Nearly a year after Searchlight New Mexico first exposed WNMU President Joseph Shepard’s big spending on international flights, resort stays and exotic furniture, a new government report accuses university officials of violating policy and wasting a huge amount of taxpayer money.
Archive
Posted inFeatured
Why New Mexicans addicted to opioids can’t get the medicine they need
Buprenorphine is the best tool doctors have for patients trying to end dependency on drugs like fentanyl and OxyContin. Unfortunately, DEA regulations keep it in dangerously short supply.
Posted inImmigration
Donald Trump’s victory puts all eyes back on the border
The candidate who depicted immigrants as dangerous criminals just won with an impressive electoral mandate. Will he follow through on the aggressive policies he sold to voters?
Posted inImmigration
On the southern border, a brief moment of reunion
Families from the U.S. and Mexico gathered on a makeshift bridge across the Rio Grande
Posted inPolitics
What’s the role of a nonpartisan news site in an era of hyperpartisan political division?
Searchlight New Mexico was founded to produce investigative journalism in the public interest. Whoever is in power — at any level of government — the mission remains the same.
Posted inFeatured
How cyber soldiers at Kirtland Air Force Base safeguard the integrity of New Mexico’s vote
To prevent hackers, foreign enemies, and other bad guys from meddling with democracy, the New Mexico Secretary of State works with the Air National Guard in a complicated operation that keeps the process running smoothly on Election Day
Posted inNuclear
Plutonium just had a bad day in court
In a major decision whose consequences are still being assessed, a federal judge declared that plutonium pit production — one ingredient in the U.S. government’s $1.5 trillion nuclear weapons expansion — has to be performed in accordance with the nation’s strongest environmental law
Posted inCriminal Justice
The historical tensions that motivated Ryan Martinez have not gone away
In a Searchlight essay from 2023, centuries-old conflicts at the heart of this crime were deeply explored
Posted inCriminal Justice
Inside the shoplifting bust of Albuquerque Journal editor Patrick Ethridge
The editor of New Mexico’s largest newspaper has lost his job for stealing groceries at a Walmart. Public and private records obtained by Searchlight New Mexico paint a clear picture of what happened. What remains a mystery is why.
Posted inPolitics
The Navajo lawmaker bridging past and future
Senator Shannon Pinto, the only Diné member of the New Mexico Senate, serves a constituency whose lives have been threatened over time by industry, exploitation, and violence