As of Monday, February 1, 2021, Montana reports 94,070 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 106 new cases reported in the last day: 26 in Flathead County, 17 in Yellowstone County, 11 in Missoula County, 9 in Cascade County, 9 in Lewis & Clark County, and more new cases in 15 more Montana counties. The number of active coronavirus cases in Montana is 3,618. Statewide, 4,248 people have been hospitalized. The most active cases are in Yellowstone, Flathead, Cascade, and Gallatin Counties. 1,234 people have died in Montana of COVID-19. Nationwide, more than 441,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. There have been 26,200,000 cases of coronavirus in the US, and counting.

A powerful snowstorm blanketed much of the Northeast on Monday, severely hampering public health efforts to get vaccinations into arms between Pennsylvania and New England. Public health agencies were struggling to get shots into arms on Monday as snow blanketed roads and parking lots. Mass vaccinations at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, home of pro football’s Giants and Jets, were canceled, while New York City-run testing and vaccine sites were also closed for the day. in New England, doctors and nurses stationed at Fenway Park and Gillette Stadium, where baseball’s Red Sox and football’s Patriots play, trudged forward with vaccination efforts on Monday despite forecasts of 10 inches of snow for Boston.

At least three attorneys have quit former President Donald Trump’s legal team after he asked them to focus on unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud as part of his defense strategy in his second impeachment trial. The three lawyers are Butch Bowers, Deborah Barbier and Joshua Howard, the sources said. Two new attorneys were named Sunday evening, just days before a pre-trial brief is due. Trump wanted his original team to falsely argue that he had won the election and continue his baseless suggestions that the count was somehow “rigged,” per one person with knowledge of the discussions, but the attorneys were not comfortable with amplifying misinformation. Instead, they wanted to use a Constitutional argument. Forty-five Republican senators voted last week in support of a measure declaring that impeaching a former president is unconstitutional.

For the fourth year running, Bozeman topped the field in a recent national list of micropolitans with the strongest economies.
POLICOM Corporation, which studies local and state economies, uses about two dozen factors from a 20-year period to determine the behavior of an economy over time. Bozeman has been the top micropolitan area in the nation— meaning the population is under 50,000 — since 2018. Bozeman was joined on the top 10 micropolitan list with a few other cities in the region, including Heber, Utah, Jackson, Wyoming, and Ellensburg, Washington. That is in line with trends showing people choosing where to live based on quality of life, a trait of the mountain states that launched three communities to the top of the national list.