KRWG Public Media reported this week on U.S. Senator Ben Ray Luján’s visit to Las Cruces to hold a town hall and listening session on the impacts of expected cuts to Medicaid. Attendees of the town hall had concerns about crime, education and many other topics on their minds.
The Q&A session started with a question about democrats gaining back the power in the senate.
“Are there plans being made this time to prevent this type of thing from happening again as what the Trump administration has been doing throughout the last months that he's been in office,” asked an attendee.
Sen. Luján stated that his concern was that many of the actions taken by President Trump have been deemed illegal and that the law is clear.
“The problem right now is that we don't have an independent Department of Justice that's supposed to be the top cop in America to enforce these rules regardless of who is making the decision. If the Supreme Court says you're out of bounds, as the top court in America, it's out of bounds until it's corrected by the law. I don't know what it's going to take when this president just chooses to ignore what the supreme court says, and the Department of Justice does not want to enforce,” Luján said.
The Senator went on to explain the redistricting efforts being made by Texas Gov. Abbot and how he believes that regardless of the redistricting, the majority of the house will flip.
“That restores checks and balances with at least one of the legislative branches as well that arguably stops a lot of the nonsense where the executive branch just operating on their own,” Luján said.
Another community member stated that New Mexico is consistently placing last for education and for child poverty but first in crime.
Luján said that not having good intenet connection in the state was a big contributor as to why the education ranks low in New Mexico and that a reason why crime is so high is because mental health is not prioritized.
“I find it hard to believe that in New Mexico we cannot demand better and turn things around. There's a better and smarter way for us to do all of these things it takes investment, it takes dollars, I would argue they exist right now, and we should be working instead of making this a partisan thing,” Luján said.
Another audience member shared his experience in education and the impact that cuts have had on pre-K programs in Sunland Park.
"This has created a state of panic for many parents who depend on the services to work. Despite our efforts to find solutions, we do not currently have resources to fill the sudden and critical gap,” said an attendee.
“Leaders out of southern states that were able to get republican colleagues to speak up and to sound off when, you know better than most, when payroll was in question for all these head start programs across the country, because it was from one night to the next that this disappeared. And the way that Head Start programs across the country found out about these cuts is that they went to do the payroll and they were shut out, there was no money. Now, the administration said they were reviewing it, well it's been restored. So, let's look to see what we can do here as well,” Luján said.
Border security and what is happening with ICE raids around the country was also mentioned in the meeting with a community member asking the senator what he was doing in response to this.
“So, what have I been doing I've been working with several of my colleagues, Alex Padilla who is the ranking member on the subcommittee, over sees immigration policy on the judiciary committee, has been leading the initiative with Dick Durbin out of Illinois as well. And we've been challenging posture of this administration, looking at funding into this administration. Some of us have signed on to amicus briefs. I can share those with you as well, looking at what's happening here,” Luján said.
The senator then answered a question about the possibility of martial law in 2026.
“As the 2026 election approaches that the President might declare martial law and there would be no election,” a community member said.
I still have faith in the American people, I have faith in the process I can't imagine, even my republican collogues that I serve with would allow something like that to happen to America. Now I hope I’m wrong, I hope we never see this. I hope we don’t even have to think about this. But we're talking about it,” Lujan said.
Towards the end it was asked how Las Cruces citizens would be able to help out and be better citizens.
“What can we do what works best is it calling people in Washington D.C. or is it writing letters what can we do. How can we be better citizens to make sure we have an election.” said an attendee.
“The calls matter, the letters matter, emails matter, whether you support or oppose what New Mexico's federal delegation is doing weigh in with us because we represent you,” Lujan said.
Congressional elections are coming up next year.
