New Mexico
New tool launches to offset donor fatigue for reproductive rights aid – NM Political Report
A new practical support tool for patients traveling to New Mexico and Colorado for an abortion launched as a pilot project connected to Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains last week. Organizers launched a new nonprofit organization called Gloria. It connects abortion patients traveling long distances to Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Denver to a short-term […]
A new practical support tool for patients traveling to New Mexico and Colorado for an abortion launched as a pilot project connected to Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains last week.
Organizers launched a new nonprofit organization called Gloria. It connects abortion patients traveling long distances to Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Denver to a short-term rental host with a vacation rental vacancy. The platform is the first of its kind by coordinating short-term rental properties with abortion patients.
Toshiko Langford, who is the director of impact and analytics for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, founded Gloria. She told NM Political Report that after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022, there was an outpouring of financial support but now, two years later, donor fatigue has led to a tapering off of donations.
Adrienne Mansanares, president and chief executive officer of PPRM, told NM Political Report that PPRM saw considerable donations after the Texas six-week gestational ban in 2021 and then a “huge surge” in donations after the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade. But donors’ sense of urgency in providing funding for travel costs for those traveling long distances for an abortion has tapered off, she said.
Mansanares said grass roots organizations who help with abortion patient traveling are the ones who have experienced the decrease in funding the most. Mansanares said contributions to PPRM are stable, but Planned Parenthood has a decades-long, national brand and a robust development program.
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But, even as donor fatigue has set in, New Mexico has, within the Rocky Mountain region, by far the greatest influx of abortion patients coming from out of state, Langford said. In 2023, 14,000 patients traveled from Texas to New Mexico for abortion care. Langford said a large proportion of those 14,000 needed lodging because of how far they are traveling.
Mansanares said PPRM has expanded its services and hours so that a local patient can expect to get the appointment they need without long waits. But still more than half of PPRM abortion care patients are traveling from out of state, so it’s a continuing crisis, Mansanares said.
She said an additional crisis PPRM is battling now is a spike in delayed abortion care, which can lead to more challenges for the patient but it’s also harder on the providers.
“It’s better to get healthcare when the patient wants and needs it and not delay that care,” Mansanares said.
Gloria is also a response to a phenomenon Langford saw on social media platforms shortly after Roe fell. Individuals were offering rides and places to stay but, while it was “a beautiful outpouring of support,” it wasn’t usable by patients, Langford said.
Langford said it became very clear to her there needed to be a way to coordinate that in-kind support so both sides could be vetted to ensure safety for everyone involved.
Langford said Gloria can also help alleviate the decrease in donor funding by providing in-kind donations from short-term rental hosts. She said she’s seen patients forgoing car payments in order to come up with the travel funds necessary but, even then, the patient often doesn’t have the additional resources to pay for lodging.
Langford said she’s seen patients drive 17 hours across the state of Texas and a part of New Mexico to arrive in Albuquerque for an abortion appointment and then turn around and drive those same 17 hours back across the two states to return home.
“So many patients are forgoing basic needs in order to finance their travel as well as the procedure and they’re doing pretty drastic things. We just want to support them,” Langford said.
She said there’s a “huge community” who have resources which have not been tapped into to help patients. Langford said it was in her role at PPRM that she first realized the gap between short-term rental hosts who were offering to lend a night or two stay in a vacant rental property but that there was no infrastructure in place to coordinate the hosts to the patients.
Langford said the host and the patient are connected through a secure app and no personal information is shared. The hosts and the patient do not meet in order to ensure privacy and security. The patient and their families have the entire rental property to themselves during the stay, also to ensure privacy and security, Langford said.
Mansanares said the houses are lovely vacation homes.
The patient is able to stay in a home and that can be helpful, especially when a patient is traveling with small children or other family members. It can also be helpful if the patient has a flight out after a procedural abortion and wants to return to the rental house to relax instead of waiting long hours at the airport for the flight.
Langford called the current roll out a pilot project and said that, so far, there are six hosts on Gloria. The platform is limited to patients who seek services at PPRM clinics in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Denver. But, she said, the goal is to expand not just across the region but nationally. She also hopes to expand so that other abortion clinics can rely on Gloria to direct patients who need lodging when traveling for an abortion. She hopes to begin scaling up the project by October.
Mansanares said another benefit from the creation of Gloria is that its work helps to destigmatize abortion care.
“People in the community have something to give, they want to pitch in but they may not have the funds to donate or they have the funds, but they want to do more. This seeks a solution that’s outside of traditional systems,” she said.
CHIMAYO, N.M. (KRQE) – A suspect is dead following a shooting involving the Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s Office in Chimayo on Highway 76. Deputies are said to be okay. New Mexico State Police is investigating the shooting.
KRQE News 13 will provide updates as they become available.
LAS CRUCES, N.M. (KFOX14/CBS4) — A leader in the New Mexico Republican Party was arrested Wednesday, accused of a deadly hit-and-run in Las Cruces.
Former Treasurer of the Republican Party in New Mexico, Kimberly Ann Skaggs, 54, was arrested Wednesday and charged with leaving the scene and tampering with evidence, jail records show.
Police documents show the charges stem from a deadly hit-and-run crash that happened Monday afternoon, which killed 40-year-old bicyclist, Andrew Brown.
Investigators believed Skaggs was involved after an investigation revealed that Skaggs allegedly was driving fast in the area, fled the scene after the crash and then tried to hide the vehicle from authorities.
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The investigation
According to police documents, a witness at the scene of the crash– 850 N. Fairacres Rd.– described seeing a dark blonde-haired woman flee in a black Cadillac Escalade SUV.
Afterwards, investigators said they saw on Flock cameras– A.I. powered license plate readers– a black Cadillac Escalade traveling near the site of the crash minutes before the incident.
READ MORE: Dona Ana County expands Flock license plate cameras as officials cite crime-solving gains
The license plates showed that the vehicle belonged to Skaggs and that, in September 2025, the Las Cruces Police Department had given her a citation for “racing on streets-exhibition driving.”
Investigators stated that a business on Picacho Ave. captured what they alleged was the same black Cadillac Escalade driving fast.
Then, the documents described how investigators tracked down the Escalade using OnStar’s live GPS tracking, discovering the SUV was at a property on the 5000 block of Northwind Road, which investigators said the Dona Ana County Assessors Office confirmed is a property owned by Skaggs.
On Tuesday, at around 6:41 p.m.– over 24 hours after the deadly hit-and-run– investigators executed a search warrant on the property and described finding the black Cadillac Escalade behind a home, under a red metal carport.
Investigators noted damage on the SUV consistent with the crash, highlighting that there was blood splatter near one of the front tires, markings on the front bumper consistent with hitting a bicycle and parts missing, which investigators said were the same parts found at the scene.
Dona Ana County jail records show Skaggs was booked on Wednesday afternoon and remains jailed without a bond.
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About Skaggs
On the official website of the Republican Party of New Mexico, Skaggs was listed as the treasurer before she was removed.
KFOX14/CBS4 has reached out to the Republican Party to learn more and are waiting for a comment regarding the arrest.
Also, according to election statistics, Skaggs ran for State Representative in District 36 in 2022 and 2024, losing both times to Democrat Nathan P. Small.
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SANTA FE, N.M. – Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham asked Attorney General Raúl Torrez to investigate whether any Drug Enforcement Administration agents broke state law when pills reached New Mexico streets.
In a statement, Lujan Grisham said, “make no mistake: the DEA knew people would die if these pills made it into New Mexico communities.”
The governor also shared a timeline from 2022 to 2025 that she said shows when she asked federal officials for help with New Mexico’s fentanyl crisis and violent crime.
Lujan Grisham said the first request came on June 21, 2022, when she wrote to then-Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray and asked for 50 additional federal agents.
She said she wrote to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland on Sept. 15, 2022, asking for more agents, resources and support for New Mexico law enforcement.
Lujan Grisham said she wrote Garland a second time on Aug. 8, 2023, with the same request.
What came next?
About a month later, Lujan Grisham said she sent Garland a third letter and said New Mexico needed more federal law enforcement to curb violent crime, drug trafficking and human trafficking.
She said her most recent request came on Sept. 4, 2025, when she wrote to former Attorney General Pam Bondi and again asked for additional agents and resources.
The governor’s statement says those requests span several years as she pressed the federal government for more help in New Mexico.
Full statement from Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham:
“I am appalled by reporting this week by the Associated Press and Albuquerque Journal that revealed federal authorities made a deliberate decision to let hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills flood into New Mexico communities, despite knowing that fentanyl is so lethal the White House has designated it a weapon of mass destruction.
Let me say that again: the Drug Enforcement Administration watched as 74,000 fentanyl pills were delivered to a mobile home park in Albuquerque, and they did nothing. And that’s just one transaction. Shockingly, the federal government stood by while monitoring shipments, tallying exact pill counts, and watching as these deadly drugs hit the streets.
There are no words to describe how reckless and dangerous these decisions were. Make no mistake: the DEA knew people would die if these pills made it into New Mexico communities, and the agency let it happen anyway. The result: hundreds of New Mexican parents burying their kids. Hundreds of New Mexican kids growing up without stable parents. All while the federal government stood by.
If the justification for letting these pills flood our communities was that it would somehow make New Mexico safer down the road through bigger eventual busts, the results say otherwise. New Mexico now leads the nation in the increase in overdose deaths for the second straight year, despite deaths dropping nationwide.
Today, I wrote to Attorney General Raúl Torrez and asked him to investigate whether any federal agents broke state law when they allowed lethal drugs to remain on our streets, and to prosecute anyone responsible — regardless of whether they are a federal agent or not.
I have spent years working across two administrations — writing letters, traveling to Washington, meeting directly with President Joe Biden and his cabinet, pushing for accountability, asking for more federal agents to be deployed to New Mexico to help fight this crisis.
- On June 21, 2022, I wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray, imploring the FBI to assign no less than 50 additional agents to New Mexico to stem escalating drug trafficking and violent crime.
- On September 15, 2022, I wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland, requesting that the Department of Justice provide additional federal agents, resources and support to New Mexico law enforcement. We asked the department to match the level of investigative, analytical, and technical resources the FBI had deployed in its Buffalo, NY surge.
- On August 8, 2023, I wrote again to Attorney General Garland, renewing my request that the DOJ expeditiously assign more federal agents to New Mexico.
- On September 7, 2023, I wrote to Attorney General Garland for a third time, reiterating my request once more federal law enforcement support to curb violent crime, drug and human trafficking.
- On September 4, 2025, I wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi, once again requesting additional agents and resources.
I have declared the surge of drugs like fentanyl to be a public health emergency. I have deployed the National Guard to both Albuquerque and Española. While my administration was doing everything we could to stem the tide of fentanyl coming into our state, the federal government deliberately allowed it to flood in.
New Mexican lives are not the federal government’s cost of doing business.
I plan to hold the federal government accountable for this disaster and will explore every possible avenue of action against the federal government to right these wrongs.”
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