Texas house speaker directs committee to study annexing parts of New Mexico

New Mexico governor calls order ‘not serious’ as south-eastern counties note divisions with Democratic Santa Fe Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox The speaker of Texas’s house of representatives says he is entertaining the idea of expanding the state by annexing some New Mexico counties. Dustin Burrows, who has been the chamber’s speaker since 2025, ordered a state legislative committee on 26 March to look into the legal and economic options to add “one or more contiguous counties” of New Mexico to the state of Texas. The office of the New Mexico governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, and some of her fellow state Democratic politicians summarily dismissed the idea, with Lujan Grisham’s office saying it is “not a serious proposal”. Burrows set off the controversy by issuing an order to establish a new committee to study whether counties in the south-eastern part of New Mexico could be annexed. For years, south-eastern New Mexico counties have pointed to political differences between themselves and the state’s capital, Democratic-led Santa Fe. In January, representatives from one of those counties, Lea county, introduced a legislative amendment t