in the news

Two of the top officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency office in charge of compensating victims of the 2022 Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire have been placed on administrative leave, according to an email. The move comes after news outlets reported Jay Mitchell, director of the New Mexico Joint Recovery Office since 2024, had received a...

Top Senate Democrats are investigating the Department of Energy's plan to prop up aging coal plants with millions of dollars Congress originally set aside to advance carbon capture technologies and improve energy resiliency and environmental protection in rural areas. Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Senate Energy and...

New Mexico’s U.S. senators voted against yearlong funding for the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday, alongside all but one Senate Democrat, pushing the federal agency closer to a shutdown. Congress has passed annual funding for the majority of the federal government since the shutdown in November, but money for Homeland Security has...

Regional lawmakers are demanding a classified briefing with members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet regarding the Federal Aviation Administration’s temporary airspace closure that halted all El Paso air traffic Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, Feb. 11. Democratic U.S. Reps. Veronica Escobar and Gabe Vasquez, including Democratic New Mexico...

Jay Mitchell, director of a multi-billion-dollar federal claims office for northern New Mexico wildfire victims, has been placed on “administrative leave” following revelations of a six-figure payout he received for smoke damage at his Angel Fire home, according to an email Source New Mexico obtained Thursday. Mitchell and his wife Lisa received...

New Mexico’s congressional delegates are demanding answers after a sudden closure of airspace over El Paso and a nearby area of southeastern New Mexico disrupted flights early Wednesday morning amid a dispute between the Pentagon and the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA announced late Tuesday it was closing the airspace around El Paso and...

Un grupo de 11 senadores demócratas denunciaron este miércoles que el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (DHS) y Oficina de Inmigración y Aduanas (ICE) “tienen la intención de detener y expulsar a niños del país sin tener en cuenta las protecciones constitucionales o legales”, un plan que forma parte de la política migratoria de ‘tolerancia cero’...

The Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations has lost the staff required to properly oversee about $27 billion in funded energy projects, according to a new assessment from the Government Accountability Office The failure to meet those congressionally-mandated requirements stems from the Trump administration’s deep cuts to the...

TUCUMCARI - Mesalands Community College's iconic but idle wind turbine might generate power soon after U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico secured $4 million to repower it. The college received the funds as part of fiscal-year 2026 federal appropriations recently signed into law, a news release from the college stated last week. The college's...

SANTA FE — A recent $2 million federal grant awarded to the New Mexico Office of Broadband Access and Expansion is set to develop the next generation of technicians to connect even the most remote reaches of the state to high-speed internet, the nervous system of the digital age. The state broadband office, created in 2021, is set to leverage the...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich supports New Mexico’s new Immigrant Safety Act, which prevents local governments from contracting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for civil immigration violations. The law, signed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Thursday, aims to keep local law enforcement focused on community safety rather...

U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), clad in a camouflage vest over his collared shirt, took the mic in the Roundhouse rotunda Friday afternoon while onlookers crowded around the third-floor railing looking down. “We have the leadership of the House and the Senate here in New Mexico stand up for public lands, water and wildlife in the last five years...

Congress repealed a measure that allowed U.S. senators to sue the Justice Department and receive $500,000 or more for subpoenaed phone records. The repeal was included in appropriations bills that President Donald Trump signed into law Tuesday. Sen. Martin Heinrich sponsored the original repeal legislation and Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández sponsored...

A week before the 2024 election, Idaho’s largest electric utility struck a 35-year deal to buy power from a wind farm under development in Wyoming. The Jackalope Wind project would span an area the size of Chicago, with hundreds of wind turbines generating clean electricity by 2027. But the wind farm soon became a casualty of President Trump’s...

U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-NM), ranking member of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, hosted a roundtable discussion recently on the Trump Administration's policies that he said are raising electricity bills for Americans, including New Mexico. Heinrich said the energy affordability crisis that is unfolding is almost...

It's been a long time coming, but finally, compensation will be coming to New Mexicans and their families who were exposed to radiation from the testing of atomic weapons in the 1940s. Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.), who was instrumental in getting Congress to expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, announced Friday that the U.S. Department of...

Top House and Senate Democrats are investigating the Trump administration's unprecedented move to directly invest or take equity stakes in more than a half-dozen mining and mineral companies. Senate Energy and Natural Resources ranking member Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), House Natural Resources ranking member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and House...

Members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation on Friday called on the federal official overseeing a multi-billion dollar wildfire compensation fund to resign, following Source NM’s reporting this week that the official had applied for and received a six-figure payout. According to documents obtained by Source NM and New Mexico PBS, Jay Mitchell,...

Skyrocketing energy bills are shaping up to be a cornerstone of congressional Democrats’ election-year message for why voters should return them to power in November. The Trump administration is responsible for Americans’ bigger electric bills, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) said Thursday after a roundtable discussion on energy affordability with...

Somewhere in the pile of projects awaiting Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s personal signature sits a plan to protect the town of Los Alamos, New Mexico, from devastating wildfire. “We were approved last summer, and it’s been sitting on her desk since,” Philo Shelton, Los Alamos county’s utilities manager, told NOTUS. The county wants to...