Basin states have had 2 years to figure out how to share the shrinking river. Will they get there before the feds step in?
Economy
Posted inIssues
Western economies falter under the Trump administration
Tariffs, layoffs and federal funding clawbacks stress budgets.
Posted inOctober 2025: Limits to Growth
Ventura County is turning former farmland into affordable housing for farmworkers
This California county has some of the nation’s strictest protections for agricultural land, but developers are using a new exemption to house people who work the land.
Posted inArticles
The rural West’s increasing health care costs haunt the shutdown
Health insurance costs are skyrocketing, and federal tax credits that make it more affordable are expiring.
Posted inArticles
Tribal governments fend off the worst of the impacts of the shutdown
In the weeks leading up to the shutdown, tribal nations hefted their political and economic capital to protect services for their citizens.
Posted inArticles
What the government shutdown means for public lands
Many parks will stay open, and oil and gas permitting will continue — even as tens of thousands of staff are furloughed at NPS, BLM and USFS.
Posted inArticles
Denver’s storied tradition of sex work, then and now
In her new book, Michelle Gurule reveals her experience as a sugar baby and just how little has changed about the industry in the last century.
Posted inArticles
How to make electricity in the West cheaper and more reliable
Regionalized power markets give utilities more buying options, driving down prices and boosting stability.
Posted inArticles
Resistance to data centers rises on the border
In Doña Ana County, New Mexico, residents have long struggled to access clean water. Now, developers plan to spend $165 billion on a massive data center complex.
Posted inSeptember 2025: Who Controls Our Food?
The Rio Grande’s pecan problem
How Big Ag is threatening New Mexico’s water supply.
Posted inSeptember 2025: Who Controls Our Food?
Who controls food in the West?
Consolidation, shifting politics, water rights and the myth of the cowboy all play into the region’s ability to feed itself.
Posted inArticles
The national parks are not OK
A former national park supervisor explains how toilets may be clean this summer, but the parks themselves are actually ‘hollowed out.’
Posted inArticles
In Albuquerque, developers are turning old motels into affordable housing
Once-dilapidated buildings are finding new life as homes for immigrants and other working-class New Mexicans.
Posted inArticles
Can this Washington member of Congress turn the Democratic Party around?
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’ ‘Blue Dog’ strategy of appealing to working-class rural moderates won her a long-held Republican district.
Posted inMay 2025: The Art of the Cruise
The toll of Bozeman’s housing crisis
At the small city’s only emergency shelter, demand is higher and the work is harder than ever.
Posted inMay 2025: The Art of the Cruise
Is sustainable tourism possible?
As Western mountain towns struggle with overtourism, Jackson Hole tries out a new plan to mitigate visitors’ impacts.
Posted inMay 2025: The Art of the Cruise
The Cybertruck is all tricks and no truck, a musky Tesla fail
Tesla’s baking sheet on wheels rides fast in the recall lane toward a dead end where dysfunctional men gather.
Posted inArticles
Can Trump bring back ‘clean, beautiful coal’?
The fossil fuel-fetish once again trumps economics and common-sense.
Posted inApril 2025: A Monumental Reckoning
How a crucial homeless shelter in Boise was obstructed by neighbors
The Veterans Park Neighborhood Association sued to halt a shelter’s plans.
Posted inArticles
A return to the fight against Alaska’s Ambler Road
Alaska Native tribes and activists will use previous momentum to try and keep a road from being built through caribou migratory paths, subsistence harvest areas and remote Indigenous land.