Left to right: NM Democratic U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján, U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich and U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández during a news conference in Santa Fe during the 2025 legislative session. All three the week of July 21 called out the Trump administration for budget decisions and more impacting the state.
New Mexico’s congressional delegation had words — many— for President Donald Trump’s administration this week.
On Wednesday, New Mexico Democratic U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján wrote to Trump with detailed concerns about proposed reductions in the 2026 Fiscal Year budget for the Department of Energy, including a 14% reduction to the Office of Science; a 74% reduction to the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy; and a 57% budget cut to the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.
“These proposed changes jeopardize not only our nation’s economic competitiveness,” Luján wrote, “but also our national security, energy independence, and capacity for innovation.”
The cuts to the Office of Science and EERE, he continued, “will have an immediate and destabilizing impact — threatening the continuation of critical research programs, leading to the loss of thousands of skilled jobs.”
Moreover, the budget cuts, Luján contended, will “scale back” fellowships, internships and research grants “that support tens of thousands of graduate and postdoctoral researchers,” while also impeding the national laboratories “critical role in translating federal research into commercial success.”
ARPA-E, specifically, Luján wrote, “has funded over 1,000 high-risk projects, resulted in over 700 patents, and attracted over $12 billion in follow-on private investment.”
The letter cited work at both Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory — clean rooms and GenBank, respectively — as examples of the “groundbreaking innovation coming out of the national labs” in New Mexico, before urging the president to “reconsider these reductions and restore full funding for DOE research and innovation programs.”
Fellow Democratic U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, ranking member on the U.S. Energy and Natural Resources Committee, also registered significant concerns about the proposed budget last month during hearings.
Heinrich: Trump administration violating treaty obligations
Heinrich on Wednesday also levied criticism at the Trump administration in response to reports of the deleterious effects Trump’s executive order promoting “efficiency” has had on Gallup Indian Medical Center.
Stat News reported that executive order spurred a new approval process for contracts that has subsequently created a “bottleneck leading directly or indirectly to delays in care and losses in medical services and personnel.”
In his statement, Heinrich said he was “appalled” at GIMAC’s “dismal” state.
“Despite the truly heroic work being done by providers there, burdensome and unnecessary red tape inflicted by the Trump Administration has caused this already overburdened hospital to cut down on essential services,” he said, adding that his office had received “numerous” reports that the facility had “slashed the number of beds available and scaled back maternal care. That’s not okay. If expectant mothers need an ultrasound or experience pregnancy complications overnight, they shouldn’t have to be flown to another facility to receive basic medical services. But that is the state of care right now.”
Heinrich called on Trump “to take immediate action” to repeal [Department of Government Efficiency] policies that are crushing this hospital,” noting that GIMAC needs “federal investment in a new location,” not policies that are “nearly bringing its operations to a halt.” The Trump administration’s actions, Heinrich concluded, “are a blatant and unacceptable violation of treaty obligations and must end now.”
U.S. Forest Service ‘failing’ to restore trust
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, who represents New Mexico’s 3rd Congressional District, this week sent a letter to U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz about the Laguna Fire burning approximately 25 miles west of Abiquiú, which, as of Wednesday, had grown to nearly 17,000 acres. The Santa Fe National Forest on June 30 announced that lightning caused the 176-acre fire and said the agency would “actively manage” the blaze. On July 12, the agency said a spot fire had ignited outside of containment lines the day prior. Before the spot fire escaped, the fire had reached about 12,000 acres and was 87% contained.
Laguna Fire grows to more than 15,000 acres after spot fire escapes management boundaries
In her letter, Leger Fernández contended that the fire “is currently destroying thousands of acres of the Santa Fe National Forest and has killed and maimed the livestock of local ranchers in Rio Arriba County.” Moreover, in the aftermath of events such as the controlled burn that led to the devastating Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon fire, “communities in northern New Mexico have completely lost trust in the agency’s wildfire decision-making,” she wrote.
Leger Fernández’s letter also included a list of questions to Schultz, including why a “strategy of full containment” wasn’t a “top priority”; whether Forest Service staff reductions had influenced the agency’s response to the fire; what type of communication the Forest Service had occurred with local ranchers whose cattle grazed in the fire area; and what type of compensation would be available to those ranchers who had lost livestock.
She concluded by citing a May 2022 letter she wrote to the agency’s previous Forest Service Chief Randy Moore in which she expressed concern “about the prospects of another fire resulting from a prescribed burn and the level at which USFS engages with the local community when planning these events.” That letter was written in the aftermath of Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon — the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s history.
“I hoped that the Forest Service could make strides in the long process of restoring the community’s trust,” Leger Fernández wrote this week to Schultz. “This incident indicates the Forest Service is failing.”
This post was originally authored and published by Julia Goldberg from via RSS Feed. to get your news feed on Nationwide Report®.
