Just one day after the midterms, and with less than two months left in office, Democratic New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham turned heads after “shockingly aligning” herself with President Donald Trump in the waning days of her administration.
Despite vowing not to in August 2025, Lujan Grisham announced Wednesday — just one day after Democrats’ historic midterm victory — that New Mexico would be opting in to Trump’s Federal Scholarship Tax Credit program, a controversial school voucher program that critics say diverts tax dollars to private and religious education institutions.
In a joint statement, New Mexico education union leaders Whitney Holland and Bethany Jarrell said Lujan Grisham’s decision was “nothing short of a betrayal” to public school students and families. The two unions Holland and Jarrell represent have previously described Trump’s federal education program as a “voucher scheme” that promises “tax credits to well-off individuals who can donate thousands of dollars,” Source New Mexico reported.
Journalist Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, a New Mexico native, issued a particularly blistering condemnation of Lujan Grisham for “shockingly aligning herself with one of Trump’s worst policies” in an analysis published Friday on her Substack.
“What Lujan Grisham’s move tells us all, though, and loudly, is that ‘vote blue no matter who’ is not enough to get the nation back on track,” Valdes-Rodriguez wrote.
“We must also hold all opportunistic, conniving, narcissistic, vindictive, neoliberalist billionaire-loving Democrats accountable for the many ways in which they have betrayed, are betraying and will likely continue to betray the populace that installed them.”
Created under Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit program will let taxpayers claim a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit of up to $1,700 starting Jan. 1, 2027, for cash donations to scholarship-granting organizations that fund K-12 expenses such as private school tuition.
The credit applies only to organizations in states that opt in and submit a list of approved groups to the IRS. Because the program has no aggregate cap, its cost depends on how many people claim it, and the Joint Committee on Taxation projected $25.9 billion in lost federal revenue over 10 years.
“So, yes. Celebrate the leftward shift of the nation. But let’s never lose sight of those among the Democrats whose primary allegiance is to their own fragile, enormous and insatiable egos,” Valdes-Rodriguez wrote.
“That type of psychology sucks when it’s Donald Trump hurting his own people to make himself feel better, and it hurts when it's Michelle Lujan Grisham hurting the children of New Mexico.”