City Desk
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PNS - Thursday, March 5, 2026 - Advocates for those with disabilities in Idaho and nationwide are alarmed by proposed Medicaid cuts, programs that provide virtual crisis care are making inroads in rural South Dakota and Wyoming, and the mighty bison returns to Texas.
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PNS - Friday, March 6, 2026 - Kristi Noem is fired from her position as Homeland Security Secretary, but moves to a new and unclear role. The Senate Majority Leader blames Democrats for the ongoing DHS shutdown and the House fails to advance a war powers resolution for Iran.
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PNS - Friday, March 6, 2026 - Trump ousts Kristi Noem from DHS; Rural CA community colleges deploy AI to keep students on track; Algae-powered concrete earns University of Miami project top prize; As Ukraine war lingers, ND sponsors press for speedy work approvals.
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On February 27, 2026, we lost the publisher of ButteNews.net. Below is his obituary and an editorial by the publisher of The Billings Outpost, David Crisp.
James (Jim) Edward Larson, born June 14, 1955, of Butte, MT died at his home on February 27, 2026.
Born in Great Falls to George Harold Larson and Ruperta Jean (Wales) Larson.
Jim attended school in Great Falls until college where he received his bachelor’s from Montana State University in Bozeman, then off to University of Montana in Missoula for grad school where he studied history with a focus on Winston Churchill.
In 1965 when he was a young boy Jim read a story about a Montana weekly newspaper that won a Pulitzer for Distinguished General Local Reporting for their coverage of the 1964 flood. That is the story that lit a journalistic spark that was the tipping point. He wanted to be a part of a weekly newspaper.
That article and idea never left Jim. Later in life, after a wild array of jobs, he joined the staff of The Billings Outpost where he sold ads, conducted interviews, wrote articles, managed ad staff and basically intertwined himself entirely, this was his dream.
In 2015 he started his own monthly paper. First issue was 4 pages of ads and a community calendar. The final issue he was able to work on in January 2026 was 24 and pages and filled with so much entertainment and almost 50 ads. This paper was his joy.
Jim is survived by wife, Diane (Hoeckelberg) Larson, daughter Sarah (Larson) Karbassi, and son-in-law Ali Karbassi. Also, Lanita Barnhart (Gary), Gerry Larson, Patrick Larson, Linda Hodke (Dave), Anna Fisher (Maurice), Marsha Larson.
What a lousy week.
From Butte came news that Jim Larson, an old friend and colleague, has died after a long illness.
I got the news that he was in hospice while I was in the hospital for the second time in just over a month, still trying to recover from recurring pneumonia that first struck me nearly a year ago.
Then came news that we have invaded Iran, signaling, perhaps, a final end to our constitutional republic. As the founders well understood, leaving decisions about war to a single person who seeks neither our advice nor our consent leads to tyranny. Republicans, who used to care about the Constitution, applauded mindlessly.
It’s hard to avoid catastrophic thinking when you’re struggling to catch your next breath, even with oxygen tubes stuck up your nose. I always see people on these hospital visits who are far worse off than I am, but I tend not to think, “There but for the grace of God go I.” I tend to think, “There by God’s grace I will soon go.”
It’s hard to write about Larson, who was at my old weekly, The Billings Outpost, nearly from its beginning in 1997 to its end in 2016. It sometimes seems like I imagined the whole thing, from the impossible hours and the endless grind to rare moments of pure joy. Larson sold ads, delivered papers, conducted interviews, designed ads, wrote stories, managed the ad staff, set up public events and hatched wild schemes to somehow make us rich and profitable. Some of his schemes backfired, but so did some of mine, and we spent a lot of time picking up the pieces.
We also spent a lot of time brainstorming, dining and drinking. The long hours and endless stress can’t have been good for us, and perhaps we never quit paying the price. The first time I pulled an all-nighter at the office, our ad manager, the formidable Lee Ullom, said, “It’s about time you put in a full day’s work.” Many all-nighters followed.
A city editor I worked with in Texas used to say, whenever complications arose, “The paper will get out.” Somehow, it always did.
One late night at the Outpost, we were struggling to download a file. Nothing worked. We finally gave up and went on to other work, hoping for a miracle. The miracle arrived about half-an-hour later. The computer suddenly clanked and whirred, and the file showed up.
Larson was the same sort of miracle worker. He arrived at the Outpost out of nowhere with no newspaper experience. As I got to know his background – growing up in Great Falls, railroad gandy dancer, sales jobs pushing everything from beauty products to cleaning supplies – I slowly learned that whatever else might be true about Larson, he was a provider, never afraid to put his head down and get to work on whatever needed to be done. On holidays, which never quite existed for me, he would often still come in, hoping to snag another ad sale or two.
He eventually followed his wife to a job in Butte, and we mostly lost touch. He started another publication there, but now he is gone, and I’m not doing so great either. And the whole news business that we tried so hard to make work is in its worst shape since Ben Franklin died.
The president attacks the news media remorselessly, and the billionaires whose news acquisitions we hoped might save us lie prostrate at his feet. Because I was tied to tubes and monitors and had nothing else to do, I watched the president’s entire state of the union address from my hospital bed. The usual lies and distortions did not surprise me, but I still can’t quite figure why one entire political party rises to its feet and applauds assertions that it must know aren’t true.
The president could have made a case then for attacking Iran, but he did not bother. He doesn’t want or need our permission to do whatever his damaged spirit moves him to do. And the news media, hungry for war news, barely notes that the Constitution is in tatters.
No wonder I don’t feel so good.
~David Crisp
