📰 THE NEWS STAND · THE RECORD, READ CLOSELY
Issue articles
🔥 Hot topics
What came up most, across all 42 interviews: the hot-issues count, by office → · today’s front page is at the Coffee House → · the broadcast itself: the Radio Station →
≈ 6 min read · or listen, or skim the bold lines
Each article takes one subject across the full record — all 42 of Cal Nez’s candidate interviews, the law as it stands, and the reported cases — and reads them together. The same spine every time: what the law says today, what candidates propose in their own words (quoted and linked, grouped by approach and never by quality), what nobody said, the pattern Cal keeps testing and how it holds up against the record, and what could be done now regardless of who wins. No scores, no rankings; every claim links to its source.
The articles
Healthcare — what the record shows
638 and self-governance, oversight of the money, facilities and the people care doesn’t reach, and the workforce underneath it all — discussed substantively in 35 of the 42 interviews, with the biggest silence exactly where the money is.
The Whole Picture — one article
Everything the record has shown so far, told once, in order — the scattered law, the seams, the money, what 42 candidates said, and what doesn’t need the ballot at all. A living article, revised as the record grows. Read this one first.
Why do the branches fight?
The record’s biggest theme — 36 of the 42 interviews. Structural, not personal: the 1989 split, the budget as the weapon both branches hold, the accountability gap, and the few who propose redesigning the ring instead of describing the fight.
The Gray Zone
The Navajo Nation owns businesses — and a business the Nation owns is the hardest thing on the reservation to hold accountable. On discrimination law, on who can sue, on who is protected, on simply seeing inside: the same entity falls into the same gap, question after question. Why it happens, and where the record lands on it.
Twenty-four million, and a bed that comes down from the ceiling
Housing in 34 of 42 interviews — and 22 of the 42 name the same contract, most of them before Cal asks. What that shared vocabulary means, where the claims stop and the documented record begins, and the policy argument almost nobody had: should the Nation buy homes, or build them?
Who is allowed to build it
Infrastructure in 31 of 42 interviews. Everyone is for roads; the real question is who is permitted to connect the last hundred feet, and who pays when no office is required to. Three candidates, one utility, three different theories of the problem.
Boil snow
Water in 40 of 42 interviews — more than anything but the economy. The candidates tell it as childhood and as broken windmills; only one names the $5 billion settlement in Congress that would actually decide it.
The officers in the room
Public safety in 35 of 42 interviews. An unusual number of candidates policed the Nation or advocated for victims themselves — and Title 17, the law that governs it, is named by exactly one.
Starting to leave us
Youth, language and culture in 35 of 42 interviews. The real story is the good-faith split over how to save Diné bizaad — taught as a subject, lived as a medium, or made the frame around everything — and a law (§ 111) nobody is measuring.
One ranch and one farm
Ranches in 36 of 42 interviews. Washington once counted the entire Navajo Nation as a single farm, because nobody had done an ag census — and the money followed the count. Plus Title 3, which governs grazing and was never printed.
The law says the language shall be taught
Education in 38 of 42 interviews. Title 10 has required Navajo language instruction in all schools serving the Nation since 1984 — and a board may waive the language qualification by vote. Nobody publishes whether any of it happens.
Half the Nation lives somewhere else
Members living off the Nation, raised in 25 interviews. Two candidates read the Treaty of 1868 to opposite conclusions. One says they are “not even represented.” No counted population, no office, no settled answer.
They came home to a waiting list
Veterans in 23 of 42 interviews — the one subject where candidates agree, which is why agreement stops carrying information. The trust fund, the paperwork, the missing facilities, a father waiting fifteen years for a home — and the waiting-list number nobody publishes.
The tribunal that stopped sitting
The body that decides whether a Diné worker was fired for just cause. Its decisions are unpublished; in 2018 the Supreme Court issued a writ of mandamus to make it hear a case at all. No federal door exists. And not one of the 42 candidates named it.
The companies the people own
The Nation’s enterprises, in 36 of 42 interviews. A presidential candidate says whether they make money is “not known to me.” Boards, subsidies, and whether an enterprise serves the people who own it — plus §1024, which would transfer every one of them on November 3.
The layer closest to the people
Chapters come up in every one of Cal’s 42 interviews — no other subject is universal. Twenty-seven candidates on certification, the unfunded-mandate question, and the accountability gap two of them read in opposite directions. Plus: nobody knows how many chapters are certified.
The law that was supposed to build the economy
The Navajo Business Opportunity Act — raised in 39 of 42 interviews, more than any other named law. Fourteen candidates on what it promises, the front-company leak, why it never reaches the burrito lady, and where it stops. Plus what nobody said: how anyone actually reads it.
Where would the money come from?
Gaming (even Las Vegas), small business, site leases, energy, tourism, and following the people off-Nation — how the candidates propose growing the economy, verbatim and grouped by approach. Plus the two silences: who is the customer, and can a business read its own rules?
Who can read the law?
Possibly no one holds a complete, current, topic-organized body of Navajo law — and whether anyone does is itself not public. Where the pieces live, how to look one up on DiBB, the three ways the people can propose laws, and the demand that’s already a legal duty.
The slate — recurring themes, next in line
Twelve of the set are live. The rest are the themes the record itself nominates, counted by how many of the 42 interviews discussed each substantively (the counts): and land & grazing — only 10 of 42, the record’s thinnest ground, waiting for Round 2 where it’s the first question. Government reform’s core — the law itself, and why the branches fight — is written. Each publishes when its claims are checked, not before.
Where they stand, issue by issue
Each article above has a companion page: the same subject, but candidate by candidate — grouped by approach, never by quality. Three issues have stance pages waiting on their articles.
The NBOA · Local economy · Title 2 & reform · Healthcare & 638 · Education · Veterans · Enterprises · Ranches · Chapters & advocacy · Housing · Infrastructure · Land, grazing & homesites
New: The President, On the Record — the Nygren interview on the $24 million, reported and analyzed. And The ZenniHome Money — Four Charts.