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SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The state Legislature has endorsed a bill that would raise royalty rates for new petroleum development on prime pieces of land in New Mexico, on one of the world’s most prolific oil production areas.

A 37-31 vote on Thursday sent the bill from the Statehouse to Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham for consideration.

The proposal would increase the top royalty rate for oil and gas development from 20% to 25% on New Mexico’s state trust lands with implications for the energy industry in the Permian Basin, which overlaps southeastern New Mexico and western Texas. The area accounted for 46% of U.S. oil production in 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

New Mexico deposits royalty payments from oil and gas development in a multibillion-dollar investment trust that benefits public schools, universities and hospitals.

“We have a legal duty to maximize the return on these assets,” said Democratic state Rep. Matthew McQueen of Galisteo, a co-sponsor of the bill.

Legislative approval was the culmination of a yearslong effort backed by Public Lands Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard to increase top-tier royalty rates. A year ago, Garcia Richard put a hold on lease sales indefinitely for coveted tracts while advocating for the rate increase.

Proponents say neighboring Texas already charges up to 25% on state trust land amid intense competition to drill in the Permian Basin. The royalty changes in neighboring New Mexico would not go into effect in Texas.

Opponents say the rate change threatens to penalize petroleum producers and public beneficiaries, noting that oil production is significantly taxed in other ways and hinges on volatile commodity prices.

In a news release, Garcia Richard said the goal is “to make as much money as possible for school kids and our public institutions.”

“Raising the oil and gas royalty rate on premium state lands was always the right thing to do,” she said.

Garcia Richard, a Democrat, terms out of office as land commissioner in 2026 and this week announced her candidacy for lieutenant governor.

New Mexico is the No. 2 state for oil production behind Texas.

Efforts by New Mexico to save and invest portions of a financial windfall from local oil production are paying dividends as state government income on investments is forecast to surpass personal income tax collections.

The state’s land grant permanent fund currently distributes about $1.2 billion a year to beneficiary schools, universities and hospitals as well as the state general fund.

New Mexico state government relies heavily on a financial windfall linked to oil production amid increasing concerns about the connection between climate change and natural disasters including wildfires.

A coalition of environmental groups praised the passage of bills this week that would underwrite local clean energy and environmental sustainability projects and related job training.

But Albuquerque-based attorney Gail Evans of the Center for Biological Diversity vowed to press forward with a lawsuit against the state seeking compliance with the “pollution control clause” in the New Mexico Constitution on behalf of Native Americans who live near oil wells.

“Our legislators didn’t even take the tiny step of ensuring our kids are protected from dangerous oil and gas pollution when they’re at school,” said Evans, alluding to a stalled bill to restrict oil and gas operations within a mile (1.6 kilometers) of school property.

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — A new museum devoted to telling the stories of those who have received the nation’s highest military honor is opening this coming week in Texas.

The National Medal of Honor Museum is set to open Tuesday in Arlington, just west of Dallas. It highlights the lives and service of Medal of Honor recipients from the Civil War to the global war on terrorism. Over 3,500 people have received the Medal of Honor, which is awarded by Congress for risking one’s life in combat beyond the call of duty.

Jack Jacobs, a retired U.S. Army colonel who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Vietnam War, said he wants museum visitors to realize the recipients aren’t “spectacular supermen,” but regular people who “embody the kinds of values that are really important.”

“Really grand things, not just in combat, but in everyday life … are all accomplished by ordinary people who come to the conclusion that something has to be done and they are going to do it,” Jacobs said.

When his unit was ambushed by the Viet Cong on March 9, 1968, Jacobs took charge after his commander was seriously wounded. Despite being wounded in the head by shrapnel and bleeding heavily, Jacobs reorganized the company and repeatedly ran through enemy fire to rescue the wounded, saving the lives of a U.S. adviser and 13 soldiers.

Jacobs, now 79, said he lost a lot of friends in the battle.

“You really do wear the award for all of the people who can’t wear the award,” he said.

The museum’s focus is on telling the life stories of the recipients, said Alexandra Rhue, the museum’s senior vice president of engagement. “Here you met the people first and then you learn what they did,” Rhue said.

The recipients featured in the museum include those from various branches of the military, conflicts and geographic locations, as well as different ethnicities and races.

Chris Cassidy, the museum’s president and CEO, said he hopes the exhibits inspire visitors.

“Everybody needs courage in some form or fashion,” he said. “So that’s our aim: to inspire people through the stories of Medal of Honor actions, to bring a little courage into your own life.”

Several of the recipients, including Jacobs, appear in videos in an exhibit where their images answer visitors’ questions. There are over 60 recipients who are still living.

A celebration Saturday ahead of the opening will feature musical performances, fireworks and a drone show. The museum is nestled amongst Globe Life Field, where the Texas Rangers play, and AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys.

TEXAS (AP) – As measles cases in West Texas are still on the rise two months after the outbreak began, local public health officials say they expect the virus to keep spreading for at least several more months and that the official case number is likely an undercount.

But there’s a silver lining, officials say: More people have received a measles, mumps and rubella vaccination this year in Texas and New Mexico, which also has an outbreak, compared to last year — even if it’s not as high as they would like. And pharmacies across the U.S., especially in Texas, are seeing more demand for MMR shots.

As of Friday, the outbreak in Texas was up to 309 cases and one measles-related death, while New Mexico’s case count was up to 42 and also one measles-related death. Forty-two people have been hospitalized across the two states.

Texas’ outbreak, which has largely spread in undervaccinated Mennonite communities, could last a year based on studies of how measles previously spread in Amish communities in the U.S. Those studies showed outbreaks lasted six to seven months, said Katherine Wells, director of the public health department in Lubbock, Texas. Lubbock’s hospitals have treated most of the outbreak’s patients and the public health department is closely assisting with the response.

“It being so rural, now multistate, it’s just going to take a lot more boots on the ground, a lot more work, to get things under control,” Wells said during a media briefing this week. “It’s not an isolated population.”

The outbreak includes 14 Texas counties, two New Mexico counties and four probable cases in Oklahoma, where health officials said the first two were “associated” with the West Texas and New Mexico outbreaks.

Measles is one of the world’s most contagious diseases. Its slow way of spreading makes it especially hard to contain and outbreaks can have multiple peaks, said Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Many people spread the measles virus unknowingly for days before the telltale rash appears. The virus also can hang in the air for up to two hours after a sick person has left a room.

“Within this community, it’d be perfectly reasonable to think probably another couple months before things die out,” Lessler said. “But if it gets into another community, you just potentially start that clock over again.”

If the outbreak goes on until next January, it would end the United States’ status of having eliminated measles, which is defined as 12 months without local virus transmission, said Dr. William Moss, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University and executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center.

“We’re only three months in. I think if we had a strong response where the messaging was clear that measles vaccination is the way to stop this outbreak, I would be surprised if it went for 12 months or more,” said Moss, who has worked on measles for 25 years, mostly in Africa. “But we’re not seeing that type of response, at least from the federal government.”

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. instead has sown doubt about the measles vaccine, which has been safely used for more than 60 years and is 97% effective after two doses. In an interview with Fox News last week, Kennedy said MMR shots cause “deaths every year,” although he later added that vaccinations should be encouraged.
Vaccinations are up in Texas and New Mexico

Still, there are signs the outbreak has had an effect on vaccinations, especially locally.

Between Feb. 1 and March 18 last year, New Mexico Department of Health registered 6,500 measles vaccines. During that timeframe this year, more than 11,600 measles vaccines were administered in New Mexico — about half given to adults and half to children.

Southeast New Mexico, where the outbreak is located, represents a large portion of the count, with 2,369 doses administered.

In Texas, at least 173,000 measles doses were given from Jan. 1 to March 16, compared to at least 158,000 over the same timeframe last year, according to the state health department. That includes more than 340 doses in given by public health in the West Texas outbreak area as of March 11.

Texans must opt-in to the state’s immunization registry, so most people’s vaccinations are not captured in the Texas Department of State Health Services numbers, department spokeswoman Lara Anton said.

“We don’t know if more people are opting in or if this is a true reflection of an increase in vaccinations,” Anton wrote in an email. “It may be both.”

Pharmacy chains Walgreens and CVS told The Associated Press that they’re seeing higher demand for MMR vaccines across the U.S., especially in the outbreak areas.

Texas health officials say they’d like to see more uptake in the communities at the epicenter of the outbreak, especially in Gaines County — where the childhood vaccination rate against measles is 82%. That’s far below the 95% level needed to prevent community spread, and likely lower in the small religious schools and homeschooling groups where the early cases were identified.

Prasad Ganji is a pharmacist in Seminole, the biggest town in Gaines County. He said he ordered a 10-dose box of the MMR vaccine as cases started to spread.

He can give vaccines to people older than 14. But he still has doses left.

“The uptake for vaccines been definitely been a struggle,” Wells said of Gaines County, “I want to be honest with that.”

GAINES COUNTY – The Texas parents of an unvaccinated 6-year-old girl who died from measles Feb. 26 told the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense in a video released Monday that the experience did not convince them that vaccination against measles was necessary.

“She says they would still say ‘Don’t do the shots,’” an unidentified translator for the parents said. “They think it’s not as bad as the media is making it out to be.”

The West Texas measles outbreak, the biggest in the state in 30 years, has infected more than 270 people and hospitalizing dozens of them. Public health officials have repeatedly told Texans that studies have time and time again shown that the safest and most effective way to avoid contracting the very infectious, life-threatening disease is to vaccinate with the measles-mumps-rubella shot.

The couple, members of a Mennonite community in Gaines County with traditionally low vaccination rates, spoke on camera in both English and Low German to CHD Executive Director Polly Tommey and CHD Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker.

“It was her time on Earth,” the translator said the parents told her. “They believe she’s better off where she is now.”

“We would absolutely not take the MMR,” the mother said in English, referring to the measles-mumps-rubella vaccination children typically receive before attending school. She said her stance on vaccination has not changed after her daughter’s death.

“The measles wasn’t that bad. They got over it pretty quickly,” the mother said of her other four surviving children who were treated with castor oil and inhaled steroids and recovered.

The couple told CHD that their daughter had measles for days when she became tired and the girl’s labored breathing prompted the couple to take her to Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock. There, the girl was intubated and died a few days later. The other children came down with measles after their sister died.

The parents’ interview was recorded Saturday and later posted on the website of Children’s Health Defense, an organization founded in 2007 by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now secretary for the U.S. Health and Human Services Department. Kennedy stepped down from the organization to run for president in 2023.

The deceased girl’s father insisted that measles helps build up a person’s immune system. “Also the measles are good for the body for the people,” the father said, explaining “You get an infection out.”

Infectious disease experts have urged the public to avoid attempting to achieve immunity through measles exposures. Measles carries too high of risks, including lifelong complications and death, compared to the generally mild side-effects from the vaccine.

The Mennonite community located in remote Gaines County, about 400 miles west of Dallas, has been the center of a West Texas measles outbreak. As of Tuesday, measles has spread to 279 patients in Gaines and nearby counties.

Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, which cared for the couple’s daughter, released a prepared statement on Thursday. They said the interview circulating online contains “misleading and inaccurate claims regarding care provided at Covenant Children’s” and that the hospital could not directly speak about the girl’s case because of patient confidentiality laws.

“What we can say is that our physicians and care teams follow evidence-based protocols and make clinical decisions based on a patient’s evolving condition, diagnostic findings and the best available medical knowledge,” the statement said.

Covenant Children’s reiterated that measles is a highly contagious, potentially life-threatening disease that often creates serious, well-known complications like pneumonia and encephalitis.

The hospital urged anyone with questions about measles to contact their health provider.

Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia’s government has given final approval for a Texas-based marine robotics company to renew the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean more than a decade ago.

Cabinet ministers agreed to terms and conditions for a “no-find, no-fee” contract with Texas-based Ocean Infinity to resume the seabed search operation at a new 15,000-square-kilometer (5,800-square-mile) site in the ocean, Transport Minister Anthony Loke said in a statement Wednesday. Ocean Infinity will be paid $70 million only if wreckage is discovered.

The Boeing 777 plane vanished from radar shortly after taking off on March 8, 2014, carrying 239 people, mostly Chinese nationals, on a flight from Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, to Beijing. Satellite data showed the plane turned from its flight path and headed south to the far-southern Indian Ocean, where it is believed to have crashed.

An expensive multinational search failed to turn up any clues to its location, although debris washed ashore on the east African coast and Indian Ocean islands. A private search in 2018 by Ocean Infinity also found nothing.

The final approval for a new search came three months after Malaysia gave the nod in principle to plans for a fresh search.

Ocean Infinity CEO Oliver Punkett earlier this year reportedly said the company had improved its technology since 2018. He has said the firm is working with many experts to analyze data and had narrowed the search area to the most likely site.

Loke said his ministry will ink a contract with Ocean Infinity soon but didn’t provide details on the terms. The firm has reportedly sent a search vessel to the site and indicated that January-April is the best period for the search.

“The government is committed to continuing the search operation and providing closure for the families of the passengers of flight MH370,” he said in a statement.

GAINES COUNTY – With its measles outbreak spreading to two additional states, Texas is on track to becoming the cause of a national epidemic if it doesn’t start vaccinating more people, according to public health experts.

Measles, a highly contagious disease that was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, has made a resurgence in West Texas communities, jumping hundreds of miles to the northern border of the Panhandle and East Texas, and invading bordering states of New Mexico and Oklahoma.

Based on the rapid spread of cases statewide — more than 200 over 50 days — public health officials predict that it could take Texas a year to contain the spread. With cases continuously rising and the rest of the country’s unvaccinated population at the outbreak’s mercy, Texas must create stricter quarantine requirements, increase the vaccine rate, and improve contact tracing to address this measles epidemic before it becomes a nationwide problem, warn infectious disease experts and officials in other states.

“This demonstrates that this (vaccine exemption) policy puts the community, the county, and surrounding states at risk because of how contagious this disease is,” said Glenn Fennelly, a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases and chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Texas Tech University. “We are running the risk of threatening global stability.”

The measles outbreak — the largest in the state in 30 years — has spread from two cases in late January to more than 270 cases and now includes 11 counties, most of them in the rural South Plains region.

So far this year, there have been more than 300 cases of measles confirmed across 15 states, as of March 13. The Texas outbreak, which makes up the bulk of those cases, is only linked to cases in New Mexico and Oklahoma, where state officials said this month that someone associated with the Texas outbreak was exposed.

Last month, Texas officials reported that an unvaccinated, otherwise healthy school-aged child died from measles, the first death from the virus in a decade.

This month, New Mexico officials said an unvaccinated adult in Lea County, about 50 miles away from the outbreak’s epicenter of Gaines County, who died had tested positive for measles. Officials are still confirming whether the cause of death was measles, according to the New Mexico Department of Health.

“This is a very multi-jurisdictional outbreak with three states involved and about seven or eight different local health departments, in addition to some areas where the state serves as the local health department. There are a lot of moving parts,” said Katherine Wells, director of public health for the City of Lubbock, during a Tuesday meeting of the Big Cities Health Coalition, a national organization for large metropolitan health departments.

Most of Texas’ measles cases are in unvaccinated school-aged children and are concentrated in the Mennonite community in Gaines County, which traditionally has low vaccination rates.

Wells said efforts to increase the vaccination rates in Gaines County, which is about 70 miles from Lubbock, and the surrounding region have been slow as trust in the government has seemingly reached an all-time low.

“We are seeing, just like the rest of Americans, this community has seen a lot of stories about vaccines causing autism, and that is leading to a lot of this vaccine hesitancy, not religion,” she said.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to the politicization of vaccines and overall weariness to health mandates like quarantines and masks. Public health officials are now battling misinformation and public resistance to measles.

Wells said because the state can’t stop people from traveling, she fully expects this outbreak to last a year, and the surrounding states and the nation should prepare themselves for a potential spread.

“Measles is going to find those pockets of unvaccinated individuals, and with the number of cases and ability for people to travel, there is that risk of it entering other unvaccinated pockets anywhere in the United States right now,” Wells said.
Vaccine hesitancy

Fennelly was living in New York in the 1990s when pamphlets started getting passed around the Hebrew community warning against the unfound dangers of the measles vaccine. Soon, the vaccine refusal rate began to climb, and an outbreak started filling hospitals with sick infants.

Now, decades later, Fennelly is watching the same series of events play out in Texas.

“This could have been predicted. There have been steady rates of increased personal belief exemptions over the last several years leading to pockets of under-vaccination across the state,” he said.

In the West Texas region, misinformation about vaccines, distrust of local public health officials, and fear of government authority overruling family autonomy have reigned supreme, creating the pockets that measles infiltrated this year.

However, this is not just a South Plains problem but a statewide issue as vaccine exemptions continue to grow.

“We have several pockets of population that have high unvaccinated groups. We sent out a letter to public and private school districts with low vaccination rates explaining the situation and asking them to update their children’s shots,” said Phil Huang, director and health authority for Dallas County Health and Human Services, during the Big Cities Health Coalition meeting.

Texas requires children and students to obtain vaccines to attend schools, child care centers, and college. However, individuals can claim they are exempt if they are in the military, have a religious or personal belief that goes against getting immunized, or if a health provider determines it is not safe to do so.

Since 2018, the number of requests to the Texas Department of State Health Services for an exemption form has doubled from 45,900 to more than 93,000 in 2024.

Data suggests that vaccine exemptions and those living in areas with higher vaccine exemption rates for measles and pertussis are at increased risk of contracting these diseases. The authors of this data collection concluded that “geographic pockets of vaccine exemptions pose a risk to the whole community.”

Fennelly said the hurdles to obtaining exemptions are easy to clear, leading to an increasing number of people refusing the vaccine.

State lawmakers this session have filed more than a dozen bills that would strengthen or expand vaccine exemptions.

“We don’t have the capacity in Texas to deal with so many sick children if this continues to spread. We are already at our limit with seasonal influenza and respiratory syncytial virus. Our doctors are at their limit,” Fennelly said.

Simbo Ige, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, had to deal with a measles outbreak in her city a year ago, with 64 individuals testing positive, 57 of whom were associated with a shelter. She said the quickest way they controlled the outbreak was quickly administering more than 30,000 doses of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine.

A Chicago Department of Health report projected a high probability of an outbreak of more than 100 cases without the city’s rapid intervention.

“It required a lot of education and messaging because people wanted the answer to why I need to get vaccinated. We started listing out the reasons — parents won’t be able to go to work, kids can’t go to school, and even worse, kids can get sick and die,” Ige said. “It’s 2025. We shouldn’t be having children dying from measles in this day and age. We have the tools. We just have to amplify the message.”

New Mexico’s public health officials started spreading awareness of vaccinations immediately after they learned Texas had its first measles case and before New Mexico got its first case.

“We started setting up clinics and getting the ball rolling,” Jimmy Masters, the southeast region director for the New Mexico Department of Health, said. “Let’s see what we can do to get people in the doors and vaccinated beforehand.”

Nearly 9,000 New Mexicans have received measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine shots between Feb. 1 and March 10. During that same time period last year, officials vaccinated 5,342 people.

Texas has held multiple vaccination clinics in the outbreak area, but according to the Texas Department of State Health Services, only 350 doses have been administered.

New Mexico has also emphasized its Vaxview website that keeps track of residents’ immunizations, allowing concerned people to check within seconds if they need a shot. Texas has a vaccine tracking program known as ImmTrac2, but it’s an opt-in program that doesn’t have most adult records. If someone doesn’t opt in by age 26, their records will not be retained.

“We told people to contact us to ensure their vaccine status is up to date,” Masters said. “If they aren’t sure, just call the health office so we can find out for them. And if they don’t have their records updated for the vaccine, then we can ask them to come in and take advantage of the clinics or come in as walk-ins.”

Because of this, most of Lea County is considered immunized, Masters said, so public health officials in New Mexico don’t view the outbreak as rapidly evolving.

Back in Texas, the opposite is playing out. Advice from public health officials is seemingly ignored, and vaccine efforts are struggling.

“We need to have a consistent message from all levels. We need to reinforce the message that vaccines are safe and vaccines are how you prevent this, and we have concerns when other messages dilute this message,” Huang said.

Texas Department of State Health Services officials are also encouraging people to vaccinate, but whether people will listen is out of the agency’s control.

“The only way to stop the virus from spreading is to get more people immunized. We are …providing education about the severe complications associated with measles infection, and directing them to locations where they can get vaccinated,” said Lara Anton, spokesperson for the state health agency.

Fennelly said the main difference between Lea County and Gaines County is the public acceptance of the vaccine and public health in general. He said if Texas wants to improve, there should be studies on why people are so hesitant to accept vaccines.

“We need to be asking why Gaines County? What are the concerns, and how do we, the health profession and public health officials, most effectively confront and allay those fears,” he said. “People shouldn’t be more afraid of the vaccine than the disease.”

A person with measles visits a friend, another visits kids at a college, and the other has friends over. Public health departments in West Texas are trying to trace the spread of measles, since other than strongly suggesting people quarantine, there’s nothing more local officials can do to prevent infected individuals from traveling.

“We shouldn’t be surprised in this kind of environment that we will have more cases,” said David Lakey, the vice chancellor for health affairs and the chief medical officer at the University of Texas System. “I think we need to work with individuals to ensure they stay home during an event like this.”

State lawmakers have stripped control from cities and counties from implementing mandates, such as closing businesses and schools. While some of these laws apply only to COVID-19, public health experts say it has created an environment where state health officials can only offer suggestions to Texans with little enforcement, allowing measles to continue to spread.

“The state of Texas is taking it seriously and trying to balance how they approach this while respecting the laws of the state and also people’s freedoms,” Lakey said. “They are doing it while also making sure that we are doing everything it can to identify people, provide vaccines, isolate individuals, and take all the other steps to address an event like this.”

With young children particularly vulnerable to the disease, Lakey said hospitals must screen people entering hospitals.

Wells said there have been a couple of women who gave birth at a Lubbock hospital who were infected with measles or were recently exposed to it, and babies six months old or younger have needed treatment with immunoglobulin because of exposure.

“That’s really why measles is so scary. It’s so communicable, and it’s so easy to enter some of the very vulnerable areas where babies don’t have those vaccinations yet,” she said. “That’s going to be day cares, schools, hospitals, pediatricians offices, and we’re seeing those cases more and more as this outbreak continues.”

This potential spread makes contact tracing necessary, but Wells said it is one of their region’s most significant challenges besides testing. While a laboratory set up in Lubbock has cut down wait times for tests results from 72 hours to one day, Wells said rural Texas doesn’t have the staff to track the travel of more than 270 people.

“This is going to be a large outbreak, and we are still on the side where we are increasing the number of cases, both because we’re still seeing spread and also because we have increased testing capacity, so more people are getting tested,” she said.

New Mexico has a lead investigator for contact tracing who interviews the patients, gathers medical records, establishes a point of contact, and organizes vaccinations for those who were potentially exposed to prevent spread.

While West Texas officials try to follow the same policies, the health care system is decentralized, meaning the contact tracing is done by the local health authority first, and then, if necessary, the state gets involved and possibly, assistance from the CDC.

Chris Van Deusen, spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services, said while the state is not necessarily struggling to contact trace, he acknowledges the extra manpower it requires.

“That also depends on the individuals talking with us and sharing that information. So that can be difficult, particularly when dealing with a more insular community. It can be difficult to make inroads, and that is why the local process is important,” Van Deusen said.

Experts say that as travel season ramps up and if Texas can’t seem to stop the spread, states nationwide should prepare themselves for what may come.

“The message to health departments is be ready, and schools need to think about this and government officials because this really does have the potential to grow beyond these three states,” Wells said.

Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.