You may have seen the news about the suspension of all federal grants. While we work to figure out what this illegal action means for New Mexicans, I’m committed to keeping you in the loop. Please sign up here if you want to hear updates from my office about this situation. Please write me here to share how this may impact you and your family.
You can also read more of my thoughts on this illegal action here.
Many New Mexicans have begun reaching out to my office to share their concerns about how this unlawful directive could harm them, their families, and their loved ones.
On how the freeze could impact federal funding for New Mexico organization that supports youth housing:
Hello, my name is Caitlin. I’m 21 years old. I would like to start off by saying DreamTree has helped me drastically. Since I’ve been in this program I’ve been able to attend college at Northern New Mexico College in Española, New Mexico. I’m going for my associates degree in child development and my bachelors degree in business, something that I would never imagine doing because of all the life crisis I’ve been in. Not only has DreamTree been able to help me go back to college, being able to be in this program has allowed me to participate in 2 internships which both has allowed me to be a voice in the community, getting to talk to the senators field representatives, and being able to voice the change I would like to see for our community. Without DreamTree I wouldn’t be able to have a roof over my head which would cause a lot of worry and fear being high at risk to sexual assault which happened to me in the past. I wouldn’t be able to set up goals for my future because I wouldn’t have nobody to talk to. DreamTree is not just a program: it’s home, it’s my safe space. I believe that if everyone would come together during this hard time and help each other out we would be ok. There are kids younger than me who are in this program and really need something, someone to hold onto. Little kids that don’t have their parents. This program means a lot to me. They’re home away from home, they’re family.
Message from Head Start worker in Las Cruces concerned about the ability to continue to provide care to low-income families:
Hello, my name is Haley, I'm one of your constituents living in Las Cruces. I work in Head Start, providing education and day care to low-income families in southern New Mexico, and we rely on federal grants to operate. I know I'm asking you to reason with a supremely selfish and unhinged human being who has probably never thought of another person in his entire life, but please do what you can to end this federal grant pause, or else we will be forced to shut down, not to mention how badly this will affect the millions of Americans who rely on services funded by federal grants.
Assistant professor/researcher in Albuquerque whose work depends on NIH funding:
I am a biomedical scientist here at the University of New Mexico, an assistant professor in the Department of Pathology and a member of the UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center. This past week has been absolutely horrible, and now I see that the new administration is pausing all federal grant funding until February 10th. I find this absolutely unacceptable! I am upset by the pause in global aid that is affecting the health and lives of millions. I am also personally affected by this pause because of the NIH grants that sustain my lab and pay the salaries of my staff and students. These grants were applied for and awarded in good faith and they pay for extremely important cancer research. They also support graduate students who are living paycheck to paycheck in order to receive the education that they need to become amazing scientists. Before this announcement, I was preparing to hire a young woman who just graduated from UNM with a degree in Biochemistry and who worked in my lab on her senior research project. She is a mother with a young son and she wants to work in my lab and ultimately go to graduate school to become a scientist. Now, I have to tell her that I can't hire her because I am not certain of the status of my grants. We live in a majority Hispanic state and the new powers that be may deem my ovarian cancer research unnecessary because it works to increase the diversity of patient-derived cancer models.
Sexual Assault Services Exec Director concerned about lack of funding agency depends on to provide support to sexual assault survivors and victims:
As your constituent, I am asking, on behalf of the survivors my agency serves, to do everything in your power to stop this order from affecting core, necessary funding such as this. It is essential that the federal grants on which victims’ service providers depend do not experience any interruption. If they are interrupted, then our ability to serve victims and survivors will be gravely compromised, with immediate and real harm to the people who most desperately need our help.