It’s hump day! Here are the topics for today’s commentary:

• I-194 The Montana Plan
• Satire is OK?
• Montana PAW-litics
• Lake Ontario
• One More Thing

I-194 THE MONTANA PLAN:

Great Falls residents! Want to learn how I-194 (The Montana Plan) impacts our elections? Come to a casual Community Roundtable this Thursday, August 27, from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. at the Great Falls Public Library. Bring your questions—everyone is welcome!

There are many other community roundtables scheduled across the state. Click HERE for more information. 

SATIRE IS OK?

Campaign mailers with altered images of Republican legislative candidates holding pride flags and wearing pronoun pins did not violate Montana’s deepfake ban, according to state political practices commissioner Chris Gallus.

Distributed by a conservative PAC before the June primary, the mailers targeted three GOP candidates viewed as too moderate by the party’s right wing. Lee Newspapers reports that Gallus classified the materials as satire in a parallel court filing, making them exempt from state laws restricting AI-generated electioneering.

Beam me up, Scotty. 

MONTANA PAW-LITICS:

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alani Bankhead has a secret weapon on her campaign team called Lulu. Lulu is a retired electronic-detection police K9.

Bankhead writes that Lulu spent her career helping protect children from online predators. These days, she’s retired from law enforcement, but she’s taken on a new assignment: keeping an eye (and nose) on Montana PAW-litics. 

Follow her on Instagram at @k9lulumt for:

Behind-the-scenes campaign moments

Treat-worthy policy conversations

Lulu’s official candidate sniff tests

And a reminder that politics could always use a few more tail wags.

Good luck to Alani (and Lulu)! Check out the Bankhead campaign website HERE. 

LAKE ONTARIO:

What crazy thing did President Donald Trump do today? At around 4:58 a.m., he posted the following on Truth Social:

The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Trump has damaged the United States’ relationship with Canada so badly that it may never be repaired. 

ONE MORE THING:

People vaccinated in 2021 look five years older today. Unvaccinated people haven’t aged at all, depending on the skill of the embalmer…(Threads)

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