DOE: Feds nixed energy grants to New Mexico, other 'blue states' - Olivier Uyttebrouck, Albuquerque Journal
The Trump administration last year axed 10 energy project grants in New Mexico, withholding a combined $135 million in federal funding to the state.
The U.S. Department of Energy provided little explanation for the cuts.
The answer came this month when DOE officials acknowledged in federal court records that it cut 284 grants to "blue states" that cast electoral votes for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
Among the $7.56 billion in funding terminated in October 2025 were clean energy grants destined for New Mexico companies and institutions, including the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and the Public Service Company of New Mexico.
DOE attorneys admitted in a court filing that the decision to accept or terminate grants was "based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient's state" and whether the state was identified as a "Blue State or a non-Blue State."
A blue state was so designated as a state “that awarded their electoral votes to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing Senators,” wrote Jeff Novak, the DOE's principal deputy general counsel. New Mexico awarded its five electoral votes to Harris in 2024 and has two Democratic U.S. senators.
The acknowledgment was filed July 15 in a lawsuit filed by University of California researchers seeking restoration of federal funding.
Another 340 grants destined for states that cast electoral votes for Trump in 2024 "were not terminated in October 2025, and they have not since been terminated," Novak wrote.
Novak also said the Office of Management and Budget, an executive office of the president, identified the awards slated for termination from a list of 624 grants.
DOE did not immediately respond this week to a request for comment.
Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., said the court filing verified earlier suspicions that the Trump administration targeted Democratic-led states for grant cancellations.
“This reporting proves what we’ve known all along: the Trump administration’s decision to cancel energy project grants in states where Donald Trump lost in 2024 was nakedly political and vengeful," Heinrich said in a statement.
Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., called the Trump administration's action "corruption, plain and simple."
"No President should be able to weaponize the federal government against Americans based on where they live or how their state voted," Luján said in a statement.
Claudia Polsky, an attorney representing the California researchers, said the DOE chose to release its statement to the court in lieu of a discovery process that would have required DOE officials to testify under oath. A federal judge in San Francisco is expected to rule in that case by the end of the year, she said.
Grant terminations
DOE announced in October that it had nixed grant awards totaling $7.56 billion for 223 projects in 16 states, including 10 New Mexico grants.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said at the time that many awards were rushed through by the Biden administration with "inadequate documentation by any reasonable business standard." None of the DOE statements made any mention of a partisan political test, although the 16 targeted states had all cast electoral votes for Harris.
The New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, also called New Mexico Tech, saw the most cuts, with four projects losing a combined $56.2 million in grant funding.
PNM, the state's largest electricity provider, had $35.6 million cut from a project to improve grid stability and reduce customer bills.
PNM spokesman Eric Chavez said Tuesday that PNM immediately appealed the grant termination. PNM has since received the full grant early this year and plans to restart work on the project.
Other grants canceled last year include:
- Kit Carson Electric Cooperative lost a $15.4 million grant to partially fund a distributed battery energy storage system for grid resiliency in northern New Mexico.
- Navajo Transitional Energy Co., a Farmington-based Navajo-owned mining and power company, lost $6.6 million for a carbon dioxide capture project at its Four Corners Power Plant.
- Pajarito Powder, an Albuquerque materials science firm, lost two grant awards worth a combined $18.5 million.
New Mexico officials celebrate state bucking Obamacare enrollment trend - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and state Health Care Authority officials on Wednesday celebrated a new analysis showing that New Mexico is the only state in the country in which Obamacare enrollment increased since Congress allowed federal subsidies to expire late last year.
The Kaiser Family Foundation study published Tuesday evaluated recent enrollment trends for those who purchase coverage from exchanges established through the 2010 Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. The study found that New Mexico’s enrollment increased 14% since 2025. Nationally, enrollment dropped 12% in the same period.
Kaiser’s study attributes the nationwide decline to the expiration of federal subsidies, known as the Enhanced Premium Tax Credit, that reduced premiums for certain Obamacare enrollees who made less than 400% of the federal poverty level ($128,600 for a family of four.)
A 2021 federal law created the tax credits with a four-year expiration date, and Congress did not extend them, despite efforts from minority Democrats.
But unlike other states, New Mexico used its own funds, both in an October 2025 special legislative session and during the regular legislative session earlier this year, to fully pay for the expiring tax credits with state funds.
Roughly 65,000 New Mexicans receive the tax credits. In some cases, the tax credit covers 90% or more of the premium.
The Kaiser study noted that New Mexico is the only state to fully fund the tax credits on its own. In the period the study analyzed, between late 2025 and May of this year, Obamacare enrollment increased from roughly 69,000 New Mexicans to more than 80,000.
In a statement Wednesday to Source NM, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said the enrollment increase shows that New Mexico was right to prioritize healthcare affordability.
“Affordability is a top priority in New Mexico,” she said. “The results speak for themselves — people urgently need affordable health care. New Mexico is proving that it is possible, even in the face of Congress’s failure to extend these tax credits.”
Health Care Authority spokesperson Marina Piña noted that the state’s Health Care Affordability Fund, which the Legislature established in 2021 and expanded during the 2026 session, “helped keep premiums and out-of-pocket costs low despite federal subsidy reductions.”
The 2026 expansion transferred $91 million into the fund through July 1, 2027, along with an additional $162 million in the two fiscal years afterward.
“We are grateful to the Legislature and the Governor for having the foresight to establish the fund in 2021 and support policies that protect the health and wellbeing of New Mexicans,” she said.
New Mexico House of Representatives Majority Floor Leader Rep. Reena Szczepanski (D-Santa Fe), who championed state legislation funding the expiring subsidies, told Source NM in a text message Wednesday that maintaining New Mexicans’ access to healthcare during this tumultuous period will have lasting benefits.
“If we can continue to increase access to healthcare, we will make gains in everything from education to public safety to economic development, because it all starts with good health,” she said. “It’s not too late for Republicans in Congress to act and restore the support that families need.”
'Unacceptable:' Use of force at county meeting draws criticism - Algernon D’Ammassa, Albuquerque Journal
Public reaction was swift after a contentious meeting of the Doña Ana County commissioners boiled over Tuesday. The livestream of the meeting was suspended as a mix of law enforcement officers and private security scuffled with local activists, and a woman was knocked to the ground twice.
Video footage circulated quickly online. U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., posted a clip on social media with a message calling the interaction “unacceptable.”
It unfolded in a packed meeting room where supporters and opponents of Project Jupiter, the hyperscale data center under construction in Santa Teresa, traded speeches during the public comment period and engaged in heckling, cheering and booing across the room while County Chairman Manny Sanchez banged his gavel and asked for certain individuals to be removed — all data center opponents — for heckling and bickering with other attendees.
“At the end of the day, all I was asking was for some respect, for people to be able to speak,” Sanchez told the Journal on Wednesday.
Two local officials said the incident crossed a line.
“I have been on the other hand of harsh public accountability, sometimes reasonable and sometimes not,” Las Cruces City Councilor Johana Bencomo wrote on Instagram. “I understand firsthand what it’s like to be on the receiving end and I would never advocate for weaponizing our police department to silence people.”
Bencomo told the Journal she viewed the incident both as a community organizer who has trained people in nonviolent protest, and as an elected official who has herself faced threats from constituents angered by her positions.
“We are seeing, especially from the young folks, a level of frustration so high that they don’t feel heard; they feel like things are shady,” she said.
State Rep. Angelica Rubio, a Las Cruces Democrat, said footage of the incident was “disturbing” and demonstrated a pattern that began when the project was announced to the public last August.
“Public comment was suppressed and force was used against community members who showed up to participate,” Rubio said in a written statement.
Rubio is among a group of lawmakers who have promised to introduce a statewide moratorium on data center development when the state Legislature convenes in January.
In an interview, Rubio said the county appears to be “more concerned with civility than they are with the idea that the community has just not had an opportunity to say what it needs to say and learn about what's actually going to go down.”
The data center is being built for use by Oracle and OpenAI, and controversy over the uses of its technology has merged with local concerns about the data center’s environmental impacts.
Some commenters online expressed frustration with data center protesters and approved of Sanchez’s efforts to impose order.
“These agitators have been pulling these antics and removing the opportunity of citizens to listen and share their concerns with decorum,” Juan Garcia, who chairs the local group Coalition of Conservatives in Action, wrote on Facebook.
Earlier this month, the county changed its rules for public comment by requiring commenters to sign up. Sanchez said the policy, similar to that of the Las Cruces Public Schools, aims to keep public comment to about an hour so that other agenda items can be addressed. In recent months, commissioners’ meetings have run for eight hours or more.
But opponents wishing to speak against the data center suspect the changing rules — including a prohibition against sharing recorded messages from county residents who can’t attend meetings — has to do with limiting opponents’ input.
Annie Ersinghaus, who regularly attends the meetings and speaks against Project Jupiter, said, “We’ve been calling for transparency and their response has been more rules. It’s doing the opposite of what they want. They want to calm us down and all we’re asking for is the opportunity to speak.”
Yet Sanchez argued a subset of opponents were being provocative on behalf of a social media audience via clips from the meeting’s live stream or filmed confrontations.
“This is their playbook. They try to get you in a gotcha moment,” he said.
Sanchez called a recess to the meeting after he concluded public comments and people throughout the room erupted in anger, chanting, “Let us speak!”
A deputy approached Kiki Garden, who stood with a sign yelling at commissioners. Other opponents gathered around Garden, including Abegail Salugsugan. In video captured by the Journal, the deputy was seen attempting to remove Garden as others intervened. Salugsugan fell to the floor during the melee and got back on her feet as a Security Concepts employee entered the fray, knocking Salugsugan to the ground a second time.
Layers of policing at meeting
There were layers of public and private security present as the meeting unfolded with every seat occupied. People stood alongside the walls and back of the room or spilled out in the main lobby, where the meeting could be viewed on video monitors.
Doña Ana County Sheriff Kim Stewart and deputies were present along with armed Security Concepts staff; additionally, Oracle executive Mahesh Thiagarajan brought his own security team, who wore suits and stood in positions on both sides of the room as Thiagarajan made his presentation. It was not clear whether his security detail was armed: Oracle did not respond to a query from the Journal.
Three data center opponents were arrested during the meeting on misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and/or resisting or obstructing officers.
Salugsugan, 26, was taken into custody as she lay on the ground bleeding from a cut over her eye, along with Garden, 33, and Orin Parnell, 50. Parnell had been removed earlier after repeated heckling. All pleaded not guilty and were released on their own recognizance Wednesday morning after appearing before county Magistrate Judge Linda Flores.
It was not clear what policies were in place at the county about Security Concepts’ personnel’s authority or uses of force. Stewart referred queries about security to county staff. Neither the county nor Security Concepts responded to the Journal’s queries.
Sanchez said he wasn’t clear a written policy existed, but that he had been advised the company’s security guards “are not to physically handle residents or the public.”
New Mexicans protest outside BLM office over proposal to undo Chaco Canyon mining protections - Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico
A crowd of about 100 gathered outside the Bureau of Land Management’s Santa Fe office Wednesday afternoon to protest the federal agency’s proposal to eliminate or shrink a 10-mile ban on mining operations around Chaco Culture National Historical Park.
Wednesday marked the final day for the public to weigh in on the controversial proposal, which Indigenous leaders and New Mexico’s Democratic federal delegation have sharply criticized.
As protesters filed into the BLM’s Santa Fe parking lot, holding signs with inscriptions like, “How can you put a price on sacred land?” and, “Hands off Chaco,” organizers directed them to a table where they could fill out cards with a message to the agency expressing their opposition to the proposal.
Before the protest began in earnest, Allison Sandoval, a New Mexico-based BLM spokesperson, requested to speak into the protesters’ megaphone. She instructed the crowd to give her their handwritten comments and said she’d pass them along to the proper BLM officials.
Indigenous residents from across New Mexico took turns speaking into a megaphone and leading the crowd in chants of, “Protect sacred sites.” Chaco is a culturally and spiritually significant site to many Native populations across the Southwest and is believed to have been an economic hub of the San Juan Basin in the Four Corners region about 1,000 years ago.
The proposal to erase a Biden-era prohibition on mining within 10 miles of the site is “not just bad policy,” Marissa Naranjo, the deputy director of Sovereign Energy and a member of Santa Clara Pueblo, told the crowd. “That’s a slow form of erasure and cultural genocide.”
Albuquerque resident Barney McCulloch told Source NM he drove up to Santa Fe Wednesday to voice his support for the 10-mile buffer zone around Chaco.
“I just think it would be terrible if they went back on this deal they made,” he said. “There has to be some other place” for mining operations, he added.
As another opponent to the proposal walked through the crowd to speak from the megaphone, three protesters unfurled a banner that read: “Protect Greater Chaco from Extractive Colonialism.”
Julia Bernal, executive director of the advocacy organization Pueblo Action Alliance, told the crowd that the strong turnout of Indigenous New Mexicans Wednesday was proof that “we are still here and we’re not going anywhere.”
“We refuse to be part of a trade-off economy,” she said.
While Bernal and the crowd demonstrated outside the BLM office, they gained a powerful ally. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez announced he had formally filed a comment opposing the proposal.
“Chaco Canyon is one of New Mexico’s greatest cultural and historical treasures,” Torrez said in a statement. “The federal government cannot dismantle longstanding protections through a rushed process that sidelines Tribal Nations, ignores the public and fails to honestly assess the consequences.”
Indigenous leaders from the greater Chaco region traveled to Washington, D.C., on Wednesday to speak against the proposal, particularly the fact that the federal government allowed just two weeks for public input on a proposal that could undo years of work.
“The federal government’s rushed process directly undermines Tribal sovereignty and the government’s fiduciary duty towards allottees and all Indigenous peoples,” Mario Atencio, who is Diné, said in a statement. “Despite federal law requiring meaningful consultation with Tribes, the BLM did not conduct outreach to Tribal communities and limited federal notices to English, barring non-English speakers from engaging with information about the consequential impacts of this proposal. This is illegal and disgraceful.”
