Ammon Bundy

A jury as ordered Ammon Bundy and an associate to pay more than $50 million in damages to Idaho's largest hospital after armed protests last year led to a security lockdown.

The antigovernment militant is scheduled to appear in a Boise, Idaho, court Monday on charges stemming from a tense protest that led to the lockdown of one of the state's large hospitals.

At the same time Montana hospitals are seeing record numbers of Covid patients, county health officers are resigning or being forced out by elected officials who don't follow public health guidance.

Violent acts of insurrection like the U.S. Capitol mob have been incubating in the western U.S. for years, where self-described "patriots" have led armed uprisings, often with few legal consequences.

The anti-government activist has been arrested for a second time in two days during a protest at the Idaho state capitol. Police say troopers "were forced to physically remove him."

Anger at the state response to the pandemic spurred dozens of people, some of whom were armed, to barge into and pack the House of Representatives' gallery on Monday.

Less than a month after declaring a mistrial, Judge Gloria Navarro said there can be no retrial against the Nevada rancher and three other men, who led an armed standoff with federal agents in 2014.

The jury found Ammon Bundy and six followers not guilty of illegally occupying a federal wildlife refuge earlier this year and not guilty of conspiracy to commit a crime.

In the wake of the Ammon Bundy wildlife refuge trial, Native Americans are refocusing national attention on the ancestral rights their tribes hold to federal lands in the West.

A juror was found to be biased and dismissed on Wednesday. The judge ordered an alternate to take his place in the trial of seven people in the armed occupation of wildlife refuge in Oregon.