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by Matt Standal Montana Free Press For Bozeman’s John Wallace and his girlfriend DeeDee, the coming weeks are a time of uncertainty. The couple has been living in a camper trailer on Bozeman’s streets for the past few years, and now they must decide what to do when the city’s ban on urban camping takes effect Wednesday. Laid off from a lumber mill in Townsend during the pandemic, Wallace said he relocated to Bozeman and found work at a local gas station. Faced with a city-wide shortage of affordable rentals, Wallace said he s...
by Zeke Lloyd Montana Free Press Frederick Maw VI was 14 months old when his father, Freddie J, received a 20-year sentence to Montana State Prison in 2018. Caterina Maw, Little Freddie’s grandmother, remembers driving alongside a “trembling and scared” child on a bus to a small red cabin in 2022 during her grandson’s first trip to meet his father. “He saw the swing set and he saw all the dads standing there with smiles on their faces — then he just got this huge smile and ran to his dad to give him a hug,” Caterina Maw...
By Bram Sable-Smith and Sarah Jane Tribble KFF Health News SEPTEMBER 22, 2025 Every day for nearly 18 years, Alessandra Fabrello has been a medical caregiver for her son, on top of being his mom. “It is almost impossible to explain what it takes to keep a child alive who should be dead,” said Fabrello, whose son, Ysadore Maklakoff, experienced a rare brain condition called acute necrotizing encephalopathy at 9 months old. Through North Carolina’s Medicaid program, Maklakoff qualifies for a large slate of medical care in the f...
by Tom Lutey and Mara Silvers 09.08.2025 America’s push for clean power had finally come for Colstrip, a southeast Montana town built around a power plant of the same name and a large open-pit coal mine. Duane Ankney, a Republican firebrand in the Montana Legislature, set out determined to save the power plant and his adopted hometown if it was the last thing he did. Both were in better shape when Ankney, 79, died Saturday from apparent heart failure. Friends credited the former lawmaker’s passionate 10-year fight for Col...
by Amanda Eggert 09.05.2025 The Montana Public Service Commission declined to make a declaratory ruling incorporating climate change into its regulatory oversight of the energy sector. A coalition of 41 businesses and nonprofits submitted a petition to the PSC in March of 2024 in the wake of a state district court finding in Held v. Montana that the state’s right to a “clean and healthful environment” incorporates a right to a “stable climate system.” The petition before the PSC had two parts. One asked the agency to adopt...
U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Montana GREAT FALLS – A Mexican man who entered the United States illegally was sentenced Sept. 3 to a sentence of time served and remanded to U.S. Border Patrol upon release, U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme said. Enrique Hernandez-Rodriguez, 51, pleaded guilty in August 2025 to illegal reentry. Chief U.S. District Judge Brian M. Morris presided. The government alleged in court documents that on July 26, 2025, Enrique Hernandez-Rodriguez, an alien and citizen of Mexico, who was last removed from th...
U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Montana GREAT FALLS – A man who illegally possessed a firearm and ammunition on the Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation was sentenced Sept. 3 to 32 months in prison to be followed by 3 years of supervised release, U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme said. Franklin Troy Caplette, 40, pleaded guilty in March 2025 to prohibited person in possession of a firearm and ammunition. Chief U.S. District Judge Brian M. Morris presided. The government alleged in court documents that on October 12, 2024, Caplette pos...
by Tom Lutey Montana Free Press 09.01.2025 A version of this story first appeared in Capitolized, a weekly newsletter featuring expert reporting, analysis and insight from the editors and reporters of Montana Free Press. The robocalls to John Sivlan’s phone this summer just wouldn’t let up. Recorded messages were coming in several times a day from multiple phone numbers, all trashing state Republican Rep. Llew Jones, a shrewd, 11-term lawmaker with an earned reputation for skirting party hardliners to pass the Legislature’s b...
Press release Hear from expert speakers and get the tools to do a deep dive into your farm's succession plan during the Succession Planning Institute offered Nov. 2 by Montana Farmers Union for multi-generational farm and ranch families. The institute is free to MFU members or $50 for non-members and will be held from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 2, at the Yogo Inn in Lewistown following MFU’s 110th Annual State Convention to be held Oct. 31-Nov. 1, with preconvention tours planned Oct. 30. “The issue of succession pla...
by Tom Lutey Montana Free Press 09.02.2025 A version of this story first appeared in Capitolized, a weekly newsletter featuring expert reporting, analysis and insight from the editors and reporters of Montana Free Press. Emma Carlson was planning a June 2025 wedding last fall when she happened across Anchor G, a Helena wedding planning business owned by Abbey Lee Cook. The business owner seemed to check all the boxes when the two met. Carlson needed a day-of planner to manage the event. Cook not only came across as someone wh...
by Mara Silvers Montana Free Press On a Saturday morning in April, with spring flowers blooming outside her Helena home, Theresa Cardiello paged through the stack of medical records on her dining room table. They were flecked with orange and pink sticky notes bearing scribbled stars and question marks — her annotated attempts to make sense of the unimaginable. Her late husband had been dead for 19 years. Theresa requested his case file from the local hospital in January, after ProPublica published an investigation into a...
by Tom Lutey Montana Free Press South Dakota-based Black Hills Corp. is buying Northwestern Energy. The two utilities announced their all-stock transaction on Tuesday. Black Hills shareholders will have a 56% majority in the new company, which will be headquartered in Rapid City. NorthWestern CEO Brian Bird will lead the company as Black Hills CEO Linn Evans retires, according to a press release. The Montana Public Service Commission will get to weigh in on the sale to determine whether the new company is in the best...
from Montana Department of Livestock HELENA — The Montana Department of Livestock (MDOL) received confirmation Friday, Aug. 15, that an animal from a Beaverhead County herd within Montana’s Designated Surveillance Area (DSA) tested positive for brucellosis. The herd has been placed under quarantine pending the completion of an epidemiological investigation. The positive bull was identified as a brucellosis suspect during required testing at a livestock market in late July. The animal was euthanized and taken for necropsy at...
From Montana Department of Health and Human Services State and local health officials confirmed the first detections of West Nile virus (WNV) in Montana for summer 2025. WNV activity appears to be widespread across the state, and the Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS) is urging all Montanans to take increased precautions against mosquito bites. Four mosquito pools have tested positive for WNV, including three in Lewis and Clark County and one in Cascade...
by Mara Silvers Montana Free Press The CEO of the state’s only public psychiatric hospital is stepping down after roughly a year on the job, according to a Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services press release sent late Friday afternoon. Dr. Kevin Flanigan assumed the role at the Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs last summer. The department’s release said Flanigan was resigning, but did not cite a reason for the leadership change. Flanigan did not respond to requests for comment before publication. One...
by Zeke Lloyd and Nora Mabie Montana Free Presss The House gave final approval early Friday to President Donald Trump’s request to rescind about $9 billion for public broadcasting and foreign aid as Republicans intensified their efforts to target institutions and programs they view as bloated. The GOP-majority chamber passed the bill 216-213. It’s now on the desk of President Donald Trump, who pushed for the legislation as part of his effort to cut back on what he considers wasteful government spending. House Speaker Mike Joh...
by Katie Fairbanks Montana Free Press MISSOULA — Attorneys for a Helena man detained by immigration officers last week argued during a hearing in federal district court last Thursday that he should be released because racial profiling led to his arrest. Helena police and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were searching for two Venezuelan men with outstanding warrants when they pulled over Christopher Martinez Marvan, a Mexican national, in early July. The 31-year-old did not have any warrants for his arrest. A...
by Tom Lutey Pat Williams, Montana’s longest-serving member of the U.S. House, died Wednesday evening in a Missoula hospital. The Butte native, who was Montana’s last Democrat elected to the House to date, served nine terms from 1979 to 1997, including two as the state’s at-large representative. Williams was 87. “He was a hard-nosed politician but he had such a soft center,” said Sheena Wilson, a friend who hired on to Williams’ staff in Washington, D.C. “He knew a lot of people were having a lot more difficult time than he...
by Matt Hudson A large data center is proposed on vacant land near Great Falls, between Malmstrom Air Force Base and the Missouri River. Projected to use up to 600 megawatts of electricity, the data center would likely be the largest in the state. Credit: Matt Hudson / MTFP Montana has about 540,000 housing units, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. A proposed data center in Great Falls may require enough electricity to power 88% of those homes for a year. Announced on June 17, the data center is proposed for a 569-acre...
Zeke Lloyd Montana Free Press Montanans protested in cities across the state on Saturday against what they called constitutional violations by the Trump administration. The peaceful demonstrations were connected to about 2,000 planned “No Kings” gatherings across the country, organized as counterprogramming to President Donald Trump’s military parade in Washington, D.C., to mark the Army’s 250th anniversary that coincided with his 79th birthday. The organization’s website listed roughly a dozen events across Montana, includin...
by Eric Dietrich Montana Free Press Gov. Greg Gianforte announced Monday that he has appointed state Rep. Marta Bertoglio as the director of the Montana Department of Commerce, the agency that administers state business development grants and conducts other economic development efforts. Bertoglio, a third-term Republican from Clancy, fills a vacancy created in February after then-commerce director Paul Green, himself a former Republican lawmaker from Hardin, left the role to run Big Sky Economic Development, the regional...
by Mara Silvers Montana Free Press Attorneys for BNSF Railway, the U.S. government and a Libby asbestos-screening clinic sparred in federal court last Thursday over how the railroad giant can collect a multimillion-dollar judgment stemming from hundreds of fraudulent diagnoses made by the nonprofit health care clinic, a case litigated extensively in a 2023 jury trial. The prior legal battle left the Center for Asbestos Related Disease, or CARD, saddled with a more than $3 million penalty. The jury found that the clinic had...
By Katheryn Houghton and Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez and Arielle Zionts WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. — Navajo Nation leaders took turns talking with the U.S. government’s top health official as they hiked along a sandstone ridge overlooking their rural, high-desert town before the morning sun grew too hot. Buu Nygren, president of the Navajo Nation, paused at the edge with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Below them, tribal government buildings, homes, and juniper trees dotted the tan and deep-red landscape. Nyg...
By Katheryn Houghton HAMILTON — Scientists are often careful to take off their work badges when they leave the campus of one of the nation’s top research facilities, here in southwestern Montana’s Bitterroot Valley. It’s a reflection of the long-standing tension caused by Rocky Mountain Laboratories’ improbable location in this conservative, blue-collar town of 5,000 that was built on logging. Many residents are proud of the internationally recognized research unfolding at the National Institutes of Health facility and ackno...
by Eric Dietrich Montana Free Press It’s a time-honored April tradition at the Montana Legislature that, as spring flowers begin to blossom and lawmakers barrel into the late-session time crunch, bills knocked back to the dirt sprout back to life. So it was for Gov. Greg Gianforte’s signature property tax relief proposal Friday, as lawmakers prepared to take a long weekend for their Easter holiday. That proposal, one of the Republican governor’s key priorities, would scale down taxes on primary residences and long-term renta...
