Fear, testing barriers and miscalculations have hobbled the statewide program.
California
Posted inJanuary 1, 2021: No Place Like Home
How the Zoom boom is changing the West
Remote workers are flocking to Western towns.
Posted inArticles
Ski communities are ‘getting crunched on all sides’
The pandemic has heightened cost-of-living issues in resort towns.
Posted inJanuary 1, 2021: No Place Like Home
Students and faculty urge deeper look at land-grant legacy
University officials face pressure to address their history as the recipients of dispossessed Indigenous land.
Posted inJanuary 1, 2021: No Place Like Home
Will California finally fulfill its promise to fix the Salton Sea?
Decades have passed and millions of dollars spent, yet little has been done to restore the lake. California officials say it’s all been leading up to this moment.
Posted inJanuary 1, 2021: No Place Like Home
A high school football team’s wartime resistance
In ‘The Eagles of Heart Mountain,’ Bradford Pearson renders the lives of incarcerated Japanese Americans during World War II in three dimensions.
Posted inDecember 1, 2020: A Community Divided
20 signs that the climate crisis has come home to roost
From Alaska to Wyoming, evidence shows the climate is off-kilter in the West.
Posted inArticles
The dust-up over California’s off-road beach
COVID highlights conflicts over air pollution, crime and accidents on California’s Central Coast.
Posted inDecember 1, 2020: A Community Divided
In California, 1 million people lack access to clean water
Why one community has struggled with arsenic in its water for so long, despite the state’s Human Right to Water law.
Posted inDecember 1, 2020: A Community Divided
Elections in the West highlight divisions and diversity
Justice, power and environment: The 2020 elections were defined by grassroots organizing and deep partisanship.
Posted inArticles
What it took to investigate a suspicious town in the Mojave Desert
The creator of the 2020 podcast California City reflects on how she exposed deceptive desert land sales — from the outside.
Posted inArticles
Are wildfires contaminating your drinking water?
Manufactured substances known as volatile organic compounds pollute water around the U.S., and they’re heightened in the aftermath of fires.
Posted inDecember 1, 2020: A Community Divided
A whistleblower speaks out over excavation of Native sites
In California, archaeologists unearthed Indigenous burials 11 years ago, but the remains have yet to be repatriated.
Posted inArticles
Wilderness rescuers brace for a busy winter
Snow is on the way — and amid COVID-19, recovery missions are on the rise.
Posted inArticles
California voted to keep affirmative action ban in place
It’s a setback, but students have been fighting to diversify their college campuses for years.
Posted inArticles
Bracing for unlawful militias and vigilantes at the ballot box
Emboldened by Trump’s rhetoric, armed groups plan to post up near poll sites.
Posted inNovember 1, 2020: When the Smoke Clears
Maskless in Montana; stuck in a rut; hot pronghorn
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
Posted inArticles
Violence at the U.S.-Mexico border as a presidential election nears
Law enforcement deploys tear gas and rubber bullets in confrontation with Indigenous activists.
Posted inArticles
How the West’s wildfires impact crops
Wine grape and cannabis growers try to assess the invisible damage of ash and smoke on their harvests.
Posted inNovember 1, 2020: When the Smoke Clears
California’s history of anti-Blackness hides beneath its progressive reputation
A new history of the state traces early civil rights battles spearheaded by Black activists.