Free Republic

SANTA FE — Republican state Rep. David Gallegos and others filed a federal lawsuit this week challenging New Mexico’s refusal to authorize the reopening of schools in every county in the state, arguing it violates the constitutional right of students to an equal education. The lawsuit comes as Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration delays the return of in-person classes for students in some districts because their home counties exceed statistical thresholds on the spread and prevalence of COVID-19. Many of the affected districts are in the southeast quadrant of the state — a region with three times as many...

A newly-unsealed lawsuit is bringing up old allegations against former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and several other high-profile New Mexicans. The lawsuit claims Attorney General Hector Balderas benefited from Richardson's 2008 pay-to-play scandal. A lawsuit in 2008 alleged Richardson had been the mastermind of a complex operation that defrauded New Mexico's taxpayers. It states, "Richardson obtained money for himself; money for his campaigns; money for his political organizations; lavish meals, entertainment, and travel; wine and liquor, sexual services and sexual favors." Bill Richardson faces fresh calls for investigation into alleged pay-to-play schemes In 2009, the U.S. Attorney over New...

Screenshot from Youtube video of Protest for Freedom Rally, cropped and scaled by Dean Weingarten On Sunday morning, 19 July, 2020, a kindergarten teacher was organizing a Black New Mexico Movement protest at the Civic Plaza in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He had a firearm holstered across his chest. Police say he refused to disarm after they told him firearms were banned at the Plaza. A few minutes later they arrested him and two other armed men who were with him. Grady complained that members of the New Mexico Civil Guard, who attended a Protest for Freedom rally at the Civic...

A series of forums on race offered at Sandia National Laboratories left at least one lab employee miffed enough to send an email blast to the entire staff voicing his displeasure. And the upset electrical engineer appears to have caught the attention of the White House, which last week in a memo told all federal agencies to stop hosting similar training sessions. Last month, Casey Petersen, an engineer, sent an “unauthorized” email to all lab employees denying the existence of systemic racism and aspects of white privilege and criticizing recent race-based training seminars at the labs. About two hours later,...

Several months ago, the Trump campaign surprised many by saying that New Mexico was one of its “battleground states” and the chairman of the New Mexico GOP flat-out said President Trump would carry New Mexico. In some ways, this shouldn’t have been a shock: the 2016 election was even closer than it looked when Hillary Clinton won by just over 65,000 votes. Gary Johnson, the former New Mexico governor and Libertarian candidate captured 74,000 votes as well. Since 2016, New Mexico Republicans have chipped 5,000 votes off the Democrats’ registration edge in the state.One likely reason the Trump camp thought...

The company building the virtual border wall has a new version of its stealthy fast-flying drones — and a fresh contract with Customs and Border Protection to match. Anduril, a young defense-friendly tech company from the founder of Oculus, received $36 million from Customs and Border Protection this month for its AI-powered autonomous surveillance towers... In July, CBP awarded Anduril $25 million for a previous set of surveillance towers. The agency plans to implement 200 towers by 2022 in an ongoing relationship with the contractor worth more than $200 million... Now, Anduril is launching the fourth iteration of its small,...

The U.S. government has expelled more than 147,000 migrants through the Southwest border since March under a health mandate to stem the spread of COVID-19. Many are being sent to Mexico in two hours or less under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Title 42 order, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan... The fast-track expulsions have increased almost exponentially, going from 7,079 in March to 42,071 in August alone... Mexican officials say they’re receiving the largest groups of Title 42 migrants — 4,600 in the past six months — at the Columbus-Palomas (NM) port...

SANTA FE – With Election Day less than two months away, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has a sizable lead over President Donald Trump among New Mexico voters, according to a Journal Poll. Fifty-four percent of likely general election voters surveyed recently said they would vote for Biden, while 39% said they would vote for Trump, the Republican incumbent. The remaining voters surveyed were undecided or said they did not plan to vote for either candidate. Biden’s commanding advantage in the Journal Poll was due largely to strong support among female voters, Hispanics and self-described moderates. Specifically, 67% of moderates,...

The coronavirus pandemic has hit Mexico so hard that the governments of several states ran out of death certificates. Officials said Friday the federal forms started running out about 15 to 20 days ago in at least three states — Baja California, the State of Mexico and Mexico City. Authorities say a million new forms have been printed and are being distributed. The certificates are printed with special characteristics because falsification has been a problem in the past.

On the fifth anniversary of the notorious spill of 3 million gallons of heavily contaminated acid mine water from the Gold King Mine in southwestern Colorado, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the State of Utah announced an agreement that ends the state’s lawsuit. Neither the EPA nor the contractors involved at the Gold King spill site are entirely off the hook for their alleged missteps that resulted in downstream damages. Lawsuits filed by the Navajo Nation, the State of New Mexico, and a group of Navajo farmers and ranchers have been consolidated, and discovery is proceeding, with a projected...

LY971 took off from Ben Gurion International Airport in Israel bound for Abu Dhabi at just after 11am on Monday, marking the latest stage in the normalisation of diplomatic relations between the Jewish state and a key Gulf Arab nation. Recommended 2/5 'Happy birthday, you rat': Protesters target Lukashenko on embattled Belarus leader's 66th birthday Looking to extend your home or add more daylight into your existing extension? We’ve partnered with Sky channels to help show you how. 2 minutes could save you thousands on private student debt. Prince Harry reveals coronavirus stopped him from visiting UK as he hopes...

A federal judge found the federal government should not be forced to stop construction on the border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border in California despite claims human remains were bulldozed over. U.S. District Judge Anthony Battaglia, a Barack Obama appointee... hearing Thursday in a challenge brought by the La Posta Band of Diegueno Mission Indians. The tribe claims President Donald Trump and the federal government have failed to meet tribal consultation requirements regarding border wall construction, which cuts through Kumeyaay land in San Diego... The tribe and the federal government are at odds over whether the type of notices, given...

There is a civil war erupting at @SandiaLabs. Following my investigation, a dissident electrical engineer named Casey Peterson emailed all 16,000 employees denouncing critical race theory in the lab and hoping to spark a rebellion against Sandia executives. On Tuesday, Peterson made a YouTube video "pushing back back on the narrative of modern systemic racism and white privilege." (VIDEO AT LINK) The video quickly hit 10,000 views within the labs and dozens of Sandia employees contacted Peterson to express support. Within hours, Sandia executives dispatched a counterintelligence team to lock Peterson out of the network and scrub his communications from...

For twelve years, Yaser Said has been on the run after his horrific murders of his daughters on January 1, 2008. He did it because they had non-Muslim boyfriends, which as far as Yaser was concerned, brought dishonor upon the family. Murder didn’t dishonor the family, but Muslim girls with non-Muslim boys did. This is the reality of honor killing, while the enemedia condemns those who speak out against it as “Islamophobic ... Said had been on the run since 2008 after police said he took his daughters, 18-year-old Amina and 17-year-old Sarah, to get something to eat on New...

The government’s legal immigration agency said Monday that it will give strict scrutiny to DACA recipients who try to use a backdoor path to citizenship, as the Department of Homeland Security finalized plans for restarting the program after a Supreme Court decision this summer. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said illegal immigrant “Dreamers” can obtain advance parole to travel outside the U.S. — which offers the indirect path to citizenship — only if they have special circumstances such as an urgent national security reason or the need for a medical procedure that can be performed only outside the U.S. That...

There are few remaining survivors of concentration camps. Ed Mosberg is one of them. And the 93-year-old from Morris Plains, NJ, has no time for Rep. ­Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s statements last week, when she called the southern border’s migrant detention centers “concentration camps.” “She should be removed from Congress. She’s spreading anti-Semitism, hatred and stupidity,” Mosberg told The Post. “The people on the border aren’t forced to be there — they go there on their own will. If someone doesn’t know the difference, either they’re playing stupid or they just don’t care.” On June 18, the Bronx/Queens politician posted a video...

As national Black Lives Matter demonstrations grow, Latino activists are joining the multiracial protests while trying to draw attention to their deadly police encounters, some of which go back decades. Latino advocates and families of those killed by police say they aren’t trying to pull the focus away from Black lives but want to illustrate their own suffering from policing and systemic racism. Activists say cases from Phoenix to Springfield, Massachusetts, show a pattern of police violence against Latinos like that against Black people. As with the killing of Black men and women, officers rarely face punishment in the deaths...

In the Middle Ages, the plague caused tens of millions of deaths in Europe in a series of outbreaks known as the Black Death. And while it's extremely rare in modern times, the deadly bacterial infection is still around today — but how likely are you to catch it? This week, California reported its first case of plague in five years. The patient, a resident of the South Lake Tahoe area, is said to be recovering at home. And in July, a 15-year-old boy in western Mongolia died of bubonic plague that he contracted from an infected marmot. According to...

Data from the American Values Atlas (AVA) shows that throughout 2019, on average, 28% of Hispanic Americans viewed Trump favorably, compared to 41% of all Americans. In 2020 so far, more than one-third (36%) of Hispanic Americans view Trump favorably, a significant increase from 2019.

President Trump’s border wall construction will reach 300 miles at the end of this week, a top Army Corps of Engineers official said on Tuesday as he gave Mr. Trump a tour of the border region in Arizona. New wall is going up at a rate of 10 miles a week. ...and while 300 are almost completed, another 300 are under construction. The remaining mileage is still in planning.