Federal appeals court upholds injunction against Montana's drag ban

By DARRELL EHRLICK | Editor-in-Chief

"Because it covers expression that is not sexualized, it is overinclusive. Dolly Parton … could not visit a library in Montana to read one of those books to children if she wore glamorous clothing and makeup consistent with her famously flamboyant feminine persona.”– Opinion from the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upholding an injunction on Montana’s drag ban law.

The State of Montana, without much public notice, decided to change the rules for gatherings and events on the Montana Capitol grounds. The Gianforte administration said that the move to prohibit events on weekends is a cost-savings effort, but it happens just as communities are gearing up for another No Kings rally at the end of this month.

The Pentagon confirmed that six more U.S. soldiers have died in the war with Iran as all six of the crew members aboard an aircraft refueling tanker died in a crash.

The United States Department of Justice is hit with a roadblock into the Trump administration’s effort to oust or discredit Chairman of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell. A federal judge would not grant the DOJ’s efforts, which included subpoenas that the judge said was meant to intimidate and harass Powell, who was appointed by Trump, but who has also drawn his ire for not capitulating to Trump’s demands.

As U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin prepares to be confirmed by the United States Senate to lead the Department of Homeland Security — a move widely expected to happen — he will have a tough job ahead of him, our Washington, D.C., bureau reports because he will step into ongoing immigration efforts, while trying to restore public trust with American citizens.

Five people who use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is often referred to as “food stamps,” have sued the federal government, saying that the recent banning of items classified as “non-nutritional” is an overreach of government power.

Columnist Doug James says that Montana’s parole system is broken. It’s default setting seems to be no second chances — but that is the entire point of parole, isn’t it?

This next section probably dates us a little, but remember when late-night talk show host Jay Leno used to collect newspaper headlines and other assorted print bric-a-brac in his popular “Headlines” segment? While the public devoured it, leading to several compilations of the headlines, journalists cringed because … well, we’ve all been there.

Having written thousands upon thousands of headlines, there’s an art to it. Of all the things that editors get complaints about, headlines are often among the top of the complaint list, along with problems with the crossword puzzle. Headlines are also tricky: The average headline is somewhere around six words. So here’s your challenge: Try explaining any story in six words. It’s not as easy as you think. Then, throw in some deadline pressure, and the overall exhaustion that comes with any job and you’ve got a recipe for errors.

One of the other galling things about headlines is that when you write them and publish them, at least in the print edition, they live forever. So, people can go back and back again to look, laugh and mock. There’s also something that every journalist knows is true: Stories, pages and photographs just look different on screen than they do when they roll off the presses.

Journalists also used to live in fear of Jay Leno’s features because we knew there’d be hell to pay if one of our headlines made it on the show, and we knew that every subscriber — for a period of time — was judging every headline, just hoping that one of us would, in a state of deadline pressure, write something with a double meaning or make a glaring mistake.

Mistakes like that still happen, but the electronic medium is more forgiving — a headline gaffe or name misspelling doesn’t live forever and can be changed almost instantaneously.

So with those paragraphs of explanation, we totally understand, sympathize and — yes, even chuckled at this recent headline from our friends in Livingston.

When we lost rock-and-roll legend Tom Petty, we lost more than just a great artist with a distinctive voice and guitar — we lost a huge fan and student of music. Petty’s music show on satellite radio made paying the hefty price for the service worth it because he was so good at turning up gems, digging deep into obscure tracks and he had the name recognition to feature interviews with some of the biggest names out there.

One of my good friends John, shared with me an artist he learned about through Petty, Eddie Hinton. I had heard of him once or twice, but always as a name in passing. Here’s part of the note from my friend:

“(I did) a deep dive into Eddie Hinton, who I had heard of because Tom Petty featured him a couple times on his buried treasure Sirius XM show. Eddie’s biography is interesting as he was a session musician at Muscle Shoals and FAME studios. He never got much recognition for his work but lots of musicians covered him. Drugs and alcohol took him down.  I particularly enjoy this song of his. Great growling. I’d never heard of him before Tom played him.” 

Today, we feature Hinton’s song, suggested by John, “Something Heavy,” which has a recurring lyric that “I need something heavy.” That seems entirely understandable and well suited for a Monday. We’re all going to need something heavy to make it to Friday.

If you have a song that you’d like to share, or would like to get in touch with us, please send us a note at [email protected]

Thanks for reading Treasure State Update. Did you know our weekend digest is also free? Sign up here. And if you enjoyed today’s edition, please forward to a friend. Increasing our readership helps us cover more news.