Would someone please drop out?

By DARRELL EHRLICK | Editor-in-Chief

Happy Friday, folks. You made it. Congratulations.

Today, we begin with a group of Democrats sharing a frustration that a lot of people seem to have in Montana: The Dems’ candidate for the United States Senate, Alani Bankhead, and independent candidate Seth Bodnar are good choices for those who don’t want to vote Republican. But leaders worry that their races against each other will just mean that Republican candidate Kurt Alme will just waltz to victory.

Meanwhile, we note that the Montana Department of Corrections seems to be shifting its messaging on a number of things. At first, a new addition to Deer Lodge was supposed to be online in 2029, but that’s been moved back a year. And already officials are pointing out that even then, prisoners may have to be outsourced to private prisons out-of-state. That is in addition to converting Pine Hills Correctional Facilities into another women’s prison.

A district court judge in Missoula has ordered the state to pay $1.3 million in legal bills to the American Civil Liberties Union, which had to litigate against a law passed by the Legislature that would have prohibited gender-affirming care because it violates the state’s right to privacy, which has generally been interpreted to include decisions by doctors and individual patients.

Officials at Yellowstone National Park have closed portions of rivers there because of hot temperature and low stream flows. We’re likely to see more of those closures as temperatures are on pace for a record-setting heatwave that could see numbers well above triple digits.

The director of the Smithsonian Institute, America’s most noted museum and the national keeper of some of the most important items related to American culture and history, has pushed back against a report issued by the Trump administration that says that the institution intentionally misrepresents American history.

A former Olympic canoeing competitor who has been charged with vandalizing the Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., had his day in federal court on Thursday. He pleaded not guilty, but prosecutors in the case wanted to schedule it quickly for trial so that they could publicly disclose evidence they said they have proving that he meant to destroy the “American flag blue” liner that Trump ordered for the nation’s 250th birthday.

Republicans in Congress have slim majorities in each chamber. As the midterm elections draw near, there’s even less time that the party has to accomplish its goals before the results could change the power balance. But as the time narrows, Republicans seem mired in intra-party squabbling that is leading to a deadlock of legislation.

If it seems like politics in your state have gotten particularly rancorous, you’re not alone. Officials who study state politics say that politics usually reserved for the national level have seeped down into the state, and how states solve some of these issues, like maintaining an independent judiciary, could shape the future of federalism and America.

Columnist George Ochenski writes that Montana is used to political intrigue. And Montana always seems to insist that it should go its own ways, when it comes to politics. But the way the race for the U.S. Senate is shaping it, it’s already a mess.

This could have just as easily been titled: More random but interesting “studies” that are sent to us on a daily basis. Wallet Hub, one of the main purveyors of these sorts of email, does a pretty good job taking some popular question, like: Best loved picnic food in each state, and finding some type of objective and reliable information to ask a question. One of my favorite data makers is “Terrible maps.” Sometimes, they’re cynical; other times, they’re whimsical. Today’s feature seems to check out.

In this case, the organization looked at which word most appears in dating profiles in each state.

Unsurprisingly, Montana’s word …. was hunting, a word we shared with four other states (Wyoming, West Virginia, Arkansas and Louisiana) .

On Thursday, news from a hospital in Portugal revealed that British rock star Bonnie Tyler had died at the age of 75. She was a gravelly-voiced fixture in rock music during the 1970s and 1980s. She burst onto the popular music scene with her song “It’s A Heartache.”

But her biggest hit, which we’re sharing on today’s “The Hook,” is a song that you could not miss if you turned on the radio or MTV in 1984, “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” The song has been recorded by a number of artists. Originally, Meat Loaf was mad because he claimed the hit should have come to him. And to be fair, it does have a certain rock-opera quality that defined Mr. Loaf.

But, Tyler’s rough voice and lush orchestration made this song a hit. The video — including the creepy “bright eyes” — remains on the list of all time great videos that were in the rotation of videos during MTV’s ‘80s heyday.

A tidbit of trivia: Tyler’s version of the song barely kept the honor of being the most famous version of the song. Eleven years after she took the song to No. 1 on the Billboard charts, fellow British singer Nicki French came close to breaking that record — where her remake of the song stayed at No. 2 for three weeks.

And if nothing else, the song gave us one of the most famous lyrics of all rock music: “Living in a powder keg and givin’ off sparks …”

If that’s not just as accurate in 2026 as it was more than 50 years ago when the song became popular, I don’t know what is.

Here is the obituary of Tyler published by The Los Angeles Times.

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]

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