in the news

U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich called on President Donald Trump to sign bipartisan housing legislation into law, after Trump abruptly canceled his plans to do so Wednesday morning. Trump posted on social media Wednesday morning he would not sign the housing legislation, called the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, until the Senate passed his bill...

When I draw a hunting tag, especially for elk, one of the first things I do is pull out a map. I look for public land – and then I look for roads, because that’s where the elk aren’t. That’s because elk need food, water, and a secure place to bed – and that usually means being miles from any open roads. Want to fill your freezer? Find the roadless...

Numerous members of the Senate Democratic caucus sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, urging it to do more to curb the New World screwworm fly that recently crossed the border. There are seven confirmed cases of the flesh-eating pest in the U.S., six in Texas and one in New Mexico, threatening the region's livestock industry. The...

A last-minute amendment to a bipartisan wildfire bill ignited a fiery spat in the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on Wednesday before advancing along party lines. The addition getting rid of the 25-year-old Roadless Rule was a "poison pill" for the Democratic minority, including New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich. "One of the...

Eleven senators are demanding answers from the Trump administration on the use of national park entry fees for the president’s “vanity projects,” according to a letter that the lawmakers sent to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Wednesday. The National Park Service plans to spend at least $90 million in entry fee revenue on D.C. beautification and...

The U.S. Senate passed legislation to fund President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement agencies early Friday after weeks of delays and backlash. Senators voted 52-47 to approve $70 billion to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol for the next three years. New Mexico’s Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Lujan voted against the...

A measure to return three tracts of land from the former Albuquerque Indian School campus to a trust for New Mexico’s 19 Pueblos passed the U.S. House this week and advanced to its first U.S. Senate Committee. The federal legislation, titled the Albuquerque Indian School Act, would transfer 10 acres of a former boarding school to the Indian Pueblo...

Jack Brooke has done a lot of living in his nearly 88 years. As a child, he listened to the advent of rock ’n’ roll on a plastic radio. He s pent two years in the Coast Guard in the 1960s. He sold life insurance before building his own business as a management consultant. “Life has just been great, all the way through,” Brooke said. These days,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration spent almost a year crafting regulations to block U.S. adversaries from buying commercial data gathered from cell phones at the federal government’s most sensitive locations. The resulting rules, however, have a few gaps. Left off the list of 736 sensitive locations were the White House, Congress and the...

An effort by New Mexico’s Senior U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich and a handful of other Senate Democrats have made it significantly harder for Republicans to include their proposed $1 billion appropriation for President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom in an upcoming budget reconciliation bil, according to a Sunday press release from Heinrich’s...

New Mexico’s United States senators this week joined 22 other Democrats in seeking more information from the federal Agriculture Department on how a recently announced “restructuring” will impact the department’s research and innovation mission. USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins in late April said the department would be relocating some positions and...

The United States Forest Service is expected to soon release a draft version of a policy that would rescind or greatly alter the 2001 “Roadless Rule,” which protects roughly 60 million acres of federal forestland from road construction and timber harvesting. Environmentalist organization Earthjustice held a news conference Wednesday opposing the...

Members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation on Friday celebrated the recent introduction of legislation to protect a 107,000-acre expanse of the Caja del Rio plateau. The public lands spanning volcanic fields west of Santa Fe have historical, ecological, spiritual and cultural significance to pueblos, land grant communities and other advocacy...

During the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Rev. Andrew Black said he loaded his baby into a pack and hiked with her in the Caja del Rio almost every day. Black’s daughter, now 5, returned to the area Friday to attend a news conference on recently introduced federal legislation that would designate more than 67,000 acres in the Santa Fe National...

As costs rise, the economic impact is forcing residents and business owners to adapt. U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., hopes to share the stories of affected New Mexicans with lawmakers and the Trump administration in an effort to ease financial burdens and influence policy changes. “Being able to hear these stories helps me push back against...

When tourists see a statue of Gustavus Cheyney Doane, a 19th-century explorer, at a Grand Teton National Park visitor center this spring, a marker beneath it that used to be there will now be missing. It had asked visitors: “How do we acknowledge the good and bad of a figure?” pointing out that Doane’s expedition led to the designation of the first...

Senate Democrats on Thursday unveiled their plan to block future attempts to sell off federal lands via the budget reconciliation process, vowing to prevent a repeat of Republican proposals to dispose of up to 3 million acres of public lands last year. Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Ron Wyden...

On the heels of the US Supreme Court hearing arguments in Monsanto Company v. Durnell, Sens. Martin Heinrich and Cory Booker on Wednesday introduced legislation intended to overturn President Donald Trump’s executive order mandating production of the highly contentious weedkiller at the center of that case. “Since my time serving as a City Council...

Keegan King of Acoma Pueblo has witnessed a growing number of hunters with out-of-state license plates when he hunts in the Gila National Forest and other parts of New Mexico. This spring, King drew only a javelina tag in the state’s big-game lottery, meaning he will not have a shot at bringing home an elk or deer this year. He’s one of many...

In the months since President Donald Trump first floated the idea of tariff dividend checks, some Americans are still waiting to see if they will receive relief. In March, Democratic U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich led a group of seven Senate Democrats in introducing the Tariff Refunds for Working Families Act, which could create a rebate program for...