Me with my girlfriend Sarah Silva backpacking in the San Pedro Parks Wilderness in 2019. Changing channels. It’s a television term that can also apply to navigating life. We’ve all had to do this a lot lately — making adjustments, some small, many massive, as we adapt to living during a pandemic. I’m making another change I need to tell you about. I shared a lot about my adventures in the wild on social media in the year or so before COVID-19 consumed our lives. As I looked back on it to write this column, a passage from one social media post from August 2019, which I wrote after hiking to Bay ..read more

The offices of the Las Cruces Sun-News, a newspaper owned by Gannett. (Heath Haussamen/NMPolitics.net)COMMENTARY: Despite years of cutting into democracy’s bones by decreasing news coverage in communities across the United States, a giant corporation that owns several newspapers in New Mexico still has room to cut staff, its leader suggests. To be perfectly clear about my position: Gannett leader Michael E. Reed is wrong. He must know it. And his company’s history of chopping down local newspapers for profit is a real threat to the First Amendment and the society it is intended to protect ..read more

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. (Office of the Governor)COMMENTARY: Michelle Lujan Grisham has an impressive résumé. As governor she’s been highly visible by pushing New Mexico into national debates on hot topics like vehicle fuel efficiency and free college tuition. She isn’t afraid to take strong stands on issues when doing so will anger conservatives and sometimes even the progressive wing of her own party. She’s a female person of color. And she appears to have boundless energy. For all those reasons, there’s a good chance she will end up on the successful Democratic presidential candid ..read more

My girlfriend Sarah’s grandfather, Ramón Jiménez, a Mexican immigrant and pecan farmer and a dear man who makes America great. (Heath Haussamen/NMPolitics.net)COMMENTARY: I came across a truck parked on the side of a dirt road while I was hunting last week with a red “Make America Great Again” cap displayed on the dashboard. The plate on the front read, “You can’t fix stupid.” I’ve been thinking about it ever since. The sort of othering promoted by President Donald Trump and his MAGA agenda is sweeping the globe as populist movements grow in response to economic pressures. That, coupled wit ..read more

A voting kiosk (Heath Haussamen/NMPolitics.net)COMMENTARY: Tuesday’s elections in New Mexico proved that, in spite of all our dysfunction, society is still able to implement structural reform that supports democracy and benefits people. We’ve made several changes in New Mexico since the last election. Most notable was the consolidation of the many tiny, local elections that had long flown under the radar into one, larger, nonpartisan election held every other November. That was intended to make it easier for people to keep up and participate. Other changes were the allowing of same-day r ..read more

A scene from the destructive 2018 Woolsey Fire near Los Angeles. (Peter Buschmann for the U.S. Forest Service)COMMENTARY: I’ve happened to be reading the apocalyptic novel Parable of the Sower over the past couple of weeks as intentional power outages and terrifying wildfires have raged across California. In Octavia E. Butler’s 1993 novel, which is set in California in the 2020s, climate change has exacerbated many other human-caused problems and pushed the United States toward collapse. Government is unable to deliver critical services to people. Crime, drug abuse and fires are rampant. Pe ..read more

New Mexico GOP Chair Steve Pearce (Heath Haussamen/NMPolitics.net)COMMENTARY: Former N.M. Gov. Susana Martinez once complained that her Democratic opponent Diane Denish and her predecessor Bill Richardson were perpetuating “a corrupt system that rewards friends while stealing from taxpayers.” Former U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, while he was running for governor last year, blasted his Democratic opponent Michelle Lujan Grisham for the “kind of corruption” that “holds New Mexico back… politicians rigging the system for their own gain while fleecing taxpayers.” Former state GOP Chairman and gube ..read more

A replica of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo at Spaceport America. (Heath Haussamen/NMPolitics.net)COMMENTARY: As a teen I photographed the moon through a telescope with my dad. I almost minored in astronomy in college. As someone who hopes to watch Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo fly into space with my kids, and who desperately wants my kids to have the option to find quality jobs in our community, I want Spaceport America to succeed. The spaceport is a state government agency that’s funded with our money. Our ability to scrutinize the project is essential to its need to earn public trust an ..read more

COMMENTARY: President Donald Trump violated people’s First Amendment rights when he blocked them on Twitter. Spaceport America violated my First Amendment rights when it blocked me on Twitter. Several court rulings have affirmed that government officials can’t exclude people from accessing their social media accounts to avoid criticism. Most prominently, federal appeals judges in New York ruled in July that Trump can’t block Twitter users from an “otherwise open online dialogue” because he doesn’t like what they say. So it was discouraging to discover this week that state Sen. Michael ..read more

President Donald Trump (Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons)COMMENTARY: State Rep. Alonzo Baldonado is “willing to bet that your quality of life has improved dramatically since Donald Trump took office.” That’s because, the Los Lunas Republican wrote in a recent Albuquerque Journal guest editorial, “nearly 6 million” new jobs have been created during Trump’s tenure and Latinos filled 2.4 million of them. Baldonado doesn’t mention a single Trump action that led to more jobs. But in calling complaints about Trump a Democratic Party “fear-mongering farce” he claims, incredibly, that Hispanic Americ ..read more