New Mexico’s Leaders Had a Chance to Explain COVID. So Far, They’ve Chosen Silence.

On Monday, New Mexico Madness published a public memorandum to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Attorney General Raul Torrez, asking six straightforward questions about how New Mexico handled COVID lockdowns, mandates, and cash‑lottery incentives in light of newly released federal pandemic work notes and Dr. Anthony Fauci’s recent Fifth Amendment testimony. New Mexicans who lived those policies are still waiting for real answers.

Recent federal records show that Fauci’s pandemic‑era notes were recovered from government computer systems and produced to the U.S. Senate as official government documents, not private diaries. In his latest hearing, Fauci repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment rights rather than explain those notes or reconcile them with his public statements. That combination—official work files and refusal to testify—raises obvious questions for any state that leaned heavily on his authority during COVID.

New Mexico did more than lean. It built an entire regime around that authority.

What New Mexico Made People Live Through

New Mexico’s early public‑health orders were among the most aggressive in the country.

• A March 2020 order prohibited “mass gatherings,” closed all non‑essential businesses to in‑person operations, and directed residents to remain in their homes except for essential outings. Restaurants, bars, malls, gyms, theaters, flea markets, and many other venues were ordered closed for regular use.
• Hotels and other lodging were capped at 50 percent capacity, while “typical business environments” not engaged in essential services were told to limit operations and minimize contact.
• These restrictions remained a defining feature of daily life until mid‑2021, when the state finally retired its county‑by‑county system and lifted commercial and day‑to‑day restrictions on July 1.

New Mexicans complied—or tried to. They watched livelihoods disappear, funerals and weddings stripped down or postponed, churches and schools restricted to tiny numbers, and children pushed into disrupted or remote learning with no real say in the trade.

Then came the incentives.

In May 2021, New Mexico launched “Vax 2 the Max,” a $10 million vaccine sweepstakes funded with federal stimulus dollars. The program offered weekly $250,000 regional prizes and a $5 million statewide grand prize, along with prize‑wheel events where people getting vaccinated could win stacks of lottery tickets. The state also rolled out $100 payments tied to specific vaccination windows.

Meanwhile, medicinal cannabis dispensaries and liquor outlets were explicitly treated as “essential,” allowed to keep operating under the orders even as many other small businesses were forced to close or slash operations.

The message was clear: your business might be non‑essential, but your compliance is.

Six Questions New Mexicans Asked

Our memorandum asked six basic questions on the record:

1. Does the Governor still stand by the major COVID emergency orders and mandates as they were presented at the time? Or, in light of the federal work files and testimony, does she now see any of those decisions differently?

2. How did federal guidance shape New Mexico’s choices? New Mexicans deserve a public accounting of how federal advice—including Fauci’s—translated into specific state decisions on lockdowns, masking, school restrictions, and vaccine requirements for health‑care and state workers.

3. Was it appropriate to pay and gamble people into vaccination? New Mexico used $100 payments, a $10 million sweepstakes, and prize‑wheel promotions to push shots. We asked whether the Governor still believes those tactics were ethical.

4. Were the rules applied consistently and fairly? Residents were ordered to stay home, close businesses, and forgo normal life, yet many saw looser enforcement in other public settings.

5. Will there be any independent review of New Mexico’s COVID response? Serious leadership should be willing to identify what worked, what failed, and what must not be repeated.

6. Does the Attorney General see any basis for legal or civil‑rights review? Other states’ attorneys general have challenged mandates or investigated vaccine‑related incentive schemes; New Mexicans deserve to know whether their AG considers the matter closed.

These are not “gotcha” questions. They are the minimum that people who lived under these policies should be able to ask in 2026.

What the Evidence Says Now

Hindsight doesn’t erase COVID’s danger. It does sharpen the picture.

On distancing and lockdowns:

• Reviews of social‑distancing measures find that combinations of stay‑at‑home orders, gathering bans, and closures did reduce spread, especially early. But they also emphasize that benefits depend heavily on timing and that blunt, prolonged measures produce serious harms—economic loss, delayed care, educational damage, and erosion of trust.
• The celebrated “6‑foot rule” was always softer science than the slogans suggested. Analyses of school reopening found no meaningful difference in case rates between 3‑foot and 6‑foot distancing when masking and other measures were in place, undermining the idea that longer school‑based distancing was a clear, evidence‑backed necessity.

On vaccines:

• The data still show that COVID vaccines significantly reduce severe disease, hospitalization, and death, especially in older and high‑risk groups.
• But current CDC/ACIP guidance explicitly frames vaccination for younger, healthy adults and children as a shared decision with more marginal benefit and acknowledges rare but real risks such as myocarditis, pericarditis, and, for earlier adenovirus products, serious clotting syndromes.
• Ethics reviews now warn that pushing mandates and strong pressure into low‑risk populations can cause more societal harm than good by damaging trust, widening inequalities, and undermining future public‑health efforts.

In simpler terms: the scientific picture was more nuanced—and more fluid—than New Mexicans were told, especially for healthy adults and kids.

Cost–Benefit, Without Consent

Lockdowns, mandates, and vaccines were framed as a straightforward cost–benefit proposition: accept sweeping restrictions and injections, and in return, gain protection. But that “trade” was never voluntary. The costs were mandatory; the benefits were uncertain and shifting.

• Stay‑at‑home orders and closures reduced transmission, but they also destroyed livelihoods, deepened economic strain, and delayed care for non‑COVID conditions. Those costs were imposed without meaningful consent or choice.
• The vaccine narrative moved from “stop the spread” to “prevent infection” to “reduce severe disease for a few months until the next variant,” yet New Mexico still tied employment and strong social pressure to injections for many low‑risk workers and students.
• For many healthy adults and children, the infection‑plus‑recovery path ultimately provided durable immunity with fewer unknowns than repeated boosters, raising a fair question about why the state felt justified mandating a fluid, evolving product as a condition of work or schooling.

The core issue isn’t whether some measures helped—many did, especially for the vulnerable. It’s that New Mexicans were never given a serious say in how much cost they were willing to bear, particularly when their personal risk was low.

Double Standards: Businesses, Schools, and the Streets

New Mexicans also watched clear double standards emerge.

• Liquor stores and medicinal cannabis dispensaries were explicitly classified as “essential businesses,” allowed to operate (often with curbside adjustments) while other retailers and small businesses were forced shut.
• Schools were turned into enforcement arms—tying attendance to ever‑shifting rules, testing regimes, and in some settings vaccination expectations—while many parents struggled to see clear evidence that those extra burdens on healthy kids added much beyond what basic measures already achieved.
• In 2020, large protests over police violence filled streets across the country. Many public‑health voices publicly supported those protests as justified, even as the same public was told not to gather for worship, funerals, graduations, or to keep small businesses alive.

Whatever one thinks of the issues at stake, the message to ordinary New Mexicans was unmistakable: some risks were acceptable because they aligned with favored causes or categories; their daily lives and livelihoods were not.

Other States’ Attorneys General Are at Least Fighting

New Mexico is not the only state wrestling with the pandemic’s aftermath.

• Florida and other states have used their attorneys general to challenge federal vaccine mandates and reshape the mandate landscape, framing the issue as one of personal choice and parental rights.
• Texas has launched wide‑sweeping investigations into alleged unlawful financial incentives around childhood vaccinations, targeting what it describes as “bribes” that push shots parents believe are unnecessary or unsafe.
• Democratic AG coalitions—including New Mexico’s—have gone to court in other contexts to defend vaccine schedules and oppose reductions in childhood immunization recommendations.

In short: where other AGs are willing to litigate both for and against different aspects of vaccine policy, New Mexico’s AG has shown no comparable interest in examining how this state’s pandemic choices affected residents’ rights, livelihoods, and trust.

Protection or Historic Overreach?

All of this brings us back to the core question.

• New Mexico ordered residents to stay home, closed entire sectors of the economy, and used emergency powers to control basic aspects of daily life.
• It tied work and education to vaccines whose guidance, dosing, and product line‑up kept changing, even for low‑risk groups, while rare but real risks were still being sorted out.
• It paid people and dangled jackpots to encourage compliance, with lotteries and incentives aimed heavily at those least able to turn down quick cash.
• It enforced rules ruthlessly at some doors and far more loosely at others.

Was all of this truly “for the protection of New Mexicans,” or did it cross the line into the most far‑reaching civil‑rights intrusion in modern state history?

Reasonable people can argue the details. But in 2026, with federal work files on the table and the nation’s most prominent COVID official hiding behind the Fifth, the question can no longer be waved away as “excessive.” The cost–benefit balance was real. The lack of choice was real. The double standards were real.

New Mexico’s leaders were given a chance to clear the air. So far, they’ve chosen silence. That choice, too, now belongs on the record.