NorthWestern refuses to share information on data centers during merger hearings.

By DARRELL EHRLICK | Editor-in-Chief

“At this moment I want to emphasize that the risk to the general public is low.” – Dr. David Fitter, who is in charge of the Centers for Disease Control, response on the hantavirus.

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will be heading to Missoula next week to campaign for Democrat Sam Forstag, who is running in the Democratic primary. “AOC” traveled with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, during the campaign season in 2024.

Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said that Americans who were on a cruise ship with an outbreak of the hantavirus are being quarantined and given specialized care. They reassured the public on Wednesday that the chance of an outbreak is low, and that public health officials have confronted the disease previously, unlike COVID-19, which was new.

The United States Senate has confirmed Kevin Warsh, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve Bank. Warsh will succeed embattled chairman Jerome Powell, who will step down as the leader of the “Fed” on May 31, but will retain his voting seat on the board. While Trump has pressured the Fed to lower interest rates, with inflation soaring, it seems unlikely that Warsh will be able to do much.

As the war continues, Americans are feeling the pinch of high gas prices, as well as higher prices across the consumer spectrum. Our colleagues detail how closing the Strait of Hormuz is effecting the products that you purchase and the overall economy.

President Trump has named a longtime immigration official, David Venturella, to lead the agency that is mired in controversy after its round-ups in several U.S. cities, including Minneapolis. Venturella would become the first permanent director of the agency since 2017.

Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, has said that he will not endorse more spending for the U.S. Secret Service until he sees the bill. Right now, the U.S. Senate is currently drafting that legislation, and Johnson’s margin in the House is razor thin.

The United States Senate narrowly rejects another war powers resolution that could give Congressional leaders more oversight into the war with Iran. The measure failed 49-to-51, as Senate Majority Leader John Thune pleaded with Republicans to stay with President Trump as he travels to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Attorneys for the Trump administration have argued in a court case in Michigan that it needs a full complement of voter data from the states in part to guard against civil rights abuses. However, attorneys for a group fighting the release say that the Trump administration’s track record — including encouraging states to redraw Congressional maps— undercut that argument.

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In a move as shocking as splitting Memphis, Tennessee, into three separate Congressional districts, Cam Sexton, the Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives, has now booted all Democrats from committees after they refused to support the gerrymandering, saying that they helped incite a rowdy crowd who booed and whistled, according to the Tennessee Lookout.

In an attempt to change voting laws and voting requirements, our neighbors at the South Dakota Searchlight report that residents who don’t provide more than a post office box will be considered “federal voters” and ineligible to vote in some state elections. Officials there say that it is meant to prove residency to avoid voter fraud, but other say it will disenfranchise hundreds of voters.

And, after the crew of Artemis II returned safely to Earth, officials at NASA downloaded some of the breathtaking photography from the mission, which includes profound pictures of both the Earth and the moon, according to the Smithsonian magazine.

Attorney and columnist Doug James writes that many people in Montana are being held in jail not because they have been found guilty, but because they can’t make bail. And that practice of cash bail has undermined our legal system, which is founded upon the idea that a person is innocent until proven guilty.

As I scrolled through pictures that have been publicly released from Artemis II, I was spellbound by the stunning images of the Earth and the moon. Sure, I had seen plenty of satellite photos of both, but there was something more profound because of how we got those photos.

As I was reading the article (please see “Good Reads” above) the song that was going through my head was the soft, mellow version of “Blue Moon” that Elvis Presley recorded on Sun Records. It’s a haunting song proving a young Elvis’ falsetto vocal range. There is a common criticism of “The King” that he was not as great as some other artists because he did not write many of his own hits, or that he was not a stellar musician. Those arguments are legitimate, but they completely discount what a totally different sound he created with his voice. And even though his voice became incredibly stylized with a sort of sneer later in life, it’s hard to discount or even discredit the prodigious talent he showed from the very moment he stepped into the recording booth at 706 Union Avenue in Memphis. What I hear when I listen to that song is an Elvis whose sound was fully formed, and just waiting for his big break, which would come when he signed a large deal with RCA records that made “Heartbreak Hotel” his breakthrough hit in 1956.  

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