Ben Ray Lujan

In historic vote, House impeaches Trump for abuse of power, obstruction of Congress

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The U.S. House voted to approve two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump Wednesday night. 

The House voted 230-197, with one voting present, on the first article of impeachment, abuse of power. That alleged that Trump used his powers as President to try to punish Joe Biden, a political opponent. The House voted 229-198, with one voting present, on the second article of impeachment, obstruction of Congress. That article alleged that Trump improperly impeded the investigation in a number of ways, including directing current and former officials to not comply with subpoenas from House committees. It’s just the third time in U.S. history that a president has been impeached, after Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998.

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Torres Small: Impeachment ‘the necessary response’ to Trump’s actions

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U.S. Rep. Xochitl Torres Small announced this weekend that she will vote to approve articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. The House is expected to vote on two articles of impeachment against Trump this week. The freshman Democrat said in a statement that she believes “impeachment is the necessary response to President Trump’s use of the Executive Office of the President for his own personal and political gain.”

Torres Small won election in a very narrow race in a conservative district that Trump won in 2016. Torres Small was one of the moderate and conservative Democrats who won congressional elections in 2018 as part of a Democratic wave. The articles of impeachment approved by the House Judiciary Committee last week charge Trump with abuse of power for his conduct in asking Ukraine to help his political campaign by investigating Joe Biden’s son.

Ben Ray Lujan

Pelosi announces House will move forward with articles of impeachment

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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced Thursday that the U.S. House of Representatives would start drafting articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump over his withholding of foreign aid to Ukraine in exchange for investigating the son of a political rival. The announcement came after an investigation by the House, which began in late September. At the end of October, all three of New Mexico’s members of the House, all Democrats, voted to support the impeachment inquiry. The investigations included closed door meetings by House committees and more recently public hearings of the House Intelligence Committee and the House Judiciary Committee. Ben Ray Luján, the Assistant Speaker in the U.S. House of Representatives, supported the announcement.

News

How McKinsey helped the Trump administration detain and deport immigrants

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ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. Just days after he took office in 2017, President Donald Trump set out to make good on his campaign pledge to halt illegal immigration. In a pair of executive orders, he ordered “all legally available resources” to be shifted to border detention facilities and called for hiring 10,000 new immigration officers. The logistical challenges were daunting, but as luck would have it, Immigration and Customs Enforcement already had a partner on its payroll: McKinsey & Company, an international consulting firm brought on under the Obama administration to help engineer an “organizational transformation” in the ICE division charged with deporting migrants who are in the United States unlawfully.

Donald Trump

The Trump administration cracked down on Medicaid. Kids lost insurance.

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ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. In early August, Elizabeth Petersen was home-schooling her children in the kitchen of their northern Idaho home when she got a call from Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center, where her 4-year-old son, Paul, was set to have surgery a few weeks later. Since having a stroke around his first birthday, Paul had been under treatment to restore use of the right side of his body. He had recently graduated from a feeding tube and needed surgery to close a hole in his stomach.

Deb Haaland

Members of NM House delegation vote to back impeachment investigation

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House Democrats, including all members of New Mexico’s delegation, voted Thursday to approve rules related to the impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump. The 232-196 vote was nearly on party lines, with ex-Republican, now independent Justin Amash voting along with the Democratic majority and two Democrats voting with Republicans against the rules. The vote outlined rules for the next phase of the impeachment proceedings, which has so far consisted of closed-door meetings with witnesses. At the same time, the House has been pushing for documents from Trump and testimony from those close to Trump. Republicans have criticized the process, saying it is not transparent.

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Poll: Latinx, Hispanic voters in NM sour on Trump

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A tracking poll of Latinx and Hispanic voters showed weakened support for Donald Trump in New Mexico and other potential battleground states. The poll, conducted by Equis Research between Sept. 23 and 29, found support among the voters in New Mexico fell from 28 percent in July to 24 percent in the most recent poll. Both numbers are still the highest in the eleven states surveyed. Job approval among Latinx and Hispanic voters in New Mexico also dropped, from 35 percent to 29 percent.

American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico

NM won’t provide driver’s license data to Trump administration

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The state of New Mexico will not provide driver’s license data to the Trump administration. The Associated Press reported Wednesday that the Trump administration asked states to provide driver’s license information data in another effort to get citizenship data. The administration sought to get the information through the 2020 Census for use in redistricting in 2021, but lost a court battle over adding a question to the decennial census. According to the AP, at least 13 states have denied the Trump administration’s request, 17 others are still deciding and 17 states haven’t received a request yet, while three states did not respond to questions. A spokeswoman for the governor’s office told NM Political Report about the decision on Tuesday after she spoke with the state Taxation and Revenue Department, which oversees the state’s driver’s license program.

Donald Trump

City of ABQ sends $211K bill to Trump campaign for costs surrounding rally

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The city of Albuquerque tallied up the costs incurred during a September Donald Trump campaign visit and invoiced the president’s reelection campaign $211,000. Most of the costs came for paying for time off for city employees, who received paid time off after leaving early on Sept. 16 and coming into work late on Sept. 17 while the president spent the night in a downtown hotel. Other costs included services from the Albuquerque Police Department and for barricades.

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Torres Small backs impeachment inquiry

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After becoming one of the final Democratic holdouts, U.S. Rep. Xochitl Torres Small now supports the ongoing impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump happening in the House, citing Trump’s efforts to block the investigation. However, she said she still has “not reached judgment on the president’s actions, nor on the appropriate response.”

The first-term congresswoman announced the news in an opinion piece in the Las Cruces Sun News on Thursday. Previously, Torres Small had held the middle ground, saying she supported an investigation into the allegations against Trump related to Ukraine, but not calling it a formal impeachment inquiry. However, the Trump administration’s actions changed that. “Earlier this week, the president and his administration made it clear to New Mexicans that they are not committed to finding the truth,” Torres Small wrote.