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Abortion rights ballot measure to go before Montana voters

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Abortion rights ballot measure to go before Montana voters


Voters will get to decide in November whether they want to protect the right to an abortion in the constitution of Montana, which on Tuesday became the eighth state to put the issue before the electorate this fall.

The Montana Secretary of State’s Office certified that the general election ballot will include the initiative on abortion rights. All but one of the eight states are seeking to amend their constitutions.

Montana’s measure seeks to enshrine a 1999 Montana Supreme Court ruling that said the constitutional right to privacy protects the right to a pre-viability abortion by a provider of the patient’s choice.

Republican lawmakers in the state passed a law in 2023 saying the right to privacy does not protect the right to an abortion. It has yet to be challenged in court.

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Opponents of the initiative made several efforts to try to keep it off the ballot, and supporters took several of the issues to court.

Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen initially determined that the proposed ballot measure was legally insufficient. After the Montana Supreme Court overruled him, Knudsen rewrote the ballot language to say the proposed amendment would “allow post-viability abortions up to birth,” eliminate “the State’s compelling interest in preserving prenatal life” and potentially “increase the number of taxpayer-funded abortions.”

The high court ended up writing its own initiative language for the petitions used to gather signatures, and signature-gatherers reported that some people tried to intimidate voters into not signing.

The Secretary of State’s Office also changed the rules to say the signatures of inactive voters would not count, reversing nearly 30 years of precedent. The office made computer changes to reject inactive voters’ signatures after they had already been collected and after counties began verifying some of them.

Supporters again had to go to court and received an order, and additional time, for counties to verify the signatures of inactive voters. Inactive voters are people who filled out a universal change-of-address form but did not update their address on their voter registration. If counties sent two pieces of mail to that address without a response, voters are put on an inactive list.

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Supporters ended up with more than 81,000 signatures, about 10.5% of registered voters. The campaign needed just over 60,000 signatures and to qualify 40 or more of the 100 state House districts by gathering the signatures of at least 10% of the number of people who voted for governor in 2020 in that district. The initiative qualified in 59 districts.

Republican lawmakers have made several attempts to challenge the state Supreme Court’s 1999 ruling, including asking the state Supreme Court to overturn it. The Republican controlled Legislature also passed several bills in 2021 and 2023 to restrict abortion access, including the one saying the constitutional right to privacy does not protect abortion rights.

Courts have blocked several of the laws, such as an abortion ban past 20 weeks of gestation, a ban on prescription of medication abortions via telehealth services, a 24-hour waiting period for medication abortions and an ultrasound requirement — all citing the Montana Supreme Court’s 1999 ruling.

Last week the state Supreme Court ruled that minors in Montana don’t need parental permission to receive an abortion, overturning a 2013 law.

In 2022, Montana voters rejected a referendum that would have established criminal charges for health care providers who do not take “all medically appropriate and reasonable actions to preserve the life” of an infant born alive, including after an attempted abortion. Health care professionals and other opponents argued that it could have robbed parents of precious time with infants born with incurable medical issues if doctors are forced to attempt treatment.

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The legality of abortion was turned back to the states when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

Seven states have already put abortion questions before voters since then — California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Ohio and Vermont — and in each case abortion supporters won.



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Montana Lottery Mega Millions, Big Sky Bonus results for May 8, 2026

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The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.

Here’s a look at May 8, 2026, results for each game:

Winning Mega Millions numbers from May 8 drawing

37-47-49-51-58, Mega Ball: 16

Check Mega Millions payouts and previous drawings here.

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Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from May 8 drawing

09-14-18-20, Bonus: 16

Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Millionaire for Life numbers from May 8 drawing

14-16-21-43-51, Bonus: 03

Check Millionaire for Life payouts and previous drawings here.

Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results

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When are the Montana Lottery drawings held?

  • Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
  • Mega Millions: 9 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
  • Lucky For Life: 8:38 p.m. MT daily.
  • Lotto America: 9 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
  • Big Sky Bonus: 7:30 p.m. MT daily.
  • Powerball Double Play: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
  • Montana Cash: 8 p.m. MT on Wednesday and Saturday.
  • Millionaire for Life: 9:15 p.m. MT daily.

Missed a draw? Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.

This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Great Falls Tribune editor. You can send feedback using this form.



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“It’s Life Alert or rent”: Montana trailer park tenants are on rent strike

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“It’s Life Alert or rent”: Montana trailer park tenants are on rent strike


Mobile home residents in Bozeman, Montana, say they’re being forced to choose between paying rent and paying medical costs.Courtesy of Jered McCafferty

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35-year-old Benjamin Moore has lived in Mountain Meadows Mobile Home Park, outside Bozeman, Montana, since he was 17. This month, for the first time, he’s withholding his rent.

On May 1, Moore received a rent bill for $947, up 11 percent from the month before, and the second hike in nine months—the product of the park’s sale to an undisclosed buyer. 

Moore hung a sign on his trailer that says “RENT STRIKE.” He and his neighbors in Mountain Meadows and nearby King Arthur Park, organized with the citywide group Bozeman Tenants United, are collectively withholding over $50,000 a month from their landlord. 

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Historically, trailer parks have been a relatively affordable housing option—a third of trailer park residents in America live below the poverty line. But on average, their cost of living has risen 45 percent over the past decade. By unionizing, the Bozeman trailer park tenants believe they might be able to fight the most recent rent hike—especially given the state of their housing. 

For years, tenants say, the maintenance hasn’t been attended to: tree limbs hang perilously over trailers, and water shutoffs are a regular occurrence. “I cannot recall a time in the past 20 years where we had three straight months of water and power working all day, every day,” Moore said. 

Shauna Thompson, another resident, calls the water “atrocious…like a Milky Way, like you’re drinking skim milk. It’s very nasty and turned off all the time, without any notice.” And tenants allege that they’ve experienced retribution for maintenance requests, punitive eviction attempts, and unsafe conditions. 

A group of protestors in support of a rent strike rip up rent notices.
Members of Bozeman Tenants United, including Benjamin Moore and Shauna Thompson, rip up their rent increase notices. Jered McCafferty

“It’s really hard on people here,” Moore said. Some residents are “already paying their entire Social Security check for rent. It’s a very poor neighborhood. We’ve got old folks. We’ve got young families. We’ve got working-class people who can’t afford anything else.”

For the past four decades, a group called Oakland Properties has owned both trailer parks. When they learned about the sale, tenants were scared that their parks would be bulldozed, or that their rent would be increased even further, forcing them to move. 

The tenants attempted to buy the parks themselves, but were decisively outbid. The winning bidder demanded an NDA. The transaction should be finalized next month, park owner Gary Oakland said, but residents still don’t know who’s going to own the land they live on.

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This month’s rent hike, Oakland acknowledged, was “part and parcel” of the sale. But for tenants, it’s a catastrophe. On top of the $947 lot rent—more than double the national average—many residents also pay off home loans on their trailers, as well as insurance and utilities costs.

Oakland calls claims of broken utilities “nonsense”: “If it was such a bad place to live, why would the homes be selling for such high dollars?” he said. The rent strike, Oakland points out, is “just a group of people not paying their rent.”

Some people are rationing their medication to make ends meet, Moore said. “There’s one person who canceled Life Alert. It’s either Life Alert or rent, and if you don’t pay rent, they evict you and throw you in the streets.” 

An older woman in a wheelchair with oxygen tubes holds a rent notice and a rent strike sign.
Many of the tenants of King Arthur and Mountain Meadows parks rely on a fixed income to pay their rent.Jered McCafferty

Tenant organizers across the nation have found a foothold in recent years organizing against individual landlords, and Bozeman’s tenant union, situated in one of the fastest-growing communities in the state, is no exception. Tenant unions from Los Angeles to Kansas City to New York have organized to win rent freezes, maintenance, and security in their homes.

Mobile home parks—increasingly private-equity-owned and uniquely at-risk in the face of climate disasters—are organizing, too: a group of trailer park residents in Columbia, Missouri, unionized in February. In Montana, as Rebecca Burns recently wrote for In These Times, mobile homes were already once a site of tenant organizing: buoyed by the state’s miners unions, the first Bozeman-area mobile home tenants’ union won an agreement with their landlord in 1978.  

Oakland says park residents “have been terrorized by the union,” and plans to evict the strikers. The strikers say they’ve retained a lawyer and will fight to stay in their homes.

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“I wish none of this was happening,” Moore said. “Your utilities should work. Your place should be safe. You should be able to get in and out of it. These are the absolute basics, and they just haven’t kept them up. And if you call them on it, they threaten you.”



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Montana’s fastest man who started as a walk on

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Montana’s fastest man who started as a walk on


Karsen Beitz arrived at Montana with no scholarship offers, one remaining walk-on spot and no guarantee that his track career would last.

Now, the former Sentinel High School standout is one of the fastest athletes in Montana history.

Beitz, a Missoula native and junior sprinter for the Grizzlies, has turned an unlikely college opportunity into a record-setting career. He owns Montana’s 100-meter and 200-meter program records and enters next week’s Big Sky Conference Outdoor Championships as one of the top sprinters in the league.

Coming out of high school, Beitz was a football and track athlete without a Division I offer.

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“I was upset about it,” Beitz said. “But at the same time, I was fine with just going to college and living a normal college life.”

That changed after conversations between Sentinel coach Dylan Reynolds and Montana coach Doug Fraley.

“You may not think he’s a D-I prospect based on his times,” Reynolds told Fraley, “but I’m just telling you, if he gets in the right program, he’s going to be a D-I runner.”

Fraley had one walk-on spot left on his roster. He brought Beitz into his office, talked with him and decided to take a chance.

“I liked him. We had a good conversation, so I decided to give him the last walk-on spot,” Fraley said. “I’m sure glad I did.”

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Beitz became a Division I athlete in his hometown, but his first goal was modest. He wanted to prove he belonged and earn a scholarship.

He did that quickly.

As a freshman, Beitz placed at the Big Sky Outdoor Championships and helped Montana’s 4×100-meter relay reach the podium with a school-record performance.

“There was no doubt he earned that scholarship,” Fraley said.

Beitz continued to climb in 2025. He placed second in the 200 meters at the Big Sky indoor meet, but a hamstring injury kept him out of the outdoor championships.

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“It sucked to deal with,” Beitz said. “But I’m young and still had two years left, so I shifted my mindset to how I could come out these next two years.”

He has not looked back.

Beitz won the 200 meters at the 2026 Big Sky indoor championships, the first individual conference title of his track career. His time of 21.09 seconds edged Idaho State’s Alex Conner by one-hundredth of a second.

“I think the best part about it was seeing how happy Doug was,” Beitz said. “He was jumping up and down, gave me a big hug. After last year, I knew what I was capable of, so to go out there and do it was amazing.”

Then came the outdoor season.

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In April, Beitz broke Montana’s 58-year-old 200-meter record, running 20.55 seconds at the Pacific Coast Intercollegiate in Long Beach, California. The previous record had stood since 1968.

Two weeks later, he added the school’s wind-legal 100-meter record, running 10.25 seconds at the Bengal Invitational in Pocatello, Idaho. Which broke a 44-year-old program record and gave Beitz both sprint marks.

“He’s a really competitive guy, and he wants to be the best in the Big Sky,” Fraley said.

The records have not left Beitz satisfied. They have made him hungrier.

“You have all these goals and numbers in your mind,” Beitz said. “Then once you hit those numbers, you’re not satisfied. There’s just more numbers to chase.”

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The next chase begins at the Big Sky Conference Outdoor Championships, scheduled for May 13-16 in Portland, Oregon.

After college, Beitz hopes to follow his mother’s footsteps and become a pharmacist. Maybe even the world’s fastest pharmacist.

“If I’m running around the hospital talking to doctors,” Beitz said, “I’ll do it pretty fast.”

From a walk-on few people noticed to a conference champion and school-record holder, Beitz has become Montana’s fastest man — and he is not done running.



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