press releases

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – At 4:30 p.m. MT/ 6:30 p.m. ET on Thursday, August 13, U.S. Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich, and U.S. Representatives Ben Ray Luján, Deb Haaland, and Xochitl Torres Small will join the conservation community in New Mexico for a virtual celebration of the Great American Outdoors Act being signed into law. The...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich have joined 46 senators in a bipartisan call for the extension of the statutory deadlines for the delivery of apportionment data and redistricting files following the 2020 Census. In a letter, led by U.S. Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawai'i) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), to House and...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) is leading 12 Senate Democrats in a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in support of incentives that promote the use of smart-grid technologies that improve the capacity and efficiency of the existing transmission grid, often at a substantial savings to...

WASHINGTON—U.S. Senators Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) joined 33 senators in a letter to President Donald J. Trump, urging his administration to restore full funding to states like New Mexico in order to maintain critical National Guard unit services during the COVID-19 pandemic. Last week, the president reduced Federal...

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, members of the New Mexico National Guard have been deployed in a number of roles — providing food, water, testing and transportation in the ongoing battle against the coronavirus. Although up to 400 of those soldiers have been deployed in that effort, the National Guard decreased that number after...

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, led the entire Democratic Caucus in a letter to President Trump opposing Bureau of Land Management Director nominee William Perry Pendley. "We write to express opposition to Mr. Pendley's nomination to the position of Director of the...

WASHINGTON—U.S. Senators Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), along with U.S. Representatives Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) and Xochitl Torres Small (D-N.M.) announced that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has awarded $640,000 to the New Mexico Department of Health and to El Centro...

New Mexico U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich says Congress must approve legislation that will offer significant relief during the pandemic.  He also talked about President Trump's executive actions related to pandemic relief, calling them inadequate. In addition, Heinrich says Congress must take action to protect funding for the U.S. Post Office,...

Las Cruces, NM – U.S. Representative Xochitl Torres Small (D-N.M.) and U.S. Senators Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) announced that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has awarded more than $10 million to organizations across rural New Mexico to modernize water and wastewater infrastructure through its Rural...

ALBUQUERQUE - At 11 a.m. MT/ 1 p.m. ET, on Tuesday, August 11, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) will host a virtual discussion with national experts in the field of outdoor education as well as local leaders in New Mexico to discuss the advantages of educating students outdoors during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. These experts will...

New Mexico has passed a key threshold in its transition away from fossil fuels. Public Service Company of New Mexico, a utility owned by PNM Resources, will build 650 megawatts of solar power and 300 megawatts of battery capacity to divest its share of the San Juan coal plant in 2022. The unanimous decision last week by the Public...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) is calling on the Trump administration to reverse its decision to cut Census data collection operations short by one month. The once a decade count, which is mandated by the Constitution, helps set federal funding levels that affect everything from schools, roads, and hospitals to...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation criticized a decision this week by the Trump administration moving up the end of field data collection for the 2020 Census from Oct. 31 to Sept. 30. U.S. Sen. Tom Udall called the decision an “obvious attempt to skew the count,” while fellow Democrat U.S....

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), along with nine Democratic Senate colleagues, have introduced legislation to create a new $2 billion fund for Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) that would automatically provide capital during a natural disaster or economic crisis, giving impacted communities the support...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) are introducing legislation to authorize a one-time $89 million infusion of funds into the Navajo Electrification Demonstration Program (NEDP) to empower the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority (NTUA) to implement projects that bring electric power to Navajo...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) joined Senators Mazie K. Hirono (D-Hawaii), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), to introduce the Impact Aid Infrastructure Act (IAIA), which provides $1 billion in...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, issued the following statement upon the Great American Outdoors Act being signed into law. “I was so proud to lead the successful effort to pass the Great American Outdoors Act into law. This historic new law represents the...

For decades, the conservation community has been advocating for the full and permanent funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a program that uses royalties from offshore oil and gas operations to purchase new public lands and maintain public access. Today President Donald Trump—who has often been criticized by conservation and...

Members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation praised President Donald Trump’s signing of the Great American Outdoors Act as a victory for conservation and a help for an economy crippled by the COVID-19 pandemic. The president signed the legislation Tuesday. It will provide $1.9 billion a year for five years to help clear a...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a stroke culminating years of work by Democratic and Republican lawmakers, President Donald Trump signed into law Tuesday morning a bill guaranteeing full annual funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. "America’s natural landscapes belong to the American people," the president said in an address...