Kirk Siegler

About 10,000 households in the area of Spokane, Wash., are behind in rent. Some people finally returning to work face homelessness as the state and federal eviction ban is expected to end next month.

Ninety percent of the West is under drought. Concerns of another bad fire year come as one farming community in Washington state has barely started cleaning up from a destructive fire last year.

Some conservative, rural states have resettled refugees at the highest per capita rates. In Idaho, employers applaud President Biden's pledge to lift a Trump-era cap on refugee numbers.

President Biden has nominated a Montana environmentalist to push his agenda calling for millions of dollars to restore ecosystems and clean water sources over some 600 million acres of public land.

Absent federal funding, volunteer aid groups are providing much of the humanitarian relief along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Border Patrol says the pandemic limits how many people they can safely hold at facilities. Officials say funding and jurisdiction issues also prevent them from transporting migrants to cities.

In rural Arizona, the Border Patrol is now dropping off migrants from overflowing detention facilities in small towns that are cut off from transportation and other services.

Amid pressure to reverse a Trump administration decision, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland travels to Utah to tour the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments.

Now that the pandemic has normalized remote work, some rural states are marketing themselves to big city residents for relocation.

As Boulder, Colo., police try to find a motive in Monday's mass shooting that left 10 dead, community leaders are struggling to keep the focus on victims and their families, not the alleged gunman.

People are trying to come to grips with Monday's mass shooting at a grocery store. A 21-year-old man from suburban Denver has been charged with 10 counts of murder in the first degree.

Police in Boulder, Colo., have named the alleged gunman and all 10 people he is believed to have killed in the supermarket shooting and the charges he faces.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has a long and seemingly insurmountable to-do list, including a pledge to begin repairing a legacy of broken treaties and other abuses against tribes.

Of the 109 people currently listed as missing in South Dakota, 77 of them are indigenous. The state's legislature passed a bill this week to address the alarming crisis on and off reservations.

The Rosebud Sioux Tribe is vaccinating its community at rates faster than the rest of South Dakota. That mirrors a trend in Indian Country, which has been hard-hit by the coronavirus.

The Biden administration is expected to be sued over its ban on new oil and gas leasing on federal land. In top fossil fuel states like Wyoming, cuts to services and mass layoffs were already looming.

A settlement has been announced in a landmark case that prohibits cities from ticketing homeless people for camping in public places — if there aren't adequate shelter beds available.

Five months after most of the farming town of Malden, Wash., was destroyed, President Biden has approved a stalled federal aid package.

Most of the oil and gas drilled in Wyoming comes from federal land and communities there are bracing for job losses and school funding cuts in the wake of a Biden administration pause on new leasing.

In many rural, and more conservative corners of the country, reaction to the historic nomination of Joe Biden and the nation's first woman and minority vice president was more muted.