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      Man in Maga hat charged over shooting of Indigenous activist at statue protest

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      An Indigenous justice activist is fighting for his life after a man wearing a hat with the Donald Trump slogan “Make America great again” allegedly shot him during a protest against the reinstallation of a statue honoring a Spanish conquistador in New Mexico.Jacob Johns was shot on Thursday morning in the northern New Mexico city of Española while demonstrating against plans to again erect a Juan de Oñate statue that previously had been taken down and put in storage. First responders flew Johns to a hospital in Albuquerque by helicopter after he was wounded.By Friday, he was recovering from emergency surgery, said a message on an online GoFundMe campaign set up in his support.The suspected shooter – 23-year-old Ryan Martinez – was arrested on charges of attempted murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. On Friday, a judge ordered Martinez held without bond through at least the weekend.Johns was part of a crowd who had gathered at the Rio Arriba county annex building to celebrate officials’ postponement of plans to re-erect a statue of Oñate there. The conquistador and his Spanish compatriots carried out a 1599 massacre of hundreds of members of a pueblo tribe in what is now New Mexico.Crews had torn down Oñate’s statue from a spot in the community of Alcalde and had taken it into storage in 2020 amid racial justice protests ignited by a Minneapolis police officer’s murder of George Floyd weeks earlier. But there were plans to stand the statue back up near the county annex, though protests forced officials to delay the monument’s reintroduction.A cellphone video posted on social media showed that a fight broke out near where a crowd was celebrating the postponement. At one point, the video showed the man identified as Martinez jump over a waist-high barrier and try to grab another man.Two more men then grappled with Martinez, who is seen leaping back over the barrier, grabbing a pistol from his waistband and aiming the weapon at those with whom he was tussling as voices yell, “Let him go!”Martinez, clad in a turquoise hooded sweatshirt, appeared to fire once. A voice shouted in pain, and Martinez ran toward a parking lot, according to the video. The recording then showed the driver of a white car speed away, honking the horn.In the moments before the shooting, the video in question captured a red hat getting knocked off Martinez’s head as he struggled with other men during the confrontation.Still images of Martinez taken earlier in the day showed that hat bore the “Make America great again” slogan.Additionally, according to the Daily Beast, a social media profile matching Martinez’s details featured the phrase “Fuck Joe Biden”. The profile also declared “Trump won”, echoing the false conspiracy theory that the former president was denied re-election by fraudsters.Police in Española later arrested Martinez and booked him into jail.Martinez’s arrest came after the second shooting surrounding a face-off of protesters and counter-protesters near the Oñate statue. In June 2020, during a rally calling for the statue’s removal, Steven Baca shot Scott Williams and was arrested on a count of aggravated battery with great bodily harm.Baca pleaded guilty to unlawful carrying of a deadly weapon as well as aggravated battery for pulling a protester down by her hair. Prosecutors dismissed the charge pertaining to the shooting, the Albuquerque Journal reported.The GoFundMe for Johns, the victim of Thursday’s shooting, described him as being a Hopi Native American.A photo from the Albuquerque Journal showed Johns – of Spokane, Washington – holding up a sign that read “Do Not Resurrect Oñate” next to a speaker before the shooting that wounded him in the upper torso. In that photo, Johns and the speaker stood before another pair of signs that read: “Not today Oñate.”Johns’s GoFundMe campaign described him as a climate activist, artist, musician and father to a teenage daughter. As of Friday, the campaign had raised more than $31,000 that organizers said were meant to help cover his medical bills as well as other family needs during what would “likely be a very lengthy recovery period”. More

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      New Mexico judge blocks suspension of right to carry guns in public

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      A federal judge has blocked part of a public health order that suspended the right to carry guns in public across Albuquerque, New Mexico, the state’s largest metro area, as criticism mounted over the actions taken by the governor and political divides widened.The ruling Wednesday by US district judge David Urias marks a setback for Michelle Lujan Grisham, the Democratic governor, as she responds to several recent shootings that took the lives of children, including an 11-year-old boy as he left a minor league baseball game in Albuquerque.Lujan Grisham imposed an emergency public health order Friday that suspended the right to open or concealed carry of guns in public places based on a statistical threshold for violent crime that is only encountered in Albuquerque and its outskirts. The governor cited the recent shootings, saying something needed to be done. She acknowledged that some would ignore the order.Violators would have faced civil penalties and a fine of up to $5,000 by state police. The local sheriff and Albuquerque’s police chief had refused to enforce the order.Advocates for gun rights filed a barrage of legal challenges to the order in US district court in Albuquerque alleging infringement of civil rights under the second amendment. Republicans in the legislative majority have called for impeachment proceedings against the governor.Lujan Grisham has remained defiant despite protests that have drawn crowds to public squares in Albuquerque over recent days. The governor is testing the boundaries of her executive authority again after using public health orders for aggressive lockdowns during the outset of the coronavirus pandemic.Mothers and military veterans have been among those demonstrating, many with holstered handguns on their hips and rifles slung over their shoulders. They have voiced concerns about the ability to protect themselves from violent crime in a city that has been scarred by drive-by shootings and deadly road-rage incidents.Even top Democrats, including Raúl Torrez, the state attorney general,have suggested that the governor’s time would have been better spent developing comprehensive legislation to tackle the issue.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNew Mexico is an open-carry state, so the governor’s order suspending the open and concealed carry of firearms affects anyone in Bernalillo county who can legally own a gun, with some exceptions. Just more than 14,500 people in the county have an active concealed-carry license, according to an Associated Press analysis of data provided by the New Mexico department of public safety for the 2023 fiscal year. More

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      Gun rights group sues New Mexico governor over emergency firearm ban

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      A pro-gun group is suing the New Mexico governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, in an effort to block a 30-day emergency order suspending the right to carry firearms in public in Albuquerque’s Bernalillo county issued last week after a spate of shootings.The governor announced open and concealed carry restrictions on Friday in a public health order relating to gun violence after the fatal shootings of an 11-year-old boy on his way home from a minor league baseball game last week, as well as the fatal shooting of a four-year-old girl in her bed in a motor home and a 13-year-old girl in Taos county in August.Lujan Grisham said she expected someone to legally challenge her executive order, adding that she welcomed “the debate and the fight about making New Mexicans safer”.That challenge arrived on Saturday when the National Association for Gun Rights said it would file a lawsuit in federal court against the governor, citing 2021’s BruenUS supreme court ruling easing gun restrictions.The president of the pro-gun group, Dudley Brown, accused the governor of “throwing up a middle finger to the constitution and the supreme court”.“Her executive order is in blatant disregard for Bruen. She needs to be held accountable for stripping the God-given rights of millions away with the stroke of a pen,” Brown said in a statement.Lujan Graham said she issued the order to open up more resources to help New Mexico get the gun violence issue under control and called on the federal government for help.“These are disgusting acts of violence that have no place in our communities,” Lujan Grisham said on Thursday, adding that Bernalillo county needed a “cooling off period” during an epidemic of gun violence.After announcing the order, she said the state needed “to use the power of a public health [order] in a state of emergency to access different levels, different resources and different opportunities to keep New Mexicans safe”.The order calls for monthly inspections of firearms dealers statewide to ensure compliance with gun laws and for the state health department to compile a report on gunshot victims at hospitals that includes age, race, gender and ethnicity, along with the brand and caliber of firearm involved, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican.Lujan Grisham has acknowledged that a violation of a public health order is the lowest level of violation. “The point is this – we better have the debate about what’s necessary to reduce the number of particularly illegal firearms and our ability to go after bad actors,” she said.The National Association for Gun Rights said the June 2022 Bruen ruling “held that any gun regulation that does not fall into the text, history, and tradition of the second amendment is unconstitutional”, the NM Political Report wrote. The US constitution’s second amendment guarantees Americans the right to bear arms.New Mexico’s Republican state senate minority leader, Greg Baca, described Lujan Grisham’s order as “egregiously unconstitutional” and said he was preparing a legal challenge.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Sadly, this governor would rather use our state police to stop and frisk law-abiding citizens than have them fully focused on finding and bringing the child killer to justice,” Baca said.The New Mexico house minority leader, T Ryan Lane, also a Republican, dismissed the governor’s order as “a political stunt”.But the 30-day gun ban for everyone but law enforcement or licensed security officers may lack adequate enforcement. Bernalillo county sheriff John Allen, a Democrat, said he was “wary of placing … deputies in positions that could lead to civil liability conflicts, as well as the potential risks posed by prohibiting law-abiding citizens from their constitutional right to self-defense”.Allen indicated that sheriff’s deputies would not enforce the ban. Similarly, Albuquerque’s mayor, Tim Keller, said the governor had made it clear that state law enforcement – not Albuquerque police – would “ be responsible for enforcement of civil violations of that order”.Miranda Viscoli, co-president of New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence, told the Associated Press that if the order “makes it so that people think twice about using a gun to solve a personal dispute, it makes them think twice that they don’t want to go to jail, then it will work”.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Biden Pitches Manufacturing Boom on Southwest Tour

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      During a stop in New Mexico, the president highlighted how one of his signature pieces of legislation will benefit blue-collar workers.President Biden on Wednesday entered a wind tower manufacturing plant surrounded by desert boasting of declining unemployment, waning inflation and a manufacturing boom — all metrics that should make his three-state Southwest tour a victory lap.“Our plan is working,” Mr. Biden said, referring to his economic agenda. “When I think climate, I think jobs.”But hours before he entered Belen, the president reflected on the challenge hanging over the White House during his tour of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Even as he traverses the country to promote his economic policies, many voters are still skeptical of — or unclear on — Mr. Biden’s legislative record.He addressed the issue of voter sentiment during a fund-raiser at a private residence shortly after arriving in Albuquerque on Tuesday night.Noting recent infrastructure projects funded by his policies, Mr. Biden said: “They’re beginning to realize what we actually passed is having an impact. It’s just going to take a little while.”White House officials are hoping tours around the nation like Mr. Biden is doing this week can change that. As extreme weather rages across the country, the White House has framed one of its signature pieces of legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, as both a means to improve environmental justice and a source of manufacturing jobs for wind and solar.A day after seeking to galvanize environmental activists by designating a fifth national monument near the Grand Canyon on Tuesday, Mr. Biden traded talk of conservation for remarks focused on “renewable manufacturing” that can provide “high-paying jobs and dignity to the people who have long been waiting for that.”Mr. Biden talking to Ed Keable, the superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, on Tuesday.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThe president pointed to the company hosting him, Arcosa Wind Towers Inc., which received $1.1 billion of new orders for wind tower equipment after the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act, according to the White House.The message most likely resonated with people in New Mexico, where many rural communities are still focused more on job growth rooted in energy production than the fight against climate change, according to Brian Sanderoff, the president of New Mexico-based Research & Polling Inc. But it has not broken through to the nation at large, according to recent surveys.Mr. Biden remains broadly unpopular among a voting public that is pessimistic about the country’s future, and his approval rating is just 39 percent, according to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll. That survey found him in a neck-and-neck tie with former President Donald J. Trump.The poll did find that more Americans think the economy is in excellent or good shape: 20 percent, compared with 10 percent a year ago.On Wednesday, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, defended the administration’s messaging strategy, saying on CNN that “polls don’t tell the entire story.” She then indicated that the public would see more trips like Mr. Biden’s current swing through the Southwest.The president will be “talking directly to the American people about how wages are actually going up, about how inflation is going down over a long, extended period of time,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said.In the weeks ahead, however, Mr. Biden must convince Americans that they will feel the impact of provisions of his infrastructure, clean energy and semiconductor packages — even if much of the funding may not be spent for years to come.“People live through day-to-day challenges of the economy,” Mr. Sanderoff said. “You can tout big legislation, comprehensive legislation that you passed through Congress, but people are busy getting their kids through school and dealing with the cost of bread.”Matt Bennett, the executive vice president for public affairs at Third Way, a center-left think tank, said the way Mr. Trump’s criminal indictments have dominated Americans’ attention lately makes it even more important for Mr. Biden to travel to small markets and speak directly to the American people.“People have to begin to feel it in their life or understand what the president has done,” Mr. Bennett said. “That takes time.”During his visit to the wind tower facility on Wednesday, Mr. Biden appeared to agree.“I’m not here to declare victory on the economy,” he said. “We have a lot more work to do.” More

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      Solomon Peña Faces Federal Charges for Attacks on Democrats

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      Solomon Peña, who lost a bid for a seat in the New Mexico Legislature in 2022, is accused of orchestrating shootings at Democratic officials’ homes. He also faces state charges.Solomon Peña, a former Republican candidate for the New Mexico House of Representatives, has been charged with several federal offenses in connection with drive-by shootings at the homes of Democratic officials, the Justice Department said Wednesday.The authorities in New Mexico have said that Mr. Peña, 40, orchestrated the shootings at the homes of four Democratic officials in the weeks after he lost an election bid in November 2022. No one was injured in the attacks.Mr. Peña, who was arrested in January, already faces several state charges, including attempted aggravated battery and shooting at an occupied building. The federal charges against him and two other people — Demetrio Trujillo, 41, and Jose Trujillo, 22 — were unsealed in a court in New Mexico on Wednesday and include several firearms offenses and interference with federally protected activities.Mr. Peña would face a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 60 years if he were to be convicted of the federal charges, the Justice Department said in a statement.“There is no room in our democracy for politically motivated violence, especially when it is used to undermine election results,” Kenneth A. Polite Jr., the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in the statement.Roberta Yurcic, a lawyer who has represented Mr. Peña at the state level, did not immediately respond to requests for comment overnight. The state trial is expected to start early next year.Mr. Peña was convicted of burglary and larceny in 2008 and served nearly seven years in prison in New Mexico. He was released in 2016.After the November 2022 midterm elections, Mr. Peña refused to concede even after losing by a wide margin to an incumbent in a district that has long voted for Democrats. Prosecutors say that he also visited the homes of several county commissioners to urge them not to certify the results.The shootings at the four Democratic officials’ homes took place in December and early January. Two of the officials had certified the election results.Prosecutors say that Mr. Peña hired others to carry out the shootings, and that he took part in at least one of them — by trying to fire an AR-15 rifle at the home of Linda Lopez, a state senator.The shootings rattled New Mexico’s political establishment. They also stoked growing concerns nationwide about political violence after an attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and a conspiracy to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, among other incidents. More

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      New Mexico shooter roamed area with at least three guns, police say

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      An 18-year-old man who stalked a New Mexico neighborhood, fatally shooting three people “at random” on Monday, armed himself with at least three guns, one of which was the style of powerful rifle used during many mass shootings, officials said, renewing calls for legislation to combat gun violence.The attack, which also left six people injured, came as the US is poised to see its worst year in recent history for mass killings.Police named the three dead victims as 97-year-old Gwendolyn Schofield, her 73-year-old daughter, Melody Ivie, and 79-year-old Shirley Voita.The deadly shooting erupted about 11am local time in Farmington, a city of about 50,000. “The suspect roamed throughout the neighborhood, up to a quarter of a mile,” Farmington’s police chief, Steve Hebbe, said.Authorities also named the shooter as local 18-year-old high school student Beau Wilson, but added they were still trying to determine a motive for the attack. Wilson lived in the Farmington neighborhood where he opened fire.Farmington deputy police chief Kyle Dowdy said there is nothing yet leading investigators to believe Wilson knew any of the people he shot. “We’re pretty confident in that is was completely random,” he said.Wilson legally purchased at least one of the guns he used in November.The gunman, who was confronted by police and killed, shot at least six houses and three cars during the attack. Authorities said that the gunman did not target any particular location – such as a school or church – nor people during the shooting.Some of the shootings were captured on video that was uploaded to TikTok, which police confirmed was authentic.The footage shows a man clad in black clothes pacing near a driveway outside the First Church of Christ, Scientist, with an apparent handgun. Later, the footage shows him being shot by police.Neighborhood resident Joseph Robledo, 32, hurried home after hearing that his wife and one-year-old daughter hid in their laundry room during the gunfire. A bullet went through his baby’s room and its window, but did not strike anyone.An older woman was in the street in front of his house. She had been shot while driving by and appeared to have fallen out of her vehicle, which kept going without her, Robles said.“I went out to see because the lady was just lying in the road, and to figure just what the heck was going on,” Robledo reportedly said. As he and others provided first aid, neighbors told a police officer where the shooter was.“We were telling [the officer], ‘He’s down there’ … The cop just went straight into action,” Robledo recalled.Middle school teacher Nick Atkins, who lives on a street locked down by police, said the neighborhood is largely calm. “You never think it’s going to happen here, and all of a sudden, in a tiny little town, it comes here,” Atkins reportedly said.After the shooting, New Mexico’s congressional delegation issued a statement that read: “One thing is clear: Congress needs to act on gun violence NOW.”The statement alluded to how the federal government last year enacted bipartisan congressional legislation that expanded background checks for the youngest gun buyers while funding mental health and violence intervention programs. But, the statement added, Monday was “a painful reminder that we must do more”.“We are committed to fighting for sensible gun safety measures that will keep New Mexicans safe,” the statement said.Numerous mass shootings have afflicted large cities and small towns, maiming and killing innocents in places ranging from schools to synagogues to shopping malls. But Congress and many state legislatures have done little beyond last year’s legislation, such as a measure that would raise the minimum age people must reach before being able to legally buy guns.Instead, many politicians continue trying to deflect discussions about gun control by saying the focus should be on praying for victims of violence or arming would-be bystanders such as schoolteachers and training them to confront mass shooters themselves.Some officials have even taken steps to insulate the gun industry from potential lawsuits. Several weeks after a shooting at a Nashville, Tennessee, school left six dead, among them three nine-year-olds, the Republican state governor signed legislation that provides additional legal protections for firearm and ammunition sellers, dealers, and manufacturers, ABC News reported.The killings in Farmington left the US with at least 225 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines as a mass shooting as one in which four or more victims are injured or killed.While Monday’s case wasn’t classified a mass murder, which is when four or more victims are slain, the US has been on pace this year to set the highest number of mass murders in recent memory, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive. There have been 21 mass murders so far this year as of Tuesday. There were 31 mass killings in 2019, 21 in 2020, 28 in 2021 and 36 in 2022.Agencies contributed to this report More

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      Former Republican candidate arrested over shootings targeting Democrat homes

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      Former Republican candidate arrested over shootings targeting Democrat homesSolomon Pena ran for the New Mexico state legislature in 2022, but lost to the Democrat incumbent A failed Republican state legislative candidate, who authorities say was angry over losing an election last November and made baseless claims that the vote was “rigged”, has been arrested in connection with a series of drive-by shootings targeting the homes of Democratic lawmakers in New Mexico’s largest city.Albuquerque Police chief Harold Medina held a news conference on Monday evening hours after Swat officers arrested Solomon Pena at his home.Medina described Pena as the “mastermind” of what appears to be a politically motivated criminal conspiracy behind four shootings at, or near, the homes of two county commissioners and two state legislators. The shooting took place between December and early January.Pena lost an election in November to incumbent state Representative, Miguel P. Garcia, the longtime Democrat representing House District 14 in New Mexico. Garcia won by 48 percentage points, or roughly 3,600 votes.Police said Pena had approached county and state lawmakers after his loss, claiming the contest had been rigged against him despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud in New Mexico in 2020 or 2022. The shootings began shortly after those conversations.New Mexico’s state Canvassing Board unanimously certified the results of the November election.“This type of radicalism is a threat to our nation and has made its way to our doorstep right here in Albuquerque, New Mexico,” said Mayor Tim Keller. “But I know we are going to push back, and we will not allow this to cross the threshold.”Deputy Commander Kyle Hartsock said at least five people, including Pena, were involved in the shootings. Pena is accused of paying the others to carry out at least two of the shootings, according to Hartsock, before “Pena himself” allegedly “pulled the trigger” during one of crimes.Police said they identified Pena as their “key” suspect using a combination of phone records, witness interviews and bullet casings collected at the Democrats’ homes.A lawyer for Pena who could comment on the allegations wasn’t listed Monday night in jail records.No one was injured in the shootings, which came amid a rise in threats to members of Congress, school board members, election officials and other government workers around the nation. In Albuquerque, law enforcement has been struggling to address back-to-back years of record homicides and persistent gun violence.Hartsock said additional arrests and charges were expected in the case but declined to elaborate, citing the ongoing investigation. He said some individuals, including Pena, were in custody Monday night.A criminal complaint outlining the exact charges against Pena was expected to be released in the coming days.The shootings began in early December when eight rounds were fired at the home of Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboa, police said. Days later, former Bernalillo County Commissioner Debbie O’Malley’s home was targeted.As news reports began to surface about the shootings, state Representative Javier Martinez examined his property and discovered damage from gunshots. Police believe the shooting occurred in early December.Then, during the first week of January, shots were fired at the home of state Senator Linda Lopez – a lead sponsor of a 2021 bill that reversed New Mexico’s ban on most abortion procedures.Lopez said in a statement that three of the bullets passed through her 10-year-old daughter’s bedroom.Police had been investigating two additional shootings – one in the vicinity of New Mexico attorney general Raul Torrez’s former campaign office and another at state Senator Antonio Maestas’ office. But Gilbert Gallegos, a spokesperson for the police department, said Monday the shootings do not appear to be connected to the case.TopicsNew MexicoUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Suspect in Shootings at Homes and Offices of New Mexico Democrats Is in Custody

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      The authorities say that a man is being held on unrelated charges, and that a gun tied to at least one of the episodes has been recovered.The authorities in Albuquerque announced Monday that a suspect in the recent shootings at the homes or offices of a half-dozen Democratic elected officials was in custody on unrelated charges and that they had recovered a gun used in at least one of the shootings.Officials did not release information on the suspect other than to say that he is a man under 50; nor would they say what the unrelated charges were.“We are still trying to link and see which cases are related and which cases are not related,” Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina said at a news conference on Monday afternoon.Officials have ideas about a possible motive, Chief Medina said, but will not release details for fear of compromising the investigation.The authorities have not definitively tied the shootings to politics or ideology.Police officials asked the courts to seal all paperwork related to the case, Chief Medina said. He said that the authorities had numerous search warrants and were waiting for additional evidence.No one was hurt in the shootings, four of which happened in December and two that took place this month. The shootings involved four homes, a workplace and a campaign office associated with two county commissioners, two state senators and New Mexico’s newly elected attorney general.The police had provided details last week on five of the shootings. On Monday, they said that they were also investigating a shooting that occurred in early December and caused damage to the home of Javier Martínez, a New Mexico state representative set to become the State Legislature’s next speaker of the House.Mr. Martínez said he had heard the gunfire in December, and recently discovered the damage after he heard of the attacks related to the other elected officials. He decided to inspect the outside of his home, KOB reported.In addition to the Albuquerque Police Department, the New Mexico State Police and Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office are investigating the shootings.If a federal crime was committed, the Police Department will pursue those charges, Chief Medina said. “The federal system has much stronger teeth than our state system,” he said.The shootings came at a time when public officials have faced a surge in violent threats, extending from members of Congress to a Supreme Court justice.Mayor Tim Keller of Albuquerque said he hoped the fact that a suspect was in custody would provides some comfort to elected officials, who he said should be able to do their jobs without fear.“These are individuals who participate in democracy, whether we agree with them or not,” Mr. Keller said. “And that’s why this act of violence, I think, has been so rattling for so many people.” More