Progress made on wildfires, but high winds threaten efforts - By Margery A. Beck And Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
Fire crews took advantage of a break in the weather in their battle to contain large fires in the West and Plains states, but they fear the return of stronger winds Tuesday could spread the flames further.
A southwestern Nebraska wildfire that killed a former volunteer fire chief last week, injured several firefighters and destroyed several homes was about half contained, the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency said.
The fire, dubbed the Road 702 Fire, has burned about 70 square miles of mostly grasslands and farmland near the Nebraska-Kansas state line and was estimated to be about 47% contained.
Terry Krasko, a spokesman for the Rocky Mountain Complex Incident Management Team, said Tuesday afternoon that high winds had blown in but that firefighters were able to contain the fire within the existing perimeter. He said there were no new injuries or reports of more destruction.
"It's quite a bit calmer," Krasko said from Cambridge, Nebraska. "I'm not saying it's out. There's still a lot of heat and we'll be working for several days to cool it down, but for the most part the fire's stayed within its previous footprint."
After a break in the weather Monday, the National Weather Service issued a red flag warning Tuesday for the area of mostly prairie and farmland, with temperatures expected to be warmer, humidity dropping to as low at 15% and winds gusting up to 35 mph.
Meanwhile in the West, crews continued working to corral blazes in northern New Mexico that have charred a combined 225 square miles over recent days. Evacuations remain in place and several small villages were threatened. Authorities have started to survey the damage but have yet to tally the number of homes and other buildings that were destroyed.
The largest of the wildfires has blackened more than 94 square miles in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Crews there were bracing for the weather to take a turn later this week with more hot, dry and windy conditions forecast for the area.
San Miguel County Deputy Manager Jesus Romero described the situation as touch-and-go as the winds cranked up Tuesday afternoon.
"Everybody is eager to get back home. It's still not really safe right now," he said. "There's plenty of forest still to be burned, plenty of fuels and it's plenty dry and we're dealing with the wind. Some places are a little bit better than others, but right now it's just too risky."
In Arizona, crews are working to encircle and mop up a 33-square-mile wildfire on the outskirts of Flagstaff that burned 30 homes and additional structures last week. Aircraft helped firefighters battling a different major fire that continued to grow, burning 10 square miles in the Prescott National Forest in north-central Arizona.
Four new fires were reported Monday, two in Colorado and one in Oklahoma and Virginia, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Nationally, 11 large fires have burned about 342 square miles in six states, the agency reported Tuesday. More than 3,500 wildland firefighters and support personnel are assigned to those fires.
___
Montoya Bryan reported from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Associated Press writer Paul Davenport contributed from Phoenix. Associated Press reporter Margaret Stafford reported from Kansas City, Missouri.
Native American leaders push for Chaco area protections - By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
Native American leaders said Tuesday they were excited about a series of meetings this week with land managers as the Biden administration considers prohibiting new oil and gas development on hundreds of square miles of federal land in northwestern New Mexico that several tribes consider sacred.
Top officials with the All Pueblo Council of Governors said during a virtual briefing that they will reiterate their support for the proposal during tribal consultations. The meetings are part of the public outreach being done by the U.S. Interior Department as it considers the withdrawal from nearly 550 square miles around Chaco Culture National Historical Park.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who is from Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, cited the cultural significance of the area surrounding the national park when she first proposed the 20-year withdrawal during a visit in November. She has said many tribes in the Southwest, including her own, have a connection to the area.
Randall Vicente, the governor of Acoma Pueblo, said tribes were ready to band together to ensure more permanent protections are adopted for lands outside park boundaries.
He said the remnants of stone dwellings, ceremonial kivas, pottery sherds, petroglyphs, shrines and the other cultural resources that dot the high desert around Chaco Canyon were left there by the ancestors of today's pueblo people.
"Together, this area is one irreplaceable, sacred, interconnected landscape unlike any other. We remain tied to those resources," he said, describing them as "the footprints and fingerprints of our ancestors."
A World Heritage site, Chaco park is thought to be the center of what was once a hub of Indigenous civilization.
The Navajo Nation is among the Native American tribes that support increased protections, but top tribal officials have called for a smaller area around Chaco to be set aside as a way to limit the economic impact on families who rely on revenues from oil and gas leasing.
In a nod to the Navajo concerns, the pueblo leaders said the withdrawal would not affect development on land overseen by the Navajo Nation or individual Navajo allottee owners. However, allottees have argued that taking federal parcels off the board would leave them landlocked and curb the interest of oil companies in leasing their land.
Pueblo leaders said Tuesday their tribes continue to work on an ethnographic study that they hope will provide more insight for federal managers on cultural resources in northwestern New Mexico.
Ben Chavarria, historic preservation officer for Santa Clara Pueblo, said Chaco's influence can still be seen today in the pueblos' governance systems, dances, songs, prayers and other customs.
Describing its essence as independent and alive, he said the greater Chaco region is "an area of such immense cultural and traditional importance to the pueblo that it cannot be conveyed in words."
Mayor nominates APD superintendent of police reform - Albuquerque Journal, KUNM News
Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller has announced his nomination for the city’s superintendent of police reform.
The Albuquerque Journal reports the mayor announced the nomination of LaTesha Watson Monday.
If confirmed by the City Council, Watson would co-lead the Albuquerque Police Department alongside Chief Harold Medina.
The superintendent position, established last year, oversees internal affairs and reform initiatives – including APD’s settlement agreement with the Department of Justice – along with officer discipline and police academy training.
Watson would fill the position left vacant by the December retirement of interim superintendent Sylvester Stanley.
Watson would bring 25 years of experience to APD. She previously worked in Sacramento, C.A., as the director of the Office of Public Safety Accountability. Before that, she was a police chief in Nevada and deputy chief in Texas, according to her resume obtained by the Journal.
The science behind why schools should be removing COVID-19 from the air - Austin Fisher, Source New Mexico
Paloma Beamer is an environmental engineer, scientist, and former president of the International Society of Exposure Science. She’s also the mother of a public school student.
In the pandemic’s third year, it is still not widely understood that coronavirus is airborne, Beamer said, and that lack of understanding makes it hard to limit people’s exposure.
The public should care about indoor air quality in schools because experts who study the indoor air environment have worried about it for a long time, she said, and documented the benefits of improving the quality of indoor air.
For example, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory almost a decade ago found a strong association between carbon dioxide levels and student absenteeism in California schools, and that schools with poor ventilation were more likely to have students who are absent.
“We think the reason is that when you start to re-breathe air, you get a higher concentration of CO2 in a room,” said Nissa Patterson, a former New Mexico Department of Health employee with a master’s degree in children and family public health. Basic biology tells us that CO2 is not great for the brain, she said.
Add in COVID, and if ventilation were to be improved, there would not need to be such a big reliance on masking and testing, Beamer said.
Beamer points to the government’s hierarchy of controls, which is used to determine the effectiveness of different kinds of health and safety interventions. The most effective controls are at the top, while the least effective are at the bottom of the hierarchy from the Occupational Health and Safety Administration.
The best option is elimination, according to OSHA. That’s physically removing the hazard from the workplace, and it includes ventilation.
“Opening doors and windows is always better,” Beamer said. “I think if you really handled the ventilation as much as possible on the front end, and having kids wear masks when the rates are higher, it can help a lot.”
At the bottom is personal protective equipment like masks, the least effective kind of intervention.
“If you start at the bottom with all the controls that rely on people doing them correctly, like wearing a respirator or things, then there’s more likely to be human error and issues,” Beamer said.
That’s why Beamer has been arguing for ventilation as a key to reducing transmission in schools since the start of the pandemic.
“We need to understand that whatever you can do to eliminate the source as close as possible to the source, and to address it systematically — rather than relying on individual people to do something — is gonna have the best benefit for everyone,” she said.
Beamer’s work is cited in a June 2020 report by the Healthy Buildings program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Joseph Allen and co-authors were some of the first scientists to establish that coronavirus can infect even people who haven’t had close contact with the infectious person, through long-range airborne spread.
They went on to publish research recommending building managers improve air ventilation by bringing in clean outdoor air and enhancing filtration to remove viral particles from indoor air. Schools can also use CO2 monitors to track air buildup in different classrooms, Beamer said.
“I think for this group of scientists, we’ve been saying the same thing the whole time,” Beamer said.
It’s been hard to get traction with policymakers on this point for a long time, she said. Efforts generally have gone instead to sanitization of surfaces.
Hundreds of scientists wrote to the World Health Organization in July 2020 telling them that COVID is airborne. But the organization did not recognize airborne spread as a key way people are infected until April 2021, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention didn’t officially acknowledge it until a month later.
“I think that there’s a lot of old infrastructure that if we took the time to invest in it for COVID right now, because it’s acute, we’ll have much more longstanding benefits to our school,” Beamer said.
Those benefits would extend beyond COVID to other respiratory illnesses like the flu, Beamer said, and even to things as basic as improving people’s cognition by making sure they have enough oxygen indoors.
“There’s a lot of work that has been done to show the importance of indoor air quality, it’s just I think we’re seen as a little niche science that has been trying to jump up and down for 30 years,” Beamer said.
NO FOLLOW THROUGH
While New Mexico required schools to make improvements to indoor air quality, there is no systematic tracking of whether those schools actually installed new filters or better air systems to be able to, for example, keep fresh air moving through the building.
In response to questions from Source New Mexico, the New Mexico Public Education Department said it does not collect data on which schools have installed high-quality filters, which ones have actually improved ventilation in their buildings, or even which ones have written policies in place to govern those improvements.
The only known database of school facilities in New Mexico is maintained by a separate agency, the Public School Facilities Authority.
It contains about 6 million data points on every piece of equipment in every school across the state, said Matica Casias, the authority’s executive director, like the quality of the building’s roof or foundation. But the database is internal to the facilities authority and not accessible to the public.
PED Finance and Operations Director Antonio Ortiz also sits on the Public School Capital Outlay Council, which oversees PSFA.
Ortiz said the database ranks every school in New Mexico by greatest need based on the age of the building or systems inside of it and how much space the building has, among other criteria. The top 150 are eligible to apply for state funding, he said, which could pay for remodeling or building an entirely new facility.
There is nothing in the database that accounts for indoor air quality, Ortiz and Casias said.
That information could include which schools have installed the right filters for catching viruses, which schools have heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems that are compatible with those filters, or which schools have systems that would still function with doors and windows open — a basic but very important part of ventilation.
Unfortunately, that is the reality of environmental and occupational health, Beamer said.
“We have great policies written, but when you actually look at the enforcement, the follow through of them — we’ve had OSHA for 50 years, but yet look at what it’s done to workers during the pandemic,” Beamer said. “It’s sad because it’s like, ‘Oh that sounds great,’ but then there’s no follow through on keeping track. That’s just mind-boggling.”
Protections sought for Western bird linked to piñon forests - By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
Collecting piñon nuts has been tradition for Native American and Hispanic families in the Southwestern U.S. for generations.
But environmentalists are concerned that without the pinyon jay — a very social bird that essentially plants the next generation of trees by stashing away the seeds — it's possible the piñon forests of New Mexico, Nevada and other Western states could face another reproductive hurdle in the face of climate change, persistent drought and more severe wildfires.
The Washington, D.C.-based group Defenders of Wildlife filed a petition Monday with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the bird under the Endangered Species Act, saying the once common species plays an integral role in the high desert ecosystem.
The group points to research that shows pinyon jay numbers have declined by an estimated 80% over the last five decades, a rate even faster than the greater sage grouse.
Patricia Estrella, who represents the group in New Mexico, said that while population declines are well documented, the exact cause remains unclear as multiple threats are at play.
"Not only is it difficult to tease apart the effects of interacting factors, together they create even greater threats through positive feedbacks," Estrella wrote in the petition. "Successful conservation of the pinyon jay requires addressing and ameliorating multiple threats simultaneously."
Piñon-juniper forests cover more than 75,000 square miles in the United States, and wildlife managers in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, and New Mexico already have classified the bird as a species of greatest conservation need.
Nearly 60% of the jay's remaining population can be found in New Mexico and Nevada, but its range also includes central Oregon and parts of California, Utah, Wyoming, Oklahoma and Mexico's northern Baja California.
Pale blue with a white bib, the pinyon jay typically mates for life. When food is abundant, they can nest more than once a year.
Their home range can be large, with the birds fanning out over hundreds of miles when food is scarce.
Research highlighted in the petition notes that more piñon and juniper woodlands are being cleared around the West for housing developments, agriculture, and solar and wind energy projects, and as land managers look to reduce the threat of wildfire.
The Biden administration's infrastructure push includes $500 million over five years for prescribed burns, $500 million for mechanical tree harvesting and another $500 million for clearing fuel breaks. Defenders of Wildlife and others are concerned that managers will be able to move ahead with many projects without public input or more detailed environmental reviews.
The petition states that studies documenting the effects of woodland reduction on pinyon jay populations are few, but some scientists are recommending that land managers avoid nesting and foraging sites.
When the piñon crop is good, jays start the morning by eating seeds. Then they collect seeds, congregate in the tree tops and depart together to caching areas that are usually open spaces where less snow accumulates in the winter.
Research has shown they have excellent memory and recover more cached seeds than other types of jays or nutcrackers, but the seeds that go uncollected are left to germinate.
According to the petition, the loss of piñon trees would disproportionately affect Native American and Hispanic communities in the Southwest. Each fall, families make the trek to the forest to harvest the seeds.
The nuts are usually roasted and salted, but their popularity now extends beyond Southwest cuisine, including pancakes, brownies, pizza and salad toppings.
It will be up to the Fish and Wildlife Service to determine whether there's enough information in the petition to warrant further review. That could take months.
Police release videos in probe of Baldwin film-set shooting - By Morgan Lee Associated Press
Law enforcement officials released a trove of video evidence Monday in the ongoing investigation of a fatal October shooting of a cinematographer by actor and producer Alec Baldwin on the set of a Western movie.
Data files released by the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office include lapel camera recordings taken by a commanding officer as he arrives at a film-set ranch where medics are attending to the wounded, with an evacuation helicopter whirring overhead. A search for the gun leads to the movie production's armorer, who breaks down in tears.
Other videos show investigators as they debriefing Baldwin within hours of the fatal shooting, talking with him inside a compact office — and rehearsal clips that show Baldwin in costume as he practices a quick-draw maneuver with a gun.
Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza said in a statement that the investigation by his agency remains open and ongoing as it awaits the results of ballistics and forensic analysis from the FBI as well as studies of fingerprint and DNA.
"The sheriff's office is releasing all files associated with our ongoing investigation," he said in the statement. Those files also include photos of ammunition from the set and examination reports.
At a ranch on the outskirts of Santa Fe on Oct. 21, 2021, Baldwin was pointing a gun at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins when it went off, killing Hutchins and wounding the director, Joel Souza. They had been inside a small church during setup for filming a scene.
In a video taken by police later that day, Baldwin makes a few frantic calls as he awaits a meeting with law enforcement officials.
"You have no idea how unbelievable this is and how strange this is," he says over the phone.
Under questioning by two investigators, Baldwin pieces together what happened as the gun went off, still apparently unaware that Hutchins would die and shocked to learn that he had been holding a gun loaded with live ammunition. Baldwin said the gun should have been empty for a rehearsal with no filming.
"I take the gun out slowly. I turn, I cock the pistol," Baldwin says. "Bang, it goes off. She (Hutchins) hits the ground. She goes down. He (Souza) goes down screaming."
Souza recounted his experience from a hospital emergency room, where he was treated for a bullet wound and questioned by investigators.
Souza described "a very loud bang, and then it felt like someone kicked me in the shoulder." He knew Hutchins was wounded too and asked if she was OK.
In the Oct. 21 video, Baldwin repeatedly says there were no prior problems of any kind with firearms on the set of "Rust."
Those statements conflict with more recent findings by state occupational safety regulators, who last week issued the maximum possible fine of nearly $137,000 against the "Rust" film production company.
New Mexico's Occupational Health and Safety Bureau said Rust Movie Productions must pay $136,793, and distributed a scathing narrative of safety failures in violation of standard industry protocols, including testimony that production managers took limited or no action to address two misfires on set prior to the fatal shooting.
The bureau also documented gun safety complaints from crew members that went unheeded and said weapons specialists were not allowed to make decisions about additional safety training. Rust Movie Productions has indicated it will dispute the findings and sanction.
Baldwin said in a December interview with ABC News that he was on set pointing the gun at Hutchins at her instruction when it went off without his pulling the trigger.
Lujan Grisham calls on local governments to ban fireworks sales around New Mexico – By Marisa Demarco, Source New Mexico
As at least 20 wildfires consumed thousands of acres this weekend, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced that she would ask local governments to temporarily ban the sale of fireworks around the state.
State government can ban the use of fireworks — and it has — but under the law, banning sales is something that has to happen at a local level.
“I don’t have the power to prevent those sales,” Lujan Grisham emphasized at a news briefing on Saturday afternoon.
This is not a new consideration in New Mexico, and previous state officials — regardless of political affiliation — grappled with their inability to restrict fireworks sales statewide as New Mexico’s fire conditions grew more dangerous in recent years.
The governor issued an executive order Monday urging municipalities and counties to ban the sale of fireworks.
“While many of us like to celebrate with fireworks, no momentary display is worth causing a wildfire that could threaten the lives and property of your neighbors,” Lujan Grisham said.
If 2020 and 2021 in Albuquerque were any indication, celebrating with fireworks during the pandemic can often extend well beyond the Fourth of July holiday.
Local governments are facing great need as high winds on Friday accelerated wildfire spread in 16 of the state’s 33 counties by Saturday. “I do not want to minimize how dangerous the situation is, and how dramatic it is,” Lujan Grisham said. “Even with the weather and all of the brave men and women who are on the front lines of all of these fires, it’s going to be a tough summer.”
That’s why the state has implemented bans and is looking for more from local governments, she explained. And there are ways to compensate businesses that would lose their annual income if the sale of fireworks were banned, the governor added.
Fire officials also said that they don’t yet know what or who ignited the fires and they were somewhat behind in their investigations because there were so many at once.
But the exceptionally dry environment and high winds in New Mexico are why they spread so quickly beyond the state’s capacity to fight them alone.
Though drought conditions in the state can vary within a year, the overall picture shows that the last two decades here have been the driest in 1,200 years, according to climate scientists who just released a study. They call it a “megadrought” and say it intensified rapidly in 2020 and 2021.
That plus higher temperatures in New Mexico — both a result of human-caused climate change — increase the “severity, frequency, and extent of wildfires,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
There are severe drought conditions in 93% of the state, the governor’s news release indicated, with conditions escalating into the “extreme” or “exceptional” designations in 70%.
Residents staying in Mora are running out of food, official says – By Shaun Griswold, Source New Mexico
Mother Nature showed some sympathy to the people of Northern New Mexico by dropping a smattering of snow over massive wildfires, sparing villages and giving fire crews some leverage in slowing the massive Calf Canyon-Hermit’s Peak fire.
But it didn’t make too much of a dent in extinguishing the flames up north, and cities and villages remain under mandatory evacuation orders, with more issued Monday. The Calf Canyon and Hermit’s Peak fire had burned more than 56,000 acres by Monday morning and only 12% of it was contained.
“It wasn’t enough,” said Mora County Commissioner Veronica Serna. “It was an exciting blessing for a moment, but once the moisture dries up the fire will pick up again.”
The snow that fell in Mora County is melting, and officials are worried about the weather forecast that is predicting more wind in the area by the end of the week.
Sunday afternoon, state fire officials estimated that the entire village of Mora would be destroyed by the fire. An estimated 300 people remained despite the mandatory evacuation order.
Due to the snow, Serna was able to visit those people this morning with breakfast from Teresa’s Tamales. The restaurant is located in Cleveland, N.M., a few miles north of Mora proper but within the fire zone.
“We have to stay and help out,” said owner Teresa Olivas. “We are feeding the firefighters, police and the people that are staying. We have to.”
Food is becoming an issue for the people that are choosing to stay. One, there isn’t a grocery store nearby, and the gas stations that do sell food are closed. Mora County residents shop in Las Vegas, Taos or Española. But if they go out to get supplies, those choosing to stay won’t be allowed back through a New Mexico State Police blockade, Serna said.
“They thought the snow would help, but it won’t, and it’s so smokey,” she said Monday evening moments before heading into the heart of the fire zone to deliver dinner for residents.
Along with the Mora County Sheriff’s Office, Serna and Olivas are committed to feeding the community breakfast and dinner as long as they can.
“They have run out of groceries,” Serna said. “All of our resources are shut down.”
The fire is now also receiving federal help to combat the flames and create a barrier away from the homes and the watershed in the area. The two fires combined this weekend when wind conditions hit historic levels.
Justices hear fight over aslyum-seekers waiting in Mexico - By Mark Sherman Associated Press
The Biden administration is seeking the Supreme Court's go-ahead to end a controversial Trump-era immigration program that forces some people seeking asylum in the U.S. to wait in Mexico for their hearings.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in the administration's appeal of lower-court rulings that required immigration officials to reinstate the "Remain in Mexico" policy that the administration "has twice determined is not in the interests of the United States," according to court filings.
Texas and Missouri, which sued to keep the program in place, said it has helped reduce the flow of people into the U.S. at the southern border. "Many raise meritless immigration claims, including asylum claims, in the hope that they will be released into the United States," the states told the Supreme Court in a filing.
About 70,000 people were enrolled in the program, formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols, after President Donald Trump launched it in 2019 and made it a centerpiece of efforts to deter asylum-seekers.
President Joe Biden suspended it on his first day in office and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas ended it in June 2021. In October, DHS produced additional justifications for the policy's demise, to no avail in the courts.
The program resumed in December, but barely 3,000 migrants had enrolled by the end of March, during a period when authorities stopped migrants about 700,000 times at the border.
The heart of the legal fight is whether the program is discretionary and can be ended, as the administration argues, or is essentially the only way to comply with what the states say is a congressional command not to release the immigrants at issue in the case into the United States.
Without adequate detention facilities in the U.S., Texas and Missouri argue that the administration's only option is to make the immigrants wait in Mexico until their asylum hearings.
The two sides separately disagree about whether the way the administration went about ending the policy complies with a federal law that compels agencies to follow rules and spell out reasons for their actions.
Those being forced to wait in Mexico widely say they are terrified in dangerous Mexican border cities and find it very hard to find lawyers to handle their asylum hearings.
Democratic-led states and progressive groups are on the administration's side. Republican-led states and conservative groups have sided with Texas and Missouri. Those include the America First Legal Foundation, led by former Trump aides Stephen Miller and Mark Meadows.
As the court is weighing the asylum policy, the administration is expected to end another key Trump-era border policy that was put in place because of the coronavirus pandemic. It allows authorities to expel migrants without a chance to seek asylum. The decision to end Title 42 authority, named for a 1944 public health law, on May 23 is being legally challenged by 22 states and faces growing division within Biden's Democratic Party.
Navajo President Jonathan Nez says he'll seek reelection - Associated Press
Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez, whose tenure has been dominated by the coronavirus pandemic, is seeking a second term in office.
Nez made the announcement over the weekend from his hometown of Shonto. Nez, 46, highlighted his administration's handling of COVID-19 and said he wants to ensure that plans to rebuild the economy, and extend power and water lines continues.
"We must continue on the path of recovery and healing together," he said in a statement.
A handful of others also have said they'll seek the position, including Buu Van Nygren, Ethel Branch, Frank Dayish Jr. and Earl Sombrero.
Nygren, a vice presidential candidate in the tribe's 2018 election, recently resigned as chief commercial officer at the Navajo Engineering and Construction Authority.
Branch, who served as Navajo Nation attorney general while Nez was vice president, launched a COVID-19 relief fund for Navajo and Hopi families that has raised over $18 million, according to its website.
Dayish lost a bid for the tribal presidency in 2006 after serving as vice president under Joe Shirley Jr. Dayish has since worked in administrative positions in the health care and housing industries.
Sombrero is the manager of a Navajo chapter, or precinct, near the Arizona-Utah border.
The deadline to file for the tribe's top elected post is May 4. More than a dozen people typically run for president of the Navajo Nation, which has the largest land mass of any Native American tribe in the U.S. and is second in population with about 400,000 tribal members.
The primary election is Aug. 2. The top two vote-getters move on to the November general election.