A wildfire swept through portions of a Civil War-era fort and historical site in southern New Mexico, forcing the evacuations of campgrounds and a horse ranch, authorities said Monday.

The fire damaged structures at Fort Stanton Historical Site built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s and a gym erected by Germans interned at the site during World War II after their ship sank.

Ground crews, air tankers and helicopters joined efforts to contain a blaze that scorched more than a square mile (3 square kilometers) of terrain at the site and surrounding conservation lands managed by the federal Bureau of Land Management.

Laura Rabon, a spokesperson for a multiagency team responding to the situation, said crews cleared lines of vegetation Monday on the north side of the wildfire and helicopters doused smoldering hot spots with water. The fire was contained along 4% of its boundary.

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.

Separately in Arizona, more than 500 firefighters and support personnel had largely contained the boundaries of a wildfire northeast of Tuscon, in the Santa Catalina Mountains, that has destroyed five homes in the community of Oracle. Evacuations were rescinded in some residential areas — but not all — on Monday.

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 first 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, as more than 70 people fought the fire. Fort Stanton Historical Site was closed and three nearby camping areas were evacuated.

The Albuquerque City Council approved a pilot program to give police officers gas procurement cards — a move they hope could improve emergency response times for residents west of the Rio Grande.

The program aims to lessen the burden on officers crossing the river and facing traffic and potentially responding slowly to calls because they were getting gas at city fueling stations that are few and far between. Councilor Louie Sanchez, a former police officer, sponsored the resolution.

He said the West Side, which includes his district, lacks facilities for police officers to fill up at city fueling stations.

“What (police officers) told me is that if they have a person that’s in custody in their car and they’re running low on fuel, now what?” said Sanchez, who’s also running for mayor. “Now they have to deal with it.”

According to data provided alongside the city’s 2026 proposed budget, Albuquerque Police Department officers have taken about 9 minutes and 10 seconds on average to respond to the most serious calls over the last year. For lower-priority calls, the response times average between 14 and 21 minutes.

“They’re not answering calls while they’re fueling up,” said Councilor Dan Lewis, who represents the northwest corner of the city. “And if they did answer a call, or did get a call, it’d be at least a 15-20 minute drive to get back over to their area.”

Information presented alongside the resolution shows that there are five fueling stations in the city: one near the Big I, one just north of Downtown, one by the Eastside Animal Shelter, one at the Albuquerque International Sunport and one at the Double Eagle II Airport.

The Northwest Area Command Police Substation at 10401 Cibola Loop NW is several miles from all five locations.

The resolution passed with unanimous support on Monday, but only received partial support and some pushback from the APD Chief Harold Medina. Medina worried that gas cards could be misused and asked the council to limit the scope of the pilot program so that few officers would have access to the gas cards.

“Our biggest concern is we don’t have a system that tracks the card,” Medina said.

Medina also added that the city had a similar program in the 1990s but had discontinued it at the turn of the century. He said it was canceled because officers put high-grade fuel in their cars, raising costs.

An APD spokesperson also told the Journal that Medina would’ve preferred to have time to work out vehicle and fuel accountability issues before the resolution passed, but said the department will make it work. The council was unmoved by Medina’s critique.

“There’s no doubt that it keeps our officers closer within the district responding to calls,” Lewis said. “If all the chief could come up with is that there’s risk involved — I don’t even want to entertain that argument.”

The program will last for 12 months and is set to begin in late May or June. During that timeframe, gas cards for private stations would be given out to officers in the southwest and northwest command areas, which cover everything west of the Rio Grande.

An APD spokesperson said the department did not yet have data about how many officers would be eligible for the pilot program.

The resolution also calls on APD to provide the council with quarterly reports on the plan’s efficacy and a full evaluation at the end of the pilot period. APD and the city’s Finance Department are responsible for establishing guidelines and monitoring the program.

The council also amended the resolution, calling on the administration to draft a report analyzing the costs and benefits of a fueling station in the northwest corner of Albuquerque.

One question the reports may answer is if the program raises the city’s fuel purchasing costs. A city spokesperson said that, with hundreds of police cars, buses and fleet vehicles, the city can negotiate a lower price for fuel than the average consumer. But a policy analysis for Sanchez downplayed the possibility of that, saying the cards were likely to be used in rare situations on an as-needed basis.

The body of a U.S. Air Force member was recovered from a lake in southern New Mexico on Monday, two days after the airman assigned to Kirtland Air Force Base went missing at the popular recreation spot, military authorities said.

The member of the 351st Special Warfare Training Squadron went missing at Elephant Butte Lake on Saturday and hasn't been identified publicly under procedures for notifying next of kin, said Lt. Daniel Fernandez, a spokesperson for Kirtland.

An investigation into the death was underway by state authorities overseeing Elephant Butte Lake State Park, a popular getaway between Albuquerque and El Paso, Texas.

State Parks spokesperson Sidney Hill said there are no indications of foul play. The body was transferred to the state Office of the Medical Investigator to determine the cause of death.

At a boat ramp on the lake Monday, military personnel including members of the 351st and an Air Force rescue squadron formed two lines for a dignified transfer of the remains from a boat. The lake otherwise was busy with Memorial Day revelers.

A long list of agencies participated in the search for the missing airman, including New Mexico state police, a local fire department, New Mexico State Park rangers and a team from the 306th Rescue Squadron out of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona.

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 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.

The 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 common sense 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.