New Mexico has received a huge $156 million-dollar boost from the Biden Administration to put more solar energy in many low income and disadvantaged communities across the state.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Monday in a case to address whether or not people can be punished for living in encampments. The outcome could affect a similar case that has made it up to New Mexico’s Supreme Court.

This year’s effort by progressives is the latest in a long standing campaign, stretching back to the mid-2000s, to bring more progressives into the Legislature.

New Mexico labor regulators on Tuesday announced a legal settlement that resolves longstanding accusations of unpaid wages against a restaurant business in northwestern New Mexico.

The BLM has always leased land for things like oil and gas and grazing. Now it will sell leases for conservation, too.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released a final rule to designate two types of PFAS chemicals as hazardous substances. The agency says it will make it easier to ensure the parties responsible for PFAS contamination pay to clean it up. In New Mexico, PFAS have been documented in rivers downstream from urban areas and in groundwater near military bases and airports.

Organ donations and transplants hit an all-time high in 2023, according to New Mexico Donor Services. Still, over 640 New Mexicans are sitting on a waitlist hoping to find a match before it’s too late. Donor Services, along with recipients and waitlisters themselves are undertaking efforts to get more New Mexicans with organ failure life-saving transplants.

In 1970, New Mexico’s Arturo Sandoval was recruited to help organize the nation’s first Earth Day, a massive movement that helped incite cultural and congressional action. Reporter Laura Paskus, host of “Our Land” on New Mexico PBS, spoke with Sandoval about his memories of the event.

The U.S. Border Patrol is asserting its authority to seize cannabis shipments — including commercial, state-authorized supplies — as licensed cannabis providers file complaints that more than $300,000 worth of marijuana has been confiscated in recent months at highway checkpoints in southern New Mexico.

The new rule by the Bureau of Land Management will protect land considered sacred by Pueblos — and used by wildlife — from development by gravel miners.