| | | | By Julia Goldberg | Editor-in-Chief |
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| | Good morning, everyone. Happy Friday! We continue hunkering down at Source interviewing candidates for the Nov. 3 general election in advance of early voting, which starts on Oct. 6. You’ll find an interview below with the two gubernatorial candidates, with more election coverage here. | Data center pushback continues to mount ahead of the election, with U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.) yesterday becoming the latest official to propose a pause on such developments ahead of creating more guardrails. Her proposal arrives as Oracle’s Project Jupiter in Doña Ana County, and its setbacks, makes national news. And that’s barely the half of it. Read on below for more stories. | As for the state’s trial against Meta over the Cambridge Analytica data scandal — the jury is still out. We’ll let you know if they reach a verdict before the weekend. And as for the weekend, the National Weather Service forecasts conditions may be a bit drier before another round of monsoon moisture next week. As ever, more to read and more on the way at sourcenm.com. Thanks for being here. | |  | Democrat and former U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, left, will face Republican and former Rio Rancho Mayor Gregg Hull, right, in the Nov. 3 general election contest to be New Mexico’s next governor. (Photos by Danielle Prokop/Source NM) |
| New Mexico Election 2026: New Mexico governor | New Mexicans will elect a new governor on Nov. 3 for the first time in eight years as Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a term-limited Democrat, leaves office. Source senior reporter Joshua Bowling spoke with candidates Deb Haaland, a Democrat and former U.S. interior secretary, and Gregg Hull, the Republican former mayor of Rio Rancho, about their candidacies and plans should they be elected. You can find all of Source NM’s election coverage here. | |
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| |  | New Mexico public education officials proposed a $5.9 billion budget request to a joint session of the interim Legislative Finance and Education Study committees on Thursday. (Photo of Mayfield High School students in Las Cruces by Leah Romero for Source New Mexico) |
| New Mexico education officials propose new $5.9B budget with 2.9% increase | The New Mexico Public Education Department on Thursday laid out spending plans for a proposed $5.9 billion budget for Fiscal Year 2028, a 2.9% increase over FY27. PED officials say the budget prioritizes building on improvements with literacy rates and chronic absenteeism, and continuing to work to address lower-performing schools. | |
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| |  | New Mexico residents protest a pending air quality permit application for the Oracle and OpenAI data center Project Jupiter outside the New Mexico Environment Department in Santa Fe on Aug. 21, 2026. (Photo by Danielle Prokop for Source NM) |
| U.S. Rep. Leger Fernández calls for ‘pause’ on data centers in New Mexico, as Oracle stock falls | U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.) on Thursday issued a call for a “pause” on data centers in New Mexico, and released a set of standards she said such developments should meet before receiving approval. Her announcement came as Oracle’s stock dropped amid reports it had sent Project Jupiter’s developer a “force majeure” notice allowing it to delay payments if the project is delayed. | |
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| |  | Protecting tributaries like the Little Badger Wash on his land is part of the larger stewardship of the Colorado River, Alastair Lee Bitsóí (Diné) writes. (Photo courtesy Alastair Lee Bitsóí) |
| Commentary: Colorado River stewardship begins in often dry tributaries like Little Badger Wash | Amid this week’s monsoon storms and flash flooding, writer and farmer Alastair Lee Bitsóí pondered the impact the weather had on his family’s farm on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico. In an essay for Source NM’s commentary section, Bitsóí writes that while the floods caused damage, they also showed “the possibility of bringing dormant farmland back into food production with water harvesting methods,” and reinforced how caring for arroyos is part of the larger work of sovereignty and stewardship of the Colorado River. | |
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