(Photo by Marisa Demarco / Source NM)

Last week, the US Drought Monitor, in association with the NOAA, released a map.

As you can see above, New Mexico is experiencing one of the worst droughts in the country, with almost half of the state's land area in a D3 drought. This is shocking to look at, obviously, but this is not surprising to anyone who has been paying attention. The Rio Grande has been almost completely dry for ages now, and Elephant Butte is at only 1.7% capacity (no thanks to Meta’s Los Lunas data center), which could lead to a burgeoning groundwater crisis. A large portion of our current groundwater is toxic wastewater left over from oil and gas production. The lack of water has become so dire that bears have begun wandering the suburban streets of Rio Rancho in search of a more hospitable habitat (which is poignant given the recent attempted partial rollback of the Endangered Species Act.) Despite all of this though, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, cut millions of dollars worth of environmental grants for New Mexico last year.

All of this just so happens to be going on while big oil and gas (now further intertwined with private equity) have been shamelessly bankrolling our education system in a pathetic attempt to whitewash the reality of how their poisonous industry affects our state. They seek to market themselves as a net positive for New Mexico while they engage in widespread fraud, leave mass amounts of abandoned oil wells unplugged, attempt to begin discharging fracking waste into our groundwater, let oil spills happen over 35,000 times a year and expose citizens to methane pollution and I for one feel like MLG and the New Mexico government have been letting them get away with this stuff for far too long. The corporate gaslighting continues beyond oil and gas (as we saw firsthand with Starlink proposing Project Jupiter), and it’s starting to feel like they think the people of New Mexico will put up with anything if it helps stimulate the local economy.

New Mexico’s land has obviously been exploited for decades now (most notably for uranium extraction), but lately it’s been reaching a feverish pitch. Apparently it will never be enough for the beneficiaries of this exploitation, whether they be part of the federal government or some massive oil conglomerate, and now Chaco Canyon is the latest target of this exploitation, with the BLM proposing reopening the 10-mile barrier surrounding Chaco Canyon to oil and gas pipelines. This decision came days after Trump downsized Bear Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante national monuments by 3 million acres. New Mexico is also seemingly making a grand return to uranium extraction (with help from our friends over in Washington), as over 12,000 mining claims have been filed in the last 4 years. State landmarks like Cibola National Forest and Carson National Forest are also being considered as potential mining sites (as mentioned in my Nuclear NM article)

Climate Change is getting worse and worse every year, and 2026 is set to become the hottest year in American history by December, and as of the time of writing this, Michigan and Ontario are currently being engulfed in flames due to wildfires (along with Oregon and a sizable portion of France and Spain). France also reported around 5,700 deaths from its historic heat wave in late June, and mass flooding has been reported from all over the US. While the French heat wave was happening, the Trump administration appointed a climate denialist for its new climate change office. This came after previous withdrawals from the Paris Agreement and the UN climate treaty, paired with widespread climate denialism from the Trump administration. If we want things to get better, we need to stop listening to these people and start listening to actual science.

It’s clear the people in power are still open to treating New Mexico as a sacrifice zone, whether for oil and gas, uranium strip mining, or anything else; it's clear that if we don’t act soon, then the environmental issues inside New Mexico will continue to get worse and worse. A state with unbreathable air, undrinkable water, and overexploited land is not a state that anyone should want to live in.

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(Photo source unknown)

CSI Aviation is a company you’ve most likely never heard of. Founded and headquartered in Kileen, Texas (but currently handling most of its operations in New Mexico), the company’s mission statement is to “Provide unparalleled aviation services tailored to the individual needs of its customers.” Its stated purpose is vague and undefined, other than the website saying it was established to “Arrange chartered aircraft, primarily large airline aircraft, for charter customers in the United States.” It’s primarily known for providing medical flight services, but it has also served a variety of clients. Lately, what it’s really been known for is its unethical relationship with the US government regarding ICE. In 2024, 80% of ICE deportation flights were conducted by CSI subcontractor GlobalX, and CSI has been known for transporting prisoners of the US government for a while, including ICE detainees.

CSI was recently awarded $1.1 billion by the Trump administration, more than double what the company was given during the Biden administration. Multiple of its subcontractors (GlobalX, Omni Air International, Geo Transport) have also received increased amounts of funding since the first Trump administration. The government has discontinued the use of military C-17s to fly detainees to detention centers like CECOT or Guantanamo Bay, meaning most deportation flights are chartered by CSI and its subcontractors. Those who seek to profit from deportations and detentions have a lot to gain right now. Damon Hiniger (CoreCivic CEO) recently said, “This is truly one of the most exciting periods of my career,” echoing the sentiment of other people of his ilk. The goal imposed by DHS of 1 million deportations in one year still has not been met, meaning ICE has had to accelerate towards a higher threshold of deportations at a breakneck pace (leading to disastrous results)

We’ve already seen how much money the government is willing to waste on ICE, detention centers, and detainees, with billion-dollar investments into facilities like Alligator Alcatraz practically setting money on fire in front of our very eyes, but this amount of funding for chartered aircraft carriers is something else, with THE DHS spending $140 million last year on 747s alone as well as funneling $70 billion to ICE for stronger border patrol. Despite all this funding, bodycams for ICE officers are still not mandatory, even though Kristi Noem said, "We will rapidly acquire and deploy body cameras to DHS law enforcement across the country" earlier this year.

The idea of stuffing a bunch of restrained detainees onto a crowded charter plane may seem exceptionally cruel already, but the allegations of poor treatment CSI Aviation has received make it sound even more disturbing. A former flight attendant recalls multiple instances of poor treatment, recounting one story of a little girl who collapsed onto the floor, struggling to breathe. The on-contact nurse tried to fix her unbalanced oxygen saturation level, but outside of giving her Tylenol, there wasn’t much she could do. She and her epileptic mom were rushed to the hospital when they touched back down in Arizona, but her dad wasn’t allowed to come with.

Formal ICE air incidents during Obama’s second term and Trump’s first year in office include reports of alarmingly slow evacuations during emergency scenarios, airline mechanics designated for clearing flights being arrested for public intoxication, and chartered planes filling up with smoke as a result of hydraulic fluid in the air conditioners. In one incident, the landing gear broke, one of the wings caught fire, and the stench of burning rubber began enveloping the vessel, but instead of alerting the passengers, they just got up and left. Officers, guards, and nurses were “confused about what to do and in which direction to exit during distress,” also stating “no one has received any training on emergency evacuation situations.” Similar reports had also emerged during the Biden administration and the current Trump administration. These flights are also heavily mismanaged, with one CSI-chartered flight harboring 92 Somali immigrants, turning back around to the US after touching down in Senegal due to “logistical issues.” They were also forced to stay shackled for almost 2 straight days during the flight, as well as 23 hours straight at the Dakar Airport tarmac.

Trump’s last rally here in Albuquerque was held at the CSI aviation hangar at the Sunport, which to some may have seemed like an odd place to host a political rally for a presidential campaign. It all starts making more sense when you start to examine CSI Aviation CEO Allen Weh’s political career. You see, he has been angling as an establishment Republican for a while, and he and his wife are long-time conservative donors. In 2024, Allen and Rebecca Weh contributed a combined $315,300 to the RNC. CSI employees have raised a combined total of $735.017 for the RNC since 2012. Allen also unsuccessfully ran as a Republican for the NM Senate in 2014 (and as a republican gubernatorial candidate in 2010), raising over $3.6 million for his campaign. Weh was also involved in a scandal during the Bush administration pertaining to the improper removal of government officials.

Despite its perceived loyalty to the Trump administration, CSI Aviation actually sued the US Department of Homeland Security last year, claiming it “improperly awarded a $915 million deportation services contract to Salus Worldwide Solutions Corp.”

CSI has continued to be embroiled in controversy, and I doubt they will be out of the news any time soon.

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(Photo source unknown)

If you asked someone from outside of New Mexico what they think of when the state is mentioned, they’d probably say either Breaking Bad, aliens, or Los Alamos. This is unsurprising to anyone from here, considering the insane amount of tourism generated by Los Alamos, the large amount of advanced nuclear weaponry developed at Los Alamos National Lab (LANL), and the legacy left behind by the detonation of the world’s first atomic bomb. This is disturbing to many native New Mexicans, considering the horrific effects experienced by not only those who were victimized in Hiroshima/Nagasaki but in New Mexico as well.

Trinity

Let’s start with the byproduct of the bomb itself. Officials supposedly tried to err on the side of caution when detonating the bomb, but many “downwind” of the blast faced the wrath of one of the nation’s monstrous creations. LANL seemingly thought (according to the official narrative) that there was no significant risk to the general public as the surrounding desert was seemingly almost entirely empty (also hypothesizing that the areas low, predictable winds would help to limit the spread of radiation) but what they didn’t know about (or didn’t care about) was that approximately 10,000 people were living within 50 miles of the test site. Hundreds of thousands also lived within 150 miles of the site (both were affected by the blast radius).

Those living near the Trinity detonation, many of whom saw the blast were told in a press report that it was a result of “a remotely located ammunition magazine containing a considerable amount of high explosives and pyrotechnics “ (even though the blast was witnessed by citizens nearly 3 hours away in El Paso) In the immediate aftermath, some as far as 50 miles away experienced what many of them thought was hot snow raining down from the sky. Only later did they find out that it was actually radioactive ash. Some of those who came into contact with this ash (such as Barbara Kent, who, along with many other young girls at a summer camp in Ruidoso) later developed cancer. Others began collecting what witnesses describe as “glassy green rocks.” These were also later discovered to be radioactive waste from a crater that broke nearby Tularosa. Livestock were also affected, with cows and sheep in the blast radius becoming radioactive. Out of 300+ Hereford cattle, over 60 were sent to Oak Ridge for further research.

According to a study conducted by multiple scholars, the fallout may have reached 46 states in total over a ten-day period. It was also reported in 2020 (75 years after Trinity) that residents in the counties of Socorro, Lincoln, Guadalupe, San Miguel, and Torrance (all of which are near the blast site) received the highest doses and thus were likely more susceptible to cancer from this exposure.

Do you want to know the craziest part of all of this? What if I told you LANL actually knew that the fallout would most likely irradiate local populations? According to Nukespeak, the notes of Frederick Reines at LANL on the first of August 1950 detailed that the “experts” at the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) “knew they were taking risks with populations around the test site, and that they did not “fully understand the nature or extent of the risks.” Before eventually joining the project, Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls told LANL in a 1940 memorandum: “Owing to the spread of radioactive substances with the wind, the bomb could probably not be used without killing large numbers of civilians.”

Beginning in 2005 (7 years after developing thyroid cancer), Tina Cordova created the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium with Fred Tyler and other Tularosa residents. Cordova had 6 of her immediate family members die prematurely from cancer after the blast, so she knew her diagnosis was not coincidental. For decades, New Mexico residents affected by fallout from Trinity received no justice, while victims of nuclear contamination in places like Pennsylvania, Utah, and Nevada began to receive a degree of justice via the implementation of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA). Still, for some unknown reason, New Mexico was not included in the original draft. It would stay like this until 2025 (80 years after Trinity), when a Bipartisan vote from Congress made it so that expanded RECA compensation finally included New Mexicans as part of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. Without Cordova and the work of many New Mexicans who stood hand in hand with their congressional representatives, this bipartisan bill may not have materialized.

Most notably, however, downwinders say that the compensation is not enough to fully make up for the damage, although it is a step in the right direction. In addition, RECA compensation itself is very flawed, as it requires that the claimant possess certain documentation that many New Mexico residents did not possess before or after the blast, and the federal government has already imposed a strict deadline.

Church Rock/ Superfund Sites

The market for uranium mining across the Native / Indigenous lands began thriving during the 1950s due to its location smack dab in the middle of the Grants Mineral Belt, and locals soon began working in the mines for extremely low wages, not yet knowing the dire consequences that uranium mining would have on their health. What these miners did not know was that the US Atomic Energy Commission (the regulatory body in charge of the mines) had known about the inherent health risks attributed to radiation exposure since the late 1800s. In fact, in 1951, workers for the US Public Health Service actually began following the miners as part of a study led by Duncan Holaday and Victor Archer on how uranium affects the human body. For decades, profiteers in the government and in private companies have been exploiting Native land for uranium, extracting around 30 million tons of uranium between 1944 and 1986, leaving behind more than 15,000 abandoned mine features statewide (at least 500 on Navajo land alone) until the market for uranium miners finally plummeted.

Abandoned mines alone would be bad enough for New Mexicans as they pose possible risks of contaminating scarce water resources,” but the advent of uranium mills made things even worse. Not only was the land still being exploited, but locals weren’t even getting compensated. Those who ran the mills would frequently fail to properly dispose of their nuclear waste, and in 1979, the Navajo Nation once again paid the price for outsiders’ nuclear negligence. On July 16th (coincidentally the same day as the Trinity test), the UNC’s tailings disposal pond at Church Rock Mill (18 miles southeast of Gallup) breached its containment dam, releasing 1.100 short tons of solid uranium and 94 million gallons of highly acidic tailings solution. An estimated 1.36 short tons of solid uranium and 46 curies of alpha contaminants made their way into the Puerco River, traveling 70 miles northwest downstream to Apache County, AZ. After the spill, water radioactivity levels in the Puerco were thousands of times higher than the allowable threshold for potable water.

Initially, the Indian Health Service put up signs along the Puerco in English only (even though approximately 93% of Navajo Nation residents spoke Diné Bizaad as of 1980). This proved to be insufficient as the irradiated water still poisoned residents, so replacement signs were finally put up near the Puerco in English and Diné Bizaad weeks after the spill. Residents obviously did not find this very helpful, as the Puerco was their primary source of water for irrigation, livestock care, and drinking, leaving little to no alternatives for accessing water. Despite the Navajo Nation requesting that the Church Rock site become a federal disaster area (so they could receive further aid in the cleanup), the then-New Mexico Governor Bruce King (future Epstein affiliate) declined their request (allegedly because Church Rock Mill was on private property).

Juxtapose with the response to Three Mile Island (where objectively less radiation was discharged) just 4 months earlier, where a plant supervisor at the generating station declared a state of emergency just 2 hours after the reactor meltdown, with the commissioner for the station informing Congress and the White House less than 12 hours after the breach. Four days later, Three Mile Island was a national news story, and the then-President Jimmy Carter even traveled straight from the White House to Londonderry Township to observe the site of the reactor meltdown.

The adverse side effects of the spill were downplayed in an NRC assessment released almost 2 years later, with the report asserting that the CDC “found no documented human consumption of river water” also mentioning 6 “Navajo individuals” who were tested at LANL for irregular radiation levels. Even with the denialism, the CDC still ended up concluding that “the Puerco River should not be used as a source of water for human consumption, livestock watering or irrigation.” Until the year following the spill, untreated water from nearby mines and mills was dumped into the Rio Puerco at a rate of 2.8 billion gallons a year. The Rio Puerco dumping and other large-scale incidents of mill discharge into native rivers/aquifers, happening before, during, and after Church Rock, made it hard for CDC researchers to gauge the levels of toxicity in the drinking water and livestock.

Despite the cleanup efforts from UNC and the NMEID, Church Rock was officially designated a Superfund Site in the fall of 1983, and it is still designated as such today, along with 18 other sites of major contamination in just New Mexico alone. The land surrounding Church Rock remains contaminated, and no significant cleanup efforts were initiated by those responsible for the spill until August of 2025, when the EPA, General Electric, and the UNC (now a branch of General Electric) agreed to a consent decree enacted by the US government. It is estimated that the cleanup of around 1 million cubic yards of toxic waste will cost all three of these entities $62 million combined.

Unsurprisingly, UNC and the regulatory bodies surrounding nuclear waste knew a spill was an entirely possible outcome of their poor management. In late 1977, consultants spotted large cracks in the dam wall. They were haphazardly sealed with bentonite and kerosene, yet less than a year later, consultants noticed more cracks, but for some unknown reason, they did not notify the facility owner or the state engineer. Arizona Representative Morris K Udall testified in a congressional hearing that “at least three and possibly more Federal and state regulatory agencies had ample opportunity to conclude that such an accident was likely to occur.” The US Army Corps of Engineers also stated that if the dam had been built correctly and in adherence to legal qualifications, “it is possible that the failure would not have occurred.”

New Nuclear

Despite the controversial legacy surrounding all things nuclear in New Mexico, LANL is still being given billions and billions of dollars annually to construct new atomic weaponry underneath its shroud of secrecy. When we do get a peek behind the curtain, we usually find them spending our tax dollars on what they’ve always spent them on: advanced weaponry. The pit production alone may cost LANL over $2 billion in the next year or so, and less and less money will be designated towards non-nuclear scientific research. LANL creates a lot of nuclear waste, a lot of which they clearly don’t know what to do with. In fact, they produce so much nuclear waste that the DOE created America’s one and only underground repository (one of three in the entire world) right here in New Mexico, designed to house transuranic radioactive waste. The aforementioned facility is known as WIPP (or the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant), and since its establishment in 1999, it has been nothing but a blight on the entire state. Located 33 minutes south of Carlsbad, the DOE’s Government website setup for WIPP describes it as “the nation’s only repository for the disposal of nuclear waste known as transuranic, or TRU, waste.”

WIPP has had multiple incidents since it first opened its doors, with a container of americium and plutonium exploding in February of 2014 (nine days after a salt haul truck caught fire). 13 WIPP employees tested positive for radiation exposure, not even two weeks after the incident. In 2020, a subcontractor sued SIMCO LLC (the company that operates WIPP) for $32 million, saying they witnessed gross mismanagement during a construction project at WIPP. Following the spill, WIPP was shut down for almost 3 years until finally reopening in January 2017.

Originally, America’s first deep underground geological repository for nuclear waste was supposed to be in Nevada, 95 miles northwest of Las Vegas in the Yucca Mountains. Native communities, as well as state lawmakers, vehemently opposed the creation of the Yucca Mountain Repository. Those in the Shoshone nations claimed the water on Shoshone land was no longer drinkable due to nuclear testing, and lawmakers pointed out the inherent exploitation by the government in proposing this in such a rural, largely impoverished state. The Proposal for Yucca Mountain has had its ups and downs for almost 40 years now, with federal funding being cut for the project in 2011. Last March, the Supreme Court tried and failed to finally make a definitive bipartisan decision regarding Yucca Mountain.

The process for constructing WIPP was a lot more straightforward, though, as President Carter signed a bill in 1980 (3 years after they had already drafted up a conceptual design) authorizing the construction of WIPP despite the intense public backlash from residents all over the state. Despite the numerous protests against WIPP during the construction phase (with one on Labor Day resulting in 29 arrests), WIPP construction never stopped, and with very little pushback from the local/state governments, it never needed to. WIPP has garnered more support relatively recently, but many are becoming frightened by the prospect of New Mexico becoming the permanent dumping ground for nuclear waste. This is because WIPP was originally scheduled to close in 2024, and SIMCO LLC has obviously completely skirted past that deadline. There are currently no plans for another underground geological nuclear repository (as far as I know), which leads many to believe that Eddy County may be the permanent source for all the nuclear waste in the entire US. The NMED has proposed modifying the permit for WIPP to include prioritizing the storage of Cold War-era legacy waste from LANL, something that has been met with a large amount of scrutiny from the local population. WIPP is still open as of July 2026.

It’s worth noting that governmental nuclear activity in New Mexico outside of Trinity and the confines of LANL has occurred for decades and seemingly will not end any time soon. Whether we look towards the not-so-distant past, with tests like Project GNOME and Project Gasbuggy occurring throughout the Cold War, or towards the modern day, with uranium mines recently being proposed at state landmarks like Carson National Forest, and sacred sites like Mount Taylor.

Time and time again, New Mexico residents have had to pay the price for nuclear research, whether through being poisoned by their own government, kicked out of their homes to make way for laboratories, or being exploited for cheap labor; the working class (and working class New Mexicans) has always had to pay the price.

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(Project Jupiter mockup design from Stack Infrastructure)

If you’ve paid any attention to local news in the last year or so, you’ve probably heard about Project Jupiter.

It was announced last September as a Stargate (Joint LLC between OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank) Data Center, a $165 billion hyperscale data center, in the southern Chihuahuan desert, less than 30 minutes away from El Paso, TX. Since then, Stargate has been moving as fast as it can to reach the finish line. The gas pipeline was officially approved in May, and despite the overwhelming amount of backlash coming from all over the southwest, the Doña Ana County Board of County Commissioners seem entirely unfazed.

Stargate has begun a local marketing campaign, both on TV and on Social Media, calling Project Jupiter things like “A better kind of data center” in reference to its supposedly conservative water usage. They also want to appeal to the community directly, with the “Elevate New Mexico” website claiming they will bring in $50 million to improve Doña Ana County water issues, $360 million in direct payments to Doña Ana County itself, and $384 million expected to “boost the economy” during the construction of the data center. There is no real guarantee that Doña Ana County residents or Doña Ana County itself will ever see any of this money. It appears Stargate has been playing dirty during this campaign as well, with New Mexico residents saying their names were used without their permission to manufacture consent for the construction of the data center.

Although Project Jupiter has been getting all the attention, as of July 2026, at least 6 Data Centers (not counting the Los Lunas Expansion) are to be built in New Mexico. These have been planned for construction in Raton, Soccoro, Roswell, Permian Basin, Lea County, Albuquerque, and a currently undetermined location. When the possibility of a Data Center entering into your community rears its ugly head around the corner, the corporations and local politicians alike will try to soften the blow by talking about all the jobs it will bring to the mostly rural communities they choose to set up camp in. Even though this is obviously overstated, as the small number of jobs generated from Data Centers are merely temporary, even if this were true, it would still not outweigh the overwhelming amount of evidence that Data Centers are a net negative for any community they are a part of (as well as society at large)

In communities with Data Centers, the cost of local power supplies (and residential energy rates) has been shown to go up significantly. Pollution and many other negative side effects on local resources have been reported as well, with Data Centers draining water as they please (and polluting it to the point that it's no longer drinkable), and causing lung issues for nearby residents due to the large amount of air pollution. Data Centers have also been shown to torment nearby residents with a sound not dissimilar to a jet engine taking off, constantly emanating from their facilities through all hours of the night. This constant noise, some have described as an “invisible hum,” has been shown to cause a wide variety of symptoms, including insomnia, nausea, and vertigo, to those in close proximity to these Data Centers.

The effects will be catastrophic in New Mexico as well, with Oracle itself admitting on its website that it will need to absorb 960,000 gallons of water for a “one-time fill’ and 167,000 gallons per year. They also go on to state in the same press release, “In southern New Mexico, water is a precious resource,” confirming that they know the region they are siphoning water from is already dangerously low on it. If this makes you feel a certain type of way and you're considering maybe posting about this online or protesting this in person, just be aware that you may be considered a terrorist now.

Yes, that’s right, if you oppose the construct of this new-age technofascist surveillance state, then you might be considered a terrorist according to leaked reports from Homeland Security. These reports warn officials about the rise of “Anti-tech Extremism” coinciding with the release of a presidential memorandum sounding the alarm on “anti-American,” “anti-Christian,” and “anti-Capitalist” extremists less than a year earlier.

The Government has called out many, many more so-called “extremist groups” over the last 12 months, but recent events like the firebombing of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s house have given it a reason to divert more attention to combatting these so-called “Anti-tech Extremists”. The entire US government is so obviously in bed with all these AI companies, too, whether we’re talking on a local scale, like with what happened to Saline Township, or the President of the United States literally hosting the press conference announcing StarGate LLC. It’s never been more apparent than ever that the government does not care about us, and the needs of corporations and 1 percenters will always come before the needs of the rest of the population.

The outcome of this Project Jupiter proposition is seemingly leaning towards Stargate at this point, although as of July 2026, Santa Fe County has become the most recent county in New Mexico to pass a data center moratorium, and the rest of New Mexico may soon follow suit. Only time will tell if these have any significant impact on Data Center Construction throughout New Mexico.

When it comes to pollution and corruption in New Mexico, these data centers are only the tip of the iceberg, and over the next few articles, I will cover the exploitation of our land in depth.

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(Photo credit Leila Chapa)

Overview

In May of 2025, PNM’s parent company (TXNM Energy) announced a proposed $11.5 billion sale to Blackstone, a private equity behemoth known for large leveraged buyouts and alternative asset management. By August, PNM had already filed the proposed takeover deal, getting the ball rolling on the potential acquisition. Problems arose for Blackstone when they were caught conducting a $400 million stock sale tied to the takeover without first obtaining PRC approval, violating New Mexico law.

The PNM/Blackstone Acquisition is still in motion, though, and despite the backlash from New Mexico Residents, and out-of-state politicians like Sanders and Warren, it seems like the PRC doesn’t really want to listen to the people of New Mexico. Both Bregman and Haaland have been reluctant to take a firm stance on the issue of Blackstone, echoing the sentiment of a lot of New Mexico politicians who don’t want to seem “controversial”. That being said, 16 New Mexico Lawmakers have signed an open letter opposing PNM’s acquisition of Blackstone, with Pope in particular being very vocal about his disdain for Private Equity. If more lawmakers take a stand. maybe we might ultimately get Blackstone to back off.

Why They Want Your Energy

If we want to break it down in the least complicated way possible (the full answer requires a lot more technical jargon to be properly answered), it’s because they want more money, and with a market cap far higher than the GDP of New Mexico, they know this is an easy market to dominate. If you could believe it, it’s not just New Mexico, with Blackstone buying a 20% stake in NIPSCO (Northern Indiana Public Service Company) in 2024, buying Potomac Energy Center a year later for $1 billion, and acquiring Hill Top Energy. Prices have already gone up more than 50% for NIPSCO rate payers, no doubt making Blackstone even more profitable.

Blackstone: A History of Evil
Private Equity is a predatory, exploitative business model, and Blackstone is no exception. From slowly but surely ruining the American housing market, to pricing people out via rent hikes, and acquiring healthcare giants like Hologic, TeamHealth, and Apria Healthcare (Despite the positive correlation between Private Equity healthcare acquisitions and patient mortality). They have recently begun directing a lot of resources towards AI, partnering with Anthropic (the company behind Claude) as well as investing heavily in data centers across the globe (including in New Mexico). A brand new data center near Fayetteville, GA (owned by a Blackstone developer) has recently come under fire for swallowing 30 million gallons of water, owing the Georgian government $150,000.

Blackstone has always thrived when others have floundered, and this was never accidental, whether during 2008 (which I will get into more later), Black Monday, or the COVID Pandemic; they kept finding ways to always get what they want. In fact, after 2008, Blackstone began buying up the recently foreclosed homes and renting them out to more and more tenants. In 2012, they founded Invitation Homes, thus formally ingratiating themselves into the world of commercial real estate. In the wake of Black Monday, Schwarzman’s business partner said to the New York Times ”There are going to be fascinating opportunities… There’s a good chance the dollar will continue to fall, interest rates over the long term will go up and we will experience slow growth… You raise capital when you can raise it, and then you move in opportunistically and make investments in distressed industries.”

Blackstone CEO Steven Schwarzman (and former Skull & Bones member) is one of the richest men on the planet, with an estimated net worth of $47 billion. In 2020, he was declared Wall Street’s top political donor, loyally backing GOP politicians (eventually donating $40 million to republicans in the 2024 election cycle). He would most likely describe himself as a ruthless, cutthroat businessman, telling WSJ that when he pursues deals, he wants to “inflict pain” and “kill off” his rivals. A year after buying Hilton in a cash transaction valued at around $26 billion, the 2008 financial crisis struck, and it struck hard. Schwarzman’s company, like most others during the crisis, was struggling, losing roughly $50 million in its 3rd quarter.

But Schwartzman was still living lavishly, and in a stunningly tone-deaf display of sociopathy, he said, “This kind of environment is tailor-made for making absolute fortunes in the private-equity business,” along with “I’m not Robert De Niro, but I’m close to a raging bull on private equity,” and “This is a wonderful time to be an investor. In almost every asset class, because of this dislocation, you can make phenomenal returns with very little risk.”

In 2019, the UN personally sent him a letter outlining his company’s problematic involvements surrounding SFR holdings, MFR purchases, and lobbying the government so Prop 10 wouldn’t get passed. They also called out unethical practices like pushing “undue rent” and purchasing rent in “undervalued” neighborhoods. It wasn’t just the UN; The Center of Popular Democracy said, “Through vulturous practices and the exertion of political influence through campaign contributions and political spending, Blackstone’s Invitation Homes and Equity Residential, like other private equity and Wall Street landlords, profit from and exacerbate California’s housing crisis, pushing more people into housing instability.” In 2019, the MIT contingent wrote an article called “Celebrating war criminals at MIT’s ‘ethical’ College of Computing,” calling out Schwarzman for hosting the Saudi Crown Prince “MBS” (after Blackstone received a $20 billion investment from the Saudi regime).

MIT also invited Henry Kissinger (which should speak for itself), apparently Schwarzman’s “role model” for foreign policy. Schwarzman and Blackstone have not stopped aggressively lobbying since Prop 10, with Blackstone and other real estate titans lobbying around $38 million towards the California Business Roundtable PAC to stop Prop 21 in its tracks. Schwarzman truly is a billionaire’s billionaire, representing everything wrong with capitalism and bourgeois economics.

Don’t let him and his company win.

Decision will be made soon: July 2nd

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July 2nd

10 am

Room 309

490 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, NM 87501

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(Alisa Valdez—z-Substack)

Alisa Valdes is someone I definitely had not heard of 2 months ago, but ever since I discovered her work, I have been reading it nonstop. I discovered her when I had a family friend who knew her personally tell me about how she had to move away to get away from the alleged psychological warfare levied against her by the government. She told me the whole thing was “very weird” and said that I should definitely start reading her work.

The more I read through her work, the more and more intrigued I became. Within a couple of days, I had read all of her articles and dissected everything she wrote meticulously.

Some of this stuff I was already very familiar with, as Epstein has been a pretty significant turning point in American politics ever since he allegedly committed suicide at MCC in 2019. Still, the kinds of information I was getting inundated with as I was reading her work were extremely hard to wrap my head around.

The pill that was hardest to swallow was my state’s politicians enabling Epstein and giving him a safe haven to traffic children. Now I am usually not surprised when politicians get exposed since I don’t really subscribe to partisan politics, but hearing victims say NM Politicians knew about Epstein’s crimes was hard to read. While on the topic of New Mexico politicians, Melanie Stansbury, a New Mexico state representative, had allegedly been using her campaign director to try to coerce Valdes into leaving Stansbury out of her coverage (before eventually responding to her inquiry about attorney/chief federal prosecutor John Kelly).

This was far from the only bombshell, though, because she also points out Epstein’s connections to LANL (no, this isn’t just about Robert Maxwell) by bringing up connections to Bradbury Stamm, Steve Bannon, “Info Mesa,” etc. It’s worth mentioning that I am trying my best to go through every single article again and relay what I consider the most important information. Still, I implore everyone reading this article to read all of her work yourself because I think it’s extremely important information that isn’t being talked about in mainstream media. She’s a great writer, and I’m glad she’s been gaining more traction.

The increased traction may have put a target on her back because just one day after her article claiming Epstein was a CIA affiliate hand-picked by a former OSS member she reported in another article that Lev Parnas purportedly sent an email describing a journalist on Substack who had frequently been writing about Zorro ranch and Epstein’s activity in New Mexico, whom he described as a “liar” and a “scammer.”

She later goes on to say in the article that after the email, she began to experience symptoms of Havana syndrome, such as hearing very high-pitched, electric-sounding noises, feeling disoriented, and experiencing tremors. She believed that a DEW (Directed-energy weapon) was what could have been causing these symptoms and that these symptoms were connected to Parnas’ email. She is currently moving out of New Mexico to an undisclosed location. Parnas completely denied ever sending that email, going on to state via livestream, “I did not write any emails,” and “If anyone knows where Alisa is, please have her come on here.”

If you are unfamiliar with Havana syndrome, that excerpt probably made you a little confused, so I’ll try to briefly explain what Havana syndrome is before I end the article.

Havana syndrome is a medical condition that was first reported in 2016 by a CIA officer working undercover in Havana. He described symptoms (dizziness, pressure headaches, hearing loss) that he believed were caused by an omnipresent buzzing sound that he described as a “sonic beam.” Since then, around 1,500 US officials have reported being struck by the affliction. The government had also stated earlier this year that they had supposedly obtained the device that had been causing these symptoms and that they had begun testing it.

Alisa Valdes is not the only non-governmental figure who has recently reported experiencing symptoms of Havana Syndrome, with people like “Alice” (a supposed CIA whistleblower) and Investigative journalist Catherine Herridge reporting symptoms consistent with Havana Syndrome. Former FBI agent Ben Hansen also theorized that missing scientist Melissa Casias had been the target of “futuristic weapons” (ones that might cause Havana syndrome). All of this is obviously hearsay, and Havana syndrome has never been recognized as a valid diagnosis. Still, it’s definitely interesting to read about Havana syndrome and the history behind it, and I would recommend you conduct more research independently, as it’s a lot more complicated than the way people make it out to be.

This article is way shorter than I originally thought it would be, as I had a very hard time deciding what parts of Valdes’s journalism to focus on, so I just want to say once again that if you, for some reason, read my work and don’t follow her, you definitely should. She makes some of the best content on this website, and it’s definitely worth your time.

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(Albuquerque apartment complex, photo courtesy of CABQ.gov)

“Lazy landlords are on notice. No one should have to live with sewage leaks, unsafe wiring, pest infestations, or other dangerous conditions. We’re making it clear that if you profit from housing in Albuquerque, you have a responsibility to maintain it.”

Keller posted that message on his Twitter account earlier this week, along with a “Lazy Landlords” list attached to the post. However, for some reason I can’t understand, a lot of Albuquerque residents were unhappy with his declaration. While others celebrated and said that this has been a long time coming (comparing this new initiative to Mamdani’s Block by Block housing plan). Others were quick to point out Keller’s current failures to properly run a city as large as Albuquerque (which are all mostly valid; he is, in my opinion, a pretty bad mayor) as a means to discredit the targeting of slumlords, while others bring up the Pied-à-terres in the foothills and the epidemic of Airbnb-type rentals swallowing up neighborhoods.

People on the other end of the spectrum think this will lead to more evictions because landlords will raise rent prices to offset the loss of revenue. Some have also speculated that this is a move to help Keller and his friends in real estate maintain their monopoly on Albuquerque rentals. To the extent of my knowledge, however, these people are seemingly in the minority, and the reception from Albuquerque residents is mostly in favor of the $500-a-day rule.

As a communist, I’ve wanted policy like this to happen in Albuquerque for a long, long time, but as many have pointed out, this is still a band-aid on top of the insidious problem. Actual Socialist policies advocating for tenants are something I feel everyone could benefit from, and focusing on things like rent stabilization, CLTs, and creating functioning public housing units is something that would make Duke City much closer to solving the much-maligned homelessness crisis

History

Now that we’ve gone over a brief overview of this ordinance, along with some endorsements/critiques of it, I should probably clarify that this article is a bit of a misnomer, because, for the most part, this article isn’t about Keller or Albuquerque. What I really want to do is focus on why this kind of policy has been seen as an anomaly in contemporary American politics (aside from the obvious reasons).

Of course, way back when laws like the Fair Housing Act and the Residential Landlord & Tenant Act were being passed, along with a handful of Supreme Court wins (Shelley V Kramer, Thorpe v. Housing Auth, etc). These policies were groundbreaking in a time when obtaining housing was starting to seem less like a viable option for the general public, and up until the late 1990s, the American court system was leaning towards the side of the Tenants, but Hughes v Lenox Hill Hospital marked a huge shift in the way the US government handled cases involving Tenants’ rights.

From here on out, courts across the country handled Landlord/Tenant affairs quite differently, with cases like 1029 Sixth LLC v Riniv Corporation showcasing how socially and legally conservative America had really become, consistently puffing out its chest for the Landlords. In this era, proposed policies around things like rent control and stabilization were dismissed as utopian and unfeasible, and they hadn’t fully re-entered the conversation until very recently.

To be honest think the real reason why American oligarchs have been so pro-landlord over the last 30 or so years (like most things) is because of money. Tenants obviously do not have much influence on the federal government, but massive realtor/landlord groups like the NAR have been lobbying the government for decades now, simultaneously trying to sway public opinion and convince the government that their needs are more important than the needs of the tenants.

They’ve tried so hard to make their goals a reality in fact that they have become one of the top two highest spending groups on federal lobbying. Although they’ve still been hardcore lobbying the government. This has all seemingly been in vain, however, as the rise of stuff like Track AIPAC has had more people paying attention to political lobbying than ever. This has made it a more difficult climate than ever for politicians to accept lobbying money from private corporations. This might be one of the main reasons that more laws pertaining to tenant/renters' rights have entered the zeitgeist again.

In the last few years or so, pro-renter policy has been a mixed bag, with victories like the Chicago Winter Eviction Moratorium often being overshadowed by huge losses like Horne V Gingko Aurora. One outcome people could maybe consider a partial win was 74 Pinehurst LLC v New York, which saw the Supreme Court being faced with the possibility of overturning the existing rent control measures in New York. They ended up opting to maintain the status quo, much to the chagrin of the landlords.

Modern day

More recently, though, we’ve gotten way more pro-tenant legislation proposed and/or passed in places like NY (with Block by Block and SPP), and Massachusetts, with Beacon Hill lawmakers proposing the idea of enacting rent control statewide (Something that previously only California, Oregon, and Maryland have accomplished). Because of this, Redwood City residents have begun collecting signatures for their city council, something that I think will become more common across the nation as people see the momentum behind these policies.

Back home in New Mexico, however, it hasn’t been smooth sailing trying to get policies like this “Lazy Landlords” ordinance adopted. Last year, the Renter’s Empowerment and Neighborhood Transparent Ordinance was voted out by the Albuquerque City Council 3-2, and as of June 2026, rent control remains illegal in New Mexico. In fact, enacting rent control was outright banned in 1991; that decision has never been reversed. Laws pertaining to tenant rights here are supposedly more progressive than the national baseline, with laws around anti-retaliation, habitability, and notice to terminate being described as forward-thinking by some.

This seems like it may be changing statewide soon, and overall, I am glad to finally see this kind of policy in a city like Albuquerque, and I do hope more will be done locally and federally to stop these out-of-state private equity landlords from price gouging us even further. It’s great Albuquerque can have small victories like this, but like always, we must keep fighting if we want real change to occur.

Support the Tenant Union’s

Alianza Tenant’s Union

Durango Tenant’s Union

Denver Metro Tenants Union

Texas Tenant’s Union

Tenant Unions Repository

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(CoreCivic Headquarters, taken straight from the company website)

To pick up where we left off in the last article, I’m going to answer the question I asked myself last time. I think there are 3 main reasons why CoreCivic has not been held accountable.

1. Government Lobbying

With 80 percent of Americans believing the local/state governments should be taking care of prison oversight themselves, it really makes you wonder why our government is so hellbent on letting groups like Geogroup and CoreCivic run massive sectors of the prison industrial complex.

Well, when we follow the money, we realize that CoreCivic has been lobbying the federal government since at least the late 1990s, with lobbying efforts focusing on the Republican Party during the lead-up to the 2024 election. Business practices like this help illustrate one of the reasons they’ve been able to not only consistently skirt any consequences for their unethical, inhumane behavior, but maintain their status as one of the nation’s largest private prison contractors.

2. Normalized Cruelty/Carelessness

From my research, I was able to deduce that out of 82 currently functioning facilities operated by CoreCivic, 53.659% of them have had allegations about some kind of negligence or cruelty levied against them, and 77.27% of those allegations have been proven true. Now, this isn’t shocking for people who are familiar with how US prisons function and operate, but it shows that CoreCivic has normalized this culture of callousness inside their facilities.

3. “Too big to fail”

CoreCivic is making more than ever, and that’s not just me saying that; the data they themselves have provided backs this up, with the CEO himself saying they are expecting around $2.5 billion in revenue by the end of 2026. Their stock analysis from the last 2 decades also shows a steady increase in pay each year, with CoreCivic finally reaching the $2 billion threshold last December.

They’ve earned an extra $300 million last year via government contracts, meaning that this

Like any major conglomerate, they also have their own charity called the ‘CoreCivic Foundation,’ which has helped them rake in an extra little bit of cash while also whitewashing their abhorrent reputation. They’ve been known to finance/sponsor various institutions, including high schools, mentorship groups, and summer reading programs.

With this new information that they are apparently doing better than ever, I think its appropriate to reminds you guys that they still have had allegedly at least 100 lawsuits/legal complaints filed against them in the last year and if that claim seems wild and unsubstantiated to you that I hope youll be be glad to know that I was able to independently verify that they have had more than 100 cases where they were named as an involved party.

So if you were feeling optimistic that a company like CoreCivic would course correct and finally try to operate within the confines of the law. I hope that final nugget of information has shown that CoreCivic has objectively gotten worse at handling detainees and will not get better at handling them until they get some form of meaningful pushback. Hopefully, this article has had you thinking about how we could create this meaningful change, and while I don’t have all the answers, I hope me and my organization can help guide people in the right direction.

But how can we invoke change?

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably heard so many stories like this coming out of ICE detention centers over the last year or so. It’s very disempowering to hear that innocent people are being treated this way at ICE facilities across the country. Still, we must remember that we have the power to make a difference here. Protests at Delaney Hall have proven to be making a real difference despite the brutality exercised by both pigs and ICE agents alike. They’ve already got multiple people out of custody and back with their families within the first few weeks of the start of the demonstrations.

I see them ramping up the rhetoric against immigrants with blatant propaganda, and I can’t help but think that they want to accelerate whatever it is they have planned as soon as possible before we all finally have enough of this and we start engaging in collective direct action. Maybe I’m just being too optimistic, but I think we have the opportunity to start making real change, not just here in New Mexico, but all over the country.

Current Objectives

Immediate

Free the ill/sick detainees in TCDF custody

Long term

Get TCDF to shut down.

Have CoreCivic (and GeoGroup??) bow out of private prison ownership.

Abolish Private Prison ownership.

Resources

Know Your Rights

Stop ICE

Support the hunger strikes

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Background.

Torrance County Detention Center (TCDF) is a for-profit ICE detention center located 3 miles south of Estancia, NM. It is a private prison run by CoreCivic (the second-largest private prison contractor in the United States). It operates at least 82 facilities across continental America, including 3 in New Mexico (Cibola, Torrance, and Northwest New Mexico). CoreCivic was also a major donor to the republican party in 2024 (which may have led to the increase in contracts offered to them by the government during this administration).

If you’ve heard anything about the hunger strikes in the ICE detention facilities (whether in California, Texas, New Jersey, or anywhere else), it all started in TCDF with one Rogelio Bolufe.

Ever since being detained last August, he alleges he has faced horrible treatment, and he later raised concerns to prison staff around late April of this year, right before going on hunger strike, emboldening other detainees to start protesting the unfair treatment. He claims to have lost 25 pounds since the strike began. He has since claimed that he had been transferred 5 times from an ICE field office in Albuquerque to Camp East Montana to an unknown facility in Alabama, to a temporary holding facility in Mesa, before finally being transferred to an unknown facility in Washington, with Innovation Law Lab theorizing it might be Northwest (all in the space of 48 hours).

“He is very clear that they are torturing him to try to get him to do what they want — stop his hunger strike and shut up,” Philabaum told Source NM after speaking Thursday to Bolufé.

At this time, it is unknown how many detainees are still on hunger strike, but what is known is that this is not the first time TCDF detainees have gone on hunger strike, as a peaceful hunger strike in 2020 resulted in pepper spray and tear gas being weaponized against convicts.

After reading this, I had a burning question in the back of my mind that I think everyone invested in immigrant rights/prison abolition should be asking.

What is CoreCivic?

We already know that CoreCivic is a for-profit private prison contractor, but how do they run their prisons outside of Torrance County?

Well, on their website, they write, “CoreCivic is committed to providing high-quality, compassionate treatment to all those in our care” (which you will later see is demonstrably false). They also try to do some damage control in a directory responding to allegations made by Anti-ICE journalists relating to them and how they run their facilities, stating that “CoreCivic never has and does not house unaccompanied minors.” (I call bullshit). “Individuals receive immediate, compassionate care when they arrive.” (Bold-faced lie), and “CoreCivic operates clean facilities that adhere to all applicable detention standards where we offer balanced meals and clean drinking water.” (Another fucking lie).

So we know what they claim to stand for, but why do they even exist?

Well, in their own words, “When CoreCivic first entered this arena some thirty-plus years ago, we did so to solve a critical problem. At the time, forty-one of the fifty states in this country had been declared by the Federal Courts to be operating their prison systems in an unconstitutional fashion.” They go on to state later in the same directory, “We have thrived for more than thirty years because the prison systems in this country needed us then, and they need us now. We became innovative competition in an arena that had never before had competition.”

I think that last little excerpt really exemplifies the mindset employed by the higher-ups at CoreCivic. They see the US prison system not just as something they can “fix,” but as a vehicle their company can use to assert dominance in a largely unregulated market. (as evidenced by them calling themselves “innovative competition”). A company like this not only acquiring an estimated market cap of over $2 billion, but also being allowed to oversee a large chunk of the American prison system isn’t just reckless and irresponsible, but immoral and disgusting.

It’s also worth noting that there is no evidence that any private prison contractor (CoreCivic, GeoGroup, etc.) has made US prisons safer, and many of the very limited number of studies on private prisons in America from organizations like the ACLU actually say the exact opposite.

CoreCivic’s history in New Mexico.

CoreCivic opened one of the first privatized women’s prisons in the US in 1989, Northwest New Mexico Correctional, thus beginning what some would call a very disturbing relationship with the 47th state.

Although Northwest has a relatively good reputation for a CoreCivic facility, Cibola has had a documented history of neglect, with 15 documented deaths being linked to the facility as of 2026, and multiple protests have occurred as a result of inhumane conditions (with some resulting in tear gas and pepper gas being employed). The FBI has also recently begun to get involved in an investigation of drugs being trafficked through Cibola Correctional, with guards allegedly taking part in the distribution.

It’s not just New Mexico.

CoreCivic has faced significant controversy over the years. From “consensual” and non-consensual sex happening between prisoners and prison staff (Cimarron, Otay Mesa, Citrus County ), threatening and extorting detainees (South Correctional ), widespread accusations of sub-par medical care (Dilley,, forced labor, general exploitation (Stewart, Laredo ), mismanagement (Trousdale, Whiteville, Hardeman County), violating attorney client privilege (Leavanworth), Voyeurism (Mcrae), employment of neo-nazis (Nevada Southern) and more.

Reports have also begun to come out about detainees disappearing entirely from some CoreCivic Facilities, leaving two burning questions: How can this keep happening with a company that claims to always respect human dignity? And why isn’t it getting any better?

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