press releases

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) co-signed a letter today calling on President Barack Obama to issue an executive order banning contractors from receiving federal government contracts unless they have a policy prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The letter was led by U.S. Senator Jeff...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) responds to a floor statement made this morning by U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) on Congress's oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA): "I thank and recognize Chairman Feinstein for her efforts to set the factual record straight...

New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich is right on target in his criticism of the Central Intelligence Agency over two important issues. First, the CIA refuses to declassify a Senate report on the agency’s past detention and interrogation tactics that included waterboarding. Second, the CIA may have been spying on the U.S. senators who looked into...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), a member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, today released the following statement on Congress's oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA): “The Senate Intelligence Committee oversees the CIA, not the other way around. Since I joined the Committee, the...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senators Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and Mark Udall (D-Colo.), who serve on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, issued the following joint statement in response to reports that a large number of individuals, including Americans, may have had private online webcam videos intercepted in...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) is cosponsoring the Restore Honor to Service Members Act, a bill that would help service members discharged solely due to their sexual orientation correct their military records to reflect their honorable service and reinstate the benefits they have earned. "Doing away with the discriminatory...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) released the following statement in recognition of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: "Martin Luther King Jr.‘s struggle for civil rights was an undeniable force that shaped our nation. On this day of national service, we celebrate his vision of hope, his dream of equality and justice, and...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Senators Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and Mark Udall (D-Colo.), members of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, reacted to today's speech by President Obama outlining his directive on reforming surveillance powers. The senators have been advocates for reining in overbroad surveillance powers and...

When Martin Heinrich won election to the U.S. Senate in 2012, the former Democratic House member had his eye on two plum committee assignments: Armed Services, and Energy and Natural Resources. New Mexico’s vast military presence and abundant mineral resources made both panels a natural fit. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid offered Heinrich...

WASHINGTON — Last May, Senate Intelligence Committee rookie Martin Heinrich was just settling into his new Senate office, five floors above the committee’s fiercely guarded headquarters, and finally wrapping his head around some of the intelligence matters he’d recently been tasked to oversee when Edward Snowden...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senators Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) -- all members of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence -- in a letter pressed the White House today to take swift action to rein in the National Security Agency's pervasive and constitutionally flawed domestic surveillance activities...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) made the following statement today after the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that the state is constitutionally required to allow same-sex couples to marry and extend to them the rights, protections, and responsibilities that derive from civil marriage:  “Today is a proud day...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M) issued the following statement regarding a decision by Judge Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granting the plaintiffs a preliminary injunction to block the gathering of their telephone data because a program that collects Americans telephone records in bulk...

U.S. Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich, and Congressman Ben Ray Lujan reaffirmed their support for marriage equality and joined the work of New Mexico Unites for Marriage, the campaign dedicated to securing and protecting that freedom for everyone in the state. Their endorsements come as the New Mexico Supreme Court is poised to rule on a case...

WASHINGTON — THE framers of the Constitution declared that government officials had no power to seize the records of individual Americans without evidence of wrongdoing, and they embedded this principle in the Fourth Amendment. The bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records — so-called metadata — by the National...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senators Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) urged U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli today to answer a series of questions regarding statements and oral arguments the government made to the U.S. Supreme Court. Statements made in the recent case Clapper v. Amnesty International...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senators Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), members of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, today challenged the effectiveness of the National Security Agency's bulk phone records collection program. The senators' amicus curiae brief, filed in the First Unitarian Church vs....

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) voted in favor of S.815, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2013 (ENDA), a bill he is cosponsoring to prohibit job discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.  The bill passed with a 64 to 32 vote. "Today the Senate took a historic step toward creating a...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - In a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing today, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) was one of four senators to vote against the FISA Improvements Act citing that the bill did not go far enough in curbing the bulk collection of law-abiding Americans' private records: "This bill falls short of...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich are backing legislation that seeks to restore Americans' privacy rights by ending the government's dragnet collection of phone records and requiring greater oversight, transparency, and accountability with respect to domestic surveillance authorities.  "In 2001,...