Montana DOJ puts law firm on $500,000 retainer to defend TikTok ban in court

This story is excerpted from the MT Lowdown, a weekly newsletter digest containing original reporting and analysis published every Friday. We received an answer last week — well, a very partial one — to one of the most consistent reader questions we’ve seen in our inboxes here at MTFP: Just how much is the state spending to defend all those lawsuits? All those lawsuits, of course, are the many high-profile legal challenges that have generated headlines from us and other news outlets since voters swept Gov. Greg Gianforte into the governor’s office in 2021, giving Montana Republicans