Kirk Sigler

Trump's order says wildfire victims should be able to rebuild without quote duplicative or obstructive requirements.

He's directing FEMA and Homeland Security to preempt local officials who issue building permits.

The number of building permits issued in the L.A.

fire zones is still sluggish at around 1,300 to date.

Likely the biggest delay in rebuilding is not red tape, but the fact that scores of fire victims are still in insurance limbo.

Governor Gavin Newsom accuses the president of deliberately slowing recovery, noting only a fraction of the billions of promised federal aid has been sent to California fire victims.

Kirk Ziegler, NPR News.

In late 2016, an Oregon jury acquitted right-wing extremist Ammon Bundy for leading an armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

After a standoff two years earlier on their Nevada ranch, the Bundys traveled to eastern Oregon to protest the jailing of two ranchers.

Western historian Patty Limerick recalls that many locals appreciated the attention given to their struggles with federal land managers, but most, including the jailed ranchers, told the Bundys to go home.

They didn't.

That is such an arrogance.

imposition of authority for people who are going to denounce arrogant impositions of authority in others, in land managers.

The tense 41-day standoff between the militants, Oregon State Police, and FBI left one dead Bundy supporter, LaVoy Finicum.

Kirk Sigler, NPR News.

These bridge payments, as the administration is calling them, are meant to offset the effects of the president's trade war and tariffs that have left American soybeans here in the bins and not exported to China.

The aid is expected to arrive by early March, but farmers like John Kipley say they need the money right now.

Kipley says banks won't lend because they know farmers will still be in the red next season.

One estimate at a Farmers Union conference here showed that's the case for close to half of all the farms in South Dakota, where many family farms without capital could soon be out of business.

Kirk Sigler, NPR News, Huron, South Dakota.