Federal cuts

On this month’s program we’ll hear from a local coordinator with Stand Up For Science and three University of New Mexico neuroscience researchers about their work and what they will discuss at a public event on August 23rd.

In recent months, the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) was one of many tribal colleges facing federal funding cuts. President Trump’s budget proposal threatens to reduce the school’s federal allocation from $13.482 million to zero beginning October 1, 2025.

On August 1 2025, Shelly Lowe (Navajo) from Ganado Arizona became the newest president of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, NM. She previously served as chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities and led the Harvard University Native American Program. Lowe told KUNM about her first introduction to IAIA when her son was looking for an art school.

KUNM will lose 12% of its budget, or about $275,000, after the House and Senate passed the rescission bill that was put forth at the request of President Donald Trump. The station’s new General Manager, Jeff Pope, said the cut could have drastic effects, but remains confident the station will find a way to forge ahead.

Officials with the Mescalero Apache Tribe told state lawmakers on Monday, they’re concerned about the impact of potential cuts to federal law enforcement on the reservation.

On Friday, before hosting a roundtable discussion about the effects of the federal budget bill’s impact on New Mexico’s health care, Senator Martin Heinrich got the story straight from the horse's mouth. The meeting was at First Nations Community Healthsource, where Heinrich talked to patients about what losing Medicaid would mean for them.

At a roundtable discussion hosted by Democratic U. S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (second from right) on Friday, experts, providers and more discussed the potential impacts to Medicaid, which covers 40% of New Mexicans, by what's known as the "Big Beautiful Bill." Heinrich says 96,000 people could lose health coverage and Troy Clark, president of the New Mexico Hospitals Association said six to eight hospitals might be forced to close if federal funds dry up.

For the first time in years, overdose deaths have been declining recently after reaching a peak of about 111,000 in 2022. However, advocates are worried about a backslide on that progress as federal grants are lost, and agencies like the the National Institutes of Health are crippled by drastic funding cuts.

U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-NM) spoke with Nash Jones on New Mexico in Focus about what these drastic cuts mean for New Mexico.

The New Mexico Department of Justice has released an interactive map showing some of the impacts of federal funding cuts. The map was added to the federal disruptions tracker the NMDOJ launched last month.