VIDEO: Rep. Stansbury Addresses Impact of Trump, Musk Lawless Cuts

ALBUQUERQUE — Rep. Melanie Stansbury (NM-01) continued the fight Friday against President Trump and Elon Musk’s unlawful and harmful systematic dismantling of critical federal government agencies, and programs during a press conference at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center.      

Watch the video here.   

 “The sign of a healthy democracy is disagreement in the public space,” Rep. Melanie Stansbury (NM-01) said. “The sign of an unhealthy democracy is the people living in fear. Right now, millions of Americans are living in fear. We have never seen a federal administration in this century that has ever left so many Americans living in fear ... We can agree to disagree, but we cannot allow an unelected billionaire and Donald Trump and his Republican enablers to continue to terrorize the American people.   

“We will hold them accountable. We will not rest until we use every single tool we have in the courts, in Congress, and in our communities to fight back. We will not allow this corruption to go unchecked. We will not allow them to dismantle our democracy and put millions of Americans at risk, and we will fight for New Mexico.”    

The Congresswoman was joined by community leaders who shared insight into the real-world impacts of the current chaos in Washington, D.C. During the event, leaders focused on how these cuts impact Tribal Nations, early childhood education, Head Start programs, and Medicare and Medicaid.   

“So far, we have identified over a million dollars in federal grants awarded to the tribe that are now on hold due to the funding freeze,” Thora Padilla, President of the Mescalero Apache Tribal Nation said. “These grants were awarded to address wildfire rehabilitation and improved highway safety. These grants were going to fund important work that would benefit the tribe and our surrounding communities, and we are concerned that as these actions continue, we will see even more funding issues."  

“This freeze has the potential to negatively impact the people of the Pueblo of Sandia in multiple ways, including our ability to move forward with capital projects that have been in the works for years,” Dr. Beatriz Pacheco, Director of Education at Sandia Pueblo said. “One example of this is our new Early Childhood Development Center.   It's scheduled to be completed in June of 2025, and it is vital for our children's education, health, overall well-being, and is being built to support the needs of some of our most vulnerable population. We have federal funding tied to the completion of the construction of this facility and when the freeze was announced, it threatened the delay to delay the completion of the project. It's important to note that there have been no delays up to this point.”  

“We respectfully request that the White House officials, whether it's President Trump or Vice President JD Vance or even Mr. Elon Musk, to personally come to SIPI,” Adam Begaye, Chairman at the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute said. “We extend an invitation for you all to witness and really learn the culture, the language, the atmosphere, and our campus of how much needs that we have as a treaty obligation to the Native American students. We represent all 575 Native American tribes as a National Tribal Community College, and we invite you to come and learn about us and be able to have our support.”  

“On January 28th, we experienced a temporary freeze with our payment management system,” Deborah Baca, Vice President of the Early Childhood Education and Family Development Division at Youth Development, Inc. said. “We were able after repeated attempts to draw down our payment for the same week for our payroll, but parent staff and our vendors have expressed concerns about the future of Head Start ... We have yet to realize impacts from the recent health and human services layoffs.   We don't know yet how that will affect our program.”  

“We know, also, that if Medicaid is cut, we will see an increased demand on our ERs, on our chronic conditions in the state, and more of our loved ones will die too early from very preventable diseases,” Rachel Biggs, Chief Strategy Officer at Albuquerque Healthcare for the Homeless said. “We are one of 19 community health centers across New Mexico serving as the primary care and behavioral health safety net for our most vulnerable community members ... We see over 5,000 people a year across Bernalillo County, and we are seeing vast increases in homelessness. At a time when homelessness has reached an all-time high in New Mexico, when housing costs have soared and our wages have not kept up, now is the time to strengthen and not weaken our investments in Medicaid to ensure that all New Mexicans have access to the high   -quality health care we all deserve.”  

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