5150 in the 406: Missoula’s Mental Health Crisis Meets Nationwide Protest Hysteria

Missoula joined Saturday’s nationwide “Hands Off” protest spectacle with a crowd of roughly 2,500 to 3,000 demonstrators at the County Courthouse—one of over a thousand events backed by the Women’s March, Indivisible and the shadowy 50501 operation. With signs proclaiming “Trump is Bad for my Mental Health,” “Hands Off My Queer Kids,” and a particularly graphic acronym spelling out “TRUMP” as “Toddler Rapist Uneducated Manipulator Pedophile,” the event doubled as a group catharsis session for a movement still reeling from its loss in the 2024 elections. Montana Sentinel Press shared a report of the Helena protest.

The rallies were heavily promoted in the days leading up to them by legacy media outlets including MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show and CNN, further cementing their role not as grassroots uprisings, but as nationally orchestrated political theater. Viewers were encouraged to show up and “defend democracy”—a phrase that has become increasingly performative since the post-2020-Trump news cycle.

Boos, chants, and a lineup of local speakers kept the crowd worked into a froth. But far from a launchpad for meaningful political momentum, the protest seemed more like a pressure-release valve for a fractured and demoralized Left. In that sense, it may have been a welcome outlet—one that diffused the kind of pent-up rage that in recent months has burst into vandalism of Teslas across the country, from scratched panels and keyed doors to Nazi symbols spray-painted on family cars. Even a Tesla dealership was firebombed in Portland last month, part of a wave of anger directed at Elon Musk and his new role as head of the Department of Government Efficiency.

The visuals were dramatic: handmaid costumes, a cartoon of Vice President JD Vance in an SS uniform, and a woman holding a sign that asked, “WWJD—Who Would Jesus Deport?” One of the more notable attendees was Grace Decker, former MCPS trustee and current coordinator at the Montana Budget and Policy Center for the Montana Association of Counties. Her shirt read “All Children Are Our Children” inside a heart-shaped Palestine flag—a fitting emblem of her 2021 stance that the school district held authority over parents to enforce mask mandates and push unproven COVID vaccines. She was joined by her husband Josh Decker, once tied to the Missoula chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.

The crowd itself was a fairly even mix—older women made up a noticeable portion, but younger and older men were present too, along with a number of children. The emotional register was unmistakable: panic, anger, and exhaustion. It was the kind of protest that felt less like grassroots organizing and more like a 5150 call in the political psyche—an episode of mass ideological instability surfacing all at once in the heart of Missoula.