Campgrounds and a horse ranch were evacuated Monday as wildfire swept through a Civil War-era historical site in southern New Mexico. Ground crews, air tankers and helicopters joined efforts to contain a blaze that damaged several buildings at the Fort Stanton Historical Site, authorities said. The wildfire scorched more than a half square mile (1.4 square kilometers) of terrain at the site and surrounding conservation lands managed by the federal Bureau of Land Management. Three Fort Stanton structures were damaged, said Laura Rabon, a spokesperson for a multi-agency team responding to the situation. It was unclear which buildings were hit by fire. An advisory from the historical site said the fire entered a former World War II internment camp. Rabon said the fire was uncontained as crews cleared lines of vegetation on the north side of the wildfire and helicopters doused smoldering hot spots with water. The blaze at Fort Stanton is about 15 miles (24 kilometers) away from communities at Ruidoso that were ravaged by wildfires last year when several hundred homes and businesses were destroyed. Those fires were followed by devastating flooding and erosion in scorched areas. Fire activity at Fort Stanton decreased amid mild high temperatures Monday of 75 degrees (24 Celsius) and 10 mph (16 kph) winds. The source of the fire was unknown, with a BLM investigator scheduled to begin work Tuesday. Horses and a family of four were evacuated Sunday from a private ranch in the vicinity, but they had been allowed to return. On Sunday, air tankers dropped fire retardant on the outskirts of the fire in efforts to slow its progress. Highway 220 was closed near Fort Stanton to ensure access for firefighting crews. Three camping areas were evacuated and closed. A movie armorer convicted in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer by Alec Baldwin on the set of the Western movie “Rust” was released from a New Mexico prison on Friday after completing an 18-month sentence. Prison records show Hannah Gutierrez-Reed signed out of the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility in Grants to return home to Bullhead City, Arizona, on parole related to her involuntary manslaughter conviction in the death of Halyna Hutchins in 2021. Gutierrez-Reed also is being supervised under terms of probation after pleading guilty to a separate charge of unlawfully carrying a gun into a licensed liquor establishment. Baldwin, the lead actor and co producer for “Rust,” was pointing a gun at Hutchins during a rehearsal on a movie set outside Santa Fe when the revolver went off, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza. A jury convicted Gutierrez-Reed of involuntary manslaughter in March 2024. Gutierrez-Reed has an appeal of the conviction pending in a higher court. Jurors acquitted her of allegations she tampered with evidence in the “Rust” investigation. Prosecutors blamed Gutierrez-Reed for unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the set of “Rust” and for failing to follow basic gun safety protocols. Gutierrez-Reed carried a gun into a downtown Santa Fe bar where firearms are prohibited weeks before “Rust” began filming. The terms of parole include mental health
assessments and a prohibition on firearms ownership and possession. An involuntary manslaughter charge against Baldwin was dismissed at trial last year on allegations that police and prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense. The filming of “Rust” was completed in Montana. The Western was released in theaters this month. The massive tax and spending bill passed by U.S. House Republicans would likely result in 3.2 million people losing food assistance benefits, and saddle states with around $14 billion a year in costs, according to a new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Democrats have argued the bill, which the House passed , 215-214 early Thursday without any Democrats in support, would cut programs for the needy to fund tax breaks for high earners. The CBO document, issued late Thursday, responded to a request to the office from the top Democrats on the Senate and House Agriculture committees, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Angie Craig, both of Minnesota, and somewhat bolsters that claim. The panels oversee federal food aid programs. “This report is truly devastating,” Craig said in a Friday statement to States Newsroom. “As a mother and someone who at times relied on food assistance as a child, these numbers are heartbreaking. It is infuriating that Republicans in Congress are willing to make our children go hungry so they can give tax breaks to the already rich.” A provision in the bill to tighten work requirements, including by excluding single parents of children older than 6 and by raising the age of adults to whom the work requirements apply, of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, would result in 3.2 million people losing access to the program in an average month, the CBO report said. Of those, 1.4 million would be people who currently have a state waiver from work requirements that would be disallowed under the bill and 800,000 would be adults who live with children 7 or older, the report said. In a Friday statement, Ben Nichols, a spokesman for the House Agriculture Committee led by Pennsylvania Republican Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson, said the proposed change would be more fair to the people SNAP is supposed to help and noted the program is the only state-administered entitlement program that is paid fully by the federal government. “No one who is able-bodied and working, volunteering, or training for 20 hours a week will lose benefits,” Nichols wrote. Republicans want to use the legislative package to extend the 2017 tax law and its cuts, increase spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars, overhaul American energy production, restructure higher education aid and cut spending. Toll on statesThe cost-share changes, which would require states for the first time to pay for a portion of SNAP benefits, would also limit participation and add a massive line item to state budgets, according to the CBO. Starting in 2028, states would be responsible for paying 5% to 25% of SNAP benefits, with a state’s share rising with its payment error rate. The federal government currently pays for all SNAP benefits. Under the House bill, which will likely undergo substantial changes as the Senate considers it in the coming weeks, states collectively would be responsible for just less than $100 billion from 2028 to 2034, about $14 billion per year. States would respond in a variety of ways, CBO Director Phillip Swagel wrote, including potentially dropping out of the program. “CBO expects that some states would maintain current benefits and eligibility and others would modify benefits or eligibility or possibly leave the program altogether because of the increased costs,” he wrote. The office took a “probabilistic approach to account for a range of possible outcomes” to determine what the effect on households would be and estimated that 1.3 million people would lose benefits because of state responses to the new cost-share. Nichols, with the House Agriculture Committee, disputed the CBO’s estimate regarding the cost share change. The lowest state cost-share of 5% would be available for states with error rates below 6%. Every state has hit that mark at some point in the last decade, he said. With that favorable of a cost-share, the Republican committee members did not believe states would drop out of the program, he added. “We reject the hypothetical assumption that some states may not chip into 5 percent of a supplemental nutrition program,” Nichols wrote. “Every state is capable of paying for a portion SNAP… Federal policy should encourage states to administer the SNAP program more efficiently and effectively, and this bill does just that.” CBO’s forecasters determined the impacts of the work requirements and cost-share provisions separately, meaning some people potentially losing benefits could have been counted in both categories. Move to the SenateThe House vote Thursday sent the measure to the Senate, where the debate over SNAP benefits may fall along similar party lines. Republicans who hold control in that chamber are planning to employ the budget reconciliation process, which allows them to skirt the Senate’s usual 60-vote requirement for legislation. During the House Agriculture Committee’s debate over its portion of the legislation, Republicans on the panel said the work requirement and state cost-share measures were needed reforms to SNAP that would protect the program for those it was meant to serve, while limiting the costs associated with benefits to adults who were able and unwilling to work or in the country illegally. In a Friday statement, Sara Lasure, a spokeswoman for Senate Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican, also said the panel would seek reforms to the program but did not offer specifics. “The Senate Agriculture Committee is in the process of crafting its budget reconciliation package and will work as good stewards of taxpayer dollars to make commonsense reforms to SNAP that encourage employment,” she wrote in an email. Klobuchar, in a statement after House passage Thursday, blasted the House bill and indicated she would oppose efforts to cut SNAP benefits. “House Republicans are pulling the rug out from under millions of families by taking away federal assistance to put food on the table,” she said. “They’re doing that even as President Trump’s tariff taxes raise food prices by more than $200 for the average family, all to fund more tax breaks for the wealthy. That’s so very wrong —and we will fight against it in the Senate.” The Republican reconciliation bill that cleared the United States House of Representatives by a narrow margin this week no longer authorizes the sale of thousands acres of public land in Utah and Nevada. U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-NM), who co-founded the Bipartisan Public Lands Caucus earlier this year, said the removal of that provision represents a “huge victory” for all Americans concerned about public lands being sold to the highest bidder. Vasquez said in a statement he started the caucus with U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Montana Republican, to beat back these attacks on public lands. “We committed to working across party lines to sit down and ensure the integrity of our land management system. We’ve worked together across the aisle to prevent this unprecedented public lands sell-off,” Vasquez said. “We will continue to work together to ensure our lands are public, accessible and well managed.” The provision would have gutted protections for 500,000 acres of land near Zion National Park, along with critical habitat for threatened desert tortoises and other areas designated by Congress for conservation, according to New Mexico Wild, a conservation advocacy group. That could have meant the lands were turned into “golf courses, luxury resorts or strip malls,” the group said in a statement Thursday. Environmental groups nationally have applauded the removal of the provision, which Reps. Celeste Maloy (R-Utah) and Mark Amodei (R-Nevada) sponsored. New Mexico Wild’s executive director Mark Allison said the bipartisan pushback was a factor in maintaining the land’s protections, but he warned that this is the first of many fights in coming days to stave off efforts to privatize public lands. “The fact that House Republicans were forced to retreat shows that when we unite to defend our birthright, politicians listen,” he said in a statement. “But make no mistake — this fight is far from over. The same forces that tried to sneak this land grab through would love nothing more than to come after New Mexico’s public lands next time.” The reconciliation bill now heads to the Senate. New Mexico health officials on Friday reported four more measles cases in Sandoval County, bringing the statewide total to 78. The new cases also brought possible exposures in Santa Fe County, where cases have not yet been reported. The new cases include an infant too young for vaccination and three adults who had each had at least one dose of the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine, according to a news release. NMDOH Chief Medical Officer Miranda Durham and DOH Secretary Gina DeBlassie held a news conference Thursday in Albuquerque to issue new recommendations for children in counties with measles cases to receive a first injection earlier than standard protocol and have three, rather than two, shots overall. Durham also noted during the news conference that travel presents “a risk for measles spread” and that the current outbreak is New Mexico’s largest in many years. Both Durham and DeBlassie continue to reference vaccines as the only fully preventative method against measles. “We want to make sure everybody stays safe,” DeBlassie said. A movie armorer convicted in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer by Alec Baldwin on the set of the Western movie "Rust" was released from a New Mexico prison on Friday after completing an 18-month sentence. Prison records show Hannah Gutierrez-Reed signed out of the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility in Grants to return home to Bullhead City, Arizona, on parole related to her involuntary manslaughter conviction in the death of Halyna Hutchins in 2021. Gutierrez-Reed also is being supervised under terms of probation after pleading guilty to a separate charge of unlawfully carrying a gun into a licensed liquor establishment. Baldwin, the lead actor and coproducer for "Rust," was pointing a gun at Hutchins during a rehearsal on a movie set outside Santa Fe when the revolver went off, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza. A jury convicted Gutierrez-Reed of involuntary manslaughter in March 2024. Gutierrez-Reed has an appeal of the conviction pending in a higher court. Jurors acquitted her of allegations she tampered with evidence in the "Rust" investigation. Prosecutors blamed Gutierrez-Reed for unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the set of "Rust" and for failing to follow basic gun safety protocols. Gutierrez-Reed carried a gun into a downtown Santa Fe bar where firearms are prohibited weeks before "Rust" began filming. The terms of parole include mental health assessments and a prohibition on firearms ownership and possession. An involuntary manslaughter charge against Baldwin was dismissed at trial last year on allegations that police and prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense. The filming of "Rust" was completed in Montana. The Western was released in theaters this month. The Republican reconciliation bill that cleared the United States House of Representatives by a narrow margin this week no longer authorizes the sale of thousands acres of public land in Utah and Nevada. U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-NM), who co-founded the Bipartisan Public Lands Caucus earlier this year, said the removal of that provision represents a “huge victory” for all Americans concerned about public lands being sold to the highest bidder. Vasquez said in a statement he started the caucus with U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Montana Republican, to beat back these attacks on public lands. “We committed to working across party lines to sit down and ensure the integrity of our land management system. We’ve worked together across the aisle to prevent this unprecedented public lands sell-off,” Vasquez said. “We will continue to work together to ensure our lands are public, accessible and well managed.” The provision would have gutted protections for 500,000 acres of land near Zion National Park, along with critical habitat for threatened desert tortoises and other areas designated by Congress for conservation, according to New Mexico Wild, a conservation advocacy group. That could have meant the lands were turned into “golf courses, luxury resorts or strip malls,” the group said in a statement Thursday. Environmental groups nationally have applauded the removal of the provision, which Reps. Celeste Maloy (R-Utah) and Mark Amodei (R-Nevada) sponsored. New Mexico Wild’s executive director Mark Allison said the bipartisan pushback was a factor in maintaining the land’s protections, but he warned that this is the first of many fights in coming days to stave off efforts to privatize public lands. “The fact that House Republicans were forced to retreat shows that when we unite to defend our birthright, politicians listen,” he said in a statement. “But make no mistake — this fight is far from over. The same forces that tried to sneak this land grab through would love nothing more than to come after New Mexico’s public lands next time.” The reconciliation bill now heads to the Senate. While all three of New Mexico’s representatives, all Democrats, voted against President Donald Trump’s domestic policy megabill, dubbed the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” local Republicans were showing support for the reform package that “puts Americans first.” U.S. Representatives Melanie Stansbury, Teresa Leger Fernández, Gabe Vasquez and every other House Democrat voted against the bill. Stansbury voted “hell no,” but it still narrowly passed the House with a 215-214 vote early Thursday after 29 straight hours of debate. Amy Barela, Chairwoman of the Republican Party of New Mexico, said the passage of the legislation is “a historic package of reforms.” “This is a great day for the American people and a shameful one for the Democrat politicians who turned their backs on the very people they claim to represent,” Barela said. “The Republican-led House just passed the most transformative legislation in a generation — tax cuts, wage increases, border security, military support, energy independence, and historic savings for taxpayers. And not a single Democrat Legislator stood with us — including those from New Mexico.” Stansbury called the bill a “shameful package” that will “strip millions of veterans, working families, and children of access to healthcare and food assistance to provide permanent tax breaks to billionaires.” The proposed legislation would extend the 2017 tax cuts, increase military spending and border security funding, and allocate funds for mass deportations. It also aims to eliminate taxes on tips and overtime pay, fulfilling campaign promises. The bill includes significant spending cuts to Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), rescinds clean energy tax credits from 2022 and raises the debt ceiling by $4 trillion. “Nearly 14 million Americans will lose access to healthcare, 18 million children will lose access to food assistance and school meals, and millions of seniors will be impacted by cuts to Medicare,” Stansbury said. “This is not what the American people voted for and the GOP knows it.” The RPNM praised the Big, Beautiful Bill for delivering tax cuts, wage increases, permanent border security measures, protection of taxpayer-funded benefits, pay raises and improved benefits for military personnel, reversing Biden-era mandates on “taxpayer-funded gender ideology,” overhauls to air traffic control, defense modernization, and a massive investment in energy and agriculture. “This is what leadership looks like. This bill puts Americans first — not special interests, not foreign nationals, and certainly not radical ideology,” Barela said. “New Mexicans deserve representatives who will vote for their pay raises, their border safety, and their tax relief. Unfortunately, Democrats in the NM delegation chose party politics over practical solutions.” The bill now heads to the Senate, which is controlled 53-47 by Republicans. “We now look forward to the Senate doing what the people deserve — pass this bill and send it to President Trump’s desk,” Barela said. “The Republican Party of New Mexico stands fully behind this effort to put American workers, families, and values first.” Southern New Mexico’s Spaceport America is trading rocket launches for a different kind of takeoff. An Obama-produced documentary about the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds premieres Friday on Netflix, “Air Force Elite: Thunderbirds,” and features footage of the team’s trainings at Spaceport America. “The significance to me is showing the joint cooperation, I think, between Spaceport America and our Department of Defense partners,” said Allan Turk II, Spaceport America’s director of aerospace operations. The Air Force Demonstration Squadron, more commonly known as the Thunderbirds, is a group of six aircraft — most famously the F-16 fighter jet — that performs air shows and flyovers around the world. The team is based in Nevada but also trains at Spaceport America. The Thunderbirds’ involvement in New Mexico began with a phone call in 2020, when the Thunderbirds submitted a customer inquiry seeking to use the Spaceport America facilities for flying. Turk wasn’t sure if it was fake or not, and when a pilot followed up by phone, he asked to video call instead for verification. “And sure enough, there he was in his Thunderbird outfit. I said, ‘I’ve got to take a screenshot, I’ve got to show my boss it’s legit,’” Turk said. The Thunderbirds have deployed annually at Spaceport ever since, and Turk said the team is interested in staying on for at least the next five years. Spaceport is typically the site where the squadron comes together for the first time to practice ahead of the nearly yearlong show season, Turk said. He added that Netflix shot about a week of the team’s early training sessions at Spaceport for the documentary, executive produced by former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama. And, Spaceport spokesperson Charles Hurley said, the new show allows the public a peek into DOD operations at Spaceport, which are generally kept secret. “Hopefully there’s just a little bit more tangibility of our site — what it looks like, what goes on here — with something like this that appeals to a broad audience as well,” he said.
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assessments and a prohibition on firearms ownership and possession. An involuntary manslaughter charge against Baldwin was dismissed at trial last year on allegations that police and prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense. The filming of “Rust” was completed in Montana. The Western was released in theaters this month. The massive tax and spending bill passed by U.S. House Republicans would likely result in 3.2 million people losing food assistance benefits, and saddle states with around $14 billion a year in costs, according to a new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Democrats have argued the bill, which the House passed , 215-214 early Thursday without any Democrats in support, would cut programs for the needy to fund tax breaks for high earners. The CBO document, issued late Thursday, responded to a request to the office from the top Democrats on the Senate and House Agriculture committees, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Angie Craig, both of Minnesota, and somewhat bolsters that claim. The panels oversee federal food aid programs. “This report is truly devastating,” Craig said in a Friday statement to States Newsroom. “As a mother and someone who at times relied on food assistance as a child, these numbers are heartbreaking. It is infuriating that Republicans in Congress are willing to make our children go hungry so they can give tax breaks to the already rich.” A provision in the bill to tighten work requirements, including by excluding single parents of children older than 6 and by raising the age of adults to whom the work requirements apply, of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, would result in 3.2 million people losing access to the program in an average month, the CBO report said. Of those, 1.4 million would be people who currently have a state waiver from work requirements that would be disallowed under the bill and 800,000 would be adults who live with children 7 or older, the report said. In a Friday statement, Ben Nichols, a spokesman for the House Agriculture Committee led by Pennsylvania Republican Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson, said the proposed change would be more fair to the people SNAP is supposed to help and noted the program is the only state-administered entitlement program that is paid fully by the federal government. “No one who is able-bodied and working, volunteering, or training for 20 hours a week will lose benefits,” Nichols wrote. Republicans want to use the legislative package to extend the 2017 tax law and its cuts, increase spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars, overhaul American energy production, restructure higher education aid and cut spending. Toll on statesThe cost-share changes, which would require states for the first time to pay for a portion of SNAP benefits, would also limit participation and add a massive line item to state budgets, according to the CBO. Starting in 2028, states would be responsible for paying 5% to 25% of SNAP benefits, with a state’s share rising with its payment error rate. The federal government currently pays for all SNAP benefits. Under the House bill, which will likely undergo substantial changes as the Senate considers it in the coming weeks, states collectively would be responsible for just less than $100 billion from 2028 to 2034, about $14 billion per year. States would respond in a variety of ways, CBO Director Phillip Swagel wrote, including potentially dropping out of the program. “CBO expects that some states would maintain current benefits and eligibility and others would modify benefits or eligibility or possibly leave the program altogether because of the increased costs,” he wrote. The office took a “probabilistic approach to account for a range of possible outcomes” to determine what the effect on households would be and estimated that 1.3 million people would lose benefits because of state responses to the new cost-share. Nichols, with the House Agriculture Committee, disputed the CBO’s estimate regarding the cost share change. The lowest state cost-share of 5% would be available for states with error rates below 6%. Every state has hit that mark at some point in the last decade, he said. With that favorable of a cost-share, the Republican committee members did not believe states would drop out of the program, he added. “We reject the hypothetical assumption that some states may not chip into 5 percent of a supplemental nutrition program,” Nichols wrote. “Every state is capable of paying for a portion SNAP… Federal policy should encourage states to administer the SNAP program more efficiently and effectively, and this bill does just that.” CBO’s forecasters determined the impacts of the work requirements and cost-share provisions separately, meaning some people potentially losing benefits could have been counted in both categories. Move to the SenateThe House vote Thursday sent the measure to the Senate, where the debate over SNAP benefits may fall along similar party lines. Republicans who hold control in that chamber are planning to employ the budget reconciliation process, which allows them to skirt the Senate’s usual 60-vote requirement for legislation. During the House Agriculture Committee’s debate over its portion of the legislation, Republicans on the panel said the work requirement and state cost-share measures were needed reforms to SNAP that would protect the program for those it was meant to serve, while limiting the costs associated with benefits to adults who were able and unwilling to work or in the country illegally. In a Friday statement, Sara Lasure, a spokeswoman for Senate Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican, also said the panel would seek reforms to the program but did not offer specifics. “The Senate Agriculture Committee is in the process of crafting its budget reconciliation package and will work as good stewards of taxpayer dollars to make commonsense reforms to SNAP that encourage employment,” she wrote in an email. Klobuchar, in a statement after House passage Thursday, blasted the House bill and indicated she would oppose efforts to cut SNAP benefits. “House Republicans are pulling the rug out from under millions of families by taking away federal assistance to put food on the table,” she said. “They’re doing that even as President Trump’s tariff taxes raise food prices by more than $200 for the average family, all to fund more tax breaks for the wealthy. That’s so very wrong —and we will fight against it in the Senate.” The Republican reconciliation bill that cleared the United States House of Representatives by a narrow margin this week no longer authorizes the sale of thousands acres of public land in Utah and Nevada. U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-NM), who co-founded the Bipartisan Public Lands Caucus earlier this year, said the removal of that provision represents a “huge victory” for all Americans concerned about public lands being sold to the highest bidder. Vasquez said in a statement he started the caucus with U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Montana Republican, to beat back these attacks on public lands. “We committed to working across party lines to sit down and ensure the integrity of our land management system. We’ve worked together across the aisle to prevent this unprecedented public lands sell-off,” Vasquez said. “We will continue to work together to ensure our lands are public, accessible and well managed.” The provision would have gutted protections for 500,000 acres of land near Zion National Park, along with critical habitat for threatened desert tortoises and other areas designated by Congress for conservation, according to New Mexico Wild, a conservation advocacy group. That could have meant the lands were turned into “golf courses, luxury resorts or strip malls,” the group said in a statement Thursday. Environmental groups nationally have applauded the removal of the provision, which Reps. Celeste Maloy (R-Utah) and Mark Amodei (R-Nevada) sponsored. New Mexico Wild’s executive director Mark Allison said the bipartisan pushback was a factor in maintaining the land’s protections, but he warned that this is the first of many fights in coming days to stave off efforts to privatize public lands. “The fact that House Republicans were forced to retreat shows that when we unite to defend our birthright, politicians listen,” he said in a statement. “But make no mistake — this fight is far from over. The same forces that tried to sneak this land grab through would love nothing more than to come after New Mexico’s public lands next time.” The reconciliation bill now heads to the Senate. New Mexico health officials on Friday reported four more measles cases in Sandoval County, bringing the statewide total to 78. The new cases also brought possible exposures in Santa Fe County, where cases have not yet been reported. The new cases include an infant too young for vaccination and three adults who had each had at least one dose of the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine, according to a news release. NMDOH Chief Medical Officer Miranda Durham and DOH Secretary Gina DeBlassie held a news conference Thursday in Albuquerque to issue new recommendations for children in counties with measles cases to receive a first injection earlier than standard protocol and have three, rather than two, shots overall. Durham also noted during the news conference that travel presents “a risk for measles spread” and that the current outbreak is New Mexico’s largest in many years. Both Durham and DeBlassie continue to reference vaccines as the only fully preventative method against measles. “We want to make sure everybody stays safe,” DeBlassie said. A movie armorer convicted in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer by Alec Baldwin on the set of the Western movie "Rust" was released from a New Mexico prison on Friday after completing an 18-month sentence. Prison records show Hannah Gutierrez-Reed signed out of the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility in Grants to return home to Bullhead City, Arizona, on parole related to her involuntary manslaughter conviction in the death of Halyna Hutchins in 2021. Gutierrez-Reed also is being supervised under terms of probation after pleading guilty to a separate charge of unlawfully carrying a gun into a licensed liquor establishment. Baldwin, the lead actor and coproducer for "Rust," was pointing a gun at Hutchins during a rehearsal on a movie set outside Santa Fe when the revolver went off, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza. A jury convicted Gutierrez-Reed of involuntary manslaughter in March 2024. Gutierrez-Reed has an appeal of the conviction pending in a higher court. Jurors acquitted her of allegations she tampered with evidence in the "Rust" investigation. Prosecutors blamed Gutierrez-Reed for unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the set of "Rust" and for failing to follow basic gun safety protocols. Gutierrez-Reed carried a gun into a downtown Santa Fe bar where firearms are prohibited weeks before "Rust" began filming. The terms of parole include mental health assessments and a prohibition on firearms ownership and possession. An involuntary manslaughter charge against Baldwin was dismissed at trial last year on allegations that police and prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense. The filming of "Rust" was completed in Montana. The Western was released in theaters this month. The Republican reconciliation bill that cleared the United States House of Representatives by a narrow margin this week no longer authorizes the sale of thousands acres of public land in Utah and Nevada. U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-NM), who co-founded the Bipartisan Public Lands Caucus earlier this year, said the removal of that provision represents a “huge victory” for all Americans concerned about public lands being sold to the highest bidder. Vasquez said in a statement he started the caucus with U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Montana Republican, to beat back these attacks on public lands. “We committed to working across party lines to sit down and ensure the integrity of our land management system. We’ve worked together across the aisle to prevent this unprecedented public lands sell-off,” Vasquez said. “We will continue to work together to ensure our lands are public, accessible and well managed.” The provision would have gutted protections for 500,000 acres of land near Zion National Park, along with critical habitat for threatened desert tortoises and other areas designated by Congress for conservation, according to New Mexico Wild, a conservation advocacy group. That could have meant the lands were turned into “golf courses, luxury resorts or strip malls,” the group said in a statement Thursday. Environmental groups nationally have applauded the removal of the provision, which Reps. Celeste Maloy (R-Utah) and Mark Amodei (R-Nevada) sponsored. New Mexico Wild’s executive director Mark Allison said the bipartisan pushback was a factor in maintaining the land’s protections, but he warned that this is the first of many fights in coming days to stave off efforts to privatize public lands. “The fact that House Republicans were forced to retreat shows that when we unite to defend our birthright, politicians listen,” he said in a statement. “But make no mistake — this fight is far from over. The same forces that tried to sneak this land grab through would love nothing more than to come after New Mexico’s public lands next time.” The reconciliation bill now heads to the Senate. While all three of New Mexico’s representatives, all Democrats, voted against President Donald Trump’s domestic policy megabill, dubbed the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” local Republicans were showing support for the reform package that “puts Americans first.” U.S. Representatives Melanie Stansbury, Teresa Leger Fernández, Gabe Vasquez and every other House Democrat voted against the bill. Stansbury voted “hell no,” but it still narrowly passed the House with a 215-214 vote early Thursday after 29 straight hours of debate. Amy Barela, Chairwoman of the Republican Party of New Mexico, said the passage of the legislation is “a historic package of reforms.” “This is a great day for the American people and a shameful one for the Democrat politicians who turned their backs on the very people they claim to represent,” Barela said. “The Republican-led House just passed the most transformative legislation in a generation — tax cuts, wage increases, border security, military support, energy independence, and historic savings for taxpayers. And not a single Democrat Legislator stood with us — including those from New Mexico.” Stansbury called the bill a “shameful package” that will “strip millions of veterans, working families, and children of access to healthcare and food assistance to provide permanent tax breaks to billionaires.” The proposed legislation would extend the 2017 tax cuts, increase military spending and border security funding, and allocate funds for mass deportations. It also aims to eliminate taxes on tips and overtime pay, fulfilling campaign promises. The bill includes significant spending cuts to Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), rescinds clean energy tax credits from 2022 and raises the debt ceiling by $4 trillion. “Nearly 14 million Americans will lose access to healthcare, 18 million children will lose access to food assistance and school meals, and millions of seniors will be impacted by cuts to Medicare,” Stansbury said. “This is not what the American people voted for and the GOP knows it.” The RPNM praised the Big, Beautiful Bill for delivering tax cuts, wage increases, permanent border security measures, protection of taxpayer-funded benefits, pay raises and improved benefits for military personnel, reversing Biden-era mandates on “taxpayer-funded gender ideology,” overhauls to air traffic control, defense modernization, and a massive investment in energy and agriculture. “This is what leadership looks like. This bill puts Americans first — not special interests, not foreign nationals, and certainly not radical ideology,” Barela said. “New Mexicans deserve representatives who will vote for their pay raises, their border safety, and their tax relief. Unfortunately, Democrats in the NM delegation chose party politics over practical solutions.” The bill now heads to the Senate, which is controlled 53-47 by Republicans. “We now look forward to the Senate doing what the people deserve — pass this bill and send it to President Trump’s desk,” Barela said. “The Republican Party of New Mexico stands fully behind this effort to put American workers, families, and values first.” Southern New Mexico’s Spaceport America is trading rocket launches for a different kind of takeoff. An Obama-produced documentary about the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds premieres Friday on Netflix, “Air Force Elite: Thunderbirds,” and features footage of the team’s trainings at Spaceport America. “The significance to me is showing the joint cooperation, I think, between Spaceport America and our Department of Defense partners,” said Allan Turk II, Spaceport America’s director of aerospace operations. The Air Force Demonstration Squadron, more commonly known as the Thunderbirds, is a group of six aircraft — most famously the F-16 fighter jet — that performs air shows and flyovers around the world. The team is based in Nevada but also trains at Spaceport America. The Thunderbirds’ involvement in New Mexico began with a phone call in 2020, when the Thunderbirds submitted a customer inquiry seeking to use the Spaceport America facilities for flying. Turk wasn’t sure if it was fake or not, and when a pilot followed up by phone, he asked to video call instead for verification. “And sure enough, there he was in his Thunderbird outfit. I said, ‘I’ve got to take a screenshot, I’ve got to show my boss it’s legit,’” Turk said. The Thunderbirds have deployed annually at Spaceport ever since, and Turk said the team is interested in staying on for at least the next five years. Spaceport is typically the site where the squadron comes together for the first time to practice ahead of the nearly yearlong show season, Turk said. He added that Netflix shot about a week of the team’s early training sessions at Spaceport for the documentary, executive produced by former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama. And, Spaceport spokesperson Charles Hurley said, the new show allows the public a peek into DOD operations at Spaceport, which are generally kept secret. “Hopefully there’s just a little bit more tangibility of our site — what it looks like, what goes on here — with something like this that appeals to a broad audience as well,” he said.
