Jack Healy

Hours after the Obama administration announced a new policy Friday that allows students to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity, the reaction was swift and sharp.

Hotchkiss, Colorado, banned marijuana shops after the state legalized the drug in 2012. But now it is weighing replacing its lost coal earnings with marijuana money.

Next month, Hotchkiss will vote on whether to undo its ban and welcome marijuana shops and the traffic and taxes that could come with them. With cannabis sales soaring to nearly $1 billion across Colorado, wary towns like Hotchkiss are looking at the economics of marijuana and starting to reconsider.

The “man camps” sprang up from the prairie, rows of trailers and modular steel boxes that housed thousands of workers chasing their fortunes in North Dakota’s oil fields. But these days, the man camps are missing something: men.

An armed group that is occupying a wildlife reserve in Oregon has called for Washington to hand control of federal lands to ranchers and local governments.

On Sunday, people across the shaken city of Colorado Springs gathered, seeking answers and comfort three days after the five-hour siege at a Planned Parenthood clinic left three people dead and wounded nine.

As they watched the sky go black and flames race toward their homes, the artists and campers, retirees and families living in this mountain town knew it was time to flee. Some, fearing the drought-fueled fires raging across California would bring this moment to their door, had packed bags, ready to go. Others had not.

As growing numbers of hikers and backpackers flood national forests and backcountry trails searching for solitude, they are increasingly clashing with recreational target shooters, out for the weekend to plug rounds into trees, targets and mountainsides.

The Old West has decided it is fed up with the New West.

Last year, as Colorado voters legalized marijuana for recreational use, they also approved a measure laying a path for farmers to once again grow and harvest hemp, a potentially lucrative crop that can be processed into goods as diverse as cooking oil, clothing and building material.

The reason for the disparity lies not just in the complicated, emotional politics of guns in the United States -- there was fierce lobbying in opposition to Colorado's new gun laws, and threats were even reported against some lawmakers who supported it -- but also in the way that the Senate's arcane rules make it so much harder to pass bills there than in the nation's statehouses.