Untitled

Small towns in Montana rally for ‘No Kings’

Montanans rallied across the state, 31 events planned

BY: KEILA SZPALLER, JORDAN HANSEN AND MICAH DREW

OCTOBER 18, 2025

HAMILTON — DILLON — POLEBRIDGE — Kent Kernahan, of Corvallis, said he’s a Methodist minister’s child, and he demonstrated Saturday at the No Kings Indivisible Bitterroot rally after asking himself what his father would have done.

Kernahan carried a sign that said, “Lord, Please Forgive Trump,” along with an image of the Gadsden “Don’t Tread On Me” image.

Among more than 700 people who lined several blocks of U.S. Highway 93 in downtown Hamilton, Kernahan said the symbol represents opposition to the king of England stepping on the colonies, but it’s misunderstood by some who claim it.

“I don’t think it means what they think it means,” Kernahan said.

No Kings Indivisible Bitterroot, part of a national No Kings rally and among a couple of dozen planned demonstrations in Montana, took place in Hamilton, a smaller community of roughly 5,000 in the Bitterroot Valley.

Montana supported GOP President Donald Trump with 58% of the vote in 2024, but Ravalli County, a Republican stronghold in the red Bitterroot, backed him with 69%.