President Donald Trump nominated a Santa Fe attorney to be the next U.S. Attorney for New Mexico.

Trump announced Nov. 1, that John C. Anderson is his choice for the position, which has been vacant for nearly eight months.

U.S. Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich, both Democrats, and U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, a Republican, suggested Anderson and Assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Federici as candidates for the position, which has been empty since March 10 when U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions asked Damon Martinez and more than 40 other U.S. Attorneys to resign.

“The New Mexico delegation worked closely together to identify and recommend qualified New Mexicans for federal law...

During the 2016 election, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn’t know which state officials to communicate with to relay the threat of attempted Russian interference.

That confusion is one thing U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich wants to fix with the Securing America’s Voting Equipment (SAVE) Act, which he introduced with Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins.

“I think overall, over the course of the last few decades, we may have become complacent as a country as to the potential for this,” Heinrich said of attempts to influence elections in the United States.

“There were cases where they were maybe engaged with the wrong decisionmaker or talking to the vendor...

The New Mexico State Land Office and the U.S. Department of the Interior are working out the details on a land trade involving more than 120,000 acres in the state, including some lands within the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument and the Sabinoso Wilderness.

State Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn announced this week that the federal government approved an agreement to transfer 43,000 acres of state-owned lands and mineral leases within the monument and the wilderness to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

In return, New Mexico will gain about 78,000 acres in 13 counties from the BLM.

Of the state trust lands “locked” within the national monument, Dunn said 25 percent...

The case of a statue of the Ten Commandments in Bloomfield came to an end Monday, as the U.S. Supreme Court denied statue supporters’ an appeal to the high court.

The city of Bloomfield was ordered by a federal district court to remove the monument in 2014, citing the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling two years later, leaving the city’s final option to push for a U.S. Supreme Court hearing.

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico announced Monday that the attempted appeal was...