A Q+A with outliers in fire.
Labor
Posted inArticles
Trump administration budget cuts wreak havoc on trail maintenance
As tourism season begins, trail crews are facing disruptions in key trail maintenance projects.
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 inJune 2025: The Promised Land
How worker-ownership helped California Solar create good jobs
For small solar companies, cooperative structures can build resiliency, wealth and worker power.
Posted inArticles
Federal workers say Biden’s BLM left them vulnerable to Trump
Documents show Interior rejected a union contract for employees at BLM headquarters days before the inauguration.
Posted inArticles
Working in the Permian Basin comes at a high cost
Oil workers in New Mexico are subjected to harrowing conditions that lead to death, injury, disease and terrible tolls on mental health and family life.
Posted inArticles
USGS’ biological research arm could vanish
Trump is on a multipronged mission to eliminate a science agency that conservationists, toxicologists, universities and more call irreplaceable.
Posted inArticles
DOGE is gutting AmeriCorps
The 30-year-old national service agency had tens of thousands working on climate change, conservation and disaster response in communities across the West.
Posted inMay 2025: The Art of the Cruise
See 60 days of DOGE chaos
Charting the mass culling of the federal workforce.
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.
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Nearly all federal workers who investigate firefighter deaths fired
The Trump administration made cuts at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which also halted a study of the causes of thousands of firefighters’ cancer cases.
Posted inMay 2025: The Art of the Cruise
El poder subversivo de la radio en español
Durante décadas, las comunidades inmigrantes han usado las ondas para educarse y protegerse. Bajo la administración de Trump, lo están haciendo de nuevo.
Posted inArticles
The indomitable Butte, Montana
The misunderstood, often-maligned mining town helps itself.
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Judge rules federal job cuts ‘unlawful’
The Forest Service, Park Service and other agencies must immediately reinstate workers purged by Trump.
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As Colorado closes its coal plants, some schools neglect to prepare
The state’s closures can mean less funding for education and fewer jobs for graduates.
Posted inMarch 2025: The Berry Pickers
Filipinos that strike
An oral history archive gathers some of the voices behind the recent LA teacher strikes.
Posted inArticles
Trump and Musk take aim at the rural West
Spending cuts hurt communities, economies and public lands.
