to overcome a countywide shortage of roughly 2,000 childcare slots, Moore said.
Although the city does not track the number of applications to operate home-based childcare facilities, Moore said the change has made prospective providers feel more supported in opening facilities.
"We know housing is a huge cost for people in Santa Fe, and to be able to address some of that affordability with increasing access to quality home-based daycare — we know that that's going to help the community and help our families stay in Santa Fe and thrive," she said.
Health and safety worries
Some people have expressed concerns about making home-based daycares permissible "by right" in residential areas, as SB 96 states.
Santa Fe resident Jennifer Knight said she worries such policies would bypass safety and other regulations previously in place in residential areas, including those set by homeowners associations. She also argued the law does not consider residents' concerns about neighborhood impacts from home-based childcare facilities.
"I love daycare," Knight said. "I just want these kids to be safe and you to respect us. That's all."
Groginsky said the standards for childcare facilities have not changed — but they are now overseen only by the state. She noted the state still will conduct unannounced visits at childcare facilities at least twice a year and will address all concerns families raise about facilities enrolling their children.
"We would never have advocated for something we did not feel that we were covering," Groginsky said. "Health and safety is our top priority."
This article first appeared on Searchlight New Mexico.
Lawmakers push for paid parental leave for teachers - Natalie Robbins, Albuquerque Journal
New Mexico teachers are left out of a policy guaranteeing paid parental leave to state employees. Some state legislators hope this will change next year.
Without paid maternity leave, teachers who have children are forced to use their sick time or vacation days, or try to time their childbirth with summer vacation — a task that can be difficult to impossible, said Whitney Holland, president of the New Mexico chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest labor union in the United States.
“It really makes educators choose their students or their own personal children, and this would open the door to say they don’t have to make that choice,” Holland said. “Education is a female-dominated profession, so it just naturally makes sense to do something that helps moms.”
Senate Bill 188, introduced last session by Senate President Pro Tem Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, would have guaranteed up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave to school employees and appropriated $7.5 million from the general fund to reimburse schools for long-term substitute teachers. The bill was introduced late in the legislative session and did not receive a hearing.
During a meeting of the Legislative Education Study Committee on Thursday in Taos, Shannon Holston of the National Council on Teacher Quality extolled the benefits of paid parental leave for teachers.
Around 15% of teachers leave the profession because of family reasons, Holston said, and the rough cost for larger districts to replace one teacher who leaves is $25,000.
“Paid parental leave is not only good for teachers, but it’s good for students in keeping good teachers in the classroom,” Holston said.
Nationwide, more than three-quarters of public school teachers are female, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, though Holston proposed that New Mexico extend the benefits to nonbirthing parents, including fathers, adoptive parents and foster parents.
Two states — Delaware and Arkansas — guarantee 12 weeks of paid parental leave for teachers, and 16 states require districts to offer paid leave for new parents.
“I really think it’s kind of the next step for recruiting and retaining teachers,” Stewart said. “I want people to look at the simplicity of this and the importance of it.”
New Mexico has 640 teacher vacancies, Stewart said.
Rep. John Block, R-Alamogordo, said he was concerned about the solvency of the state’s general fund and its oil and gas revenue, which New Mexico is using to help fund universal child care, among other initiatives, and which could pay for the teacher leave.
“We just keep on spending money on free stuff,” Block said. “When we do hit that cliff, when we do say, ‘OK, we’re going to totally annihilate oil and gas revenue,’ which is the goal of many people in the Legislature, I hope that they have a mechanism to actually pay for it.”
Allowing teachers paid parental leave would give them parity with other state employees, who already get the benefit, said LESC Director John Sena, who called the matter an “equity issue.”
School employees were also left out of a policy guaranteeing that state employees would have at least 80% of their health insurance premiums paid for by their employer until a bill changed the rule this last legislative session.
Teaching is unique in that other jobs don’t typically require full-time substitutes when employees take leave, Holston said.
“They care for other people’s children,” Holston said. “If we’re going to offer it to anybody, we should be offering it to teachers.”
APS to consider application from charter school teaching New Mexican, Middle Eastern history - Natalie Robbins, Albuquerque Journal
A group of Albuquerque educators have filed an application to open a high school in the city to teach students about Spanish and Middle Eastern history, architecture and artificial intelligence.
Radi Abouelhassan, a resource teacher at Albuquerque Public Schools, will be the head of the proposed school, called Andalusia Natural Sciences Academy. Its application must be approved by the APS Board of Education before it can open, a requirement for charter schools seeking to set up within an existing district.
The application for ANSA says it will combine “rigorous STEM education, project-based learning, responsible AI literacy, and New Mexico’s rich cultural heritage.”
If approved, the school’s curriculum will incorporate New Mexico’s Spanish colonial history, Middle Eastern history and the history of Al-Andalus, the medieval Muslim-ruled territory on the Iberian Peninsula. Students will use AI to construct architectural models of buildings and will use “real-world problem solving” in class, school leaders said.
“I work with middle and high school students, and I realized that when students are working on projects, usually they are more engaged,” Abouelhassan said. “Instead of looking at history, for instance, from this dry lens, it’s good to use our culture of New Mexico as a starting point.”
The school plans to open for ninth and 10th grade only in its first year, which could be as soon as August 2027. By its fourth year, ANSA officials say it will enroll grades nine through 12, and hope to have a targeted 400 students.
Abouelhassan said the school does not have a building yet, but is looking at areas of the city where there are large populations of students targeted in the Yazzie-Martinez lawsuit. The 2018 ruling found that the state was not providing an adequate education to Native American students, English language learners, students with disabilities and economically disadvantaged students.
“We will look into locations where there are a lot of immigrant families, a lot of students who are English language learners, and ones with disadvantaged groups,” Abouelhassan said. He said he is open to sharing a building with another school initially.
When asked at Wednesday’s meeting by board member Heather Benavidez what ANSA plans to offer that APS cannot, Abouelhassan said the school will provide smaller class sizes, “intentional, project-based learning,” and ethical AI training.
“We wanted to make kids actually use AI, but use it responsibly and ethically,” Abouelhassan said. “There will be a rubric where the students have to verify the sources of data and look at the credibility of the data they get.”
During Wednesday’s hearing, board member Courtney Jackson told Abouelhassan she had concerns over how the school would attract students amid city- and nationwide enrollment declines. Since 2019, APS enrollment has dropped by 20%, from 80,109 that year to 63,726 on the 40th day of the 2025-26 school year.
Abouelhassan said the school would attract students through word-of-mouth and advertising.
“We understand it might be a challenge getting 80 kids in the first year,” he said. “If we get most of that number, we will be satisfied.”
Abouelhassan holds a Ph.D. in education and an master’s degree in comparative literature and cultural studies, both from the University of New Mexico, and has taught at UNM, Central New Mexico Community College and the Community College of Qatar in the Middle East.
Ahmed Hasan and Kristoffer C. Smith will serve on the school’s board, according to the application. Hasan is a professor of mechanical engineering at UNM and serves on the board of Salam Academy, a private Muslim school east of Uptown Albuquerque, and Smith is a special education teacher at Albuquerque High School.
“We’re hopeful that they will give us a chance,” Abouelhassan said. “We know the whole model will need time to grow.”
The APS Board will take a vote on the school’s application Aug. 19.
NM US Rep. Stansbury, Native leaders vow to fight BLM proposal to undo Chaco Canyon protections - Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico
U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) and Pueblo of Acoma Gov. Charles Riley on Friday said they’ll work together to fight the Trump administration’s proposal to scale back or completely remove a mining ban around Chaco Culture National Historical Park.
The Bureau of Land Management on Wednesday announced it was opening a two-week window for members of the public to send in their opinions on the proposal, which has three options for the spiritually and culturally significant site: remove the 10-mile buffer zone on mining operations; reduce it to five miles; or keep it intact.
Stansbury said the decision to limit public comment to two weeks without holding a public hearing on the matter signaled the administration wants to do the “bare minimum” to gather public feedback. She said she believes the move violates the federal Administrative Procedure Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.
“They initiated tribal outreach during the government shutdown when the Bureau of Indian Affairs was not even staffed and operable,” she told reporters Friday. “Which indicates to us that there was no good-faith effort to actually engage tribal leadership.”
Stansbury urged New Mexicans to submit public comments on the proposal online ahead of the July 29 deadline.
Aaron Sims, an attorney for the Pueblo of Acoma and secretary for the Chaco Heritage Tribal Association, which is comprised of members from the Pueblos of Acoma, Jemez, Laguna, Zuni and the Hopi Tribe, said the federal government has faltered on its obligations to the Indigenous communities with interests in Chaco Canyon.
The Chaco Heritage Tribal Association had an agreement with the U.S. Department of the Interior to jointly participate in a cultural resources study of the Chaco region and to attend annual meetings over the effort. To date, Sims said, Interior Department officials have not made good on that deal.
The five members of New Mexico’s federal delegation, all Democrats, previously proposed legislation to make the Biden-era protections around Chaco permanent. In a joint statement, they wrote that allowing just 14 days for public comment on a proposal that could undo years of work was “wrong, shameful, and a slap in the face to Tribes.”
Riley, the Acoma governor, spoke along similar lines Friday. While many Native people trace their ancestry back to Chaco, it is not solely a relic of the past, he said.
“They didn’t leave it behind, and neither have we. We still go there today and we still pray there,” he said. “Chaco is not a museum. It is a part of a living landscape that is relied upon by Acoma and a number of other Pueblo people as part of their identity, their culture and their prayers.”
Project Jupiter air permit to be debated in October hearing - Algernon D’Ammassa, Albuquerque Journal
A public hearing into a controversial air quality permit for the data center known as Project Jupiter will take place in October, according to a notice published Thursday by the New Mexico Environment Department.
The hearing is set for 9 a.m. Oct. 19, and will continue as necessary, at the Sunland Park Multi-Generational Center, a community space within the Sunland Park Sports Complex at 4700 McNutt Road.
The permit application, submitted by Yucca Growth Infrastructure LLC, pertains to a microgrid facility planned to provide power for the hyperscale data center under construction in Santa Teresa for use by Oracle and OpenAI to train artificial intelligence software. The project includes four data centers, an office building and the power facility, which would be powered with natural gas and fuel cell technology.
The permit application includes a projected 10.1 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually. For comparison, the entire city of Albuquerque produced 5.3 million tons in 2023.
Critics and opponents of the project, including some local state legislators, have called on the project to invest in a major solar power installation instead. Others, including four Democratic lawmakers, have vowed to press for a statewide moratorium on data center development, with the support of community groups and organizations such as Food and Water Watch, which has expressed alarm over impacts to agriculture in the region as well as impacts on air and water resources.
In a statement, Oracle said scheduling the hearing three months from now “defers the public’s right to hear the detailed technical facts about our project, and puts the NMED at risk of missing their statutory mandated period to make a decision regarding the permit.”
The project has run into a significant obstacle in supplying gas to the site, as New Mexico Commissioner of Public Lands Stephanie Garcia Richard has twice denied permission to build a pipeline extension across state trust land. The applicant, Energy Transfer, has not stated whether it would further contest the decision.
Besides the air quality impacts, the process drew controversy over complaints that supportive comments had been submitted under the names of residents, including elected officials, without their knowledge or consent.
The hearing notice set an Oct. 1 deadline for parties wishing to present technical evidence, with notices for rebuttal testimony to be submitted by Oct. 12. Comments from the public will also be accepted online and at the meeting, with a three-minute time limit. More time — up to half an hour — will be allotted to technical witnesses to summarize their evidence, according to the notice.
The department’s Air Quality Bureau has until late November to decide whether to grant the permit.
An Oracle spokesperson wrote, “Project opponents have had months to prepare for the hearing and are now deliberately foot-dragging to prolong approval of a permit application that meets all air quality requirements and has been thoroughly vetted by NMED staff.”
In a scheduling hearing Wednesday, developers sought to schedule the hearing in August, but opponents argued this left too little time for attorneys to meet 30-day deadlines for filing technical evidence.
“Already, thousands of workers, including more than 440 New Mexican residents are working on site,” the spokesperson wrote. “A delayed hearing puts those jobs in jeopardy and needlessly postpones the creation of 1,500 ongoing project-supported jobs. Project Jupiter is already generating $37.4 million in tax revenue for Doña Ana County and $22.5 million for the state, and delays to the project would bring that down substantially.”
Miyagashima drops out, endorses Hull - KOB-TV
Former Las Cruces Mayor Ken Miyagishima is officially out of the race to be the next governor of New Mexico.
Miyagishima said on Friday he decided not to pursue an appeal to the Supreme Court over his presence on New Mexico ballots. Miyagashima contends that the signature requirements for independent candidates who wish to appear on statewide ballots are unfair, and favor the two major parties.
KOB-TV reports Miyagashima who ran for governor as a Democrat and then as an independent, is now endorsing Republican candidate Gregg Hull.
Torrance County ICE detainees say tap water causing skin problems amid local water emergency - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
The water shortage afflicting the town of Estancia has coincided with a spike in water quality complaints from immigrant detainees at the nearby Torrance County Detention Facility, according to a immigration lawyer who conducts weekly jail visits.
Tiffany Wang, a staff attorney at Contigo Immigrant Justice, told Source NM this week that she has heard from at least five detainees during legal aid visits in recent weeks that the water they use for showers has caused skin irritation, including rashes.
Another detainee, Roney Pereira, 55, told Source NM in a recent phone interview from the facility that he believes the water has caused rashes and skin irritation and increased his hair loss. The Brazilian detainee, held at the jail for roughly a year, said a doctor at the facility largely dismissed his concerns when he visited her about two weeks ago.
“My hair…dropped, and my skin is terrible,” Pereira said in English, which is not his first language. He said the facility’s doctor told him to limit the number of showers he takes to “maybe two times per week.”
Officials from CoreCivic, which owns and operates the facility, did not respond to Source NM’s repeated requests for comment this week on Pereira’s allegations and the water situation generally. But CoreCivic spokesperson Ryan Gustin told Inside Climate News recently that the company has increased the amount of drinking water it ships in from elsewhere and that operations were unaffected otherwise.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which contracts with CoreCivic to hold roughly 350 detainees at the facility, also did not respond to Source NM’s emailed request for comment Friday.
In late June, Town of Estancia trustees voted to declare a water emergency due to alarmingly low levels of water in city storage tanks, authorizing emergency procurement and repairs to prevent taps from running dry across the town of roughly 1,300 people.
The order prompted city officials to reduce the detention facility’s intake from the city’s water system. Local officials have described the facility as the town’s biggest water customer in a municipal system that diverts roughly 85% of all its water to commercial purposes, according to the Mountainair Dispatch news outlet.
Estancia trustees and Torrance County commissioners did not return Source NM’s requests for comment this week. Estancia Mayor Runnel Riley, who has taken a leave of absence, also could not be reached for comment.
The water that detainees say is causing health issues comes not from drinking water, which is available in water jugs throughout holding pods, but instead from sink taps in cells and showerheads in bathrooms.
Wang and Pereira said detainees generally avoid drinking tap water due to its odor and cloudy appearance.
“I think everything that I hear is just that it seems off, right? Like the water just does not seem like water that would be either potable or even safe to put on your body,” Wang said.
Jerry Tindell, who works at the Bean Valley RV Park in Estancia, said water pressure has increased in recent days and he’s eager for the situation to resolve. He noted that village officials are planning to drill a new well in mid-August to increase the water supply.
The village’s emergency order authorized it to pursue a roughly $5 million grant from the New Mexico Water Trust Board to drill an additional municipal well.
“I’m sure we’ll be fine after that,” Tindell said.
