In the latest blow to the severely unstable administration of Democrat New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, another Cabinet secretary has jumped ship just weeks after Economic Development Department (NMEDD) Secretary Alicia J. Keyes left the administration.
The governor’s office announced the abrupt departure of New Mexico Aging and Long-Term Services Department Secretary Katrina Hotrum-Lopez Monday, saying she had retired Monday, the same day as the announcement.
Hotrum-Lopez was one of the longest-serving officials in the administration, being at the Department since August 2019.
The former Cabinet secretary said, “It has been the great privilege of my life to work with the incredible team at Aging and Long-Term Services, as well as all the incredible state workers throughout New Mexico.”
“During my tenure, our department navigated an unprecedented global pandemic, historic wildfires, and all the everyday challenges of providing services throughout New Mexico,” she added.
Lujan Grisham’s health policy advisor Gina DeBlassie will step into the role and serve as acting secretary.
The Santa Fe New Mexicanreported, “Hotrum-Lopez’s retirement is the latest in a long series of departures of Cabinet secretaries under Lujan Grisham’s administration. Department of Finance and Administration Secretary Deborah Romero left at the end of 2022, followed in January by secretaries in the Public Education, Human Services and General Services departments. In June, the secretary for the Department of Information Technology was reassigned.”
Joe Biden will travel to New Mexico next week as part of a three-state excursion to Arizona, Utah, and the Land of Enchantment between Monday and Wednesday.
Biden previously visited New Mexico in 2022 to stump for far-left Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in her narrow yet successful reelection bid.
Lujan Grisham was one of the first public officials to formally endorse Biden’s announcement that he will seek another term in the White House.
“In next week’s visit, a White House official said, Biden is expected to tout provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act addressing climate change and promoting clean energy and manufacturing,” reported the Albuquerque Journal.
The Associated Presswrote, “Vice President Kamala Harris heads to Wisconsin this week with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to talk about broadband infrastructure investments. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack goes to Oregon to highlight wildfire defense grants, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will go to Illinois and Texas, and Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona heads to Maryland to talk about career and technical education programs.”
This month, New Mexico House Republicans released a notification form for parents and guardians to fill out to require notification before their child accesses medical and behavioral health services or some instructional materials. The move came after the passage of recent legislation, including H.B. 7 and S.B. 397.
The form gives multiple fields for notification, including “any health care services, referral for services, class, lesson, instruction, curriculum, assembly, guest speaker, activity, assignment, library material, online material, club, group, or association concerning transgender ideology, gender affirming care or gender identity,” “abortion,” “contraception and other family planning,” “primary health care,” and “mental or psychiatric care.”
However, the Democrats are now trying to gaslight parents, claiming the form is not binding while asserting they care about parental-teacher collaboration.
Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s New Mexico Department of Health Secretary (NMDOH) Patrick Allen and Department of Education (PED) Secretary Arsenio Romero wrote a July 14 letter to school officials charging, “The notification and consent school form offered to parents by the New Mexico House Republicans does not have any legal effect.”
According to a Santa Fe New Mexicanreport, parents have cause for concern about their child being exposed to abortion and gender-affirming care at schools.
It read, “But state law allows for a few circumstances in which youth can consent to medical care on their own. Teens 14 and older, for instance, can consent to taking psychotropic medications or engaging in certain forms of therapy and counseling. The Children’s Code requires clinicians in such cases to promote the ‘healthy involvement of a child’s legal custodians and family members in developing and implementing the child’s treatment plan.’ New Mexico has no laws requiring parental consent for minors to receive abortions.”
Democrats’ House Whip Reena Szczepanski (D-Santa Fe) gaslit concerned parents, telling the outlet the form is a “divisive tactic for political gain” to bring “national political lightning rod issues” to New Mexico, where she claims such concerns do not exist — despite the same report admitting underage children can access gender-affirming care and abortions without parental consent due to these new laws.
“I’m a mom with school-aged children, and one thing I have learned over the years is that the most important thing to help a child succeed is great communication between school, parents, teachers — everyone being involved in education is a great thing,” Szczepanski continued.
It is unclear how Szczepanski claims to want “great communication” between stakeholders yet opposes measures to ensure such communication happens at schools between parents/guardians and educators.
A July 19, 2023 letter signed by 23 of the 25 New Mexico House Republicans asked Secretaries Allen and Romero why they sent the July 14 letter, which caused further alarm and confusion among schools and parents.
One question asked by the GOP lawmakers included, “Are you advising school leaders to reject, or ignore, the explicit request by parents to be informed via the parental notification/consent form?”
Neither Cabinet secretary has yet given a response to the House Republicans’ questions, but it appears the two are hoping to push parents into confusion about what rights they have over their children’s well-being.
According to the University of New Mexico’s (UNM) Fall class offerings, the course “Critical Whiteness Studies” is being offered, where students will learn about how the professor believes white people are evil.
The course, taught by Bethany “Beth” Davila, Ph.D., “will explore the interdisciplinary field of whiteness studies. We will learn about whiteness as an ideology of supremacy and domination that functions, in part, by labeling what white people do, think, and value as superior and normative.”
“With the understanding of whiteness as an ideology—as opposed to a racial identity, experience, or skin color—whiteness studies is relevant for people of all backgrounds in order to examine how whiteness shapes society, beliefs, and practices,” the course description notes.
Davila’s bio on the UNM website reads, “My primary areas of interest are in race, whiteness, standardness, and perceptions of student identities. I use my scholarship, teaching, and administration to explore opportunities for valuing linguistic diversity in writing classrooms in order to challenge ‘standard’ English.”
The course notes that the “goal” of “Critical Whiteness Studies” is “to learn how to identify and challenge whiteness as part of an antiracist practice. In this course we will largely focus on whiteness in relation to colonialism, educational contexts, and language practices. Class work will include regular readings, informal homework and reflections, and a final research project.”
Similar courses are being offered at the University of Colorado, Denver, titled “Problematizing Whiteness: Educating for Racial Justice.”
Last year, the University of Puget Sound hosted a “Critical Whiteness Studies” course that “engages with ‘whiteness’ as a category of identification in order to develop a theoretically informed understanding of the history, function, and effects of racial encoding within literature.”
The University of Wisconsin Madison offered a now-deleted course titled “The Problem of Whiteness,” according to a report from the Daily Wire.
It is unclear what the blatantly racist course will teach in regards to supposed “whiteness” shaping society, especially from Davila, who is white.
UNM’s Black Lives Matter-supporting President Garnett Stokes recently fumed after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed racist affirmative action college admissions.
New Mexico’s far-left legislative majorities in the legislature and two-term stronghold on the governorship have achieved extreme policies thanks to the billions garnered from the oil and gas boom.
The Legislative Finance Committee (LFC) released a July 21 report showing revenue at $8.99 billion through March for Fiscal Year 2023, running from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023. That figure is up $1.9 billion or 27 percent.
However, the IHS Markit and Moody’s Investors Service reports show a projected decline in oil and gas production after peaks between 2028-2033.
“This could mean the start of a decline in New Mexico’s now-booming oil and gas production, dropping from a forecast 2 million bopd in 2030 to as low as about 500,000 bopd by 2050, according to the presentation,” reported the Carlsbad Current-Argus.
New Mexico’s Chief Economist Leo Delgado said, “You can see New Mexico is currently on the upslope of that oil production trendline with production expected to increase in the next couple of years,” adding, “You see that it’s on the upslope, but it does start to plateau in the early 2030s before it starts to gradually decline.”
He noted that New Mexico’s wells are “highly-productive” in “the first few months of operations, but taper off quicky, meaning more wells must be drilled and put into service,” the report noted.
“New Mexico has some very productive wells, very high-yield wells, very conducive well economics, low break-even points,” he said. “In order to maintain those levels of production, that activity must continue.”
“The expectation is production will slow. It will be at a much slower pace and that’s where we start to see New Mexico production still at elevated levels but at a declining rate year over year when we look at the long-term,” he continued, according to the Current-Argus.
With anti-energy Democrats currently in charge of the state, their eco-left, job-killing policies cause the projected decline and thus their cash cow for high-ticket investments, including taxpayer-funded “free” college and “universal” free daycare.
An intake survey recently uncovered by the New Mexico House Republicans shows that Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH) is using an intake survey with disturbing sexual questions at the state’s 80 school-based health centers.
There are two survey versions, one for children up to 11 and one for 11 and up.
“Young people like you can be seen for their sexual and mental health without permission from their parent or guardian,” the survey reads.
The one for the younger kids asks whether the student is “male, female, or transgender,” and the one for children 11 years and older asks if the child is “straight, gay/lesbian, or bisexual.”
Other questions from the 11 and up survey ask questions including relationship status, with the option for an “open relationship,” whether the child has had sex, including anal, vaginal, or oral, whether the child has ever “sexted,” whether the child has had sex with transgender men or transgender women, whether the child has had vaginal, oral, or anal sex [with definitions of what these terms mean], and whether the child’s sex partner has sex with both men and women.
Other disturbing questions include pronouns that include “They/Them/Their,” “Zi/Hir/Hirs,” and “No pronouns, just my name.”
The questionnaire also asks multiple questions about various illicit drugs and whether these drugs have been used before or after sexual intercourse.
A letter obtained by the New Mexico House Republicans showing NMDOH’s communications director outlining the specifics of the survey reads, “The survey is administered on an iPad either the day of the SBHC visit or through a web link that is designed to only be valid 24-hours prior to a scheduled visit ensuring up-to-date data for clinical use.”
“The surveys are designed to assure patients feel safe and are easy to use. Patients can answer questions they feel comfortable with and skip those they do not want to answer. Questions are added as health risks are identified. They also have the choice not to respond to the questionnaire at all.”
During the 2023 Legislative Session, fiery debate ensued over these school-based health centers pushing abortions and gender-affirming care on children, accusations that Democrats denied. These new revelations show merit in the concerns of conservative legislators.
The House Republicans have released a consent form for parents and guardians to mandate notification before their child accesses medical and behavioral health services or some instructional materials.
On Tuesday, the New Mexico State Police formally charged Dominic De La O in the fatal shooting of Alamogordo Police Department Officer Anthony Ferguson last Saturday.
Officer Ferguson via the Alamogordo Police Department.
The State Police wrote, “Twelfth Judicial District Attorney Scot D. Key, announced today that an Otero County Grand Jury returned true bills of indictment on 10 counts against Dominic De La O, in connection with the incident on July 15, 2023, which resulted in the death of Officer Anthony Ferguson of the Alamogordo Police Department.”
“True bills included one count of First-Degree Murder (Willful & Deliberate) a capital felony; Tampering with evidence, a third-degree felony; Aggravated Fleeing a Law Enforcement Officer, a fourth-degree felony; two counts of Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, fourth-degree felonies; two counts of Resisting, Evading or Obstructing an Officer, both misdemeanors; two counts of Criminal Trespass, both misdemeanors; and Improper Equipment — Driving a Vehicle at night without Lighted Lamps.”
Mugshot of Dominic De La O via New Mexico State Police.
The Department added, “Although De La O has been held in custody on a separate case, following this indictment, District Attorney Key filed an Expedited Motion for Pretrial Detention. Similar to a motion filed by the State in October 2022, DA Key is requesting that De La O be held in custody pending trial. In the Expedited Motion, Key cited De La O’s criminal history, argued that he continues to be a danger to the community, and petitioned the court to make a finding that no conditions of release will adequately protect the community.”
De La O was previously arrested in January after brandishing a gun on a police officer but was allowed pretrial release under the state’s failed laws that have removed cash bail — allowing violent offenders back on the streets.
He violated his pretrial release Wednesday by attending a party where a warrant was issued for his arrest. The perpetrator was stopped on Saturday during a routine traffic stop where he pulled the gun, which was obtained illegally, on Officer Ferguson, causing the fatal injury to the esteemed law enforcement officer. Officer Ferguson was transported to Gerald Champion Regional Medical Center and later flown to the Univeristy Medical Center of El Paso, where he passed away.
According to New Mexico State Police, “New Mexico State Police Investigations Bureau agents are working to independently determine the series of events leading to the shooting, including collecting evidence and conducting interviews. Throughout the process, investigative findings will be shared with the district attorney for their review and consideration.”
Officer Ferguson is the first Alamogordo Police Department officer killed in the line of duty since Clint Corvinus in 2016. Officer Ferguson was nominated for Officer of the Year in 2019 and has honorably served Alamogordo throughout the years.
Public records obtained by New Mexico Alliance for Life reveal that the state’s pro-abortion Democrat Gov. Lujan Grisham’s taxpayer-funded abortion hotline is referring women to The Satanic Temple Health (TST Health) abortion facility – advertised as “the world’s first religious abortion clinic.”
Additionally, New Mexico Alliance for Life found that only 13 of the 33 abortion clinics women are referred to are in-state businesses, while 20 are out-of-state: from Bethesda, Maryland, Seattle, Washington, to Wichita, Kansas.
The in-state state taxpayer-funded abortion referral list includes Presbyterian Health of Espanola, five Las Cruces area abortion businesses, six Albuquerque, one Santa Fe, and one Farmington.
“Why are taxpayers of New Mexico forced to promote the satanic temple religious abortion center through the pro-abortion governor’s hotline,” said Elisa Martinez. “Is the state of New Mexico fully disclosing to women that “TST Health” is a satanic ritualistic abortion center and that abortion is not a life-saving procedure or that it involves the ending of an innocent human life?”
Earlier this month, Governor Lujan-Grisham announced the establishment of the abortion referral hotline using taxpayer funds. During this year’s legislative session, she also allocated $10 million in taxpayer dollars to fund an abortion center in Doña Ana County.
According to an investigation released this month by the pro-life group Abortion Free New Mexico (AFNM), Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s recently created “reproductive health” hotline through the New Mexico Department of Health appears to be doing as expected — pushing abortion and only abortion.
New Mexico’s abortion rate has doubled since the overturning of Roe v. Wade last year. In 2021, New Mexico abortion businesses reported 4,900 abortions. That number jumped to 11,000 in 2022. In 2023, New Mexico abortion businesses ended the lives of 5,300 innocent babies.
On Monday, Morning Consult released its latest gubernatorial approval poll, showing that once again Democrat New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has ranked as one of the least popular governors in the United States.
According to the poll, 42 percent of respondents disapprove of her job performance, while 52 percent approve.
That makes her tied for third-least popular governor in America alongside Govs.
Lujan Grisham is only up four percentage points in popularity from the last Morning Consult poll taken in April, which had the governor at 48 percent approval.
Since then, she has had a slightly lower disapproval rating than the previous 45 percent.
The only governors worse than Lujan Grisham were Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI), who had a 44 percent disapproval rating, and Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA), who had a 43 percent disapproval rating.
Other governors Lujan Grisham shares the third-worst spot with include Govs. Tate Reeves (R-MS), Greg Abbott (R-TX), Tim Walz (D-MN), Kim Reynolds (R-IA), and Ron DeSantis (R-FL).
“For Morning Consult’s state-level survey data, weights are applied to each state separately based on age, gender, education, race, homeownership, marital status, presidential voting history and — for a subset of states — race by education as well as an age-by-gender interaction. Margins of error for responses from all voters in each state range from +/-1 to +/-6 percentage points,” wrote Morning Consult.
Democrat Sen. Joseph Cervantes (D-Las Cruces) is acting rather cocky about litigation regarding New Mexico’s congressional map, which he gerrymandered to benefit Democrats by splitting up communities of interest to shift the state’s Republican-leaning Second Congressional District to favor Democrats now.
The state Supreme Court ordered the lower court to decide the case by October, denying the Democrats’ motion to squelch the lawsuit at the state level.
Cervantes claimed he did not gerrymander the map, despite clear signs of partisan gerrymandering and cracking communities of interest, resulted in snake-like districts that spanned everywhere from Española and Taos to Lovington in the Third District, while Albuquerque’s South Valley was plunged into the Second District and the First District paired Albuquerque with Roswell.
The map also chopped up many communities into two or three parts, such as Roswell, Hobbs, Rio Rancho, Albuquerque, and others. The new map shifted the Second District from leaning toward Republicans by 14 points to now favor Democrats by four points.
Cervantes still claims he redrew the map to create “competitive districts.” However, Princeton University’s Gerrymandering Project’s independent review shows zero competitive congressional districts with the new map.
The Las Cruces state senator is doubling down on his claims that the bipartisan lawsuit lodged against the maps is “going nowhere.”
“I was amused by your piece saying I was as wrong as a politician can be,” Cervantes wrote to Santa Fe New Mexican’s Milan Simonich, who admonished the unfair maps. “A bit premature of you, I’d say. But I stand by my statement. The lawsuit is going nowhere. … The Court will uphold the districts. Mark my words.”
“Funny,” Cervantes continued. “But it’s my business to predict court outcomes and application of the laws. We’ll know the outcome and can settle up then.”
The gerrymandering case will be a key milestone in New Mexico for fair maps. Similar states, such as New York, had its high court strike down the Democrat partisan gerrymander of its congressional map, showing even in far-left states, there is cause to be hopeful for maps that are representative of the population — not just a political party’s quest for unlimited power.
