press releases

WASHINGTON— U.S. Senators Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and U.S. Representatives Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Deb Haaland (D-N.M.), and Xochitl Torres Small (D-N.M.) announced that the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) has...

WASHINGTON— U.S. Senators Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and U.S. Representatives Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Deb Haaland (D-N.M.), and Xochitl Torres Small (D-N.M.) announced that the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) has...

U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich has heard the stories about people passing off agriculture products as Native American made. Now he, U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Luján and other lawmakers want to find out how widespread the activity is. “I’ve been working on this issue for five years now,” Heinrich told the Journal. “Tesuque Pueblo...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), U.S. Assistant House Speaker Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), and U.S. Representatives Don Young (R-Alaska), Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), and Tom Cole (R-Okla.) announced the introduction of the bipartisan, bicameral Native American Seeds Protection Act...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senators Martin Heinrich (D-N.M) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) reintroduced the bipartisan Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony (STOP) Act, a bill to prohibit the exporting of sacred Native American items and increase penalties for stealing and illegally trafficking tribal cultural patrimony. The House...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich announced that the Navajo Agricultural Products Industry (NAPI), located in Farmington, New Mexico, was awarded $150,000 in funding from the U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Reclamation's WaterSMART Program for its Irrigation Scheduling Improvement Project. The funds for NAPI...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich and U.S. Representative Xochitl Torres Small announced that the Pueblo of Laguna was awarded $3,242,000 in funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development for three projects to renovate and improve wastewater infrastructure in Seama...

WASHINGTON, D.C. (June 28, 2019) – Today U.S. Senators Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) joined a group of 27 senators in calling for Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to meet the administration’s previously set deadline of July 1 to begin printing materials for the 2020 Census and move forward without adding a politically...

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich and U.S. Representatives Ben Ray Luján, Deb Haaland, and Xochitl Torres Small announced that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded approximately $2.5 million over five years to the University of New Mexico (UNM) Health Sciences Center to research chronic...

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich and U.S. Representatives Ben Ray Luján, Deb Haaland, and Xochitl Torres Small introduced legislation to ensure the Bureau of Reclamation has sufficient funding and time to implement its obligations under the 2010 Aamodt Litigation Settlement Act and the related water...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich wrote to the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee leadership requesting that the Chaco Cultural Heritage Area Protection Act be included in the committee’s next business meeting, where the committee could vote to report the bill out of committee...

(U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) meets with Executive Director Malinda Williams and Clinical Director Rachel Cox of Community Against Violence, June 4, 2019)  WASHINGTON, D.C. - On June 4, 2019, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) met with Community Against Violence, an organization in Taos serving adult and child survivors of sexual...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – After a successful meeting with New Mexico tribal leaders and U.S. Department of Interior Secretary David Bernhardt at the Chaco Culture National Historical Park (CCNHP) last week, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) is pleased to announce that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has reversed its objection to...

Who would have guessed that a Trump administration appointee with such close ties to the oil and gas industry would be willing to press pause on oil and gas leases on and near a historically and spiritually significant piece of land in New Mexico? It’s a tongue-in-cheek question, but the fact remains that few detractors of newly minted...

U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich has been soundly criticized for his votes to approve President Donald Trump’s nominees for secretary of the interior. Critics want to know how Heinrich, a self-professed environmentalist, can vote in favor of nominees with industry ties — men who see public lands as places to exploit rather than areas the...

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt has agreed to defer oil and gas leasing within a 10-mile radius of New Mexico's Chaco Culture National Historical Park for at least a year after touring the park yesterday with Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.). Bernhardt's leasing moratorium is a major concession to mounting pressure from lawmakers like Heinrich,...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, secured key commitments from U.S. Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt following his visit to Chaco Canyon today.  "I invited Secretary Bernhardt to New Mexico to see firsthand how special Chaco Canyon is...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, announces that U.S. Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt will travel to New Mexico to visit Chaco Canyon on Tuesday, May 28.  "I invited Secretary Bernhardt to New Mexico to see firsthand how special Chaco...

WASHINGTON -- After historic snowstorms and flooding in local Navajo communities that occurred in February, U.S. Senators Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), along with U.S. Assistant Speaker Ben Ray Luján, and U.S. Representatives Deb Haaland and Xochitl Torres-Small, lauded the decision to grant the request for...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, delivered opening remarks at a Subcommittee on Public Lands, Forests, and Mining hearing on S. 1079, the Chaco Cultural Heritage Area Protection Act, a bill he introduced with U.S. Senator Tom Udall (D-N.M.) to...