On the New Mexico Legislature’s opening day Jan. 21, climate justice protesters blockaded the street in front of the Roundhouse, demanding state lawmakers take immediate climate action.

Demonstrators parked vehicles on Old Santa Fe Trail, while a crowd of young people painted a clock on the pavement to show the urgency of the climate crisis and demand protection for stolen, sacred lands and of their futures.

The group escalated to a blockade after disrupting the governor’s State of the State address in 2024, and staging a die-in inside the capitol rotunda in 2023.

Protesters included members of YUCCA, Pueblo Action Alliance, Southwest Organizing Project, the Santa Fe Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine and students from United World College in Las Vegas, New Mexico.

YUCCA Policy Campaign Manager Ennedith López said since her organization was founded six years ago, lawmakers have largely ignored climate and environmental justice. Her group plans to support legislation focusing on human rights, housing, and specific proposals creating a one-mile buffer zone preventing oil and gas operations around schools, day cares, parks and playgrounds, and limiting ozone air pollution.

YUCCA plans to oppose Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s strategic water supply proposal, López said. That program would receive $75 million under a bill sponsored by Rep. Susan Herrera (D-Embudo) that would make the state government a middleman to solicit projects to develop treatments for salty water deep underground or oil and gas wastewater, and to create rules to regulate those projects.

“Knowing that there isn’t science to back safety for human consumption or even simply the Earth, it’s just too risky of an investment for our communities,” López said.

Today’s protest follows yesterday’s executive order from President Donald Trump withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement. Gov Lujan Grisham, co-chair of the United States Climate Alliance, yesterday released a letter with Co-Chair New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change reiterating the Alliance’s commitment to its climate goals: “This is not the first time we’ve responded to this challenge in the U.S,” the letter noted. “Our coalition was launched after the President’s decision to withdraw our country from the Paris Agreement back in 2017. Since then, our reach, resolve, and impact have only grown.”

Climate change legislation during this year’s session includes The Clear Horizons Act, which would codify Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s 2019 executive order to reduce 2005 level emissions by at least 45% by 2030. The bill would set the goals of reducing emissions by 50% by 2040 and 100% by 2050, and charge the Environmental Improvement Board with inventorying progress towards the goals.

The opening gavel strike for the 2025 session is mere hours away and so begins the flurry of activity of a nearly $11 billion dollar budget and lawmaking.

Sen. Peter Wirth (D-Santa Fe), the Senate Majority Leader, sat down with Source New Mexico to talk about priorities in the 60-day session. He celebrated the closeness of the governor’s proposed budget, and the one proposed by lawmakers, saying there’s a lot of consensus even before the negotiations start. 

“It’s a really good thing for us during the session, but also for New Mexicans, because we need to continue to put forward responsible budgets,” Wirth said.

The relationship between the fourth floor and the rest of the Roundhouse has thawed, but only recently. 

In July, lawmakers adjourned a special session last year after five hours. The two houses passed emergency funds for disaster victims, but declined to take up any of the governor’s proposals for determining when someone can stand trial, harsher prison sentences and other crime legislation.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham called July’s special session “one of the most disappointing days of my career,” and excoriated Democratic leadership in the days before and after for not sponsoring her proposed bills.

Wirth personally will be bringing bills addressing campaign finance reform, a plan to give the state more authority on protecting intermittent rivers from federal regulations gaps and raising caps for the state’s insurance program, a last resort for homeowners, among others.

But the first 30 days, lawmakers expect to focus on two legislative packages addressing public safety and behavioral health.

Source: What’s your assessment of how the Legislature will work with the governor’s public safety agenda?

Wirth: There have been a number of conversations between myself and the governor about the public safety process, and what we’ve done with the 30-day expedited plan. 

The public safety package will be an omnibus bill centered around criminal competency and on the behavioral health side, there will be a new behavioral health trust fund, taking one-time, non-recurring money and putting it into a trust fund. It’ll spin off a 5% return. We’re hoping to get that up to $1 billion – may not happen this year, right up front. Then there’s going to be a second appropriation, probably $150 to $200 million for behavioral health infrastructure. 

We are continuing to deal with the decimation of the whole behavioral health system that happened 10 years ago and critical to public safety proposals involving those suffering from mental illness and are unhoused is that there’s a place for them to get treatment. 

I think the two parts of this overall package that we’ll do in the first 30 days are something certainly that the governor wants: It fits into her agenda. Obviously, there will be discussions about what is in the public safety agenda package – her priorities and our priorities – but I’m feeling more optimistic about a process that’s good to get us where we need to go. 

There were hard words in the aftermath of last year’s special session from the governor, chastising lawmakers for not addressing public safety then; has the relation been better in recent months?

There’s no question that it was strained after the special session, but the governor reached out first, she and I have had a number of one-on-one meetings, and again, I think there’s an understanding that we need to move forward. 

I’m really confident that the process we’ve set up here gives us the chance to thoroughly vet these bills, which are complicated. And the special session: it just wasn’t ready, there was no behavioral health piece. The frustrating thing is it wasn’t ready to go, it was forced and you can’t do a special session when everything’s not preplanned. 

I also want to stress we’ve had six incredible years of productive work during Gov. Lujan Grisham’s term. I’ve been here long enough to know that’s certainly not always the case. Under the prior administration, from a Democratic perspective, we spent eight years fighting for the status quo.

Governor, Legislature feud over crime with special session just days away 

There’s been this concern that the focus on crime would suck attention from other issues coming forward in the session, any response on that?

Absolutely. I had the same concern, but I think it’s really important by having this emphasis on the first 30 days. It allows us to really put forward a package, send it to the governor and then shift gears, and make sure we get all the other key issues through the process and to the table.  

What you don’t want to have is 100 different crime bills floating around and us trying to round all that up right at the end of the session. I think that would have the potential to have the whole thing crater. 

We’ll have a focused package up front and I want to be clear, it doesn’t mean additional crime bills won’t be heard on an individual basis. I think putting the emphasis up front addresses that concern  and will allow us to obviously send it up to the governor. She gets her input on it, and adds things and figures out what needs to be on the table as we move forward. 

Putting the emphasis on the midway point, I think helps address exactly those concerns.