SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Santa Fe has long referred to itself as “The City Different” for its distinct atmosphere and a blending of cultures that stretches back centuries. Now, it’s trying something different — something officials hope will prevent a cultural erosion as residents are priced out of their homes.
It’s the first city in the United States to directly link wages to housing affordability, aiming to counter high rents by tying minimum wage increases to consumer prices as well as fair market rental prices.
Many see the new ordinance as a big step forward for workers, but Mayor Alan Webber also sees it as an important tool for addressing an affordability crisis that threatens the very fabric of Santa Fe.
“The purpose is to make a serious difference in assuring that people who work here can live here,” he said. “Santa Fe’s history and culture is really reflected in the diversity of our people. It’s that diversity that we’re trying to preserve.”
Santa Fe is not alone. Rising rents and housing prices have squeezed households nationwide, leaving many with less income to pay for other necessities. Experts say the financial pressure on renter households has increased compared to pre-pandemic conditions.
How the ordinance works
Santa Fe’s minimum wage will increase to $17.50 starting in 2027. The annual increase historically has been tied to consumer prices, but going forward a new blended formula will be used to calculate the annual increase, with the Consumer Price Index making up one half and fair market rent data making up the other.
There’s a 5% cap in case costs skyrocket, and if consumer prices or rents tank in any particular year, the minimum wage will not be reduced.
Santa Fe first adopted a living wage in 2002. The ordinance has been expanded over the years and the mission this time was to deal with median housing prices and rental costs that were far above any other major market in New Mexico.
University of New Mexico finance professor Reilly White presented the city with 25 years of data that showed changes in fair market rents and consumer prices. He said people earning minimum wage were falling behind.
“It became clear that any index that was made had to be duly weighted in favor of some of this real estate side and some of the cost of living side,” White said.
Crafting the ordinance was like threading a needle, the mayor said, explaining that the aim was to benefit workers while not overly burdening the mom-and-pop shops that are the backbone of Santa Fe’s economy.
Who benefits
About 9,000 workers will see a bump in wages once the ordinance kicks in. That’s about 20% of the city’s workforce.
Diego Ortiz will be among them. The 42-year-old father has called Santa Fe home for nearly three decades, working construction jobs to support his family.
Choosing between paying rent, buying groceries and helping his children is a constant worry. He also talked about wanting his children to be able to focus on their studies. His son is having to delay school so he can work and save money, he said.
“If there’s economic stability where we can get a good wage with the sweat of our brow, then we’re going to be able to pay our rent, pay our bills, or get a house,” he said. “Our families will be better and that will be a big change.”
According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the lowest income renters are disproportionately Black, Native American and Latino.
“Raising the minimum wage is an important thing to do in terms of affordability. Certainly part of the problem is an income problem,” said Dan Emmanuel, a senior researcher with the coalition. But he also warned that raising wages wouldn’t address affordability for seniors or those with disabilities who are not part of the workforce but make up a large share of low-income renters.
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Providing an income boost to a subset of the population also won’t necessarily resolve the underlying shortage of housing that’s driving up prices overall, said Issi Romem, an economist and fellow at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California-Berkeley.
That’s why Santa Fe officials say they’re working to permit more homes and apartment units.
On the edge of town, leasing flags whipped in the wind Wednesday as construction crews were busy building new complexes with adjacent swaths of dirt cleared for more. Mayor Webber said the uptick in permitting already is paying off — rental prices grew by just 0.5% this year.
Santa Fe also is counting on revenue from a so-called mansion tax, which targets home sales over $1 million, to fuel a trust fund for affordable housing projects.
Webber said the stakes are high and the city must tackle affordability from every angle.
“Can the people who work here afford to live here?” he asked. “Can we keep Santa Fe diverse? Can we continue to be ‘The City Different’ in spite of the economic pressures that are at work?”
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Federal officials rejected a company’s bid to acquire 167 million tons of coal on public lands in Montana for less than a penny per ton, in what would have been the biggest U.S. government coal sale in more than a decade.
The failed sale underscores a continued low appetite for coal among utilities that are turning to cheaper natural gas and renewables such as wind and solar to generate electricity. Emissions from burning coal are a leading driver of climate change, which scientists say is raising sea levels and making weather more extreme.
President Donald Trump has made reviving the coal industry a centerpiece of his agenda to increase U.S. energy production. But economists say Trump’s attempts to boost coal are unlikely to reverse its yearslong decline.
The coal-fired generation unit at Rawhide Energy Station in northern Colorado is seen Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Mead Gruver).
The coal-fired generation unit at Rawhide Energy Station in northern Colorado is seen Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Mead Gruver).
The Department of Interior said in a Tuesday statement that last week’s $186,000 bid from the Navajo Transitional Energy Co. (NTEC) did not meet the requirements of the Mineral Leasing Act.
Agency representatives did not provide further details, and it’s unclear if they will attempt to hold the sale again.
The leasing act requires bids to be at or above fair market value. At the last successful government lease sale in the region, a subsidiary of Peabody Energy paid $793 million, or $1.10 per ton, for 721 million tons of coal in Wyoming.
President Joe Biden’s administration sought to end coal sales in the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming, citing climate change.
A second proposed lease sale under Trump — 440 million tons of coal near an NTEC mine in central Wyoming — was postponed last week following the low bid received in the Montana sale. Interior Department officials have not said when the Wyoming sale will be rescheduled.
NTEC is owned by the Navajo Nation of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
A mechanized shovel loads coal into a haul truck at the Spring Creek mine, in this Nov. 15, 2016 photo, near Decker, Mont. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown)
A mechanized shovel loads coal into a haul truck at the Spring Creek mine, in this Nov. 15, 2016 photo, near Decker, Mont. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown)
In documents submitted in the run-up to the Montana sale, NTEC indicated the coal had little value because of declining demand for the fuel. The Associated Press emailed a company representative regarding the rejected bid.
Most power plants using fuel from NTEC’s Spring Creek mine in Montana and Antelope mine in Wyoming are scheduled to stop burning coal in the next decade, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.
Spring Creek also ships coal overseas to customers in Asia. Increasing those shipments could help it offset lessening domestic demand, but a shortage of port capacity has hobbled prior industry aspirations to boost coal exports.
The coal-fired generation unit at Rawhide Energy Station in northern Colorado is seen Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Mead Gruver)
The coal-fired generation unit at Rawhide Energy Station in northern Colorado is seen Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Mead Gruver)
As his administration faces mounting pressure to release Justice Department files related the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case, President Donald Trump is highlighting a different criminal justice issue — cashless bail.
He suggested in a Truth Social post this week that eliminating cash bail as a condition of pretrial release from jail has led to rising crime in U.S. cities that have enacted these reforms. However, studies have shown no clear link.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
TRUMP: “Crime in American Cities started to significantly rise when they went to CASHLESS BAIL. The WORST criminals are flooding our streets and endangering even our great law enforcement officers. It is a complete disaster, and must be ended, IMMEDIATELY!”
THE FACTS: Data has not determined the impact of cashless bail on crime rates. But experts say it is incorrect to claim that there is an adverse connection.
“I don’t know of any valid studies corroborating the President’s claim and would love to know what the Administration offers in support,” said Kellen Funk, a professor at Columbia Law School who studies pretrial procedure and bail bonding. “In my professional judgment I’d call the claim demonstrably false and inflammatory.”
Jeff Clayton, executive director of the American Bail Coalition, the main lobbying arm of the cash bail industry, also pointed to a lack of evidence.
“Studies are inconclusive in terms of whether bail reforms have had an impact on overall crime numbers,” he said. “This is due to pretrial crime being a small subset of overall crime. It is also difficult to categorize reforms as being ‘cashless’ or not, i.e., policies where preventative detention is introduced as an alternative to being held on bail.”
Different jurisdictions, different laws
In 2023, Illinois became the first state to completely eliminate cash bail when the state Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law abolishing it. The move was part of an expansive criminal justice overhaul adopted in 2021 known as the SAFE-T Act. Under the change, a judge decides whether to release the defendant prior to their trial, weighing factors such as their criminal charges, if they could pose any danger to others and if they are considered a flight risk.
Loyola University of Chicago’s Center for Criminal Justice published a 2024 report on Illinois’ new cashless bail policy, one year after it went into effect. It acknowledges that there is not yet enough data to know what impact the law has had on crime, but that crime in Illinois did not increase after its implementation. Violent and property crime declined in some counties.
A number of other jurisdictions, including New Jersey, New Mexico and Washington, D.C., have nearly eliminated cash bail or limited its use. Many include exceptions for high-level crimes.
Proponents of eliminating cash bail describe it as a penalty on poverty, suggesting that the wealthy can pay their way out of jail to await trial while those with fewer financial resources have to sit it out behind bars. Critics have argued that bail is a time-honored way to ensure defendants released from jail show up for court proceedings. They warn that violent criminals will be released pending trial, giving them license to commit other crimes.
A lack of consensus
Studies have shown mixed results regarding the impact of cashless bail on crime. Many focus on the recidivism of individual defendants rather than overall crime rates.
A 2024 report published by the Brennan Center for Justice saw “no statistically significant relationship” between bail reform and crime rates. It looked at crime rate data from 2015 through 2021 for 33 cities across the U.S., 22 of which had instituted some type of bail reform. Researchers used a statistical method to determine if crime rates had diverged in those with reforms and those without.
Ames Grawert, the report’s co-author and senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Justice Program, said this conclusion “holds true for trends in crime overall or specifically violent crime.”
Similarly, a 2023 paper published in the American Economic Journal found no evidence that cash bail helps ensure defendants will show up in court or prevents crime among those who are released while awaiting trial. The paper evaluated the impact of a 2018 policy instituted by the Philadelphia’s district attorney that instructed prosecutors not to set bail for certain offenses.
A 2019 court decree in Harris County, Texas, requires most people charged with a misdemeanor to be released without bail while awaiting trial. The latest report from the monitoring team responsible for tracking the impact of this decision, released in 2024, notes that the number of people arrested for misdemeanors has declined by more than 15% since 2015. The number of those rearrested within one year has similarly declined, with rearrest rates remaining stable in recent years.
Asked what data Trump was using to support his claim, the White House pointed to a 2022 report from the district attorney’s office in Yolo County, California, that looked at how a temporary cashless bail system implemented across the state to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks in courts and jails impacted recidivism. It found that out of 595 individuals released between April 2020 and May 2021 under this system, 70.6% were arrested again after they were released. A little more than half were rearrested more than once.
A more recent paper, published in February by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, also explored the effects of California’s decision to suspend most bail during the COVID-19 pandemic. It reports that implementation of this policy “caused notable increases in both the likelihood and number of rearrests within 30 days.” However, a return to cash bail did not impact the number of rearrests for any type of offense. The paper acknowledges that other factors, such as societal disruption from the pandemic, could have contributed to the initial increase.
Many contributing factors
It is difficult to pinpoint specific explanations for why crime rises and falls.
The American Bail Coalition’s Clayton noted that other policies that have had a negative impact on crime, implemented concurrently with bail reforms, make it “difficult to isolate or elevate one or more causes over the others.”
Paul Heaton, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who studies criminal justice interventions, had a similar outlook.
“Certainly there are some policy levers that people look at — the size of the police force and certain policies around sentencing,” he said. “But there’s a lot of variation in crime that I think even criminologists don’t necessarily fully understand.”
PHOENIX (AP) — Jocelyn Ruiz remembers when her fifth-grade teacher warned the class about large-scale patrols that would target immigrants in Arizona’s largest metropolitan area. She asked her mom about it — and unearthed a family secret.
Ruiz’s mother had entered the United States illegally, leaving Mexico a decade earlier in search of a better life.
Ruiz, who was born in California and raised in the Phoenix area, was overcome by worry at the time that her mother could be deported at any moment, despite having no criminal history. Ruiz, her two younger siblings and her parents quietly persevered, never discussing their mixed immigration status. They lived “as Americans,” she said.
More than 22 million people live in a U.S. household where at least one occupant is in the country without authorization, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of 2022 Census data. That represents nearly 5% of households across the U.S. and 5.5% in Arizona, a battleground state where the Latino vote could be key.
If Donald Trump is elected and follows through with a campaign promise to conduct the largest deportation operation in American history, it could not only upend the lives of the 11 million people who according to the U.S. Census Bureau are living in the United States without authorization — it could devastate the U.S. citizens in their families.
The issue of immigration has been a cornerstone of Trump’s platform since he promised to “build a great wall” in 2015 as he announced his first Republican campaign for president. And despite polling that shows the economy as a top concern for voters, Trump remains fixated on the issue, criticizing the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border as an existential threat to American society as Election Day nears.
Trump’s plans for a crackdown have motivated some mixed-status families to speak out. America’s success depends on the contributions of immigrants, they argue, and the people doing this work deserve a pathway to legal residency or citizenship.
Others choose to be silent, hoping to evade attention.
And there are some who support Trump, even though they themselves could become targets for deportation.
The political divide over immigration runs deep: 88% of Trump supporters favor mass deportation, according to a recent Pew survey, compared with 27% of the voters who support Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president.
Trump was asked about the impact so many deportations would have on mixed-status families when he visited the Arizona-Mexico border in August.
“Provisions will be made, but we have to get the criminals out,” Trump responded to NBC News. He didn’t say what the provisions might include, and his campaign did not share more information when The Associated Press asked for specifics.
Living in a mixed-status family is inherently precarious, as immigration policies and political rhetoric have ripple effects for U.S. citizens and legal residents, said Heide Castañeda, a professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida.
“For most Americans, it’s not a familiar thing to navigate your daily life thinking about somebody in your family possibly being taken,” said Castañeda, author of “Borders of Belonging: Struggle and Solidarity in Mixed-Status Immigrant Families.” “But for mixed-status families, of course, that’s always on their minds.”
What to know about the 2024 Election
Politicians, she said, “think that they’re targeting a particular group, but these groups live in families and communities and households and neighborhoods.”
In Nevada, California, New Jersey and Texas, nearly one in 10 households includes people living in the U.S. without legal permission, according to Pew. Many have lived in the country for decades and have U.S. citizens depending on them.
Michael Kagan, director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said recent arrivals aren’t representative of the population in Nevada.
“The vast majority have been here more than 10 years,” Kagan said, warning that their U.S. citizen relatives could inadvertently be swept up.
Erika Andriola, 37, a longtime advocate for immigrants in Arizona, witnessed her mother and brother being detained by immigration agents in 2013. She waged a successful campaign that led to their release, but she now suffers from PTSD and separation anxiety as a result of that day.
“It was just this like constant nightmares. I would wake up crying,” Andriola said. She and her brother are now legal residents, but their 66-year-old mother has been challenging her deportation in court since 2017.
It’s an experience Andriola doesn’t wish upon anyone — and she says the emotional and economic tolls can affect entire communities.
Betzaida Robinson’s brother was deported to Mexico several years ago despite never having lived there. An integral member of the family in Phoenix, he had helped pay bills and raise her two children.
Robinson said Trump and his supporters must not be thinking about what it’s like to have a loved one taken away.
“How about if you were in that position, what would you do and how would you feel?” she said.
Still, there are people living in the country illegally who do support Trump, said Castañeda, the university professor. Even Andriola says she has family members who do.
“They’re not necessarily thinking about what can happen to people like my mom,” Andriola said, “but they’re thinking about their own lives and what they think is best for them.”
Victoria Castro-Corral is a self-described optimist from a mixed-status family in Phoenix who advises students at Chandler-Gilbert Community College. She said she has faith that a mass deportation plan will never happen — and credits her Mexican parents, who crossed the border illegally decades ago, for teaching her how to remain positive.
“We’re here to stay,” she said.
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Gabriel Sandoval is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A New Mexico judge has upheld her decision to dismiss an involuntary manslaughter charge against Alec Baldwin in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of a Western movie.
In a ruling Thursday, state District Court Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer stood by her July decision to dismiss an involuntary manslaughter charge against Baldwin. She said prosecutors did not raise any factual or legal arguments that would justify reversing her decision.
“Because the state’s amended motion raises arguments previously made, and arguments that the state elected not to raise earlier, the court does not find the amended motion well taken,” the judge wrote, adding that the request was also untimely.
A spokesperson for Baldwin’s lawyers said Friday that they had no immediate reaction to the decision.
Special prosecutor Kari Morrissey told The Associated Press that she disagrees with the court’s analysis and will appeal the ruling. Morrissey was appointed by the Santa Fe district attorney to take over the case in March 2023 after a previous special prosecutor resigned following missteps in the filing of initial charges.
The case was thrown out halfway through trial on allegations that police and prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense in the 2021 death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the film “Rust.”
Baldwin’s trial was upended by revelations that ammunition was brought into the Santa Fe County sheriff’s office in March by a man who said it could be related to Hutchins’ killing. Prosecutors said they deemed the ammo unrelated and unimportant, while Baldwin’s lawyers say investigators “buried” the evidence in a separate case file and filed a successful motion to dismiss.
Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer for “Rust,” was pointing a gun at Hutchins during a rehearsal on a movie set outside Santa Fe in October 2021 when the revolver went off, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza. Baldwin has said he pulled back the hammer — but not the trigger — and the revolver fired.
A judge in April sentenced movie weapons supervisor Hannah Gutierrez-Reed to the maximum of 1.5 years at a state penitentiary on an involuntary manslaughter conviction in Hutchins’ death.
Marlowe Sommer last month rejected Gutierrez-Reed’s request to dismiss her conviction or convene a new trial on allegations that prosecutors failed to share evidence that might have been exculpatory. She found that the armorer’s attorneys didn’t establish that there was a reasonable possibility that the outcome of the trial would have been different had the evidence been available to Gutierrez-Reed, who still has an appeal pending with a higher court.
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Associated Press reporter Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, Republican former President Donald Trump and five third-party candidates will compete for New Mexico’s five electoral votes, but the most competitive race on the ballot will likely be a U.S. House race that could determine control of the narrowly divided chamber.
New Mexico was once one of the nation’s most competitive presidential battlegrounds, having gone for Democrat Al Gore in 2000 and Republican George W. Bush in 2004 by less than 1 percentage point. Democratic presidential candidates have since won seven of the last eight general elections in the state, where neither of the major party candidates has campaigned this year.
In the U.S. House, Democratic Rep. Gabriel Vasquez is seeking a second term in the 2nd Congressional District against the Republican he narrowly defeated in 2022, former Rep. Yvette Herrell. Immigration has been a major issue in the sprawling district that spans the state’s entire border with Mexico. Republicans hold a slim majority in the House, and a Herrell victory would complicate Democratic hopes to retake the chamber.
In the U.S. Senate, Democratic incumbent Martin Heinrich is seeking a third term against Republican Nella Domenici. She is the daughter of the late Republican Sen. Pete Domenici, who served six terms, from 1973 to 2009 and was the last Republican elected to the Senate from New Mexico.
More than 60% of New Mexicans typically vote before Election Day. A 2023 law requires counties to post early and absentee results no later than 11 p.m. ET.
Democratic presidential candidates historically have won most of the state’s largest counties — Bernalillo, which includes Albuquerque; Santa Fe, the state’s capital; and Dona Ana, in the south part of the state. Republicans tend to do well in the east of the state bordering Texas, and in San Juan County in the Four Corners area in the northwest.
The Associated Press doesn’t make projections and will declare a winner only when it has determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidates to close the gap. If a race hasn’t been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, like candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear it hasn’t declared a winner and explain why.
Here’s a look at what to expect in the 2024 election in New Mexico:
Election Day
Nov. 5.
Poll closing time
9 p.m. ET.
Presidential electoral votes
5 awarded to statewide winner.
Key races and candidates
President: Harris (D) vs. Trump (R) vs. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (DTS) vs. Chase Oliver (OTH) vs. Jill Stein (Green) and two others.
U.S. Senate: Heinrich (D) vs. Domenici (R).
2nd Congressional District: Vasquez (D) vs. Herrell (R).
Other races of interest
U.S. House, state Senate, state House, district attorney, bond measures, ballot measures.
By midnight ET: about 78% of total votes cast were reported.
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Associated Press writer Maya Sweedler contributed to this report.
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Read more about how U.S. elections work at Explaining Election 2024, a series from The Associated Press aimed at helping make sense of the American democracy. The AP receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
CHICAGO (AP) — For Luis Martinez, competing in lowriding bike and car competitions is about more than glory and bragging rights. The lowrider clubs in the Chicago area have become like one big family and a source of mutual support.
“It just starts with the metal,” said Martinez, who got his introduction to lowrider culture when his mother took him to a flea market. He had his first bike when he was 12.
“To me, it’s about expressing my art and what I can do with my own hands,” Martinez told The Associated Press as he polished a shiny red bike at his home in Mishawaka, Indiana.
Luis Martinez, a member of the Uso Chicago Car Club, sits on his custom-built lowrider bike in Mishawaka, Ind., Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
Luis Martinez, 29, a member of the Uso Chicago Car Club, cleans his custom-built lowrider bike in Mishawaka, Ind., Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
A detail on the hub of the lowrider bike custom-built by Luis Martinez, a member of the Uso Chicago Car Club, in Mishawaka, Ind., Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
Fluffly dice hang on the lowrider bike custom-built by Luis Martinez, 29, a member of the Uso Chicago Car Club, in Mishawaka, Ind., Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024, (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
A movement of expression with origins in Mexican American and Chicano communities, lowriding is an aspect of Latino history in the U.S. in which people show their pride, honor family and uplift culture. But misrepresentation of the culture in entertainment and media has often associated the lowriding’s “low and slow” motto with gang culture.
Still, decades since its emergence, and as the Hispanic U.S. population increases, lowriding has experienced a boom, as evidenced by an increase in car shows and conventions nationwide.
A movement of cultural expression with origins in Mexican American and Chicano communities, lowriding is a way for a person to show their pride for family and culture. (AP Video: Melissa Perez Winder)
Lowriding involves the customization of a vehicle — from the tires to the sound system — with vivid designs and colors. Unlike hot rods or muscle cars, which are often modified to have big tires and move at high speeds, the lowrider community modified the cars and bikes to go “low and slow,” said Alberto Pulido, the chair of the Ethnic Studies department at the University of San Diego.
“It was a way to speak to an identity, a presence and it was done with few resources,” said Pulido, who also directed the award-winning documentary, “Lowriding: Everything Comes From the Streets.”
“Our community didn’t have a lot of money,” he said. “They might have had a little bit expendable income to buy a car but then they were kind of on their own to create their vehicles. We call that Chicano ingenuity.”
Lowriding blends Latino and American culture
AP correspondent Ed Donahue reports on the growing popularity of lowriders.
According to Pulido, lowriding originated in the Southwest, although there are disputes about where exactly it first appeared. Pulido said lowriders in Los Angeles would like to make the claim they were the first, while those in San Diego want their undeniable influence in the culture acknowledged.
The culture can be traced to post-World War II, when veterans were coming home with an expendable income. And with the growth of highways and freeways in California, people wanted to modify their vehicles, Pulido said.
Today, conventions attract enthusiasts from all over the U.S. Last month, what was once a small showcase with only 40 lowriders at Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, grew to over 300 lowriders from clubs across the U.S.
Hugo Cardenas and Araceli Martinez, wearing Zoot suits of the Mexican American subculture known as Pachucos, dance while attending a lowrider exhibition during the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)
The decorated interior of a vintage car is pictured during a lowrider exhibition for the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)
University of San Diego professor Alberto Lopez Pulido smiles while speaking with attendees of a lowrider exhibition during the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)
Hector Gonzalez, of the Lincoln Park Conservation Committee, said the car clubs help members travel to all the showcases in the nation. In the ’70s and ’80s, lowrider clubs became a representation of the community and offered mutual aid such as ride-sharing and food donations when the local government could not or would not, Gonzalez said.
“It is something that gets passed on from generation to generation,” said Gonzalez, who, like most lowriders, was introduced to the community with a bike at the young age of 13. He has passed on his love for lowriding to his own children, nephews and cousins
“Kids grow up seeing the cars, they pick it up and they carry on the tradition,” Gonzalez said.
Lauren Pacheco, co-founder and co-curator of the Slow and Low Chicago Low Rider Festival, described lowriding as a global, multibillion-dollar phenomenon of self-expression and innovation.
“It’s a marvel of mechanical innovation,” Pacheco said. “It is the beautiful artistry in the creative practice of muralism, storytelling and upholstery.”
Within the last decade, lowrider conventions have grown so much that they’ve made their way to Japan. In Nagoya, Japanese lowriders have modified their cars, created clubs and even come to events at Chicano Park in San Diego.
Daniel Marquez, 8, is reflected in the mirror of his chrome lowrider bike, built by himself and family friends in memory of his late father Alberto, a longtime member of lowrider car clubs, at his home in Frankfort, Ill., Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
Daniel Marquez, 8, sits inside his late father Alberto’s 1963 Chevy Impala lowrider car in Frankfort, Ill., Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
A photo of Daniel Marquez sitting on his late father’s lap inside their 1963 Chevy Impala lowrider car, is displayed with a custom chrome lowrider bike built by Daniel and family friends, in Frankfort, Ill, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
Lowrider community sheds gang culture stereotype
Appreciation for lowriding has increased in recent years, enthusiasts say. But that was not always the case.
In the beginning, lowriding was associated with harmful stereotypes about Latinos as gangsters, Pulido said. Because the culture involved predominantly Latino participants, lowriding became racialized and that overshadowed the artistic and community service aspects of the movement.
The 1979 thriller-drama “Boulevard Nights” also helped to perpetuate the lowriders as gangsters trope. The film’s main character, Raymond Avila, played by Richard Yñiguez tried to avoid getting lured into the violent street gangs of East Los Angeles. Lowriding vehicles and the lowrider “cholo” aesthetic was featured throughout the film.
While the perception of lowriding has since gotten better, Pulido said he has been to lowriding car shows where police immediately show up.
Martinez, the Indiana lowrider, said lowriding misconceptions grew in the Chicago area because the community members were tattooed in ways often associated with gang affiliation. Pacheco said the Chicago festival works to dispel those misconceptions.
“We really try not to create a space that glamorizes or romanticizes gang culture,” she said. “It’s really a celebration of creativity and innovation and family.”
A Day of the Dead altar is placed next to a lowrider car on display at the Slow & Low Chicago Lowrider Festival at Navy Pier in Chicago, Saturday, Oct. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
Santos Gonzalez sits between a 1939 and a 1949 Chevy vintage cars during a lowrider exhibition for the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)
The decorated interior of a Monte Carlo vintage car is pictured during a lowrider exhibition for the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)
Lowriding culture becomes a booming industry
Gonzalez, the Texas lowriding showcase organizer, said the culture’s focus on wheels, hydraulic systems and accessories, has helped lowriding become a booming industry.
In El Paso, people have opened small businesses orientated to the lowriding community. In the last couple of years, at least 25 new businesses opened, including body shops, upholstery shops and apparel shops, Gonzalez said.
“It has become a mainstream business,” he said. “Back in the 70s and 80s, it was more of a local thing. Everybody helping each other do things on their own. Now there’s just all kinds of opportunities to purchase things and have things done to your vehicle.”
Originally from Dallas, Texas, Martinez said he would buy the parts he needed from a man in his neighborhood, who would buy in bulk from Lowrider magazine. He said the unfortunate thing about lowriding becoming so big is parts are now mass produced from China instead of being Mexican made.
Lowriding carries family legacy
But lowriding is not just about the often pricey task of modifying cars, Pulido said. It is about building a community that is always there for each other, throughout generations, he said.
“We have grandparents that are lowriders and then their kids and their grandkids are in tune already,” Pulido said.
Wearing Zoot suits of the Mexican American subculture known as Pachucos, Paula, Jacob, center, and Junior Hernandez pose for a photo while attending a lowrider exhibition during the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)
American and Mexican flags decorate a vintage car during a lowrider exhibition for the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)
It’s a legacy that Sonia Gomez wants for her 8-year-old son, Daniel Marquez. His late father, Alberto Marquez, had been a member of a Chicago area lowrider club. Too young to drive the car left to him by his father, Daniel has a lowriding bike that is more of a memorial to his dad.
“The bike is what he’s doing to build it up,” Gomez said.
The family will do an ofrenda, a display often associated with Mexican Dia de los Muertos celebrations, when local lowriding festivals are held. As part of the ofrenda, Daniel takes an image he has with his father on a lowriding bike and places it next to his actual bike, which he named “Wishing on a Star.”
“We would either go on a (lowriding) cruise with my uncle, or we would go to actual car shows,” Daniel recently recalled, while sitting at the driver’s seat of his dad’s lowriding car parked in the driveway of their home in Frankfort, Illinois.
“My mom would be there,” he said pointing to the passenger seat. “And I’d be back there all squished.”
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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A flotilla of hot air balloons ascended into a clear desert sky on Saturday to kick off a colorful mass ascension at the 52nd annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.
The nine-day gathering draws hundreds of thousands of spectators and pilots to New Mexico each fall for the rare opportunity to be within arm’s reach as the giant balloons are unpacked and inflated.
Balloons took flight to screams of delight after a brief weather delay and were spirited away by a gentle breeze. Propane burners roared and hundreds of balloons — from traditional globes to cartoonish figures — rose to speckle the sky with color.
“The mass ascension is just magical, unlike anything in the world really that I’ve seen,” said Paul Kluzak, of Phoenix. He has come twice before and arrived this year wearing a foot-tall hat resembling a hot-air balloon, with a camera slung around his neck. “Seeing them all at once is just really, really cool.”
Companion Heather Kluzak said that words can hardly express the thrill of the event.
“We just like to be a part of it,” she said. “It’s fun to be out on the field” where the balloons inflate and depart.
This year’s fiesta includes 106 balloons in special shapes, 16 of which will be making their fiesta debut. That includes Mazu, modeled after the sea goddess of the same name who is deeply rooted in Taiwanese culture and traditions.
Ordinarily, cool morning temperatures at dawn can help pilots stay in the air longer, or carry more weight. But the morning air was unusually warm on opening day, with many spectators stripping down to T-shirts.
Morning lows and afternoon highs are expected to be above average for days in a city that on Monday recorded its hottest temperature this late in the year, at 93 degrees Fahrenheit (33.8 Celsius), according to the National Weather Service.
Globally, things have been trending hotter too. It’s likely this year will end up as the warmest humanity has measured, the European climate service Copernicus reported in early September.
Typically, when the mornings are cool, less fuel is needed to get the balloons to rise. Fiesta veterans explain it is all about generating lift by heating the air inside the envelope to temperatures greater than what is on the outside.
Still, ballooning happens year-round in many places, including in the simmering Phoenix area, which has seen its share of record-breaking temperatures over recent months.
Troy Bradley, an accomplished balloon pilot who has been flying for decades, shrugged off the warmer weather in Albuquerque.
“These are really non-issues from a spectator’s standpoint,” he said. “I don’t see any difference other than they won’t be freezing in the pre-dawn hours.”
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A hot-air balloon bumped into a power line in northeast Albuquerque on Monday, leaving nearly 13,000 customers of a major electric utility without power for nearly an hour, authorities said.
Monday marked the third day of the 52nd annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.
The state’s largest electricity provider, Public Service Company of New Mexico, said the incident occurred at 8:35 a.m. and affected 12,730 customers.
Fiesta spokesman Tom Garrity said the pilot was the only person aboard and landed the balloon safely and wasn’t hurt. The man’s name wasn’t released and there was no immediate word on what caused the incident.
The balloon fiesta is one of the most photographed events in the world, drawing hundreds of thousands of spectators each fall to New Mexico to see more than 100 balloons in bright colors and special shapes soaring aloft.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Supermarket chain Albertsons told a federal judge Monday that it might have to lay off workers, close stores and even exit some markets if its planned merger with Kroger isn’t allowed to proceed.
The two companies proposed what would be the largest supermarket merger in U.S. history in October 2022. But the Federal Trade Commission sued to prevent the $24.6 billion deal, alleging it would eliminate competition and raise grocery prices in a time of already high food price inflation.
In the three-week hearing that opened Monday, the FTC is seeking a preliminary injunction that would block the merger while its complaint goes before an in-house administrative law judge.
“This lawsuit is part of an effort aimed at helping Americans feed their families,” the FTC’s chief trial counsel, Susan Musser, said in her opening arguments on Monday.
Musser said Kroger and Albertsons currently compete in 22 states, closely matching each other on price, quality, private label products and services like store pickup. Shoppers benefit from that competition, she said, and will lose those benefits if the merger is allowed to proceed.
Customers also are wary of the merger, the lawyer said. In Santa Fe, New Mexico, for example, 278 shoppers wrote to the FTC to express their concerns about a combined Kroger and Albertsons, which would own five of the city’s eight supermarkets.
But Kroger and Albertsons insist the FTC’s objections don’t take into account the rising competition in the grocery sector. Walmart’s grocery sales totaled $247 billion last year compared to $63 billion in 2003, for example; Costco’s sales have grown more than 400% in the same period.
“Consumers are blurring the line of where they buy groceries,” Albertsons attorney Enu Mainigi said.
Mainigi said Albertsons’ customers now spend 88 cents of every dollar at competitors that range from Aldi and Trader Joe’s to Dollar General. Albertsons can’t compete with larger rivals that have national scale, but joining forces with Kroger would help it do that, she said.
Kroger attorney Matthew Wolf also defended the proposed merger.
“The savings that come from the merger are obvious and intuitive. Kroger may have the best price on Pepsi. Albertsons may have the best price on Coke. Put them together, they have the best price on both,” Wolf said.
The two sides also disagree on Kroger and Albertsons’ plan to sell 579 stores in places where their stores overlap. The buyer would be C&S Wholesale Grocers, a New Hampshire-based supplier to independent supermarkets that also owns the Grand Union and Piggly Wiggly store brands.
The FTC says C&S is ill-prepared to take on those stores. Laura Hall, the FTC’s senior trial counsel, cited internal documents that indicated C&S executives were skeptical about the quality of the stores they would get and may want the option to sell or close them.
But Wolf said C&S has the experience and infrastructure to run the divested stores and would be the eighth-largest supermarket company in the U.S., if the merger plan goes through.
The commission also alleges that workers’ wages and benefits would decline if Kroger and Albertsons no longer compete with each other.
Before the hearing, several members of the United Food and Commercial Workers International union gathered outside the federal courthouse in downtown Portland to speak out against the proposed deal.
“Enough is enough,” said Carol McMillian, a bakery manager at a Kroger-owned grocery store in Colorado. “We can no longer stand by and allow corporate greed that puts profit before people. Our workers, our communities and our customers deserve better.”
The labor union also expressed concern that potential store closures could create so-called food and pharmacy “deserts” for consumers.
For people in many communities across the U.S., when a grocery store shutters, “their only source of food actually is walking to the nearest gas station,” said Kim Cordova, the president of UFCW Local 7, which represents over 23,000 members in Colorado and Wyoming.
Mainigi argued the deal could actually bolster union jobs, since many of Kroger’s and Albertsons’ competitors, like Walmart or Costco, have few unionized workers.
U.S. District Judge Adrienne Nelson is expected to hear from around 40 witnesses, including the CEOs of Kroger and Albertsons, before deciding whether to issue the preliminary injunction. If she does decide to temporarily block the merger, the FTC’s in-house hearings are scheduled to begin Oct. 1.
But Nelson’s decision will seal the merger’s fate, according to Wolf. He said the FTC’s in-house administrative process is so long and cumbersome that merger deals almost always fall apart before it’s through. Earlier this month, Kroger sued the FTC, alleging the agency’s internal proceedings were unconstitutional and saying it wants the merger’s merits decided in federal court.
The attorneys general of Arizona, California, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Wyoming all joined the case on the FTC’s side. Washington and Colorado filed separate cases in state courts seeking to block the merger.
Kroger, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, operates 2,800 stores in 35 states, including brands like Ralphs, Smith’s and Harris Teeter. Albertsons, based in Boise, Idaho, operates 2,273 stores in 34 states, including brands like Safeway, Jewel Osco and Shaw’s. Together, the companies employ around 710,000 people.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will continue to live with less water next year from the Colorado River after the U.S. government on Thursday announced water cuts that preserve the status quo. Long-term challenges remain for the 40 million people reliant on the imperiled river.
The 1,450-mile (2,334-kilometer) river is a lifeline for the U.S. West and supplies water to cities and farms in northern Mexico, too. It supports seven Western states, more than two dozen Native American tribes and irrigates millions of acres of farmland in the American West. It also produces hydropower used across the region.
Years of overuse combined with rising temperatures and drought have meant less water flows in the Colorado today than in decades past.
The Interior Department announces water availability for the coming year months in advance so that cities, farmers and others can plan. Officials do so based on water levels at Lake Mead, one of the river’s two main reservoirs that act as barometers of its health.
Based on those levels, Arizona will again lose 18% of its total Colorado River allocation, while Mexico’s goes down 5%. The reduction for Nevada — which receives far less water than Arizona, California or Mexico — will stay at 7%.
Officials on Thursday said the two reservoirs were at 37% capacity.
They lauded the ongoing efforts by Arizona, California and Nevada to save more water, which are in effect until 2026. The federal government is paying water users in those states for much of that conservation. Meanwhile, states, tribes and others are negotiating how they will share water from the river after 2026, when many current guidelines governing the river expire.
Tom Buschatzke, director of Arizona’s Department of Water Resources and the state’s lead negotiator in those talks, said Thursday that Arizonans had “committed to incredible conservation … to protect the Colorado River system.”
“Future conditions,” he added, “are likely to continue to force hard decisions.”
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Associated Press reporter Amy Taxin contributed from Santa Ana, Calif.
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The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A New Mexico judge dismissed the involuntary manslaughter case against Alec Baldwin over the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in a sudden move Friday.
Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer dismissed the case based on the misconduct of police and prosecutors over the withholding of evidence from the defense. She said the case cannot be filed again.
Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer of the film “Rust,” was pointing a gun at Hutchins during a rehearsal on the set outside Santa Fe in October 2021 when the gun went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza. Baldwin has said he pulled back the hammer — but not the trigger — and the gun fired.
He and other producers still face civil lawsuits from Hutchins’ parents and sister, which white collar defense attorney Mark Sedlander told The Associated Press are more common for workplace accidents like the fatal shooting.
“By civil law standards, it is common for someone like Mr. Baldwin to be held responsible for what happened, but it is relatively unusual in the criminal context,” Sedlander said in an interview before the case was dismissed.
Whether “Rust” will be released is still unclear. The plot follows Baldwin as a Western outlaw who works to break his grandson out of prison after he is convicted of an accidental murder. Filming wrapped in 2023, and producers have said finishing the film was meant to honor Hutchins’ artistic vision and generate money for her young son.
The career of the “30 Rock” star and frequent “Saturday Night Live” host — who has been a household name for more than three decades — had been put into doubt, and he could have gotten 18 months in prison if convicted.
In June, amid the looming trial, Baldwin and his wife, Hilaria, announced they would appear in a reality series about their large family. He shares seven young kids with Hilaria and one adult daughter, Ireland Baldwin, with his ex-wife, Kim Basinger.
The TLC series, tentatively titled “The Baldwins,” is set to release in 2025.
TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — The day that President Joe Biden’s administration ended a public health measure blocking many asylum-seekers at the Mexican border during the coronavirus pandemic, Teodoso Vargas was ready to show U.S. officials his scars and photos of his bullet-riddled body.
Instead, he stood frozen with his pregnant wife and 5-year-old son at a Tijuana crossing, feet from U.S. soil.
He was unsure of the new rules rolled out with the change and whether taking the next few steps to approach U.S. officials to ask for asylum in person could force a return to his native Honduras.
“I can’t go back to my country,” said Vargas, a long scar snaking down his neck from surgery after being shot nine times in his homeland during a robbery. “Fear is why I don’t want to return. If I can just show the proof I have, I believe the U.S. will let me in.”
Asylum-seekers say joy over the end of the public health restriction known as Title 42 this month is turning into anguish with the uncertainty about how the Biden administration’s new rules affect them.
Though the government opened some new avenues for immigration, the fate of many people is largely left to a U.S. government app only used for scheduling an appointment at a port of entry and unable to decipher human suffering or weigh the vulnerability of applicants.
The CBP One app is a key tool in creating a more efficient and orderly system at the border “while cutting out unscrupulous smugglers who profit from vulnerable migrants,” the Department of Homeland Security said in an email to The Associated Press.
As a Honduran man, Vargas does not qualify for many of the legal pathways the Biden administration has introduced. One program gives up to 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans a month a shot at humanitarian parole if they apply online, have a financial sponsor in the U.S. and arrive by air. Minors traveling alone also are exempt from the rules.
Migrants who do not follow the rules, the government has said, could be deported back to their homelands and barred from seeking asylum for five years.
Vargas said he decided not to risk it. He has been logging onto the app each day at 9 a.m. for the past three months from his rented room in a crime-riddled Tijuana neighborhood.
His experience is shared by tens of thousands of other asylum-seekers in Mexican border towns.
Immigration lawyer Blaine Bookey said for many on the border “there seems to be no option right now for people to ask for asylum if they don’t have an appointment through the CBP app.”
The government said it doesn’t turn away asylum-seekers but prioritizes people who use the app.
Bookey’s group, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, is one of the lead plaintiffs, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, challenging some of the new rules in federal court in San Francisco, including a requirement that people first apply for asylum in a country they crossed on the way to the U.S. They are asking the court to allow an asylum request by anyone on U.S. soil.
Texas Republican lawmakers also have sued. Among other things, they argue the CBP One app encourages illegal immigration by dispensing appointments without properly vetting whether applicants have a legal basis to stay.
More than 79,000 people were admitted under CBP One from its Jan. 12 launch through the end of April. From May 12 to May 19, an average of 1,070 people per day presented themselves at the ports of entry after securing an appointment on the app, the government stated. It did not provide updated figures but said the numbers should grow as the initiative is scaled up.
The administration also has highlighted improvements made in recent weeks. The app can prioritize those who have been trying the longest. Appointments are opened online throughout the day to avoid system overload. People with acute medical conditions or facing imminent threats of murder, rape, kidnapping or other “exceptionally compelling circumstances” can request priority status, but only in person at a port of entry. The app does not allow input of case details.
Still, some asylum-seekers claim to have been turned away at crossings while making requests, lawyers say.
Koral Rivera, who is from Mexico and eight months pregnant, said she has been trying to obtain an appointment through the app for two months. She recently went to a Texas crossing to present her case to U.S. officials, but said Mexican immigration agents in Matamoros blocked her and her husband.
“They tell us to try to get an appointment through the app,” said Rivera, whose family has been threatened by drug cartel members.
Priscilla Orta, an immigration attorney with Lawyers for Good Government in Brownsville, Texas, said one Honduran woman in the Mexican border city of Reynosa said a man whom she accuses of raping her tracked her down though her phone, which she was using to secure an appointment.
The woman was raped again, said Orta, who has not been able to reach her since.
“That is harrowing to realize that you’re just going to have to put up with the abuses in Mexico and just kind of continue to take it because if you don’t, then you could forever hurt yourself in the long term,” the lawyer said.
Orta said she previously could ask U.S. border officials at crossings to prioritize children with cancer, victims of torture and members of the LGBTQ community, and usually they would schedule a meeting. But local officials informed her they no longer have guidance from Washington.
“They do not know what to do with these most extremely vulnerable people,” Orta said, adding that migrants face tough questions. “Do you risk never qualifying for asylum? Or do you try to wait for an appointment despite the danger?”
Vargas, a farmer, has no doubt he could prove he and his family fled Honduras out of fear, the first requirement for U.S. entry to start the yearslong legal process for safe refuge. His iPhone is filled with photos of him lying in a hospital bed, tubes snaking out, his swollen face covered in bandages. He has knots of scar tissue on each side of his head from a bullet passing through his right check and exiting the left side of his head. Similar scar tissue dots his back and side.
His spirits were up after Title 42 expired and fellow asylum-seekers at a Tijuana shelter left with appointments. Two weeks later, he was dismayed.
“I can’t find enough work here. I’m either going to have to return to Honduras, but I’ll likely be killed, or I don’t know,” he said. “I feel so hopeless.”
CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — Actor Jeremy Renner’s hopes to expand a measure for the film industry to northern Nevada were effectively dashed Monday when the bill’s sponsor said it’s too late to entertain in the current legislative session.
A bill moving through the Nevada Legislature would provide $190 million annually in tax credits over at least 20 years aimed at bringing film productions to two sites in southern Nevada, including a $1 billion Sony expansion.
Renner, who played the sharp-shooting Hawkeye of the Avengers squad in Marvel’s sprawling movie and television universe, lobbied lawmakers Monday for a third site in northern Nevada that he said could rival film production studios in Atlanta and New Mexico where he shot Avengers and other films.
Democratic Sen. Roberta Lange of Las Vegas, the bill sponsor, and Brandon Birtcher, a developer who spearheaded the project said it was too late in the project to add another site. But Lange said a potential amendment could potentially provide for a study to look at what economic impacts a northern Nevada expansion would bring.
“It took two years to get that bill to where it is today. And so to bring in something else, a whole new idea at this point, it’s probably not going to work,” said Lange. “But I think we need to look at it.”
The bill is the latest attempt at diversifying southern Nevada’s economy that relies largely on revenue from gambling and tourism but that was hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. The proposed tax incentives are the largest in recent state history, even with the deals that numbered in the hundreds of millions with Tesla and lithium battery recycling company Redwood Materials.
But unlike those deals, which used direct tax abatements, private developers and studios must hit certain goals to receive expansive tax credits. Two sites are proposed, one on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and another in the Summerlin area of Las Vegas.
Developers would have to spend $500 million and $400 million on the sites by 2030, and studios would have to wrap up film production before getting tax credits.
Neither the state Senate nor the Assembly has voted on the bill, and Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo hasn’t chimed in on it.
The proposal stems from two years of negotiations but was introduced in the Legislature with three weeks to spare in the biennial session, unbeknownst to many, including Renner. He said he heard about it during a trip to Los Angeles and scrambled to try to get a last-minute amendment to include the Nevada county where he lives and others in the region.
“I have a desire and want to…speak up for people in Elko (County), people up here in Washoe (County), that we also deserve the opportunity to reap the benefits of building studios, jobs, infrastructure for the film industry,” Renner told The Associated Press. “And that’s my main impetus to to be here.”
Now, a study to look at the economic impact of a northern Nevada project is more likely to be added to the bill, Lange said. The condensed timeline and added tax breaks make funding a third zone nearly impossible until the 2025 Legislative session.
Renner, who moved to northern Nevada about 10 years ago, said he wants to work on films closer to home and argues that the area’s landscape including Reno, Lake Tahoe, and rural swaths of land would draw interest from major studios worldwide.
New Mexico already offers a rebate of between 25% and 35% of in-state spending for video production. Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed legislation in April that also increases payouts to productions based in rural areas of the state.
Renner said the Nevada incentives could rival Georgia’s, which has become the nationwide leader in film incentives. Films there receive a 30% break on in-state costs that are not capped, along with other local incentives.
Expanding the film industry to northern Nevada would take more tax credits than currently proposed, Lange said. State analysts predicted a maximum cost of over $3.5 billion over the next 20 years for the tax credits for the southern Nevada sites, a small part of which would fund local workforce training and education.
Opponents of the bill argue massive tax credits would better be spent on schools, health care and mental health services.
If the bill is approved, construction on the two sites could start as soon as 2025, with studios using the space in 2027. Sony has said it would invest $1 billion in the next decade at the Summerlin site, contingent upon incentives from the state.
Renner said he’s talked with Disney and other media companies about bringing more films to northern Nevada.
“I don’t know how to put a bill together or try to move the needle forward. And I’m not a policy guy,” Renner said. “So I was really excited about (the bill). And then I was frustrated that it wasn’t very inclusive.”
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Associated Press writer Morgan Lee contributed reporting from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Stern is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. Follow Stern on Twitter: @gabestern326.
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A high school student who killed three women in northwestern New Mexico with an indiscriminate spray of gunfire left a cryptic note presaging “the end of the chapter” and wore a bulletproof vest that he discarded before being shot to death by police, authorities said Wednesday.
Police added new details to the profile of the lone gunman and the weaponry he used as he walked through his residential neighborhood before being confronted by officers and fatally shot outside a church. The shooter discharged more than 190 rounds during the rampage, according to authorities, most of them from the home he shared with his father.
Farmington Police Chief Steve Hebbe said in a news conference that 18-year-old Beau Wilson was wearing what appeared to be a modified vest with steel plates and that the note was found in his pocket. Handwritten in green lettering, the message said in part, “if your reading this im the end of the chapter.”
Wilson began shooting with an AR-15 rifle just outside his home, from the front porch area, but quickly dropped that into some bushes even though it still held more live ammunition, police said.
The gunman continued firing with two pistols, discarding a .22-caliber gun and then depleting rounds from a 9-mm handgun in the final shootout with police, during which he let off at least 18 rounds.
Slain by the shooter were longtime Farmington residents Gwendolyn Schofield, 97, her 73-year-old daughter, Melody Ivie, and 79-year-old Shirley Voita, police said.
The women were well known in the community, in part through participation in faith-based groups. Ivie ran a preschool for four decades that was attended by several generations of residents.
Those wounded in the attack include Farmington police Sgt. Rachel Discenza and New Mexico State Police Officer Andreas Stamatiadas. The officers were treated at a local hospital and released.
Police are probing Wilson’s access to weapons and concerns about his prior mental health, and efforts are underway to subpoena medical and school records that might shed light on any issues.
“We have been talking with family members and trying to do more investigation into his mental health that appears to — early on — to be a factor,” Hebbe said.
At the same time, Hebbe said, “there did not appear to be significant indications that … something was going to happen that day.”
New Mexico enacted a so-called red flag law in 2020 that can be used to seize guns from people who pose a danger to themselves or others. Judicial records show the Farmington Police Department has petitioned successfully for the removal of guns in other instances, most recently in February.
In November, after he turned 18, Wilson legally purchased the assault-style weapon used Monday, according to police. They believe two of the three weapons he carried were owned by relatives.
Two days before the attack, Wilson purchased additional ammunition magazines, police said.
Authorities said it appears he shot indiscriminately at vehicles, and bullets struck 11 of them along with seven homes.
Additional weapons and ammunition were found at the home Wilson shared with his father, but Hebbe said he did not appear to have organized those before he left the house. The suspect had access to over 1,400 rounds of ammunition and 10 other weapons at the time of the attack.
“He planned to use the three weapons he had,” Hebbe said, “and he went outside and he did just that.”
Police say evidence shows that at least 176 rounds were fired by Wilson from an assault rifle near his house at the outset of the rampage.
A community vigil was planned for Wednesday night at the Farmington Museum, the latest in a series of gatherings to remember and mourn victims of the shooting.
Wilson was a senior at Farmington High School and had been scheduled to graduate the next day.
At the school’s commencement ceremony Tuesday, speakers talked of resilience and hope.
A chair was left empty with a bouquet of white roses “in memory of those we lost throughout the years,” school district spokesperson Roberto Taboada said.
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Yamat reported from Las Vegas, Nevada. Associated Press writer Robert Jablon in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
