A Native American tribe based in northwestern California filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration Monday, alleging that contractors owe millions in restoration efforts for a decimated river. 

The Biden administration’s Department of the Interior on Thursday announced the replacement names for nearly 650 geographical features that had names deemed "racist and derogatory." 

The Board on Geographic Names voted on the final names to replace the names of landmarks on federal lands that feature the term "squaw," the department said in a news release.

Former Interior Secretary and current GOP congressional candidate Ryan Zinke and his then-chief of staff lied repeatedly to investigators about their attempt to quash a tribal casino in Connecticut, the Interior Department’s internal watchdog concluded in a report released Wednesday.

More human remains were found Monday at Lake Mead as water levels continue to recede due to severe drought conditions, marking the latest discovery as the fifth set recovered since May.

National Park Service reported Tuesday that rangers responded to a report of the discovery of human skeletal remains in the Swim Beach area of Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

Authorities set a perimeter to recover the remains with support from Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s dive team and later contacted the Clark County medical examiner.

In places, the Loire can now be crossed on foot; France’s longest river has never flowed so slowly. The Rhine is fast becoming impassable to barge traffic. In Italy, the Po is 2 metres lower than normal, crippling crops. Serbia is dredging the Danube.

Across Europe, drought is reducing once-mighty rivers to trickles, with potentially dramatic consequences for industry, freight, energy and food production – just as supply shortages and price rises due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine bite.

The megadrought in the Western U.S., the region’s worst in 1,200 years, is threatening America’s cattle heartland: withering pastures, wrecking feed harvests and endangering a quintessential way of life. 

The drought is forcing ranchers here in Texas and across the Southern plains to make an agonizing decision: Sell early now for less money than they planned on — or hold on, pray for rain and risk losing everything. 

In the wake of a recent report on the harms of 19th- and 20th-century Indian boarding schools, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced a cross-country tour called The Road to Healing, during which survivors of the boarding-school system could share their stories. If healing is what Ms. Haaland wants, though, this strategy will likely disappoint.

Native American children at the U.S.'s 408 federal Indian boarding schools suffered whippings, sexual abuse, manual labor and severe malnourishment between 1819 and 1969 as part of the American government's campaign to compel their assimilation, according to a report released Wednesday by the Interior Department.

Ryan Zinke, who served as interior secretary during the Trump administration, broke federal ethics rules for his continued involvement with a land development project in his hometown in Montana, according to a report released Wednesday by the department's internal watchdog.

Why it matters: Zinke is currently running for Congress in Montana and is considered a leading Republican candidate in the race, per the Washington Post.

The Senate on Monday voted to confirm Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., as President Joe Biden’s secretary of the Department of the Interior, making the second-term Democrat the first Native American Cabinet secretary in U.S. history.

The vote was 51-40, with four Republicans joining Democrats in favor.