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new mexico
New Mexico Jury Orders Meta to Pay $375 Million for Endangering Kids
While the company plans to challenge the decision, the state's attorney general said the figure "should send a clear message to Big Tech executives that no company is beyond the reach of the law."
Mar 24, 2026
Democratic New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez and other child advocates on Tuesday celebrated a state jury's landmark verdict against Meta, despite the social media giant's plans to fight the decision requiring it to pay $375 million in civil penalties.
"The jury's verdict is a historic victory for every child and family who has paid the price for Meta's choice to put profits over kids' safety," said Torrez, who had accused the company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp of violating the state's Unfair Practices Act. "Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew. Today, the jury joined families, educators, and child safety experts in saying enough is enough."
The Associated Press highlighted that "the landmark decision comes after a nearly seven-week trial, and as jurors in a federal court in California have been sequestered in deliberations for more than a week about whether Meta and YouTube should be liable in a similar case."
Torrez said that "New Mexico is proud to be the first state to hold Meta accountable in court for misleading parents, enabling child exploitation, and harming kids. In the next phase of this legal proceeding, we will seek additional financial penalties and court-mandated changes to Meta's platforms that offer stronger protections for children."
"The substantial damages the jury ordered Meta to pay should send a clear message to Big Tech executives that no company is beyond the reach of the law," he added. "Policymakers and law enforcement officials across the country can help make this verdict a turning point in the fight for children's safety. This is a watershed moment for every parent concerned about what could happen to their kids when they go online—and this victory belongs to them."
Josh Golin, executive director of the nonprofit Fairplay, welcomed the verdict. He said in a statement that "we've known for years that Meta enables the sexual exploitation of children. Now, that has been proven by a jury."
"As an organization that fights to protect children from Big Tech's deadly business model, Fairplay thanks Attorney General Torrez for his leadership in taking Meta to court," Golin continued. "Between this case and the ongoing trial in Los Angeles, parents, survivors, and state officials are doing their part to hold Big Tech accountable. Now, it's time for our leaders in the US Congress to get off the sidelines and pass the Senate's version of the Kids Online Safety Act to force these companies to change their addictive and dangerous product designs."
As Common Dreams has reported, while a diverse coalition supports the Kids Online Safety Act, civil rights groups have also expressed concerns about the legislation. Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, warned last year that "the overbroad language in KOSA and similar legislation risks censoring everything from jokes and hyperbole to useful information about sex ed and suicide prevention."
Amid celebrations over the New Mexico jury's decision on Tuesday, Meta said in a statement that "we respectfully disagree with the verdict and will appeal. We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and are clear about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors or harmful content. We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online."
NBC News noted that "separately, Meta is facing thousands of lawsuits accusing it and other social media companies of intentionally designing their products to be addictive to young people, leading to a nationwide mental health crisis. Some of the lawsuits, which have been filed in both state and federal courts, seek damages in the tens of billions of dollars, according to Meta’s filings with financial regulators."
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Climate Week Is Here; Our Governors Are Still Siding with Polluters
Frontline communities are exposing blue state governors that sell themselves as climate leaders while favoring polluters.
Sep 23, 2025
I grew up in New Mexico, where oil rigs appear in every direction and wildfire smoke fills the summer air. For years, I’ve sat through state climate hearings and planning sessions, believing our leaders might finally act with courage. Instead, what I’ve seen is a machine built to protect industry and silence communities.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham sells New Mexico as a climate leader, but her record tells another story. This year alone, her administration advanced industry schemes like the Strategic Water Supply Act, moving forward with rules to recycle toxic fracking waste.
This comes in addition to leaving basic protections like a drilling setback law off the table and welcoming Wall Street giant Blackstone to place a bid to take over PNM, our largest utility in New Mexico—handing over our energy future to corporate profiteers.
This isn’t climate leadership. It’s industry power dressed up as progress—at the expense of our health, water, and future.
So here is our challenge to Governors Lujan Grisham, Shapiro, and Newsom: If you truly oppose Trump’s fossil fuel agenda, prove it.
Pennsylvania and California tell a similar story.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro brands himself as a pragmatic moderate. In reality, he green-lit new gas plants, advanced fossil fuel-powered data centers, and supported liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals—projects that lock in fossil fuel expansion while exposing Pennsylvanians to deadly risks.
Worse, his administration is backing legislation like HB 502 and SB 939 that strip municipalities of the power to reject harmful facilities, in direct violation of Pennsylvania’s constitutional right to clean air and water. Families already sick from fracking are being sacrificed so Shapiro can keep industry happy and court national credibility. That isn’t pragmatism. It’s siding with polluters over people.
Gov. Gavin Newsom positions himself as a global climate champion. But in California, frontline communities experience a different reality. Basic health protections like the oil drilling setback law remain under attack, while projects like the Sable Pipeline continue to threaten communities and ecosystems.
Newsom touts his “climate leadership” on the world stage, yet at home he delays, waters down, or sidesteps measures that would phase out fossil fuels. Recently, Democratic lawmakers—backed by Newsom—passed a “climate” package that extends California’s cap-and-trade system for another 15 years while also permitting new drilling. It’s yet another regulatory giveaway to Big Oil. California is sold as a model of climate action, but the truth is clear: Fossil fuel power still dictates the terms.
The pattern is undeniable: governors who pose as climate leaders while protecting fossil fuel interests. Their playbook is the same—adopt the language; sign onto climate alliances; and then push carbon capture, cap-and-trade systems, produced water, hydrogen, and LNG as “solutions.” These are not solutions. They are lifelines for oil and gas, designed to extend extraction.
This is not accidental. It is a deliberate political strategy—a blue-state echo of US President Donald Trump’s fossil fuel agenda. Yet the result is the same: communities poisoned, democracy sidelined, industry shielded. The message to frontline communities is clear: Our lives are expendable if they threaten the profits of fossil fuel companies.
That’s why this Climate Week in New York City, frontline communities from New Mexico, California, and Pennsylvania are coming together to expose the truth. Behind the speeches and pledges, our governors are siding with polluters. They cannot continue to market themselves as climate champions while advancing the fossil fuel agenda at home.
We know what real climate leadership looks like. A just transition—led by communities and workers, not corporations—can phase out fossil fuels, create union jobs, and protect public health. It means rejecting false solutions. It means putting water, air, and people before industry. It means confronting the political power of fossil fuels head-on.
As the 2026 gubernatorial races approach, young people like me are paying attention. We don’t just want new leaders. We demand leadership that stands up to polluters and delivers a future worth living in.
So here is our challenge to Governors Lujan Grisham, Shapiro, and Newsom: If you truly oppose Trump’s fossil fuel agenda, prove it. Stop greenwashing. Stop silencing frontline communities. Stop pushing industry scams dressed up as climate policy.
Because climate action without justice isn’t action—it is betrayal. And frontline communities are not backing down until we win the future we deserve.
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'Democratic Freedoms' Under Threat as Migrants Charged for Entering Trump Militarized Border Zone
"As presidential overreaches pile up, they underscore the urgent need for Congress and the courts to reassert their roles as checks on executive authority," said two experts at the Brennan Center for Justice.
Apr 30, 2025
At least 28 migrants who crossed into the U.S. over the southern border could face up to a year in detention and $100,000 in fines after being charged Monday not only with "illegal entry" but also with violating "security regulations"—the result of U.S. President Donald Trump's transformation of the border into a 170-mile-long "National Defense Area."
As Common Dreams reported last month, the White House has pushed to create a "buffer zone" patrolled by U.S. troops along a stretch of the southern border in New Mexico, with soldiers empowered to immediately detain anyone who "trespasses" in the 60-foot-wide area before handing them over to Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
The Washington Post reported that the migrants were apprehended on a route that has been used for years by people entering the U.S., and were accused in court filings of violating "the order issued on April 18, 2025, by the U.S. Army Garrison Fort Huachuca military commander designating the New Mexico National Defense Areas, also known as the Roosevelt Reservation, as both a restricted area and a controlled area under Army Regulation 190-13."
Carlos Ibarra, a court-appointed attorney for the migrants facing charges, told the Post that the government was "piling on" by adding the security violation charge, and said that "if these folks had $100,000, they wouldn't be coming over here."
The arrests came after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made an appearance at the border last week, saying in a video posted on the Pentagon's social media accounts, "This may as well be a military base."
"Any illegal attempting to enter that zone is entering a military base," he said. "You add up the charges of what you can be charged with, misdemeanors and felonies, you could be looking up to 10 years in prison when prosecuted."
Ordinarily people who are charged for crossing the border without authorization have faced a potential six-month jail term and up to $5,000 in fines.
The area was turned into a de facto military base when Trump signed an executive order earlier this month giving the Pentagon jurisdiction over the Roosevelt Reservation, saying in a memo that the southern border "is under attack from a variety of threats" and requires a more direct security role for the U.S. military.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, apprehensions of migrants by U.S. Border Patrol sank to just 7,000 in March, the fewest in at least 25 years.
The memo creating a military installation at the border was designed to give federal troops a "legitimate military reason" to apprehend, search, and detain troops without violating the Posse Comitatus Act and without Trump having to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, the Brennan Center for Justice explained in a blog post on Monday.
The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits federal armed forces from engaging in civilian law enforcement without the approval of Congress. The Insurrection Act provides an exception to that law, as does a loophole in the Posse Comitatus Act called the "military purpose doctrine." Trump's advisers have so far recommended against invoking the Insurrection Act, which authorizes the president to deploy military forces inside the United States to enforce the law in certain situations.
Trump's memo allowing the military to "act as a de facto border police force," wrote Elizabeth Goitein and Joseph Nunn at the Brennan Center, "could have alarming implications for democratic freedoms."
"It continues a pattern of the president stretching his emergency powers past their limits to usurp the role of Congress and bypass legal rights," they wrote. "He has misused a law meant to address economic emergencies to set tariffs on every country in the world. He declared a fake 'energy emergency' to promote fossil fuel production. And he dusted off a centuries-old wartime authority to deport Venezuelan immigrants, without due process, to a Salvadoran prison notorious for human rights violations."
"As presidential overreaches pile up, they underscore the urgent need for Congress and the courts to reassert their roles as checks on executive authority," wrote Goitein and Nunn.
Along with concerns about the legality of Trump's move, Goitein and Nunn noted that troops "are trained to fight and destroy an enemy; they're generally not trained for domestic law enforcement." Empowering them to engage with civilians now could make it easier for the administration to "justify uses of the military in the U.S. interior in the future."
"Asking them to do law enforcement's job creates risks to migrants, U.S. citizens who may inadvertently trespass on federal lands at the border, and the soldiers themselves," they wrote.
Rebecca Sheff, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of New Mexico, wrote last week that Trump's creation of a military installation on public border land "represents a dangerous erosion of the constitutional principle that the military should not be policing civilians."
"By authorizing service members to detain, search, and conduct 'crowd control,' these new authorities undermine our state's values of dignity, respect, and community," said Sheff. "We don't want militarized zones where border residents—including U.S. citizens—face potential prosecution simply for being in the wrong place. This isn't how we want to be in relation with our neighbors. This dangerous expansion of military authorities threatens both our civil liberties and the cultural fabric that makes our borderlands unique."
Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU National Security Project, also described potential impacts on U.S. citizens who live in border areas.
In addition to endangering migrants who cross the border, Shamsi wrote, Trump's actions "are worsening the conditions under which civilian border communities live."
"Our southern border is home to approximately 19 million people, in addition to the regular business and trade commuters who come across the border every day," wrote Shamsi. "The new policy has serious implications for border residents living under this expanded militarized zone, which includes cities like San Diego, California; Nogales, Arizona; El Paso, Texas and other heavily populated, thriving communities. People in these areas could now face federal prosecution for trespassing if they unintentionally walk or drive onto a designated 'national defense area.'"
Shamsi warned that while Trump has not yet invoked the Insurrection Act, "his administration continues to invest in the theater of war," and called on Congress "to insist on oversight for these expanded actions... and to call for safeguards and transparency to protect border residents from escalating military control over their daily lives."
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