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Democrat State Rep. Ambrose Castellano in interviews justified expensing a trip to Hawaii, new vehicle tires and restaurant tabs of more than $1,000 to his campaign as not only allowable but necessary to perform his legislative and political duties. Castellano’s defense comes in response to the campaign of his primary opponent, Anita Gonzales, promoting a recent complaint to the State Ethics Commission as evidence that Castellano used campaign funds for personal expenses. But Castellano said in an interview he did not intend to break campaign spending rules and that he welcomes a fair review by the Ethics Commission.
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Aspen Mirabal has traveled across Northern New Mexico working with women during pregnancy, birth and postpartum. A member of Taos Pueblo, her work as a doula focuses on ensuring Indigenous women deliver safely in and out of hospitals. “Sometimes clients don’t know how to advocate for themselves if this is new for them,” said Mirabal about the language spoken among providers in hospitals.
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It’s a safe bet Democrats will barrel into 2025 with their supremacy intact at the New Mexico Legislature. Barring an unexpected shock during this year’s elections, Democrats’ stranglehold on power is assured.Going into the 2024 contests, Democrats control nearly two-thirds of all seats in the House and nearly three of every five seats in the Senate.The question going into the June primary election is whether the party’s progressive wing will continue to increase power in the Legislature or will more centrist Democrats hold ground.
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Kim Wright has spent hundreds of hours on the phone with neighbors.Wright, a retired nurse, volunteers with the Cimarron Watershed Alliance, a nonprofit focused on watershed and forest health on the eastern edge of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The 2022 Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon fire made the fears of a catastrophic fire feel all the more real.
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In July 2022, a partially paralyzed and “nearly bedridden” 75-year-old man in a wheelchair fell in his bathroom at Albuquerque Uptown Assisted Living, fracturing his hip, according to court filings. But instead of staff immediately calling an ambulance for the man, who “required assistance in all aspects of his life,” he remained at the facility “in significant pain” for three weeks, his estate’s wrongful death lawsuit alleges. Eventually, the lawsuit says, he was taken to Presbyterian Hospital, where the elderly man was diagnosed with blunt pelvic trauma and a broken hip.
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This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Fund for Indigenous Journalists: Reporting on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two Spirit and Transgender People (MMIWG2T). Attorney General Raúl Torrez plans to establish a task force focused on the disproportionate rates at which Indigenous people experience violence and go missing, the New Mexico Department of Justice announced Tuesday.
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This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Fund for Indigenous Journalists: Reporting on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two Spirit and Transgender People (MMIWG2T).The state budget awaiting Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s signature contains $200,000 for Attorney General Raúl Torrez to create a new task force concentrated on a crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people.The money adds weight to the Legislature’s non-binding request that he take such action. Senate Joint Memorial 2 (SJM 2) passed on the last day of the 30-day legislative session. The task force’s fate now falls to Lujan Grisham and Torrez, in that sequence.The governor could eliminate the $200,000 appropriation using her line-item authority, which would leave Torrez to decide to form the task force anyway, without funding, or ignore the state Legislature’s request. Torrez’s office did not respond to New Mexico In Depth’s request to comment on his plans.The dollars are included in a special section of the budget that was added in the final days of the session.