All five members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation expressed outrage Thursday following U.S. House leadership’s move to block federal compensation for New Mexicans who suffered adverse health effects from nuclear testing or uranium mines — though exactly how the state’s federal lawmakers will continue the fight remains uncertain.

“I am not giving up on justice for New Mexicans and all those deeply impacted by radiation exposure and nuclear testing,” said Sen. Ben Ray Luján, who has introduced radiation exposure compensation bills in every Congress since he was first elected to the U.S. House in 2008. A Democrat, he sponsored its inclusion in the fiscal year 2024 defense

spending bill alongside Republican Sens. Mike Crapo of Idaho and Josh Hawley of Missouri.

“Over the course of this process, our support has only grown, and the fight doesn’t end here,” Luján continued.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 is a massive piece of federal legislation that sets forth appropriations and policies for all U.S. Department of Defense operations. The 2023 version of the bill allocated more than $800 billion for the department.

Originally, the bill expanded eligibility for compensation under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, offering up tens of thousands of dollars in compensation to residents of New Mexico, Colorado, Montana, Guam and Missouri — as well as those in some parts of Arizona, Nevada and Utah — who suffered the deleterious impacts of nuclear testing or uranium mines and who are not covered under the current program.

The proposal for expanded eligibility garnered broad bipartisan support, passing the Senate 61-37 in July.

But the GOP-controlled House removed those provisions from the act Wednesday, rendering New Mexicans — including those stricken with ailments from the radioactive fallout of the first atomic bomb — still ineligible for federal help unless it is reattached to the final bill.

Sen. Martin Heinrich called the change “shameful.”

“At the last minute and behind closed doors, Republican leadership stripped critical compensation for downwinders and uranium workers from the National Defense Authorization Act,” U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández said in a statement. “It is absolutely outrageous.”

“Generations of New Mexicans and their families have gotten sick and died from the radiation exposure and the lasting impacts of the Trinity Test,” said Luján, referring to the first-ever atomic bomb test in the New Mexico desert in 1945. “For New Mexico to have been ground zero for the first nuclear weapon — and left out of the original RECA program — is an injustice.”

Now the question for New Mexico’s congressional delegation is:

What can be done about it?

Hawley, whose state was also impacted by the U.S. government’s mishandling of uranium waste, vowed on X, formerly Twitter, to block the Senate from proceeding with the defense funding bill. New Mexico’s federal lawmakers haven’t committed to that approach, but all five promised not to give up on the fight — even if their precise plan of action remains unclear for now.

Valeria Ojeda-Avitia, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez, said he is committed to supporting RECA in House legislation or in future versions of the National Defense Authorization Act.

“I will not stop fighting until the United States recognizes what happened at the Trinity test site and the communities still impacted by it so many years later. We have a responsibility to make it right,” said U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury.