Health care advocates and officials will renew efforts to track harm to New Mexicans’ health from climate disasters in the forthcoming legislative session.

Healthy Climate New Mexico, a nonprofit collective of health care professionals concerned about climate change, and nine other groups back two proposals to improve preparedness and adaptation to extreme weather driven by human-caused climate change.

The first would beef up a climate health program at New Mexico Department of Health to track health impacts from heat, wildfire smoke, drought, flooding, dust and severe storms. The second is a proposal to offer grant funds for local and tribal governments to better respond to weather disasters.

“Our bills are focused on adaptation and resilience, preparedness and collecting data, which is  essential in really knowing who’s at highest risk and where the solutions need to be applied, said Shelley Mann-Lev, the nonprofit’s executive director, who has decades of public health experience in New Mexico.

Both require state funds. First, there’s $1.1 million for a climate health program to fund additional staff for the Department of Health; implement more warning systems; and increase communication between the department, the public and other state agencies.

The request for the Extreme Weather Resilience Fund would be $12 million. Advocates have said they’ll introduce two bills with sponsors in both the House and Senate, but neither was filed as of Friday, Jan. 10.

This would be the third time similar proposals have been brought before lawmakers, and Mann-Lev said there’s been increased support from both the governor’s office and members of the legislature.

A spokesperson from the New Mexico Department of Health declined to comment, saying it’s  policy to not speak about legislation proposed by outside groups. A spokesperson from the governor’s office declined to comment since the bills have not been formally introduced.

Sen. Liz Stefanics (D-Cerillos), who plans to sponsor the Senate legislation, and has introduced it before, said there seems to be more momentum and concern around the issues.

‘Beyond the body counts’ 

Other groups supporting the bill include Albuquerque Health Care for the Homeless, New Mexico Voices for children, four public health groups, including the American Lung Association, and two climate organizations.

Advocates note that climate disasters already harm and kill New Mexicans. Deaths and injuries from extreme heat are rising; floods across the state, including Roswell, raise concerns for mold development; smoke from wildfires harms lungs, especially for children and the elderly.

Preventable heat injuries and deaths rising in New Mexico

Stephanie Moraga-McHaley ran the environment health tracking program at the New Mexico Department of Health until her retirement in 2024.  She supports the bill because it could expand the current program, which tracks the raw numbers of deaths and injuries.

“There’s just so much that needs to be done besides the body counts,” said Stephanie Moraga-McHaley, who retired from the health agency in March. “We need to get some action in place, some coordination with other departments and communities in need.”

Current numbers of impacted people are an undercount, said Nathaniel Matthews-Trigg, a Healthy Climate New Mexico board member and public health researcher.

Matthews-Trigg said New Mexico health officials have made improvements in tracking the number of heat injuries and deaths – which are difficult numbers to pin down – but there needs to be more funding and staff on board.

“We know from emergency department visits that they’re increasing dramatically due to extreme heat,” Matthews-Trigg said. “But, we also know how we’re tracking these is really just giving us a sliver of the actual impact of heat on our communities and on health.”

He said climate disasters pose the “greatest public health threat in our lifetimes,” and warned that impacts will only worsen if heating from fossil fuel emissions doesn’t slow.

“It’s not going to go away,” he said. “And we’re flying blind, without the surveillance.”

The New Mexico supreme court late on Thursday ruled against several local ordinances in the state that aim to restrict distribution of the abortion pill.

In a unanimous opinion, the court said the ordinances invaded the legislature’s authority to regulate reproductive care.

“Our legislature granted to counties and municipalities all powers and duties not inconsistent with the laws of New Mexico. The ordinances violate this core precept and invade the legislature’s authority to regulate access to and provision of reproductive healthcare,” the court wrote in its opinion by the justice Shannon Bacon.

It declined to address whether the ordinances violated the state’s constitutional protections.

Abortion is legal in New Mexico, which has become a destination for women seeking abortions from Texas, especially, and other states that have banned the procedure following the US supreme court ruling in 2022 ending a woman’s constitutional right to abortion and handing powers over the issue to individual states.

Following that ruling, leaders of New Mexico’s Roosevelt and Lea counties and the towns of Clovis and Hobbs, all on the Texas border, passed ordinances seeking to stop abortion clinics from receiving or sending mifepristone, a pill taken with another drug to perform a medication abortion, and other abortion-related materials in the mail. Medication abortions account for more than half of all US abortions. Last June the supreme court upheld access to the drugs.

The ordinances invoked the federal Comstock Act, a 19th-century “anti-vice” law against mailing abortifacients, which are drugs that induce abortion, and said that clinics must comply with the law.

Under Roosevelt county’s ordinance, any person other than a government employee could bring a civil lawsuit and seek damages of at least $100,000 for each violation of the Comstock Act.

The New Mexico supreme court admonished this, saying that creating a private right of action and damages award was “clearly intended to punish protected conduct”.

The state attorney general, Raúl Torrez, praised the court’s ruling on Thursday, saying that the core of the argument was that state laws pre-empted any action by local governments to engage in activities that would infringe on the constitutional rights of citizens.

“The bottom line is simply this: abortion access is safe and secure in New Mexico,” he said. “It’s enshrined in law by the recent ruling by the New Mexico supreme court and thanks to the work of the New Mexico legislature.”

The New Mexico house speaker, Javier Martínez, called access to healthcare a basic fundamental right in New Mexico.

“It doesn’t take a genius to understand the statutory framework that we have. Local governments don’t regulate healthcare in New Mexico. It is up to the state,” the Albuquerque Democrat said.

Opposition to abortion runs deep in New Mexico communities along the border with Texas, however, which has one of the most restrictive bans in the US.

But Democrats, who control every statewide elected office in New Mexico and hold majorities in the state house and senate, have moved to shore up access to the service.

In 2021, the New Mexico legislature repealed a dormant 1969 statute that outlawed most abortion procedures as felonies, ensuring access to abortion even after the Roe v Wade reversal.

And in 2023, the Democratic New Mexico governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, signed a bill that overrides local ordinances aimed at limiting abortion access and enacted a shield law that protects abortion providers from investigations by other states.

In September, construction began on a state-funded reproductive health and abortion clinic in southern New Mexico that will cater to local residents and people who travel from neighboring states.

The new clinic should open in 2026 to provide services ranging from medical and procedural abortions to contraception, cervical cancer screenings and education about adoptions.

It was not immediately clear whether the ruling can be appealed in federal court. The New Mexico supreme court opinion explicitly declined to address conflicts with federal law, basing its decision solely on state provisions.

The Texas-based attorney Jonathan Mitchell, a former Texas solicitor general and architect of that state’s strict abortion ban, said he looked forward “to litigating these issues in other states and bringing the meaning of the federal Comstock Act to the supreme court of the United States”.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting

Alec Baldwin, whose involuntary manslaughter case was dismissed last summer over suppressed evidence, is taking the fatal 2021 “Rust” set shooting back to the court room.

The actor on Thursday filed a civil lawsuit in Santa Fe County District Court alleging prosecutors violated his civil rights and defamed him. The defendants named in the filing included special prosecutor Kari Morrissey, personnel within the district attorney’s office for New Mexico’s First Judicial District and members of the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office.

The complaint detailed Baldwin’s claims that prosecutors and investigators “conspired to procure a groundless indictment against Baldwin” by not following the proper criminal process and also intentionally kept exculpatory evidence from the defense.

In a statement to USA TODAY, Morrissey said, “In October 2023 the prosecution team became aware that Mr. Baldwin intended to file a retaliatory civil lawsuit. We look forward to our day in court.”

USA TODAY has reached out to lawyers for Baldwin as well as the DA’s office for comment. The sheriff’s office declined to comment.

Last summer, Baldwin’s lawyer Alex Spiro forewarned the sheriff’s office and prosecutor in letters sent to the parties on July 12 to preserve evidence for “potential for future litigation,” according to copies obtained at the time by USA TODAY.

The actor and producer’s attorney advised Morrissey and Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza to preserve all “devices, hard drives, emails, text messages, and other electronic communications” in addition to “documents, records, electronically stored information (‘ESI’), and other materials and data existing in any form whatsoever, that are actually or potentially relevant or relate in any way to the investigation(s) and/or prosecution(s) conducted by the State in connection with the death of Halyna Hutchins.”

The filing comes nearly six months after First Judicial District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer abruptly dismissed the criminal case against Baldwin on the grounds that prosecutors and law enforcement withheld evidence that might be favorable to the actor’s defense. In October, she upheld her dismissal; though prosecutors appealed the judge’s decision in November, they withdrew the notice of appeal the following month.

Baldwin’s criminal charge stemmed from an Oct. 21, 2021, incident in which Baldwin’s prop gun, which he said he’d been told did not contain live ammunition, discharged during a rehearsal for the movie, killing 42-year-old cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.

‘No verdict’ can ‘undo the trauma’ of criminal case against Alec Baldwin, lawsuit says

Baldwin’s legal complaint accused New Mexico investigators and prosecutors of being ” blinded by their desire to convict Alec Baldwin for all the wrong reasons, and at any cost, for the October 2021 accidental shooting of Halyna Hutchins.”

“Defendants sought at every turn to scapegoat Baldwin for the acts and omissions of others, regardless of the evidence or the law,” the filing continued.

Baldwin seeks a jury trial and an award of financial compensation for his “injuries suffered” as well as punitive damages against the defendants.

“Defendants must now be held accountable for their malicious and unlawful pursuit of Baldwin,” the lawsuit states. “Although no verdict in this civil case can undo the trauma the State’s threat of conviction and incarceration has inflicted, Alec Baldwin has filed this action to hold Defendants responsible for their appalling violations of the laws that governed their work.”

‘More to come’ Alec Baldwin vows to ‘expose what really happened’ in ‘Rust’ shooting case

Why was Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter case dismissed?

The conclusion of Baldwin’s case with the state of New Mexico arrived more than two years after the on-set tragedy. Sommer dismissed the charge with prejudice, meaning prosecutors cannot refile the same claim.

Baldwin’s lawyers alleged in their filing that Santa Fe sheriffs and state prosecutors “concealed” evidence that could be linked to the source of the bullet that killed Hutchins. Prosecutors and sheriffs argued the evidence had no relevance or value to Baldwin’s case.

The judge reprimanded Morrissey and her team as “they have continued to fail to disclose critical evidence to the defendant.”

“The state’s willful withholding of this information was intentional and deliberate,” Sommer said. “If this conduct does not rise to the level of bad faith, it certainly comes so near to bad faith as to show signs of scorching.”

Testimony revealed withheld evidence in ‘Rust’ case

On July 12, Baldwin’s lawyers said the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office was in possession of live rounds they argued might be connected to the one that killed Hutchins but failed to list them as evidence in the “Rust” investigation file or disclose their existence to defense lawyers.

On July 11, testimony revealed Troy Teske, a friend of “Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s stepfather, had delivered Colt .45 live rounds to the sheriff’s office on March 6. Baldwin’s team claimed this was evidence that could have established a connection to Seth Kenney, the prop supplier for “Rust.”

Baldwin’s attorneys alleged the rounds were evidence that the bullet that killed Hutchins came from Kenney. Kenney has denied supplying live ammunition to the production and has not been charged in the case.

Baldwin’s team has blamed Gutierrez-Reed, who is serving 18 months in prison for involuntary manslaughter, and first assistant director Dave Halls for negligence that led to Hutchins’ death. Meanwhile, prosecutors argued Baldwin handled the gun irresponsibly, exhibited “bullyish behavior on set” and changed his story to cast blame on others.

Contributing: Andrew Hay, Reuters