Project Jupiter update sparks scuffle, arrests - Algernon D’Ammassa, Albuquerque Journal
Three people were arrested and a scuffle ensued among security staff, sheriff’s deputies and members of the public ahead of a presentation Tuesday from developers of the controversial data center known as Project Jupiter.
The data center, under construction in Santa Teresa for use by Oracle and OpenAI for training artificial intelligence models, has dominated public input at regular meetings for 11 months as opposition to the data center and criticisms of the county’s vetting and oversight of the project have grown.
On Tuesday, the chambers were packed with opponents and supporters of the project, including what appeared to be a busload of workers from the construction site wearing matching work vests.
On the agenda, representatives of Oracle and builder Stack Infrastructure were scheduled to make a presentation that commissioners had requested about the number of jobs and local hires as well as other questions pertaining to the project.
The developers had missed initial quarterly deadlines to report details on how many workers were at the site and how many were from New Mexico or Doña Ana County. Commission Chairman Manny Sanchez attributed the delayed reports to a technological issue at the state Economic Development Department with an online portal for uploading data and redacting employees’ protected personal information. The EDD did not respond to a request for comment from the Journal.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Vice President Mahesh Thiagarajan said the developers would produce a detailed jobs report at the end of the week.
Proponents touted the project’s promises of thousands of jobs, including construction as well as operational positions. Opponents lambasted the commissioners and the developers alike, calling for public incentives supporting the project to be stripped over complaints about Project Jupiter’s transparency, concerns about environmental consequences for the rural border community and harms associated with AI technology.
“You have been played,” Cindy Haber told the commissioners, calling for “strong guardrails to protect our environment, livelihood, health, democratic rights.”
Angel Mendoza, one of several workers who spoke, said, “I care about the long-term future of our county just as much as anyone else. I support this project because I believe it represents responsible investment in our community. It creates good-paying jobs for skilled workers and supports local businesses.”
At most meetings over the past year, opponents have tended to outnumber proponents of the project. Tuesday’s showing was a different playing field altogether, with opponents and proponents attempting to outdo each other with loud applause, cheers, jeers and heckles as Sanchez repeatedly called for civility. A limit on the number of people permitted to speak also frustrated some in the room.
Sanchez ordered a few hecklers to be removed from the chambers and then recessed the meeting as a disruption escalated in the front of the room. While two deputies attempted to remove someone from the room, other project opponents and a private security officer got involved in a brief shoving match in which Abegail Salugsugan, 26, was knocked to the ground twice. Outside the chambers, she was arrested by deputies.
Also arrested were Kiki Garden, 33, and Orin Parnell, 50. Parnell faced a disorderly conduct charge, while Garden and Salugsugan were charged with disorderly conduct and resisting or obstructing.
Developers face commissioners
Thiagarajan and Stack’s chief development officer, Bobby Hollis, made their presentation later in the meeting as the developers’ own security staff took positions flanking the room.
Commissioners complained that they had not received the report until 10:30 p.m. Monday. In the email sending the documents, obtained by the Journal, county Economic Development Director Denisse Carter wrote to the commissioners: “I understand you might not have enough time to review it ahead of the meeting; their internal approval process took longer than anticipated.”
Hollis said close to 3,000 workers were on the Santa Teresa site at peak activity, including nearly 700 New Mexicans and 300 county residents, with thousands more construction jobs expected over the coming year.
When Commissioner Susana Chaparro pressed for more data about where the majority of construction workers resided, Hollis said, “We’re not certain,” and reiterated a promise to increase the percentage of county residents working at the site.
Thiagarajan said the project was expected to exceed $4.7 billion in long-term economic impact to the state and county, including tax revenue, capital investment and commerce. He also said that the developers had already paid 80% of their $50 million commitment to the county to fund water infrastructure projects, and that the county had collected $10 million in taxes from the project since construction began in September.
Although the developers projected a 30-year project life, Thiagarajan said Oracle’s activity at the data center was expected to last 15 years following more than two years of construction. Details of what happens to the facilities after that were not clear. Under the industrial revenue bond contract that assisted in financing Project Jupiter, the county holds title to the project properties and leases them to the developer.
Thiagarajan also pledged that the developers would invest in renewable energy projects to offset emissions, while admitting those investments would not directly reduce greenhouse gasses produced by the data center itself.
The project is currently seeking an air quality permit for a microgrid power generation facility with fuel cell technology relying on natural gas. A hearing has been scheduled for October. Separately, the State Land Office recently rejected an application to build a natural gas pipeline across state trust land to connect to the site.
Thiagarajan admitted there was no immediate contingency plan if the state Environment Department rejects the permit. He suggested the project would pursue purchasing power from El Paso Electric. Failing that, he added, if “I don’t know how to power the data center,” work might have to halt altogether.
New Mexico residents turn out to UNM campus to weigh in on proposed private equity takeover of PNM - Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico
New Mexico residents filled a ballroom on the University of New Mexico campus in Albuquerque on Tuesday to weigh in on a private equity firm’s proposal to take over the state’s largest electric provider.
Blackstone Infrastructure’s proposed $11.5 billion merger with TXNM Energy Inc., the parent company of PNM, has proven controversial since it was first announced in 2025. Residents opposed to the acquisition have often commandeered the public comment period during New Mexico Public Regulation Commission meetings, state lawmakers have taken differing stances on it and it became an important topic leading up to the June gubernatorial primary election.
Many of the people who came out to Tuesday’s public comment hearing opposed the proposed deal — at one point, a chorus of people in the crowd got out of their seats and chanted in unison that the proceeding was a “mockery of the democratic process” — and questioned why it was still on the table at all.
Earlier this month, the Public Regulation Commission decided in a 2-1 vote that Blackstone and PNM violated state law by conducting a $400 million stock sale in 2025 without first obtaining the commission’s approval. Climate advocates and New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez raised questions about the sale’s legality in February and representatives from Blackstone and PNM denied any wrongdoing.
At the time, the commission imposed $300,000 of penalties on the companies and ordered them to undo the sale. TXNM last week said it took out a $400 million loan to undo the sale.
Opponents of the sale during Tuesday’s hearing questioned whether their rates would increase if the PRC approved the acquisition. Although the PRC oversees rate hikes, some residents said the issue of the illegal stock sale led them to question whether the utility couldn’t find a way to circumvent that regulation.
“If Blackstone is allowed to acquire PNM, there’s no question about our rates going higher,” Cynthia Rodriguez, a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, told utility regulators during Tuesday’s hearing. “There’s not a law that they are not going to find a way around.”
Albuquerque resident Jeanette Salazar approached the podium in front of utility regulators and told them she would rather see the state purchase a majority stake in the utility rather than have private equity involved. After noting her age of 83, she concluded by telling regulators she hopes to “live long enough to see this whole thing go away.”
A group of people who support the acquisition, clad in orange T-shirts denoting their labor union affiliations, filled the back rows of chairs in UNM’s Student Union Building.
Andrew Mayorga, a Laborers’ International Union of North America district council representative, spoke before utility regulators alongside 17-year-old Pablo Aguilera in an orange shirt of his own. Mayorga said he believes Blackstone will rely on union labor to modernize and upgrade PNM’s infrastructure, and kids like Aguilera who are on the cusp of entering the workforce need that sort of steady work, he said.
In particular, he took aim at a resident who spoke earlier in Tuesday’s hearing and said the acquisition would only create “crappy jobs.”
“Are we all not New Mexicans? It sounds like you’re better than the rest of us,” he said.
Mayorga later told Source NM that he believes Blackstone has the capital needed to modernize and upgrade New Mexico’s outdated power grid — and believes such projects will create high-quality union jobs. In June, Blackstone and PNM announced a $20 million commitment to boost training and workforce pipelines for the skilled trades in New Mexico.
The crowd responded to several of the union members’ comments with a mix of boos and applause. One resident, activist Grace Dukes, turned around at the podium to face the crowd of orange shirts in the back of the room.
“My problem isn’t with you,” Dukes said. “It’s with a company that walks into a state, breaks its law, pockets the money and then asks you to vouch for its character.”
Appeals court keeps Kim Skaggs jailed ahead of trial - Algernon D’Ammassa, Albuquerque Journal
Kimberly Skaggs remains in jail after the New Mexico Court of Appeals upheld a local judge’s order detaining her.
Skaggs, 54, was arrested in June on charges of leaving the scene of a fatal vehicle crash and tampering with evidence. On June 22, Andrew Brown, 40, was struck and killed while crossing a two-lane road west of Las Cruces on his bicycle. Police used eyewitness photos, video footage and GPS data to identify and locate the vehicle, which had been parked out of public view on an unoccupied property owned by Skaggs.
At her detention hearing, prosecutors presented evidence that Skaggs or an employee of her business had, within a few hours of the crash, canceled the vehicle’s registration plate and requested a new one. The vehicle, an SUV, was a fleet vehicle associated with Skaggs’ business, 50 State DMV, which assists customers with vehicle titles and registrations.
In addition to her business, Skaggs is known as a civic volunteer in Tularosa and Las Cruces, a former candidate for the state Legislature, and — until she surrendered to authorities on June 24 — the state Republican Party’s treasurer.
State District Judge Conrad Perea ruled that Skaggs’ history of moving violations, while most had been dismissed, plus evidence that Skaggs was speeding on the two-lane road where Brown was killed, indicated that she was dangerous and that no conditions of release would ensure the public’s safety.
The Court of Appeals affirmed Perea’s order in a single-paragraph ruling that did not detail the panel’s reasoning.
Skaggs argued that Perea ordered her detention despite her lack of criminal history or failures to appear in court, plus a recommendation from Pretrial Services that she be released on her own recognizance. Her attorney alleged that Perea did not give due consideration to less restrictive conditions ahead of trial and instead acted arbitrarily.
In a response filed in court, the state Department of Justice said Skaggs had been stopped for speeding and other traffic offenses seven times from 2012 through 2025, although she was only adjudicated guilty in a 2012 case for driving left of center and exceeding the speed limit by 11 to 15 mph. Other cases were likely dropped because a prosecutor or a police officer failed to appear in court. In September 2025, Las Cruces police issued Skaggs a warning for street racing — exhibition driving.
Prosecutors said, based on skid marks at the crash scene, Skaggs had been traveling anywhere from 49 to 69 mph on a road where the posted speed limit is 45.
Brock Benjamin, Skaggs’ defense attorney, said he was “extremely disappointed” by the outcome, particularly since the ruling did not include an opinion from the appeals court and left him “a little confused” about how it weighed Skaggs’ due process rights against the state’s response.
New Mexico AG sues CYFD over reports that staff instructed foster teen to cross Mexican border - Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez on Tuesday announced his office filed a lawsuit against the state’s child welfare agency following reports that agency staffers took a teenage boy out of the foster care system and told him to cross the U.S.-Mexico border to reunite with his estranged mother in Ciudad Juárez.
In a news release, the New Mexico Department of Justice said the lawsuit against the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department, filed in the state’s First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe, came after the state Office of the Child Advocate reviewed the case and found probable violations of the child’s constitutional rights and reckless disregard for his health and safety.
“The State of New Mexico cannot claim to protect children while abandoning one of its own at an international border,” Torrez said in a statement. “This case is about more than one child. It is about whether the agency entrusted with protecting our most vulnerable children is following the law, honoring constitutional rights and putting the safety of children above bureaucratic expediency.”
A CYFD spokesperson did not immediately respond to Source NM’s request for comment.
Torrez’s lawsuit alleges that CYFD officials gained custody of the teenager after determining he was abused and neglected, but dropped the case weeks later and drove him to the Bridge of the Americas in El Paso, where they instructed him to walk alone into Mexico and reunite with his mother. The suit alleges that the child’s mother had recently been deported following a drug conviction.
It also alleges that the teenager sought re-entry to the U.S. and that CYFD officials asked federal authorities to bar him from entering the country.
Court records show NMDOJ lawyers argue that CYFD has violated the state Children’s Code and the teenager’s constitutional due process rights.
In April, Torrez published an investigative report focused on CYFD, which alleged the department often prioritized family reunification at the expense of children’s safety.
At an interim legislative committee hearing last week, state lawmakers expressed outrage over the recent reports — one said the troubled child welfare agency appears to be “a breeding ground for predatory behavior.”
At that hearing, Torrez’s NMDOJ presented 50 proposed reforms for CYFD, including amending state law to require that the CYFD secretary have professional child welfare experience.
Town of Taos urges water conservation after supply drops to 'critically low levels' - John Miller, Albuquerque Journal
The town of Taos is asking residents to conserve water after discovering a leak and a malfunction that caused storage tanks to drop to “critically low levels” over the weekend, leaving some users without pressure for days.
Utility crews discovered the malfunction in the water system’s supervisory control and data acquisition system, which automates management of the town’s water tanks. Workers were still applying a fix to the system on Monday evening.
How to conserve water
- Limit nonessential water use, like lawn watering and car washing
- Take shorter showers
- Run dishwashers and washing machines with only full loads
- Report any leaks to town officials
Crews were able to repair the leak they located “near one of the storage tanks,” but the process required taking the tank offline, further reducing water levels for some users.
Town officials emphasized the importance that users continue to be economical with their water use until the full repair is complete.
“The Town of Taos does not yet have a confirmed timeline for when storage levels will be fully replenished,” Joe Vigil, deputy public utilities director, said in a news release.
The water shortage comes as July temperatures spike across the state this week, with the high expected to reach the low 90s in Taos on Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service.
The unincorporated Taos County community of Cerro, about 45 minutes north of the town of Taos, continues to wrestle with its own water woes.
An estimated 80 households there have been without water since the town’s main water pump failed in May, according to the New Mexico Environment Department, whose teams are working on a fix.
Cerro is about 4 miles north of Questa, where Kit Carson Electric Cooperative is working with officials to establish a first-of-its-kind green hydrogen plant.
While unrelated to either water shortage, the green hydrogen plant has raised concerns from some critics about its water use amid ongoing drought in the region.
Debate on closing Santa Fe Plaza streets heats up ahead of vote - Santa Fe New Mexican
Santa Fe’s city council is scheduled to vote Wednesday evening on a proposal to close certain streets around the plaza during the summer.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that the proposal has been controversial since it was introduced in June. District 1 City Councilors Alma Castro and Pat Feghali introduced the resolution.
At Monday’s Finance Committee meeting, city councilors approved an amendment to the legislation that would keep one lane of San Francisco Street open year-round. Councilor Pilar Faulkner argued the open lane was needed to ensure safety — allowing quicker access for emergency vehicles.
The measure has inspired several other proposed amendments, including exceptions for vehicle loading and unloading; and parking for people with disabilities.
New Mexico Medicaid extension in 2022 doubled postpartum medical visits, state officials say - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
Preliminary results from an ongoing New Mexico Department of Health evaluation show that a 2022 Medicaid expansion for new mothers doubled the number of visits they made to doctors’ offices, which officials said is a promising sign as they seek to reduce pregnancy-related deaths.
New Mexico is one of 49 states that took advantage of a provision in the 2021 federal American Rescue Plan Act that enabled states to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage from 60 days to a year beyond the end of a pregnancy.
The extension went into effect in April 2022 and promised to drastically change postpartum care in a state where Medicaid, a government health insurance program for low-income people, covers approximately 60% of all births. That’s among the highest rates in the nation, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
State Health Department officials are working on a comprehensive analysis of the Medicaid expansion that they expect to release in September. But they provided some early insights in a recent interview with Source NM that followed the release of new data on pregnancy-related deaths.
Since the expansion went into effect, according to state health officials, healthcare facilities statewide have seen twice as many visits from new mothers. Most of those increased visits have been to primary care providers or related to substance abuse disorder, though a “modest” number related to mental health.
The health department declined to provide specific figures regarding the number of visits because officials are still finalizing their evaluation. Officials also are still evaluating whether the increased visits resulted in better outcomes for mothers or contributed to a post-pandemic decline in pregnancy-related deaths.
But Kevin Peine, executive director at the NMDOH’s Centers for Public Health, said he can already declare the expansion a “success” that the state hopes to build on by increasing awareness of the expansion.
“What we would like to see is even more women seeking care and not just one or two visits,” he said. “We want it to be a recurring thing to provide that support throughout the postpartum period.”
Expanding postpartum access to healthcare emerged as one of the key recommendations following the release of new data last week from the Health Department’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee, a multi-disciplinary volunteer board tasked with investigating deaths of pregnant mothers.
The committee found that mental illness — and particularly substance abuse — was the biggest contributing factor to 74 pregnancy-related deaths of New Mexico mothers between 2018 and 2023.
The committee defines pregnancy-related deaths as those that occur due to pregnancy complications or from health conditions a pregnancy exacerbated.
The data also show that nearly half of the deaths in that five-year period occurred in the “late postpartum period,” which state officials define as 43 days or longer after a child is born. According to the new data, 25.7% of deaths occurred between 43 and 180 days after birth, and a further 20.3% occurred between 181 days and 365 days after birth.
Peine said the high number of “late postpartum” deaths demonstrates the need for prolonged access to care. While the Medicaid expansion enabled that access, Peine said some mothers may not realize they still have health insurance months after giving birth.
“Postpartum access to health care remains critical for improving outcomes,” Peine said. “Efforts to increase provider, patient and community awareness of the extension and covered services are necessary to ensure increased uptake in care in the postpartum period.”
