This morning, Walz stood up to all these powerful forces in this country and courageously said, “Hell no.” Well, actually, this is exactly what he said:

“The Boundary Waters is a national treasure and home to some of Minnesota’s most pristine waters and wilderness. This place is deeply personal to me, to Minnesotans, and to people across the country who have paddled these waters. I am using my full executive authority to protect the waters and wildlife of the Boundary Waters and to ensure the outfitters, small businesses, and communities that depend on it continue to thrive for generations to come. It’s our duty as Minnesotans to ensure the sacred place remains wild, pristine, and unharmed.”1

Walz’s order is a delay, a wrench in the works, but it’s not a ban:

While this has been reported as a “ban” on mining around the boundary waters, that’s not exactly true. This does not “stop” mining in the region or stop this particular mine from going forward at some future date. It does, however, throw a major wrench in the works for a process that, by law, must obtain state permits even if the mine is planned and approved on federal USFS property.

Walz can do this because in states with federally managed public lands, both the federal and state governments play a role in industrial development. In MN, here is a listing of the regulatory and permitting tools available to the state Division of Natural Resources or DNR, which means this is a listing of the potential wrenches that Gov Walz just tossed into the Republican plan to poison the boundary waters:

1. The DNR is the primary regulator for mining in the state. Even with federal leases restored, a mine cannot be built without state permits. The DNR must issue a “Permit to Mine,” which must show that a mine can:

• prevent water pollution

• safely store tailings

• reclaim the site after mining

• and protect nearby ecosystems.

If the DNR determines the project poses unacceptable environmental risks, it can deny the permit outright.

2. Minnesota also requires extensive environmental review for large mining projects.

• An Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process evaluates water pollution risks, tailings dam safety, cumulative impacts to the watershed, and alternatives to the project.

• The DNR controls this process and can determine that the project does not meet environmental standards. In 2022, the state actually halted environmental review for the Twin Metals project after federal leases were canceled.

Additional State Permits and approvals also come from state agencies such as the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and include water discharge permits, wetlands permits, dam safety permits, and air permits.

If any one of these is denied, a mine cannot proceed.

As a reminder, 100% of copper mines pollute.

Additionally, Twin Metals Minnesota holds 50-year state mineral leases that the Minnesota DNR can cancel during the 21st or 36th year. One such lease is eligible for cancellation by early June of this year — however, its location is outside the priority deposit areas Twin Metals intends to develop in the near term, meaning cancellation would not halt the mine’s progress.2

The top-down rush to mine in places like the Boundary Waters is all part of the national Republican effort to steal what is yours. That’s because mining on federal land is governed by the 1872 mining law, which literally gives these minerals to huge mining corporations for … wait for it… FREE. That’s right: these mines pay zero royalties to the people of this nation for what they take from our land, a truism that must seem too good to be true for MAGA. That’s why such greedy, powerful people are rushing to crank up the bulldozers.

As a refresher on how deep and pervasive the corruption driving this particular Boundary Waters/Twin Metals mining project is, this is an excerpt from an earlier article I wrote detailing the motivation behind this corruption:3

Industrial Mining That Will Pollute The Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) - America’s Most Visited Wilderness

How it happened: This story centers on Chilean-owned Twin Metals Mining, its billionaire owner and CEO Andronico Luksic, and his multi-year effort to overturn the nearly 30-year prohibition on mining around the BWCA. This story takes shape in early 2017, just as Trump’s first administration was ramping up.

Just before Donald Trump took his first oath of office that year, Luksic, who controlled the huge international mining conglomerate that owned a controversial and therefore useless mining lease on protected public land bordering the BWCA, rightly sensed that the new administration could be bought and that his mining lease asset could become much more valuable.

In January of that year, Luksic, the man who would eventually spend millions “lobbying” to reverse the mining ban in Minnesota, added a seemingly unrelated asset to his books: a highly sought-after $5.5 million home in D.C. Within days, he also signed a sweet little “rental” agreement at that very address for two very specific tenants: Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.¹ And so began a burgeoning relationship of corruption, payoffs, and exploding personal wealth at the expense of the BWCA.

The only hiccup in his plan happened when the Biden administration successfully blocked that mine and stalled the corruption for four years, but after Trump’s 2024 win, the corruption game was back on. By then, Kushner had enlisted others to help, like former Trump Interior officials Ryan Zinke and David Bernhardt, both of whom played pivotal roles in what was to follow.

In April of this year, nine years after that first sweetheart Javanka D.C. lease, it all paid off when the House of Representatives and Senate finally caved to Kushner and Trump’s pressure, approving the mine on a contentious, nearly entirely party-line votes. Twin Metals’ value subsequently increased 1688%, from less than $151 million in 2019 to more than $2.7 billion today.

And that ain’t the only thing that increased, Republican corruption has also been on a rocket ship the past few years, and so it’s reasonable to expect that Kushner’s initial rental payoff has grown into a lucrative criminal enterprise, including crypto for Trump, God-knows-what for his bumbling sons, and payoffs for buffoons like Zinke (whose officially-reported personal wealth has multiplied by nearly 20x since he first entered office). They all did it for the same reasons: to make a couple of bucks by polluting the sacred wild landscape where children learn to fish, and more than 20% of the freshwater in all wilderness areas is found.

Verdict on Why They Are Doing It: Corruption, bribery, and corporate greed

This morning’s ballsy move by Walz is rare, even surprising. The truth is that the state permitting process on almost all projects like this is a foregone conclusion. They are almost always issued because the companies always promise to do things perfectly.

Our modern politics is so wantonly devoid of people like Walz and moments like this. We just don’t often get to witness an elected leader saying yes to common people, to our public lands, and NO to the bullshit of big corp empty promises and NO bullies like Trump. Saying NO to international billionaires. Saying NO to political pressures, to backroom bribes, cushy retirement gigs arranged by greasy payoffs and stock tips. (looking at you Ryan Zinke!)

I’ve been lucky enough to know Gov. Walz. He led the Democratic Governors Association when I ran for Gov here in Montana. He’s a person without much of a filter. I was quickly impressed by his obvious devotion to doing the right thing. He’s not wealthy and is not bothered by that fact. His commitment to public service is obvious. He’s a former schoolteacher who doesn’t seem motivated by money at all. His geeky fascination with saving money on obscure car parts is a well-known, endearing part of him.4 He governs and speaks from the heart. And that’s a damn rare thing these days.

People who care about this country, about our great public lands which we all own collectively, about wild places, fresh water, and native species have reason to celebrate because of what Walz did this morning.

The fight over the Boundary Waters is not over. If MN doesn’t keep electing people like him, we may someday lose the fight.

But today, it’s not too much to say “Hooray for the Boundary Waters and Thank God for Tim Walz!”

Share

Across the country, similar shocks have emerged for Democrats, all revolving around the same topic. Maybe, just maybe, this is the jolt of reality needed to spur Democrats into seizing an opportunity to fix some of what’s been ailing the party.

I’ll get to this topic of Unions endorsing Republicans, but let’s step back for a moment and focus on the opportunity this moment represents.

What if, after years of trying, there was a way for Democrats to bring vast majorities of working-class people back into the fold? No, it’s not difficult. Seizing it requires no embarrassing contortion or compromise and no expensive rebranding; in fact, it’s smack in the middle of what the party claims as its wheelhouse. It’s rooted in legitimate fear about job loss, skyrocketing electricity rates, worsening water quality, and the unregulated industrialization of the places we live.

It’s coming from people who endure “thousand-year climate events” every few days. Droughts, fires, and floods that disproportionately impact working people and destroy small businesses. It’s coming from people who are pissed at the tech bros and VC firms in lofty office buildings and private jets who only demand more tax breaks and environmental deregulation so they can profit more, build faster, and consume unthinkable amounts of electricity, further thickening the earth’s stifling CO2 blanket.

It’s bubbling up from a broad majority of Americans who are crying out for help in the fight against a broken economy that disproportionately rewards the investor class and tech bros. These are the same people who don’t even pretend that their feverish rush to deploy AI is anything but a project to replace millions of working Americans with dark-factory robots, self-driving trucks, chatbots, and simulated service agents.

Voters of both parties feel the rumbling of the oncoming earthquake and are grasping for a way, any way, to exert some control; some way to slow and protect against these breakneck changes being forced upon us. It comes from people who know the fight is stacked against them, but who also know that in a bare-knuckle brawl, you use every bit of leverage you’ve got. And this is the last leverage point left—where working people reach up from the mat, grab a body part, and twist until the tech bros and lobbyists start screaming.

Yup, you got it right. It’s the data centers, stupid!

How we got here:

There is no small amount of irony in the fact that Democratic strategist James Carville coined the prescient and iconic 1992 campaign theme “it’s the economy, stupid” for the exact same Clinton administration that just months later rammed the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, through Congress.1

Granted, there is no single source for what followed, but the Democratic Party’s dramatic loss of working-class voters over the three decades was partially precipitated by the “giant sucking sound” of jobs being outsourced from American factories to foreign countries. Working Americans felt betrayed, a fact that became very painfully obvious to Democrats when Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, at least in part because of her focus on corporate Wall Street connections and her inability to distance from Bill’s signature trade deal. Hillary, as the saying goes, “was just another corporate Democrat.”2

Democrats have at least pretended to take the resulting lessons very seriously. For the last decade, the party has spent hundreds of millions on consultants, autopsies, ad campaigns, focus groups and candidate recruitment in a desperate attempt to win back those working-class voters.

How’s that going? Not so great. Kamala Harris’s 2024 working-class woes are well documented, and echoes of her loss permeated through other races across the nation. Here in Montana, I lost a race for Governor to an outsourcing tech billionaire, and in the same cycle the desperate fight to keep working farmer Jon Tester in the Senate also failed. Jon lost by 7% despite a genuinely grease-stained Carhartt jacket and an insane level of campaign spending totaling more than $300 million, or more than $400 per registered voter, a sum that made it the most expensive per capita election in the nation’s history.

Some Dems Are Getting It, But It’s Scattershot and That Ain’t Cutting It:

Given all this decade-long expensive Democratic hand-wringing, you’d think that when a powerful, realigning issue like this comes along, one that bundles income disparity, environment, job loss, tax policy, and quality of life, an issue that energizes more and more voters (current polling is at 71% oppose and its growing), including large numbers of working-class Republicans, Dems would jump on it like a chicken on a June bug.3

Some Dems have pounced. Cindy Holscher, the Democratic candidate for governor in Kansas, just won her primary, coming from behind, defying the polls, and without the endorsement of sitting Governor Laura Kelly. When I asked how she did it, she had two words: “Data Centers.”4 Holscher, previously voted for a bill in the state legislature that cut taxes for large tech projects. But after being on the trail with voters, she quickly realized she needed the courage to change her mind publicly and forcefully. She did it, ran on it, and won the primary.

Why aren’t the party and candidates who want to win adopting the same kind of forceful stance across the board so that voters know exactly which party stands against data centers? Well, that can be explained by what’s going on in Montana.

How Data Centers Are Playing Out In Montana:

The battle here in Montana is emblematic of this issue for Dems across the nation. Despite loud public outcry and bipartisan opposition to planned data centers near Billings, Butte, and Missoula, Republicans remain firmly behind full-speed data center development. At least 14 others are planned for the state because we have almost no regulations; we have cheap power, and at least today, we still have water.

Our GOP governor pals around with data center lobbyists and appoints their champions to commissions. Aaron Flint, the Republican nominee for the MT01 House seat, is likewise bought and paid for by data-center tech bros and relied on nearly $1mil of AI lobbying money to win his primary.

Given these obvious GOP stances, it shouldn’t be hard for Dems to draw a clear distinction. Former Governor Brian Schweitzer made this clear a few weeks ago when he spoke to a statewide democratic group;

“Nationwide data centers have a 30% approval rating. In Montana, they have a 22% approval rating. That’s lower than almost everything, anything that you can look at. I think every issue that I have looked at, no matter what it has to do with, education or health care, I can’t find any as low as 22%. So the public is already on our side.”5

Some Dem grassroots leaders are reading Schweitzer’s mail and pushing a more aggressive stance, as witnessed by the results of the recent Montana Democratic Party convention, where the party narrowly adopted a hard-fought plank calling for a two-year moratorium on data center construction.6

But here is where political difficulty starts for Dems. This plank passed despite strong opposition from organized labor reps in attendance, who pressured the party to avoid the data center fight.

In a sign of the tug of war inside Dem politics, Former Senator Tester, who now serves on an advisory board for Anthropic AI, recently publicly chastised Democrats who oppose data center construction and suggested that focusing on future regulation would be a better approach.7

The problem with Jon’s suggested, measured approach is that, unlike past industrial building projects, AI corporations like Anthropic have unlimited money and are moving so fast that there is no time to debate careful, complex regulations, especially given the dysfunction of D.C. These companies want to slow things down so that debate grinds to a halt in the legislative back-and-forth.

I remember being very excited by Jon’s 2005/06 Senate run. (Full disclosure - I was a strong and active supporter of Jon in all of his races.) He was a straight-talking populist with a keen nose for smart politics. Maybe I’m just nostalgic for the good ol days, but it’s hard for me to believe the 2005 Jon Tester would have failed to jump on Data Center opposition as both good policy and good politics.

This is not the slow-rolling industrial buildout of the past. Given the stakes, we need fast action that demands NOTHING be built until strict regulations are in place, including rules that guard against AI displacing workers.

We need a moratorium on any new construction; Dems need to run on it, loud and proud, and if we win back the House and Senate, Democrats need to make sure it happens fast.

Data center proponents aren’t waiting around or twiddling their thumbs. They are doing all they can to stop the party from taking clear action or issuing clear messages. In a December 2025 move that surprised many, the Montana AFL-CIO instructed the Montana Democratic Party to lay off any criticism of data centers, and they did it with an official letter that read in part;

“While we understand that this is a complex policy matter, I feel it is important that we remind you that the Building Trades and union members who work in the construction industry have been very supportive of conversations about the potential for data centers in Montana.”8

In June, Jason Smalls, the Republican who is also President of Montana AFL-CIO, made a show of laughing it up with Flint and also said that the Data Center issue was no big deal and that concerned voters were just “controlling people through manipulation and fear.”

And then, last week, the Carpenter’s Union in Butte officially endorsed MAGA Flint for Congress, an unprecedented and shocking move given the very clear anti-union sentiments, history, and policies of the MAGA coalition. Ironworker leaders also filmed videos laughing it up with Flint. Apparently, union rights, prevailing wage, and fighting right-to-work aren’t important after all. Data centers are all that matter even if they jack up electricity rates and take jobs from tens of thousands of union member teachers, nurses, and police officers.

I gotta think that somewhere there must is a smoke-filled bar full of MAGA CEOs, Republican operatives, anti-union lobbyists, and wealthy investors toasting this inside job victory. And who can blame them? It’s very hard not to interpret this long, documented string of events from labor leaders as anything but a clear pro-data-center stance from an entity that purports to be inside the Democratic Party tent.

I was honored to receive the AFL-CIO endorsement in our Gubernatorial run, but that does not mean that I have to look away from what they are attempting now. The real perplexing part is that some Democrats fail to recognize the political malpractice and destructiveness of what’s happening.

A political party’s sole purpose is supposed to be to win elections. In other words, only a party that wished to lose elections would take orders directly contrary to the growing calls of almost all Democrats and a rapidly growing number of Republican voters.

Perhaps this is the sort of moment that political scientists call a “realignment opportunity.” The precipice moment where a successful political party musters up enough courage to stand up to destructive demands from its own “groups” so that it can grab voters back from the opposition party. These opportunities require courage, boldness, and a willingness to care about winning.

For the sake of our state and country, and especially the working people most impacted by data centers and AI, let’s hope Democrats find the courage to make it happen.

Share

And so for millions of U.S. citizens, there is nothing more anti-American than the current Republican rush to first sell or destroy our birthright through profiteering and industrialization, giving away minerals, old-growth forests, grass, oil, and natural gas found on or below our public land.

Indeed, the giveaway can’t just happen. There must be a real concerted effort; bedrock environmental laws that generations of Americans demanded must be broken or repealed. Our federal management agencies built up over the last 150 years must be weakened, gutted, and DOGEd. Bribes must be proffered and accepted. And most importantly, we, the owners of public lands, must be herded towards indifference, spurred to irrational anger, and prone to accept, even celebrate, illegality and immorality on an unprecedented scale.

Sadly, that’s all occurring right now, largely because Republicans are effectively deploying one of their proven tactics: the repeated spreading of bald-faced lies about our public lands. Here are the 5 of the biggest GOP whoppers and the truth you need to confront each one:

1. LIE: National Monument designations were forced on us by D.C. bureaucrats with no public comment

   TRUTH: Just last month, Utah Senator Mike Lee (Dbag - Utah) - once again marched out this old lie about the use of the 1906 Antiquities Act in his celebratory dance after the Trump admin rolled back Monument designations for nearly 3 million acres in Bear’s Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante national monuments.1

   

   As with the designation of other national monuments, an extensive public comment process was undertaken, and in this case, more than 2.7 million comments were gathered before designation. These inputs included official statements from more than 330 Native American tribes, conservation orgs, and religious groups, many near to the Utah sites. What Lee really meant to say was that oil companies and huge mining corps did not get to overrule those millions of American citizens, and that really hurts his feelings.

2. LIE: Gotta Drill Baby Drill in America because…energy independence

   TRUTH: Another oldy but goody from the Republicans who repeatedly use this lie to justify opening up public lands for their corporate oil buddies who need another private jet.

   Case in point: Ryan Zinke, who served as Trump’s first interior secretary before he was… check’s notes … yes, wow, FIRED for corruption from the Trump admin (did not think that possible), started the lying way back in his first secretarial order in 2017. “Today I took action to sign a series of directives that put America on track to achieve the President’s vision for energy independence.” 2

   

   To demonstrate how brazenly dishonest these people are, it was also Zinke who, just two years prior in 2015, also proudly voted to approve the first ever legalization of exporting all the surplus oil and gas produced in America.3. That’s right, the same corrupt Interior Secretary who said we have to drill to be independent from importing oil also voted to export oil that we produce instead of using it here, which is…checks notes again…the opposite of “independent.” (side note - this guy also made a pile of money lobbying for ConocoPhillips - I know, it’s a real shocker!)

3. Lie: Log it or Lose It.

   TRUTH: If you live in the west, and a forest fire starts, you can count Republican politicians instantly issuing statements with some version of “see, I told ya, we gotta log it or lose it.” Montana’s Steve Daines wears this one out, and repeatedly used it to advocate for a 6-fold increase in logging on federal lands in Montana last year.4

   As proof of Steve’s dishonesty, just last week a large fire blew up just north of where I live in Kalispell, Montana. And yes, you guessed it, the Skillet fire erupted in some of the most intensively logged country in Montana. According to the “log it or lose it” crowd, fires are only supposed to happen elsewhere where no logging ever happened.

   

   Yes, in some very recently logged areas, or smaller areas where effective clearing is possible, fires are easier to fight and slower to spread. And yes, of course, if we clear-cut every single tree from every single acre every single year, we will have a less fire-prone landscape, but it will be a Blade Runner movie where only big industry CEOs are happy, and the rest of us are locked in an industrialized hellscape. (As a public lands owner, I want to register my opposition)

   The real truth that Republicans like Daines don’t want you to hear is that the MOST fire-resilient and most wildlife-rich landscapes are those with old growth and natural multi-age fire scars mixed in, and this will become increasingly true as climate change worsens the fire risk everywhere.

4. LIE: You are locked out of your land by the elitists - No one can hunt, fish, or graze livestock on National Monuments or Wilderness Study Areas

   TRUTH: This is a dumb one, because, well, people can read and most all of the larger “controversial” national monuments of the last several decades protect hunting, fishing, grazing, etc. in the official designation documents. That has not stopped Mike Lee, Steve Daines, and yes, even the well-known master outdoorsman, Donald J Trump, from repeatedly deploying this lie as they constantly attack wilderness and monument protections across the nation. “You can’t go hunting, you can’t go fishing, you can’t do anything, you can virtually not even walk on it,”5 Trump said as he swiftly scrambled up a steep rocky hill in the Utah backcountry. (Sorry - the quote was real, but that last scrambling part was my lie - Trump probably said this between McRibs at the White House, I mean Gaudy Gold House).

   Thankfully, the New York Times called him on his b.s. earlier this week: “But recreation has been allowed in Bears Ears since President Barack Obama designated the monument in 2016. And government documents reviewed by The New York Times show that Trump administration officials were briefed on recreational opportunities inside the monument about a month before the Oval Office event. The documents suggest that the administration was “lying or spreading misinformation about these fantastic public lands” when it justified cutting the protected areas, said Steve Bloch, the legal director at the nonprofit Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, who reviewed the records at the request of The Times.”6

5. LIE: Oil Corps, Mining companies and Grazers pay their fair share to profit from our public lands

   TRUTH: This is really a doozy, and you ought to be hopping mad about it, because unless you are CEO at EXXON, a big public lands rancher or a Mining CEO, you are handing what are effectively big welfare checks to these people.

   Oil companies, thanks to demands from Republicans and the “Big Beautiful Bill”, pay about 12.5% royalties on public land but closer to 25% on private land. 7. Grazers get a 95% discount on public land ($1.35 per animal unit on public land, compared to about $25 per animal unit on private land).

   

   And the kicker is mining, since it is governed by the General Mining Act of 1872, which requires ZERO royalties from bulldozing your public lands. You heard that right, they get your mountain and river, you get notta.

One Last important truth before we all rush to the whiskey … the upside here is that for Trump and the Republicans, all these sweetheart deals we are giving to all of these extractive corporations leave so much more room for those Trump-boy crypto bribes and for the Mar-a-Lago campaign contributions that keep this grift churning.

Ok… grab the bottle.

Share

I’ve alerted you to these travesties in past dispatches, and many of you have sent me heartfelt responses; my favorites include wonderfully woven tapestries of blue-streaked swearing that would make sailors cower from embarrassment. I must admit I treasure every single one, often repeating the best throughout the day like an earwormed song you just can’t quit. But the most common response to the woeful news is not a rant, it’s a simple, exasperated, forlorn question from distraught public land owners across America:

“Why are they doing this?”

Given the incredible damage and likely criminal implications, you might guess the answer would be shrouded in a complex, hard-to-prove web of conspiracies. But no, it turns out that just a modicum of sleuthing uncovers the simple, easily discoverable reasons for it all, and we need only examine the backstories of three recent high-profile disasters to arrive at the inescapable answers to this important question.

1. Forcing Industrial Mining That Will Pollute The Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) - America’s Most Visited Wilderness

   How it happened: This story centers on Chilean-owned Twin Metals Mining, its billionaire owner and CEO Andronico Luksic, and his multi-year effort to overturn the nearly 30-year prohibition on mining around the BWCA. This story takes shape in early 2017, just as Trump’s first administration was ramping up.

   Just before Donald Trump took his first oath of office that year, Luksic, who controlled the huge international mining conglomerate that owned a controversial and therefore useless mining lease on protected public land bordering the BWCA, rightly sensed that the new administration could be bought and that his mining lease asset could become much more valuable.

   In January of that year, Luksic, the man who would eventually spend millions “lobbying” to reverse the mining ban in Minnesota, added a seemingly unrelated asset to his books: a highly sought-after $5.5 million home in D.C. Within days, he also signed a sweet little “rental” agreement at that very address for two very specific tenants: Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.1 And so began a burgeoning relationship of corruption, payoffs, and exploding personal wealth at the expense of the BWCA.

   

   The only hiccup in his plan happened when the Biden administration successfully blocked that mine and stalled the corruption for four years, but after Trump’s 2024 win, the corruption game was back on. By then, Kushner had enlisted others to help, like former Trump Interior officials Ryan Zinke and David Bernhardt, both of whom played pivotal roles in what was to follow.

   

   In April of this year, nine years after that first sweetheart Javanka D.C. lease, it all paid off when the House of Representatives and Senate finally caved to Kushner and Trump’s pressure, approving the mine on a contentious, nearly entirely party-line votes. Twin Metals’ value subsequently increased 1688%, from less than $151 million in 2019 to more than $2.7 billion today.

   And that ain’t the only thing that increased, Republican corruption has also been on a rocket ship the past few years, and so it’s reasonable to expect that Kushner’s initial rental payoff has grown into a lucrative criminal enterprise, including crypto for Trump, God-knows-what for his bumbling sons, and payoffs for buffoons like Zinke (whose officially-reported personal wealth has multiplied by nearly 20x since he first entered office). They all did it for the same reasons: to make a couple of bucks by polluting the sacred wild landscape where children learn to fish, and more than 20% of the freshwater in all wilderness areas is found.
   

   Verdict/Why They Are Doing It: Corruption, bribery, and corporate greed

2. Bulldozing the Ambler mining road through Alaska’s most pristine and unspoiled wilderness

   How it happened: Prior to 2016, the massive 211-mile Ambler road project was mostly considered a dangerous, pipe dream of rape-and-pillage speculators. It was risky, expensive, opposed by a dozen Native American tribes, and reliant on unproven, highly speculative mineral deposits that would probably never pay off, or copper that would have to be shipped to China if it was actually there.

   Nonetheless, in a foreshadowing decision, Trump hastily demanded the road be approved just months before he (begrudgingly) left office in 2020. Soon after, and just like in the BWCA decision above, the Biden administration reversed Trump’s insanity and barred consideration of an industrial project that would punch a road through some of the most stunning remaining wilderness on the planet; landscapes that included sacred native sites, more than 3000 river, stream, and wetland crossings, and construction directly within the Gates of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.2

   

   Given those hurdles, one might assume this project was dead, but just like the BWCA disaster, the Ambler road had inside help from a man who knew how to wield corruption long and hard enough that he would eventually get what he wanted. This time, it was a billionaire hedge fund bro and huge Trump donor, named John Paulson. In 2015, Paulson bought shares in a little-known Canadian company, Trilogy Metals, for what was a song because Trilogy was a shaky bet, since any increase in value rested on long-shot guesses about iffy deposits deep in the Alaskan wilderness and an industrial access road that no sane person thought should be built.

   Paulson, who contributed huge sums to Trump’s campaign slush funds, knew that only bribery and corruption could solve those problems, and he knew he had a willing audience in Trump. And he was right, because in October of last year, the Trump administration overruled the Biden decree and demanded that the Ambler road be constructed, over the vehement opposition of native Alaskan groups, almost every environmental organization in America, hunters and anglers across the country, and decent people everywhere.

   

   Paulson, who had also somehow convinced Trump to officially invest nearly $ 40 million of your U.S. Taxpayer money in Trilogy, was jubilant. Just weeks after the Ambler decision, he sold his entire interest in the formerly sleepy foreign company and personally profited tens of millions.

   Paulson, by the way, is still happily spending millions of dollars in campaign funds (aka political bribes) to Trump and his Republican allies today in anticipation of his next escapade.3

   Verdict/Why They Are Doing It: Corruption, bribery, and corporate greed

3. Gutting the Endangered Species Act and Opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to Oil and Gas Drilling

   Nothing slows the habitat destruction from oil and gas development like pesky citizen-demanded laws, such as the Endangered Species Act or prohibitions on federal leasing in places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. These policies, enacted by the representatives of millions of Americans, require that careful review must precede any description of critical habitats lest it “harm” the things we care to conserve.

   But no President has ever - literally ever - been so overtly and actively invested in that same industry while in office.

   And so perhaps it’s true that we could have seen these decisions coming; Trump did, after all, promise to deliver a plethora of favors to the industry in exchange for a billion in industry-generated campaign funds, a public quid pro quo almost too honest to believe.4

   

   Nonetheless, the recent “harm” policy announcement from the administration is still shocking because it informs the oil industry that no measure of destroying critical habitat of any endangered or threatened creature will be considered “harm.” It’s a blank check for an industry that delivered several literal checks to Trump and his Republican allies, and the impacts are detailed in my recent piece here. They plan to destroy habitats and kill endangered species, plain and simple.

   

   Likewise, the Trump administration’s decision to open up the Arctic to industrial development is part of the same scheme. And like so much of what Trump does, these actions are linked to his personal greed. On this one, you don’t have to guess at the motives; he goes so far as to officially report his personal stake in companies like Conoco and Exxon. In other words, he is personally making billions for oil and gas CEOs while making huge sums for himself and his cronies. AND HE’S NOT HIDING ANY OF IT. These people are literally waving the corruption in your face. They are selling your last and most wild places, your clean water, your wildlife, so that a small group of them can become more insanely wealthy.

   Verdict/Why They Are Doing It: Corruption, bribery, and corporate greed

   If you sense a trend, congratulations. Yes, every reason for every decision is the same. Nothing is complex or obscure. Greed and corruption are at the heart of everything this administration is doing. The question is, what are you going to do about it?

   The midterms are coming, but perhaps it’s also time to read up on the French Revolution.

   Share

   
   

You might read the title or the paragraph above and think, “Oh, c’mon, that can’t be true??” If you are muttering those doubts, I’ve got a challenge for you. Isn’t it time to be sufficiently pissed off about what these people are doing? Isn’t it time to at least keep step with the destruction instead of always being a step behind? Isn’t it time to stop assuming this administration is doing something different than what we know they are doing? I think so, and that means we must call these actions what they are or what they will be.

If you still need some intellectual backup before you believe, well, fine, here are the actual Trump administration words in their actual Trump administration statement: “Actions that directly injure or kill listed wildlife will continue to be prohibited. What ends today is a system that repeatedly punished people for indirect or speculative impacts.”2

In other words, choking an endangered manatee to death with your bare hands? Yes, probably an Endangered Species Act (ESA) violation. Draining the estuary where the other manatees live, or pumping diesel fuel into their water? Umm, No - Mr. Smarty Pants, that’s “indirect or speculative” because who knows? Maybe the manatees love diesel fuel or could happily live without water, just like a desert cactus. No way to know until we try! Call our corporate attorney, ya whiny Libs!

And yes, these people really do think you are dumb enough to believe all of this idiocy without raising an eyebrow. I know, it’s maddening, they think we are as dumb as Eric Trump. They think you won’t call it what it is. Well, I’m done with that shit.

And even worse, they are “doth protest too much” cocky on one hand, but try to slip this stuff by us like we won’t notice on the other. Witness the joint announcement from Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and Secretary of Commerce Howard Nutlick (yes, I double checked the spelling). It was buried in the Friday afternoon releases, an old D.C. trick meant to avoid unwanted attention from citizens like you and me that don’t take kindly to nuking wild animals and entire ecosystems.

Here’s the quick backstory on how this disaster happened: The entire oil-soaked policy announcement is the culmination of a more than 30-year Republican Party attack on the Endangered Species Act which was signed into law in 1973 by Richard Nixon.

The hatred of the bill simmered for years, and then began taking shape in 1995 with an Antonin Scalia Dissent in a Supreme Court case centering on whether old-growth trees in Oregon could be preserved for federally endangered woodpeckers and owls that depended on those ancient stands for survival.3

Back then, when we had an administration that stood up for the laws that all of us citizens demanded, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt defended federal actions under the ESA protecting those trees. Seemed like a no-brainer because any fool could see that cutting them would “harm” the species that depended on that habitat. And back when we had a Supreme Court that could spell “constitution,” the Supreme Court agreed in a 6-3 slam-dunk decision. This became part of what the legal system refers to as the “Chevron deference.”

The majority vote mattered for a long time, but very importantly, scion of the Supreme Court right-wing legal nuts, Justice Antonin Scalia, was in the 3-vote minority. He issued a snarky dissent in the case, arguing that we should put aside our most basic powers of reason and accept that cutting those trees would harm not a single woodpecker or owl, at least not immediately.

I mean, yeah, eventually those birds might all die without the habitats they need, but who could tell for sure? Definitely not those pointy-headed biologists, or “experts” in the federal government, that’s for sure! Scalia laid the groundwork for the theory that government scientists could not be trusted to predict such outcomes and that cutting down the trees didn’t have a direct “harm” on anything. And if you did not believe him, just try it! Cut down a tree and watch the woodpecker fly away! See, the bird is still alive! So let the big corps cut, mine, dam, and burn; then let’s see if anything actually dies or is “harmed” a few years later. (see also - Cigarettes don’t hurt anyone - I’m smoking one right now and I’m still alive.)

Look, I know Scalia’s reasoning is insane. But, like other Scalia dissents, his theory came to be accepted over the years as a litmus test for selecting new justices, and over time, it also served as the fever dream for big industry across the country. Ohhhh baby… what wild country could they industrialize if they could just get rid of that pesky “harm” idea?

For more than three decades, oil industry execs, mega-developers, and Republicans like Ryan Zinke, Steve Daines, Mike Lee, and Donald Trump yearned for the time when a Supreme Court, fully captured by the nut-bag right, would latch on to Scalia’s opinion and make it law.

And then in 2024, it happened. In a 6-3 case, with a passel of these federalist shills on the bench, the court adopted Antonin’s reasoning, overturning the basis for almost all of our environmental regulatory structure.4 The “chevron deference” was gone. Scalia’s old minority dissent was now the law of the land.

This, combined with project 2025, left the door open for Friday’s policy announcement from Burgum and Nutlick, and they made it official with these words: “The Department of the Interior and the Department of Commerce today announced they have finalized a rule rescinding the outdated regulatory definition of ‘harm’ under the Endangered Species Act.”

Don’t let these shills fool you. This idea is no less evil or insane than it was before Friday. Every threatened or endangered species in America is in peril BECAUSE its needed habitat is disappearing, poisoned, or both. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. There are more than 1,300 of these officially threatened or endangered species in the U.S., including those Florida Manatees, Greater and Lesser Prairie Chickens, Cutthroat Trout, Golden-cheeked Warblers, Wolverines, and, of course, Grizzly Bears.

Some of those 1,300 may seem esoteric, but their existence depends on intact ecosystems that benefit thousands of other species and all Americans. Yesterday I was one of them, fishing for westslope cutthroat trout, which depend on clean, cold water and roadless areas protected and enhanced by the ESA.

You might be an American like me and my boys who hunt elk, deer, or antelope. Despite anti-science rednecks who claim otherwise, all of these game species have been greatly enhanced or saved by the laws that protect grizzly bears, because the ESA requires that any development in the places they live be carefully regulated, and many of them live in the same places grizzlies do.

It’s not just hunters who benefit. Most of us (especially anyone of a certain age) are quickly progressing towards some version of bird-nerdiness, and there is not a native bird in this country that has not benefited from the ESA. Let’s just look at a couple of good examples: observing the mating dances of native grouse, like the Prairie Chickens, can still happen because of the ESA, and protecting these grouse has also helped thousands of other birds and animals that depend on what’s left of our once-great prairie ecosystems.

What to do about it? As for me, I’m back in the game, taking back the helm at Public Land Warriors, which I founded last year. I stepped away to run for office, but as of today, I’m back.

PLW is a no-holds-barred org, lean and mean. Three people who care only about making a difference where it matters - at the ballot box. We are going after the people who are destroying our wild places, especially our public lands. It’s time to put some pelts on the wall, and I’m tired of orgs that don’t understand we have to win elections to make a change. I hope you’ll join us.

P.S…. Congressman Pete Stauber - yeah, you - the jackwagon from Minnesota that drove the effort to get your Trump mining toadies to industrialize the boundary waters…Pete, we are gearing up to come for you.

Share

I closed the gate and turned to hear the guy in the diesel ranch truck already barking at me as the window rolled down and his face came into view, “How’d you like it if I drove across your yard? That’s national forest up there, but not down here.”

I first encountered this rancher on Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front as he was fixing fence many years prior, on a dusty summer afternoon, and he’d given what I thought was lasting permission to access the two-track through his place. Over the years, we had short, friendly conversations, which I thought solidified our agreement. But ranch life is hard; wind, stress, and isolation eventually find their outlets. And today, on this windy November day, that outlet would be me.

Having grown up on a ranch and having seen my father give many speeches like this, I recognized the frustration flowing from that truck, and I knew exactly what was necessary to salvage my hunt.

Now was the time for a heartfelt mea culpa. I jumped out, and offered it immediately. The tension diffused; two of us shook hands and agreed that I could continue up to my planned camp, from which I would strike out on foot in the morning.

My truck groaned up through steep rocks and deep ruts. Just before dark, I parked at the end of the trail, a promising spot I had located the previous summer. I rushed to set up my tent, accepting that evening scouting would not happen; too much precious daylight had been spent on the access negotiations below.

Elk hunting on even the gentlest public land is among the most difficult of hunting pursuits, and as I crawled into my sleeping bag, I thought about how this difficulty would be magnified here.

In the morning, I planned to hike into the Badger Two Medicine, a corner of mountainous country between the Bob Marshall Wilderness and Glacier National Park, and one of our last remaining truly wild places.

The Badger Two is moody, indescribably beautiful, welcoming at its best, and also frequently hostile, almost to the point of being unlivable. This, combined with the weather forecast, meant the odds were I’d see not another soul on this trip. That was just fine with me, my own version of keeping the riff raff out.

The next morning, more than an hour before first light, I rushed to brew a cup of coffee in my tent, gulped it down, then laced up my boots and strapped on my pack and rifle as I hurried to utilize whatever good weather I could get.

I stepped through that tent door and pushed through the cold darkness into pure wildness. No phones, no maps, no certainty of safety or outcome. If you’ve not felt the fear and exhilaration from doing something like this, well, I highly recommend it.

After an hour of climbing, the sun began to dilute the blackness in the eastern sky behind me. According to the Blackfeet, the great creator Apistotoke made the Sun, then formed Na’pi, the first old man spirit. The sun warmed Na’pi, who then formed these mountains and plains and the bear-claw people, or Blackfeet, from clay gathered by a turtle, scattering the people across the land, and teaching them to hunt Buffalo and Elk on the plains over which the sun was now rising.

It’s a beautiful origin story, and it served as the source of merciless mocking from European invaders and the U.S. Government, who spent nearly two centuries persecuting the Blackfeet over this native land-worshiping religion, even as those same Europeans created a pile of damaging and far less believable myths of their own.

Lots of book learning and Sunday schooling had been expended on American kids like me, demanding that sun-warmed creator spirits or clay-formed bear-claw people could be nothing more than silly creations of an evil heathen people.

But Montana, at its best, has a way of nudging one to question what you’ve been made to believe, and so it was with me.

My initial doubts about those teachings, and then my own replacements, took shape here, in the Badger-Two. Soon after my first visit to this place as a young man in the early 1990s, I, too, came to believe that in some way, my personal origin, or at least my rebirth, was centered here, and importantly, that anyone who would destroy this place must be defeated.

I even adapted a few hymns to sing in religious support of my belief, with lines like “He was born in the summer of his 27th year, comin’ home to a place he’d never been before.”

I hummed those songs, not caring whether others believed. I cared only that I believed and acted. Before long, I would join up with other Montanans who loved wild places. I would jeopardize my job and my family’s livelihood at the National Press Club in D.C., railing against the Bush administration’s plans to industrialize this place with a network of roads and oil and gas development, a battle that is, sadly, on a loud repeat loop across our nation even as you read now. And this is why I have never stopped fighting for places like this.

Personal change and sacrifice require belief, even faith, and this elk-hunting trip was something I needed to complete the test of my personal faith. Up until now, my time in this place had included dozens of summer days hiking and camping. Wonderful and life-changing, but easy times days I found wild trout in the gin-clear waters, stood on the tall, windswept peaks, and gazed in awe at twisted whitebark pines warmed by the sun. This was a complex place, but my days had mostly been simple, absent the worry of peril I knew was here.

These ancient whitebarks were centuries old before Lewis or Clark was ever born, and there was much I did not know about the forces that made them and all of the other creatures here. Almost everything in this place, especially those gnarled pines, seemed constantly and nervously wary of disaster: a fire, or a drought, or winter’s approach, as if each had a sad story about losing a family member to a recent war with the elements.

I’d been dodging those high winds and winter storms, admiring from a seasonal distance, and I knew this meant I was not yet a real creature of this place. But now I was here, in November, a month that held almost no ideal conditions. Even a few days strung together here this time of year would inevitably involve danger.

As daylight broke, I stopped my hike to soak in the mountain air, squinting through binoculars in hopes of an early elk sighting. Nothing out in front, but from behind I heard the crack of a stick and a loud “woof.” I turned to see a beautiful, dark grizzly a stone’s throw below me, standing upright, her posture one part curiosity and many parts warning.

A small cub, the size of a toddler, was beside her as she slowly waved her head side to side for a better view, one eye at a time. She held her nose high in the air, trying to catch my wind, a bear’s form of insistence on checking the real ID to make certain about the origin of any threat.

Here I was intruding again without proper permission, and this was the potential for a real confrontation. Thankfully, the morning downdraft, carrying my scent, tumbled toward her. In an instant, she let out a scolding “woof,” dropped to all fours, gathered up her cub like a fullback carrying a football, and charged away into the timber.

Some might have considered this a troubling omen so early in my hunt, but I took it as a sign of my belonging. It was true that nothing would come easy here, but like the rancher the day before, she, too, had begrudgingly accepted my presence.

I spent the rest of that day in the high peaks, marveling at lichens on rocks and soaring eagles in the sky, looking for elk, and watching over my shoulder for bears. or cats, or wolves. This was, after all, one of the only places in the lower 48 in which these predators were never fully eradicated despite the trapping, poisoning, and shooting, a process that those same Europeans considered enlightened development.

Before I realized it, the evening was upon me, and I rested beside a burnt-out pine to glass the hillsides for any sign of an elk I might chase in the morning. Within minutes, my heart jumped again; Yes, four animals, only a couple of hundred yards away!

But they were not elk. Another beautiful female grizzly, and this one was completely oblivious to my presence, with the long grizzled guard hairs over her shoulders, flowing in the wind in a sign her coat was almost ready for winter. Just feet behind her was the equivalent of a troublemaking troop of teenagers in a grocery store, three nearly-grown grizzly cubs, probably three years old and almost as big as their mom.

I forgot about the elk and lay still, watching these bears for an hour as they knocked over the shelves in their store, recklessly mimicking their mom, digging for ground squirrels, and log-rolling for ants.

I thought about this mother bear and her accomplishment; such an incredible marvel of nature. Against the odds, her ancestors had escaped the ugly human desire to kill all of her kind. She had grown up here, found a mate, birthed these three trouble makers, raised them, in this extreme place, nursing them in a den, finding food, including elk where there wasn’t much, probably fighting off boars that tried to kill them all, and avoiding people who meant her and these cubs harm. And now, they were almost ready for the real world. Next spring, she’d send them off to find groceries on their own, and she’d start the hard job of parenting all over again. I was very fortunate to be here, witnessing it all in one of the last places where big predators like this still lived in a landscape large enough to hold them and me.

With only a few minutes of light left, as I stumbled back to my feet and down a game trail back toward my tent, three miles away, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of yellow across a small canyon, the color that all elk hunters hope to see. A lone bull elk moving down the mountain into the dark timber. I’d seen him for only a few seconds, but he was here. And I pulsed with excitement, thinking about how I’d return the next day to search for him.

But I also knew my real test was yet to arrive. A winter storm was in the forecast for the next 36 hours, and this country was famous for its vicious weather. Snow driven to concrete-hard drifts by 75 mph wind and quick 50-degree temperature drops.

Prudence advised breaking camp, but I was here to prove my commitment. I’d see this through.

The next day, I hiked back to that spot, and by afternoon, I found that bull elk. I know that many of you reading this are not hunters. And I know that many of you rightfully recoil from what hunting has become in many parts of the world. But I hope you know that not all hunters are what you’ve been shown.

I want you to know that no real hunter does this because we desire to kill things. For us, ethical hunting, connecting with nature, and sourcing our own wild food are part of who we are as humans. This is especially true for many Montanans. For our family and me, hunting and harvesting are also a conscious protest against factory farms, processed food, and the destruction of nature.

A full embrace of these facts was a big part of my own transformation in Montana, where Sara and I had consciously modified our lifestyle to include a focus on local, natural, gathered, and wild food as much as possible. For us, centering our lives around wild game is both moral and natural. And I assure you that if you put this kind of effort into obtaining your food, you will hold it in much higher regard.

Like those grizzlies, I aimed to harvest sustenance here. And not just any sustenance, but elk. That day I was successful. And by the way, Ponoka (the Blackfeet work for Elk), is among the finest and healthiest proteins in the world. But finding the elk and making a shot was one thing; the hard work was yet to begin.

Out of respect for it all, I was determined that nothing would be wasted. Butchering, caching, and of course, a long, multi-mile, multi-day, and multi-trip adventure with 100-pound packs in and out of steep country. All in the face of an impending blizzard.

The first heavy haul finished just as the snow started that night. I dumped the pack and fell into my sleeping bag, knowing that the majority of the butchered 800-pound bull was still up there and that at least four grizzly bears were on close watch. My camp was probably going to get buried in snow, and my truck was in a spot that I worried would mean a prolonged or maybe even a spring extraction. Any one of these things was enough to keep me up all night, but nothing keeps you up after you’ve been packing elk.

I unzipped the tent in the morning to find 6 inches of snow and worsening windy conditions. I started the hike back to the cached elk, and two hours later, with legs worn out from the snowy trail, I arrived at the landmarks where all of the remaining elk should have been.

But it was not all there; an entire front quarter was missing. Exasperated and deflated, I examined the unique tracks in the snow and followed them to where a wolverine had eaten nearly good part of an elk front quarter.

This rarest, meanest, most far-ranging and bad ass of all remaining northern Rockies predators, of which fewer than 350 remain in our nation, had lived up to its “glutton” reputation, consuming more elk than our boys and passel of Busse house guests on a lazy summer evening.

Again, I felt lucky to be in such a place with animals like the Wolverine and Grizzly. And even though I had worked hard for that elk, I harbored no antipathy towards this creature; instead, I felt a deep honor and gladly left the remainder of that quarter for its next meal, or maybe for those three rambunctious Grizzly cubs that would surely find this treasure before long.

Despite the loss to the wolverine, the rest of the elk was located, salvaged and hauled back to camp. Within a week, it was packaged and in our freezer. If you’ve visited us, you may have shared it with us at our home.

And if not this elk, some other wild food we hunted or gathered. None of it comes easy, but the struggle, uncertainty, and danger make it all the more valuable a gift to share. This is true both in my individual sense and in our national sense

It’s all at risk now: Almost everything that made this incredible experience possible is now under direct attack: the neighborly relationship with working ranchers is being replaced by trophy billionaires who lock people out and lease out hunting access. Our bedrock laws are barely surviving withering Republican fire: the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Roadless Rule, the Wilderness Act, and the very idea of public land, just to name a few. Our economic system is creating immoral wealth disparity, and it’s rushing here to create data centers that will degrade water and worsen the climate. Rather than embracing Montana, people now seem hell-bent on taming her, on rushing here to make things easy, to build private jet strips, pave over mountainsides, and eradicate the predators that might frighten some poor tech bro’s bajillion-dollar poodle-crossed fu-fu dog.

But I want you to know that real Montana is none of this. It is the wild places and the people who fought to save them. It’s the Blackfeet and the Flathead and the Crow and all the others who were here first. It’s the Badger Two Medicine, a rough and wonderful place worth saving. It’s people working to live, fighting to make it, and tossing out the copper kings and corruption. It’s all hard, every bit of it. This is what Montana has been for so many for so long and what it should be.

This is a place that changes people, where nothing is easy, but everything is magic, and by Na’pi, I hope we can keep it that way.

Share

Both Badge and I have spent a lot of time lately fighting for Montana, have endured much stress at the attacks on what we hold dear, and probably not spent enough time enjoying it, and so for us, it was a good to channel Ed Abbey’s advice from Desert Solitaire1, his iconic 1968 work in praise of wilderness:

The flip side of our simple Abbey-inspired river rambling, the greed and insidious rush of wealth in this country, is all around us now, especially in Montana. And anyone who has studied Abbey knows that even though he directed “part-time crusading,” he never actually followed his own advice; Cactus Ed was always on a crusade.

I think most of us who really care about this place are the same as Abbey in that regard. We really can’t help it. Just being on public land and loving it is our own act of defiance.

As Badge and I pulled on our old, tattered wading boots, we too were quietly crusading. For all we knew, Elon Musk or some other obscenely wealthy oligarch was once again landing a bajillion-dollar helicopter a few miles away at Paws Up Resort, where unimaginable money buys embarrassing levels of pampering that cost more than most Montanans make in a year. They even insult anyone who has set up a tent by offering “camping” for $ 4,300 per night.

“Tough not to daydream of what Abbey’s Monkey Wrenchers would do in times like these,” I might have muttered to myself.2

Subscribe now

Even if we don’t all become George Washington Hayduke III3, people like Badge and me, and most Montanans, take a lot of pride in eschewing any such ridiculous bought-and-paid-for experiences. Days like ours are even becoming our own rigid middle finger to the nearly 1000 billionaires in this nation, as they block access, corrupt our democracy, rush to build data centers, and shatter our environmental regulations.

We want to believe that we still have a leg up on them. We tell ourselves, “they can have all the money, but they’ll never have this - an absolute pinnacle outdoor experience; a father and son wading a small stream, on public lands in Montana, tossing bushy dry flies in gin-clear water to big wild fish.”

Badge, and I act as though we experienced these days simply because we live here and chose to go, but we both know that’s not exactly true. We also have this because people fought for it, sacrificed, ran for office, and made a difference. We know we must do the same, even if it means losing sometimes.

The truth is that there is little simplicity left in our nation now, and there was none in our fishing days either. This delightful experience was, in fact, born of a painful recent defeat. It only happened because I had unexpected spare time after losing that Democratic congressional nomination here in Montana on June 2. A narrow election loss that was very tough for all of us, especially my sons, Badge and Lander.

Many of you supported our campaign, and I am deeply grateful for your contributions and your incredible messages of encouragement. I met many of you during the campaign, and kindness and a fervent desire for change came through in hundreds of repeated, heartfelt conversations on the road.

Ask any candidate, and they’ll tell you that there are these scenes that seem to constantly loop during a campaign. One of them is the moment when you lean toward a supporter to absorb the earnest and often hushed “thanks so much to you and your family for running.” Sometimes that happens a dozen times a day. And you come to recognize these statements as a mix of sincerity and subconscious recognition of the weirdness of someone like me who will toss themselves into the cauldron of modern American politics. Rephrased, it might sound like “I think you are nuts for doing this, but thanks!”

I know it probably does seem nuts to many, and I’d be lying if Sara and I didn’t utter that assessment a time or two to ourselves. For us, it’s more about the urgency of the moment and how a genuine love of this place can inspire average folks like us to rush to the front lines.

I know that’s true because that’s precisely what Montana has done to our family. For us, jumping into the fray here just comes naturally. Our sons, Badge and Lander, who bravely fought a high-profile multi-year court case to defend their Montana constitutional rights to a clean and healthy environment, would boil down the necessity of NOW like this: “It’s YOLO, Dad - you only live once.”

Just a couple of days after the low moments of the election, and on the eve of Badge’s high school graduation celebration, Sara sent a text to our family chat offering a more circumspect assessment: “We have much to be proud and humbled by. I love you all so much.” And then she centered us all by sending us all a copy of our family’s guiding admonition of advocacy from Theodore Roosevelt’s 1910 speech in Paris:4

Like most people of his age, T.R. had many shortcomings, but he lacked nothing in the willingness-to-fight department. I’m very proud that my family shares this courage to dare greatly.

I’m also proud that we share his love of nature, as evidenced by my river time with Badge and our three very happy birddogs, who understand that a November general election would have been disastrously disruptive to the middle of bird season. For all of us, and the dogs, the upside of losing is that none of us are disappointed to be “stuck” here instead of DC.

So what’s next? June 2 has come and gone for me, but there is still an urgent need for all of us to do everything possible to directly confront the national five-alarm crises of wealth disparity, a failing healthcare system, data centers, corruption, almost unimaginable attacks on our public lands, and, of course, climate.

No one in this family is leaving the arena!

For now, I promise this Montana Dispatch will contain regular, unfiltered updates, important stories, and celebrations linked to this last best place. So much is happening here, and so much must be protected here.

My challenge to each of you is to channel both Abbey and Roosevelt. Stay in the arena in whatever way possible. Get out and enjoy what we have, but never give in. We can afford nothing less in this dangerously dark time in America.

I leave you with two additional quotes, the first is another line from T.R.’s 1910 speech. It’s a succinct and poignant instruction to resist normalizing evil, to stand up against the obvious lawless ICE agents who murder American citizens, against blatant and worsening corruption, and against the destruction of our last wild places;

Lastly, I leave you with a classic Ed Abbey send-off. His own one-fingered salute to the dangerous forces of greed in this nation against which we all fight, and a stubborn personal promise that we’ll not let them win!

Although neither Abbey nor Roosevelt lived to be old men, they certainly outlived all their critics, and so can we.

“Bully” to that!

Share

First, I write today to ask for your help. I am running for Congress in Montana’s first congressional district. It’s a place unlike any other in this nation. Home to fantastic, independent people, MT-01 also contains Glacier National Park, Flathead Lake, and the Rocky Mountain Front. It contains the Bob Marshal, Cabinet, Rattlesnake, Scapegoat, Great Bear, Lee Metcalf, Anaconda-Pintler, Selway-Bitterroot, and Mission Mountain wilderness areas. This district is home to the Bitterroot, Flathead, Madison, Clark Fork, Kootenai, Big Hole, Gallatin, and Blackfoot rivers. And it’s home to a lot of people like me who are terrified about what unchecked data center development might do to it all.

The potential for data center development is happening dangerously fast across our state. Today, news broke that Quantica Infrastructure, the company proposing to build a 9-square-mile data center just outside the small town of Broadview, Montana, has requested clearance to increase its electricity usage to nearly 7,300 megawatts, which is more than 7 times the amount the company originally proposed just a few months ago. To put this into perspective, this power load from this single data center is roughly TEN TIMES AS MUCH POWER AS ALL RESIDENTIAL MONTANA CUSTOMERS COMBINED, and this industrial facility will also likely use more than 5 million gallons of water per day to cool the more than 5000 acres of servers.

As if that were not enough to scare fishing waders off, this Broadview project is only one of eleven more data centers currently being planned for a state that, up until now, we have all lovingly referred to as “the last best place.”

These drastic increases in power usage are likely to worsen climate impacts and drive up electricity costs for Montanans at the worst possible time for working folks trying to make a go of it in the least affordable state in the nation. Many recent stories have highlighted this worrisome reality, including this one from Fortune Magazine just a few days ago.

One of those eleven additional sites is in Bonner, just a few miles east of Missoula. It’s literally on the banks of the Blackfoot River. The proposed Krambu/Bonner data center was first announced to shocked residents earlier this year. The company, which advertises “Multi-region datacenters ready to power your infrastructure,” first stated that only 3 megawatts of electricity would be required, but has now admitted they may need more than 100 megawatts.

There are a few other “interesting” aspects of the Bonner project. First, it sits only a few hundred yards from several homes and from the small K-8 Bonner Public School, and proud “Home of the Lumberjacks.” This little school educates about 320 students in a working-class town composed largely of folks who chose to live in more affordable Bonner because the housing market in Missoula is prohibitively expensive.

The Krambu/Bonner site is also directly adjacent to one of the best small concert venues in the Western U.S., the KettleHouse amphitheater, where many of us have enjoyed summer evenings and wonderful music for a decade. As a side note here, if you’ve not seen Brandi Carlisle, Strugill Simpson, or Jason Isbell under the stars at KettleHouse - you have not really lived.

But of particular importance is the site’s relation to water. Namely, that it is directly on the banks of the Big Blackfoot River. Yes, the same river noted in Norman Maclean’s beautifully iconic A River Runs Through It.

“When I am alone in the half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories... and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it... I am haunted by waters.” - Norman Maclean

This proposed site, on the waters that haunted Maclean, is also just a couple of good fly rod casts above the confluence of the Clark Fork and upstream of Missoula. It’s a source of immense pride for many of us Montanans because just a few decades ago, those rivers were partially dammed and severely polluted by unchecked corporate abuse in the last century. For years, scores of dedicated advocates in our state fought to clean and restore both the Blackfoot and Clark Fork, which are now nearly back to what wild, willow-lined free-flowing western rivers ought to be.

There are many promises from companies like Krambu about “closed loop systems” and minimal impacts on water quality. But so far, these are just promises from corporations, and Montanans know quite a lot about broken corporate promises.

People who have fought to protect and restore our rivers are right to be very worried, because large data centers require a lot of water, especially since the Blackfoot flows were at historic lows of less than half of normal last year due to a worsening climate-induced drought cycle.

How much water will this facility use? No one can say for sure. How will the water be treated? No good answer to that. What will happen to the water after it’s used? No one knows exactly. When Krambu was questioned about such matters, no clear answer was given.

“The treated water would be periodically flushed…It was unclear how often water would be flushed or replaced, or what the annual water usage would be.”

This sort of corporate vaguery would certainly further haunt Norman Maclean, and it definitely troubles all of us river-loving Montanans.

So what is to be done?

We must start by admitting we have a huge problem, and that we must prioritize integrity, fight, and fortitude in our elections if we are to stop it. We have an out-of-control presidential administration that is taking payoffs and orders from tech billionaires like David Sacks, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos. This excellent Atlantic article details how just a few of these billionaires have captured the Republican Party and, so far, successfully demanded the blockage of common-sense regulatory oversight for AI or Data center construction. Importantly for my race, we also have a sycophant U.S. Congress that refuses to exercise its constitutional duty of regulation and oversight over the industry and administration. I am running to fight that with everything we have.

This is not the time to elect weak-kneed politicians, because this fight will be hard. These tech bros have captured an entire party, and they have a lot of money to manipulate our elections. They are already doing it across the country and here in Montana, where they are spending big to elect pro-data-center Republican candidates like Aaron Flint.

More than 70% of our state opposes this unchecked center development, but it’s going to happen if we don’t act quickly at the federal level. I am proposing that we quickly enact federal laws imposing a strict moratorium on all data center construction until a strong regulatory framework is in place to protect people and communities from climate impacts, water degradation, increases in power costs, and other health impacts. Further, we need to ensure that local communities have the final say on any data center construction projects.

The truth is that these companies are moving with incredible speed, and they have almost unimaginable money to exploit the fact that we have no laws in place to protect people or the sacred places like those in this Montana district. They have lobbyists and money. We are supposed to have representatives and laws. I’m asking for your help to make that happen.

I hope you’ll join me on this campaign. So much of what is important to Montana, and to our nation, is on the line.

Please visit and support at www.busseformontana.com

Share

Our nation is crying out for fighters, and some political campaigns are trying to pivot to meet this moment. But real, dedicated, genuine fighters cannot be constructed by political consultants or messaging strategies.

Real fighters have this in their DNA, and I’m proud to say that fighting does indeed course through our family’s bloodstream. I’m surrounded by inspiration: Sara, Badge, and Lander, members of our family who refuse to stand by and let bad things happen.

“Fighting like we mean it” is not something our family just says; it’s what our family does, and here are just a few true stories about my family that serve as inspiration for me:

PUBLIC SCHOOLS:

In 2021, following the tumult of COVID, a group of extremely radical anti-public-education candidates attempted to take over the school board in Kalispell, MT, where we live. These radicals promised to attack the building blocks of our public schools. Teachers and administrators were sounding the alarm, and the frothing, dangerous statements from this radical slate of candidates sounded a lot like what we now call Christian Nationalism.

Public school advocates were right to be frightened because the attempted takeover was not a fly-by-night experiment. Like many right-wing assaults, these folks sought and received support from a very wealthy MAGA benefactor who gave them more than $80k, an almost unbelievable sum for local school board elections that normally had budgets of a couple of hundred $ at most.

That shocking amount of money fueled a loud anti-education public-relations blitz that frightened our community. Sara was worried, too, but rather than stew or hand-wring over what might happen, she decided to change what would happen. As we discussed the impacts to our school district if these people won, she said, “I’m not letting them do this to our schools. Tomorrow, I’m starting my own PAC.”

By the next day, Sara had formed the “Proud Public Education Supporters of Kalispell PAC” and was frantically alerting the community about the urgent need to contribute and fight. Almost immediately, she was receiving community contributions and then, almost instantaneously, running aggressive social media ads as if the school depended on them.

Sara’s PAC and the small-dollar donations from friends and neighbors throughout the valley never came close to matching the big-money MAGA totals, but over the next few weeks, her ads were sharp and smart, and they galvanized the community to defeat 4 of the 5 extremist candidates. She was quoted in this celebratory story the next day, “This is a big win for public education and our kids. Common sense voters stood up to the bullies and said loud and clear that proven service for our students and schools triumphs over personal agendas and political propaganda.”

PUBLIC LIBRARIES:

Sara never really stops fighting for what is right, and she soon turned her sights to another community battle, the fight to save our highly respected system of public libraries. This was a big deal because in 2022, our county library system became ground zero for a red-hot national culture war waged by those who seek to destroy public libraries in the U.S.

The fight here in NW Montana became so incendiary that the New Yorker devoted much of its April 2023 issue to a story about the attacks on our Flathead County library system, which highlighted this battle as a wider lens into what was happening nationally. Here’s an illustrative quote from that article:

Public libraries—once as popular with libertarian autodidacts as leftists—have become targets of the Republican Party, and not just in Flathead County. Local library systems and local librarians are being vilified nationwide as peddlers of Marxism and child pornography.

In the face of all this, Sara once again said, “Oh no you don’t! Not on my watch!” And in 2023, she became the director of the Flathead Library Foundation and quickly went to work, not just stopping the destruction but almost unbelievably leading the charge to add facilities to the county system by building an entirely new Library in one of the small towns of our valley. When we discussed the challenges of her very difficult job over dinner many times, she would often stiffen up and say something like, “Someday all of this fever will pass, and there will be kids here who need a library, so I’m going to do everything I can to make sure they have one.”

And that’s exactly what she did. Through sheer force of will, Sara drove an effort that secured funding and then assisted with the design and construction planning for an entirely new and beautiful public library in the town of Bigfork on the northeast shore of Flathead Lake.

Sara succeeded, even in the face of all the overt governmental and cultural war resistance detailed in that New Yorker article, because she’s a fighter who cares about this place, and she refused to just talk about what was wrong; she did something to change it. The result is a brand-new purpose-built library, which opened to a beaming group of kids and community leaders in June of 2024.

A LIVABLE CLIMATE:

Given these and many other examples of Sara’s willingness to fight for Montana, it’s probably not that surprising that our boys are such brave fighters themselves. Beginning in 2020, Badge and Lander have dedicated themselves to defending their constitutional rights to a clean and healthy environment, which they believe includes a right to force the state government to address global warming through responsible energy policy. I like to say they are just constitutional conservatives because we are lucky to have a clearly enumerated environmental right in our visionary 1973 constitution.

When our boys chose to be litigants in the first-ever youth-led climate lawsuit to test this right (Held v. Montana), they knew they’d face criticism, barbs, and ridicule from kids whose parents did not share our politics. And they did in fact endure many of the sorts of things that are very difficult for teenagers to withstand, but our two boys and their fellow litigants steadfastly refused to cower.

In 2023, after years of preparation, the case went to trial with incredible national fanfare. The attention permeated our lives and dominated the boys’ social lives in ways they could not escape. They did not have much room to just be kids, as illustrated by the fact that one day we awoke to texts from friends who said, “Your boys are on the cover of the NY Times!”

When the trial started, almost all of the 16 kids who sued also bravely testified in open court. Badge proudly and emotionally spoke about the impacts of inaction on hunting and fishing, things he loves about Montana. And on the final day of the trial in Helena, as I watched Lander give the closing testimony for the entire case, I saw dozens of people in that courtroom in tears as his voice rose in a passionate challenge to adults to stop talking and start acting. It was emotional and inspiring, and reporters said it was exceptional, but I knew that our boys were just doing what they knew had to be done. As Lander said, “It’s ok, Dad, we are fighting for all Montanans, not just us.”

“That’s the sign of a good leader right there,” I thought. My boys were even fighting for the kids, and internet trolls like right-wing radio shock jock Aaron Flint, who constantly ridiculed them, because they knew it was the right thing to do. A few weeks later, these brave kids again made national news by winning that case and, in so doing, strengthened the rights and freedoms for every single Montanan.

CONGRESS:

And now I am following my family’s example, refusing to just accept a worsening trajectory for our state and nation. I’m running for Congress, knowing that this congressional race in MT-01 could decide the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. The stakes are as high as they get; if we don’t win a majority, our nation will face a very dark future.

Here’s the good news on this important race: Winning the primary is our first battle, and today we just released very encouraging polling (see memo below) showing that I lead by 15 points. This great news comes just after we released incredible fundraising results, including more than 10,000 donations to this all-important campaign.

To all of you who are engaged in this battle alongside my family, THANK YOU! To those of you who aren’t yet on the team…well, you can trust that this is not some newly found poll-tested effort to appear like we are real fighters. Our family’s dedication to Montana has been proven time and again. If you are looking for a place to make a difference, you can trust that this fight is in our blood.

I hope you’ll join us at BUSSEFORMONTANA.

Share

The Incumbent is driven from the race:

Yesterday afternoon, in a move that stunned most of the state, Ryan Zinke dropped out of the race. Fox News headline alerted Americans with this headline: “Trump Cabinet alum Ryan Zinke joins mass exodus of lawmakers leaving Congress.”1

Any of you who have followed my writing know that he was ripe to be defeated, and while he offered reasons that included his need to obtain surgeries, it should also be noted that his decision corresponds perfectly with something all congressmen hate: a likely loss of the majority and a butt-whooping for himself in Nov. Here is a summary of the latest polls in my race before he dropped out yesterday;

Those numbers are enough to scare the pants off a GOP incumbent in a red state, and so it sure looks like I just drove Zinke out of the race. While it’s good to have him gone from Congress, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed because I really wanted to beat him on election day.

Montana GOP Machine springs into action:

Just minutes after Zinke’s announcement, Aaron Flint, a longtime campaign flack and a right-wing radio shock jock, announced his candidacy. In an orchestrated nod to defying any hint of respect for democracy or allowing Republican voters to have a choice, Zinke, Governor Gianforte, Sheehy, and other Republican leaders quickly endorsed Flint. And then, in another orchestrated move, Zinke’s campaign manager and resident Twitter troll, Heather Swift, sprang from her cave with an announcement that more than $1 mil had magically appeared in a SuperPAC to support Flint.

And then, Flint also secured the endorsement of the old guy who is in the Epstein files. Yes, the same guy who just got us into another Middle Eastern war:

There’s no unity in the MT GOP:

You’d think Trump’s endorsement would seal the deal, but there is a big split among Montana Republicans. Deep red conservatives see Zinke and Flint as embarrassing posers and don’t take kindly to being told who their candidate is going to be. Hence, two others jumped into the race yesterday, just hours before the filing deadline for our June 2 primary.

Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen, fresh off her “give all our voter information to DHS” tour, decided to challenge Flint. Then, former state legislator and perennial anti-choice candidate Al Olzewski also declared. To be fair, both are formidable candidates, and that primary will be a dogfight.

Flint, who has Trump’s endorsement and GOP machine support, is probably favored to win. I’ve been on his show multiple times, and the best way to describe it is “Four Hours of Demanding that Newsmax headlines and conspiracy theories aren’t crazy or damaging.” He’s literally defended every policy of Trump’s most rabid supporters for the past 8 years. Gutting healthcare? Loves it. War with Iran? You bet. Torching Public Land? 100%. I could go on for a few pages here, and it’s tough to overstate the vitriol running through every hour of his show.

Flint, Jacobsen, and Olzewski all have flaws, and all are supportive of MAGA policies that are now deeply unpopular here. But the GOP is going to shovel truckloads of money into this district, and it’s not going to be easy to beat any of them.

Bottom Line: This is an Open Seat now, we can and must win it, and if you care about the country, I need your support:

I know you get pummeled with texts, emails, and all manner of attempts to pick your pockets. I’m sorry to add to those requests. But this is the game we are in, and if you care about saving democracy, then I need your help. There is likely to be a lot of election interference, especially in blue cities. That means a seat like this might mean the difference in November. I’m running as if this place and our entire country may well depend on me winning. I hope you’ll join us!

You can read about my campaign and contribute here.

Share

The mountainous site in Montana is the worst possible location for two reasons, one physical and the other political. First, the physical; the mine is planned literally at the headwaters of the entire valley, meaning all pollutants will flow throughout the 75-mile watershed and then into the Clark Fork River below Missoula.

And then there’s the political. The guy holding the seat in Congress for this district is Ryan Zinke, and he’s a man with an unmatched record of corruption, a history of lobbying for huge mining corporations, and a record of enthusiastic support for disastrous mining projects that imperil America’s most sacred wild places.

I’m running against Zinke in this district right now, and there are a lot of reasons to think I’m going to beat him. I’ve written much about his corruption and the metrics of this race, and you can read some of it here.

If you care about Montana, rivers, trout, or clean water, it’s very important that I win, and so I’m taking a rare day off the trail to write this dispatch to alert you about what exactly is at stake.

It’s tough to overstate how important rivers are to our state and how they define who we are. Montanans orient themselves to rivers. When we talk about The Flathead, The Blackfoot, The Swan, or The Bitterroot, we are referring to entire ecosystems, towns, businesses, people, and valleys, all of which are anchored to a river.

The Bitterroot is the ancestral home of the Salish (Flathead) people. Lewis and Clark first encountered the Salish on September 4, 1805, not too far from this proposed mine site. They were welcomed by the Salish to the famous Traveler’s Rest site near Lolo, on September 9th of that same year. Many Salish people still live throughout the valley and north a hundred miles on the beautiful CSKT reservation.

The Bitterroot is a striking place, with towering mountains standing guard on both sides of a broad valley. The river is a connecting ribbon that supports fly-fishing guides, hay fields, restaurants, and hotels. It’s so classically western that, much to the chagrin of many Montanans, it was chosen for the site of the hit TV show Yellowstone, and the barns seen in that show sit just off the bank of the river.

The people of the Bitterroot include ranchers, retirees, small business owners, and federal workers. Most are proud to be fiercely independent in a way unique to Montana. While there’s no party registration in the state, most of the valley residents also vote Republican, and Donald Trump won the county by 41% in 2024.

That brings me to why the current controversy and fear surrounding this mine is so important; this is yet another case of voters being very disappointed with what Republicans are doing. The Trump administration has made no secret of its demands to fast-track the huge industrial project. And yet even the most conservative residents are angry about it. That’s right, despite the valley’s recent partisan lean, those voters are bucking their party. The evidence for this split is clear in the recent public meetings, where hundreds have shown up to express their overwhelming opposition.

I’ve met with the Ravalli County commissioners who held those meetings, and no one would accuse them of being leftist opponents of the Trump administration, and yet their official statement to the press included these words:

“There is also a moral and cultural question: Do we want to risk our clean water and heritage for a potentially disruptive industrial operation that may or may not deliver commensurate local benefit? We received NO public testimony in support of including the proposed mine in the FAST41 program. If the mine is to be considered, it MUST be reviewed under the highest environmental standards.”1

For those not from Montana, I’ll translate; that’s conservative county commissioner speak for “Hey, Trump administration, stop screwing with our rivers, even all the Republicans out here are hopping mad about this!”

Zinke responded to this outcry in his district by trying to distance himself from the fast-track approval process, but his subsequent actions in the U.S. House of Representatives were most telling.

Just weeks after the loud anti-mine demands from his home district, Zinke spent days in Washington DC showing his true colors by whipping votes in support of another mining project; this one a hugely controversial proposal to allow a foreign-owned industrial copper sulfide mine on the edge of America’s most visited wilderness area, the Boundary Waters in Northern MN.

People across the nation pleaded with him not to risk poisoning the place that holds more than 20% of the fresh water in all of America’s wilderness. Hunters and Anglers across the country, including groups and influencers in Montana, also begged Zinke not to support the project.

Zinke not only thumbed his nose at them all by voting for it, but he also gave a speech on the House floor and spent hours convincing several of his Republican colleagues to vote for the mine. In what can only be described as a travesty, the bill allowing the huge mine was passed by 6 votes.2

We should stop here to remember that Ryan Zinke is the same guy who was fired as Interior Secretary in the first Trump administration after 18 official ethics investigations were launched against him. And importantly for this new battle in the Bitterroot, after that ouster, he made a fortune lobbying for industrial companies, including a large gold mining corporation.3

Zinke is obviously an expert in defying ethics rules, and he also claims to be a geology expert. Just after his vote to poison the boundary waters, he issued word salad statements rationalizing his actions, saying he had “examined the geology” and that things would be just fine, despite the hundreds of dire warnings from actual scientists to the contrary. Conservation advocate Land Tawney of American Hunters and Anglers summed up the deflated and common-sense response of sportsmen and women everywhere.

“There couldn’t be a worse place for a mine because it’s all water. Why are we doing this in a place that’s so sensitive?”4

Now, residents of the Bitterroot, other Montanans in this district, and good people from all across the nation who value our state and our rivers have a chance to give this guy the boot. Just like the disaster on the edge of the Boundary Waters, there could not be a worse place for a mine like this, and we all know he’s going to do all he can to push it through.

That’s the bad news, but there’s some good news in this election, too. I start 4% up on Zinke, and the DCCC just expanded the map to include this race as one of the most important in our nation. 5

I take this fight very seriously. My family has spent many of our best days on the rivers of this state, and like many, I feel a sacred responsibility to do whatever I can to conserve this place we love so much.

This is my campaign website. I hope you’ll join me because I’ll need all the help I can get to defeat Zinke. He’ll bring piles of dark money from those big corps, but when we win in November, you can be assured that, unlike him, I’ll lead the fight to save the Bitterroot. I owe it to my boys, to all Montanans, and this country to protect this place.

Share

Last week, following Alex Pretti’s tragic murder, the Trump administration launched a surprising full-on attack not just on Pretti, but also on our freedom of speech, our freedom to assemble and protest, and our Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful searches and seizures. Perhaps most importantly from a political standpoint, they also directly attacked the Second Amendment.

If you want to understand the shifting politics out in these congressional races, consider this next part carefully; without the slightest hesitation, Republicans reflexively blamed Pretti’s murder directly on his responsible gun ownership. Dozens of 2A orgs and millions of gun owners, who have never uttered a criticism of the Trump administration, subsequently lost their minds, rightly perceiving those attacks as another betrayal; this time it was of something cultural and foundational to the construction of MAGA.

Just like all of the swing/independent voters who thought Trump would make their lives better economically and have since been betrayed, those 2A advocates seemingly had no concept that the President or his cabinet members would ever even consider attacking the core tenets of gun ownership in the United States. But over and over the administration committed the worst kind of 2A blasphemy; “You can’t have gun’s, you can’t walk in with guns” or “You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple” or “I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign.” These are all direct quotes from Trump or top administration officials attacking every American’s 2A freedoms.

This all caught my attention for a couple of reasons: first, I spent 25 years in the firearms industry and am familiar with the thinking of most 2A organizations. I intimately understand the arranged marriage between the MAGA movement and what gun advocates thought was unquestioning loyalty in return. And while I have long believed that someday Trump and his henchmen would think nothing of jettisoning our freedoms or abandoning critical principles of responsible gun ownership to increase power over us, the “gun groups” and their members are just now coming to this realization, and it obviously hurts.

The pain is particularly sharp because everyone can see that the Trump administration’s definition of gun ownership recognizes only one particular type of owner, namely, those masked, heavily armed, poorly trained ICE officers enforcing the violent will of the federal government on anyone they damn well please. These officers are the exact embodiment of what the gun world has been taught to resist.

On the other hand, most American gun owners, my boys and I included, have been taught to see ourselves in the example of Alex Pretti, a guy who did things by the book and stood up to the masked government tyranny just like all of the gun groups have been coaching for decades.

For many voters, the 2A is not so much an “issue” as it is a cultural glue, and when 2A groups and GOP voters watch Trump attack Pretti for doing precisely what the vast majority of gun owners have been taught to celebrate, it’s as shocking as if the Pope himself openly questioned the existence of God at a series of widely televised press gaggles.

Were such proclamations to come from the Vatican, church attendance would probably drop like the price of a Trump meme coin, and that’s exactly what 2A advocates and Trump political allies are freaking out about.1

“I’ve spent 72 hours on the phone trying to unfuck this thing. Trump has got to correct his statements now,” said one Second Amendment advocate, granted anonymity to speak about private conversations. The person said Second Amendment advocates are “furious.” “And they will not come out and vote. He can’t correct it three months before the election.”

Another Trump acolyte laid out the direct electoral impacts even more directly;

“All you have to do is lose four, five, six percent of their base who left it blank, who didn’t write a check, who didn’t walk districts, you lose. Especially marginal districts — and the House is not a good situation right now.”

The second reason I’m watching this is that I’m running for Congress to make things better for our state and nation. To do that, I have to win (something too few Democrats have realized over the last decade). I recognize this frontal cultural attack as a magnifying glass on a long line of lived disappointments that are creating the conditions for electoral change in ‘26, and it can’t come soon enough.

Swing and Republican voters are souring on the GOP. The 2A attack is a loud cultural accelerator, lending credibility to the dozens of other Republican wounds that have been inflicted on voters. What follows are just a few of those injuries.

Out here on the campaign trail, it’s nearly impossible to find someone whose healthcare situation is anything but dire. Even Republican voters are screaming “uncle”, and they remember Trump’s emphatic, repeated, and broken campaign promises to dramatically lower costs, blow up the insurance system, and make healthcare great again. No one here is experiencing any greatness; in fact, it’s getting much worse. Many Montanans have lost coverage due to ACA and Medicaid cuts, or seen their premiums skyrocket, and voters are rightfully scared and pissed off about it.

Montana is under the cost-of-living gun gun too because our prices for just about everything are painfully high. This, despite Trump’s emphatic promise, “Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of all goods.”2 In fact, the Trump- and GOP-supported tariffs have made things much worse in Montana. Agriculture has been hit hard, and many businesses here are struggling due to the resulting high prices or the dramatic decline in Canadian tourism.3 (Gosh, who could have guessed insulting, threatening, and tariffing our neighbor would result in the equivalent of a big maple leaf middle finger?)

Instead of helping anywhere, Trump seems intent on pouring even more gas on the betrayals. Here in Montana, housing affordability is at a crisis level, the worst in the nation.4 Working people, especially anyone under 35, simply cannot afford to buy a home. But Trump cannot even be bothered to feign concern. Earlier this week, he made it clear that he wants housing prices to INCREASE, not decrease.5

"I don't want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people that own their homes, and they can be assured that's what's going to happen."

I could almost hear my own young sons screaming, “WTF?” And the response was, in fact, immediate. If you need proof of the shifting politics, even the very same “young libertarian leaning men” who shifted right in the last election were joining my boys in the WTF chant, and I think the betrayal of fundamental freedoms is opening the door for them. Witness the public reaction by none other than Liam Mcollum, the vice chair of the Montana Libertarian Party.

My point in this piece is to highlight that each day, many more voters see themselves as Alex Pretti than as the administration that killed him. Much of that has to do with economics, and obviously, the brutal attack on Pretti is not the same as economic hardship; it’s much worse. But the administration’s attack on Pretti and the subsequent trashing of our freedoms has sent a broad, powerful cultural signal to everyone struggling in this country; this administration and its Republican enablers are not on our side; they have lied to us, they care nothing about our situation, our lives, or our fundamental freedoms. They’ll never even conceive of helping, and they’ll even kill us if we resist.

Each day, more people realize that our country is in a very serious crisis, and I’m working damn hard to make sure our response is very loud and clear: There’s going to be an election on November 3rd, 2026, and we are done with your betrayals.

Share

Moose’s Saloon was, and still is, a beloved main street watering hole where patrons gather after work to toss peanut shells into sawdust and share stories over cheap beers. I was there as a twenty-something kid, alone, new to a new town, and yet to make a friend. Thankfully, I was in Montana, a place that gave chances and spared judgment. My chance that evening came in the form of a hunting story drifting over the beers from a loud guy at the end of the bar.

The fella floating the words had folded his 6’5” frame onto a random barstool. He was a heavy equipment operator at the landfill just up the road, wore a Stormy Kromer wool hat, like the ranchers I grew up with, and his pontifications grew in volume and color with each swig of his beer.

This guy had a particular way of speaking that commanded attention, plain and authoritative, in the style of a traveling preacher minus the piety. His voice was slow and booming, laced with a Canadian accent and expertly crafted off-color colloquialisms.

I wanted to find a bird-hunting buddy, so I leaned toward him and took a chance with a playful challenge, “What do you know about pheasants?” He stopped mid-sentence, looked away from his audience and shot back, “Quite a goddamned bit. I’m James. Who the hell are you?”

Subscribe now

Peanuts in one hand and beer in the other, James had been delivering a stirring sermon about his recent pheasant hunting trip to central Montana. He waved his arms as if in the pulpit and parishioners around the bar listened with rapt attention; “They were flying around like goddamned bees. Everywhere! We were shootin’ the hell outta things, the dogs were crazy as shithouse rats, the birds were piling up like cordwood.” My risky intrusion had brought it all to an uncomfortable standstill.

I grew up on a ranch with hundreds of pheasants, and hunting access to my childhood home felt like currency I could barter, so I offered it along with a handshake. “You think you know pheasant hunting? Well, you ought to see where I grew up.” James turned and gave me his full attention.

He bore a strong resemblance to the iconic Seattle pitcher, Randy Johnson. He stood and looked down his nose with a cocked eyebrow, and I felt as if I was standing at home plate facing the Big Unit. But after a moment of sizing me up, he shook my hand and told the bartender, “Get this guy a beer.”

For James, and in classic Montana fashion, a hint of a new hunting spot was enough to explore friendship with a stranger. A few months later, he and I were following our dogs across the grasslands in the biting cold. I had a lot of respect for someone who would take that sort of gamble on a new friend.

Our hunting styles were a match. Like me, James was a born walker. He was like a moose at a distance; first appearing slow and gangly, but up close, he moved with stretched, effortless strides so long and flowing that almost no one could keep up. When birds appeared, he’d swing, shoot, and take a new step all in the same motion, never stopping his forward momentum.

We both possessed an almost addictive love for bird-hunting. Twenty-mile days, blisters, and hunting right up until dusk became common. Other friends labeled our adventures “death marches” and found excuses to avoid getting looped into our hikes.

Our shared passion for birds and our dogs drove us to roam across vast swaths of country. In the ensuing decades, we hunted mostly in Montana but explored the high plains from Oklahoma to Canada. In the breaks between our marches, we stumbled into small towns, snuck dogs into dingy hotels, and ate breakfasts in greasy spoons.

We listened in on conversations of old men in small-town cafes on the off chance they might utter a tip. We chatted up crusty bartenders to find the whiskey of choice for ranchers. We lived it all with unapologetic abandon.

James proved to be a great and surprising companion. Besides being an expert operator of D9 Caterpillars and huge excavators, he was also an artist, and stories were his canvas.

I came to respect him as a master of the craft of storytelling, and he had incredible material from which to draw. He mined the experiences to produce his art, including the fact that his dad, Bill, was a renowned wilderness ranger at Schaefer Meadows up the Middle Fork, and his mom, Barbara, was a self-described “Wild River Pioneer.” Sometimes our new adventures were also threads in his projects. No matter what the source, he picked out the interesting components and wove them in the loom of his mind, spinning them together, often for weeks or months, until the fine fabric poured out.

His stories always arrived at unexpected and hilarious places and involved just the right amount of suspense and drama. “Did I tell you about the time I took out an entire motel in a runaway grain truck over on the Clark Fork?” The roadside lodging establishment, at the bottom of a massive hill on Highway 28, was thankfully almost empty due to the late morning timing of his crash, but Jim’s loaded wheat truck nearly killed the last person inside just as she was preparing to check out of room 107. He, too, barely made it out alive. The motel was not so lucky; after the collision, it was rebuilt farther north of the intersection to avoid a repeat attack.

A few years after the wreck, Jim ran into the survivor at the same Montana barstool where he and I had first discussed pheasants. Of course, he started preaching and drinking beer with her, too. They ended up laughing at another of Jim’s stories, even though she was missing a few key internal organs from the impact of Jim’s 40-ton Peterbilt.

James wove the words of his life together with the magnetic pull of the world’s finest novelists. Before long, his storytelling was in high demand by my friends and family. Inquiries about upcoming hunting trips focused less on me and more on whether James was coming along.

James was the kind of guy you wanted to have on any ride. For me, this was partially because he was silver-tongued when prying permission from even the prickliest ranchers. It was I who had native fluency in ranch language, and thought I was pretty good at the permission game, but James was the best I had ever seen.

After the initial hard “no” through the screen door, Jim would conjure up one of his booming sermonettes. He began slowly, with something familiar, maybe a commentary on a truck, a cow, or the weather. Then an artful transition to a real or imagined memory of a distant cousin they both knew who maybe had a friend or a last name that sounded about right, and then he’d throw in a good joke and one of his unique descriptive terms.

Soon the door would creak open, and Jim would be inside, drinking coffee, eating cookies, and drawing property maps on paper towels. He’d get a warm handshake from the previously frigid rancher, then swagger back to the truck with his wool hat tipped back; a slight grin creeping up from his mustache. After his truck door slammed, he’d look at me and unleash the results, “Hope you got some goddamned ammo, Busse, ‘cause we can hunt ‘er all!” I’d just shake my head in amazement.

Those ranchers sensed the truth about Jim; you could depend on him to be true and authentic. Perhaps it was this honesty that led James to become a corner post in the wobbly fence of my life, and a couple of years after we became friends, Sara and I were honored to have James in our wedding.

Over time, things got busier, and I traveled more. Life happened. We hunted together less, but it did not change the fundamentals of our friendship. On one of my work trips, my wife Sara called with an emergency. Our beloved but aging German Shorthair was on her last leg. Our vet said she was in pain and advised us to put her down that same day. I could not return for nearly a week, and in tears, I blubbered into the phone, “I’ll call James.”

It was mid-morning when I reached him at work, where he had been promoted to oversee the entire Flathead landfill operation. “Hey, is this the lord of the landfill?” I said in a half-hearted joke, trying not to break down. But Jim knew something was wrong, and he dropped everything and was at Sara’s side within the hour. He cried in the vet clinic waiting room with her, just as I would have for his dogs.

When our first son was born, Sara and I named him Lander James, in honor of our favorite Wyoming Town and my friend Jim. Lander was born in the middle of Jim’s treasured January duck hunting season, but he took the interruption in stride, showing up at the hospital in waders and full camo while promising to someday take the infant to a new spot that he declared, “had a shit load of ducks when things froze up like this.”

More than 25 years have passed since our first beers together in that bar. We’ve walked a thousand miles together and apart. New dogs have come and gone. Birds have indeed piled up like cordwood. Family has passed. And yet despite the march of time, nothing has changed. We are just a couple of bird-hunting buddies looking for the next ridge to hunt, joking with each other about missed shots and permissions gained.

We never wasted time on unimportant diversions. Long Montana walks, bird dogs, and good stories are simple things that are enough for us.

Share

I’m getting in the MT01 congressional race to fight for the people who make Montana special, and new polling shows me with a 4% head-to-head lead over Zinke. I realize that at times in 2025, many Americans have wondered if political gravity is real, and this poll is more evidence that the answer is “yes.” Zinke’s corruption, his party’s continued abuse of power, his support for tariffs, and his taking joy in jacking up healthcare expenses for tens of thousands of Montanans are not surprisingly, all deeply unpopular.

You probably have read that Montana became a deep red state in 2024, but that’s just not the whole story. I’m not saying we’re conspiratorial weirdos who doubt ballot totals, but rather that the “purple state gone deep red” headlines didn’t match the totality of our lived experience.

They certainly didn’t match mine. I ran for governor, held 187 in-person events, and drove more than 200,000 miles, meeting with Montanans in every corner of our state. It was an incredible experience, and without exception, I encountered people from both parties who were fiercely independent, worried about public lands, respectful of their neighbors, concerned about rising costs, and increasingly resentful of the growing wave of imported wealth wrecking our Montana way of life—just exactly the sort of people you’d expect to find here. Today, when I see those bright orange Busse campaign stickers still on cars across this state, I know we built profound connections.

And if you had listened to any one of the thousands of conversations or observed any of the crowds we engaged on those topics, you’d have probably been convinced Montana was just as independently purple as ever. That’s why we never gave up hope: polling showed us in deficit, but it also clearly reflected what we felt on the ground: voters would vote for us with just a modicum of engagement on the issues we stood for. This was especially true in MT01, the western congressional district where I am running, which is known to be very competitive and carries a Cook Political rating of Trump+5.

Subscribe now

But there was another force moving voters too, and when it combined with the national election, it proved more potent than we expected. The most expensive per-capita election in the nation’s history was happening at the same time we were meeting those voters. In what can only be described as a travesty, outside forces converted Jon Tester’s campaign into a referendum not on whether Jon was a good senator, but instead they turned it into a jet-fueled nationalized partisan culture war that just made voters angry and prone to penalize every Democrat.

There was a lot to anger them, because per-capita spending on that Senate race alone topped the incredible sum of nearly $300 million or $320 per voter, a national election record. That kind of spending blocked out the light in every other race. To get an idea of how smothered each Montana voter was by the unrelenting waves of hyperbolic national ads, door knockers, mailers, and social media campaigns, the next-closest per-capita campaign expenditure in the nation was the Ohio Senate race at $44 per voter, and Ohioans felt smothered by that!1

But it’s no longer 2024, and here in Montana, the dangerous fever is breaking. Because, as it turns out, policies from Zinke and his party that make people like Elon Musk wealthier while Montanans lose healthcare and can’t afford groceries are, as we say on the ranch, rubbing Montanans the wrong way.

Zinke’s abandonment of working people is exposing century-old Montana scars left here by the insanely wealthy mining barons who once poisoned our rivers and rigged the economic system against working people. They bought our politics and our newspapers. Like Zinke, they were corrupt, they fought environmental regulations, bribed politicians, and purchased Senate seats to ensure their profits. They bought big ranches, made it impossible for working people to get by, and constructed a system to keep themselves insanely rich. Just like Zinke is doing now.

What is bubbling up here now is a lot like what happened a century ago, when Montanans decided they had enough: they got angry, they took their destiny into their own hands, and they stood up and said, “Hell no.” They voted, organized, passed laws, and some even died to push the wealthy copper kings out of our state. And thank God they did - because generations of Montanans, including my family and me, got to live in the state they helped create.

Now Zinke is undoing everything those brave Montanans fought for. Why, might you ask, is he so hell bent on doing this? It’s because he’s making piles of money like all the wealthy corporations he’s helping buy this state. Zinke entered public office with no cowboy hat, and virtually no wealth - and except for a couple of years, he only made a government salary. But somehow, during his time in public office, his declared wealth has risen from virtually zero to more than $35 million. I don’t know all the corrupt deals he cut to get that money, but we know that in his stint as Secretary of the Interior, he faced 18 official investigations and was fired from the Trump administration because all he cared about was cashing in.2 Even I have to admit that it is a world-record-level accomplishment. How bad must one be to get fired for corruption in a Trump administration?

I’m not trying to cash in like Zinke or live in some fancy gated community built to keep the real Montana out; in fact, that disgusts me. I just want the people of this state to have a chance to experience the magic of Montana. I arrived in the Flathead Valley as a 20-something kid with a Montana dream. Unlike a lot of dreams that fizzle, mine turned out better than I ever imagined, not easier, but better because Montana gave us a lot of chances. Sara and I were married here. We bounced around rentals, then scraped together just enough to buy our first home. I helped build a firearms business with other hard-working Montanans. We raised two wonderful boys here. We all made friends across the state wherever we went, because that’s what Montanans do. We work hard, and we play hard, and I know this is what everyone in Montana deserves.

Montana made me a better person. And I owe it to this state to fight for what makes us all better. I hope you’ll join me to win this battle for the Last Best Place.

The real key to getting America back on track is Democrats winning in parts of our country like this, where we still love to talk to our neighbors and where election victories must be hard-won. That’s Montana, and here in MT01, it also means defeating obviously corrupt Ryan Zinke, who only cares about adding to his own personal wealth or doing favors for big corporations.

You probably don’t live in MT, but you don’t have to guess what is at stake because no matter where you are in this country, you are experiencing the wrong-track alternative to losing these places and the majority. A rapidly increasing majority of Americans believe it ain’t good.1

Republicans are punch-drunk with power, gleefully shoveling incredible advantages to the wealthiest Americans while literally celebrating policies that make things worse for anyone who doesn’t earn a cushy living from passive income, crypto scams, or the carried interest loophole.

Ryan Zinke is an old hand at this game, and the GOP is unapologetic about what they are doing, but part of this is on the National Democrats, too; it’s not like they have exactly met the moment. In fact, at times, they have almost given up on rural citizens like us. This disastrous strategy, which has resulted in the oft-referenced electoral map with blue edges and all that red across the middle, is encapsulated in Chuck Schumer’s 2016 strategy: “for every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia.”2

As an American and as someone who grew up on a ranch a long way from a paved road, graduated from a rural school with 16 kids, and who lives in a state full of blue-collar folks like those in Western PA, I can tell you that the results of that forget-us-strategy have proven to be an unmitigated disaster, not just for rural places but for the entire nation. It handed the country to corrupt yes-men like Zinke, who revel in the cruelty of making things like healthcare and groceries more expensive for almost all of us so that his party can cut billions from the taxes for people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

Turning away from rural people like those of us in Montana is a bit like refusing to add salt when you cook; it removes the critical cohesive component from the Democratic Party. Now that it seems there is at least a partial national recognition that this was a bad idea, maybe we can start listening to people that live in places such as this, like 68-year-old Kurt from Whitefish, who told me last year, “This was a great place and still is, but the people who made it great can’t afford to live here anymore and our kids can’t come back.”

Kurt’s emotional plea about property taxes and the cost of living went viral because, unless you are wealthy, you instantly feel his plight. Sara and I certainly do. We have two great boys who love this state in a way that only Montanans can really understand. They don’t dream of wealth or luxury, but they do dream of making a life here. We badly want it for them, but right now, none of us has a believable answer for how they’ll be able to afford it. That kind of uncertainty is gut-wrenching and frightening for families. What’s worse is that the GOP has clearly demonstrated that it has absolutely no intention of fixing any of it.

That’s why I assert real corrective action must start with an outsized, purposeful focus on electing bold Democrats from key rural areas across the country who really fight for the people who make our nation work.

I know it’s going to start here in Montana because this is a place where we still care about each other, where we stop to help change tires, no matter who the person is. We still take a lot of pride in sitting at a bar together with people who never mention or care about how much money anyone has. Despite concerted Republican efforts to sell this place to billionaires, the truth is, real Montanans find it pretty damn distasteful to flaunt wealth, advertise power, or tout status. Think of how great our country would be if we had a bit more of that!

It’s more important than ever to elect people from places like this that actually depend on things critical to ordinary people, you know, like rural healthcare, affordable housing, grocery prices, and public lands.

That most certainly is not Ryan Zinke. When he first ran for the MT legislature, he promised to protect the environment, drove a Prius, and never faked the whole Yellowstone cowboy bit. Now he celebrates a president who slams E.V.s, wears a big Stetson for the cameras, and is in favor of gutting the roadless rule and opening almost hundreds of millions of public land acres to aggressive industrialization.3 It’s all part of a move we know well, all hat and no cattle.

No one, including me, is suggesting anything but genuine respect for military service. But somehow, Zinke, who, according to the Navy Times,4 committed travel fraud while in the military and who has spent almost his entire adult life in the employ of the federal government somehow increased his wealth from almost nothing before he ran for office to nearly $40 million in 2024. It’s an incredible sum that is clearly noted in his official 2024 FEC filing,5 and it includes millions in real estate holdings in California, where he spends most of his time.

How might one start in humble rural Montana with no wealth, make a government salary for decades, supposedly as a servant of the people, and then become extremely wealthy? Well, that’s a good question with a straightforward answer.

While Zinke was in the cabinet, he did everything possible to help the largest extractive corporations and himself. Among other schemes, he used government planes for personal travel and set up real estate deals with oil executives who benefited from Department of the Interior decisions. Zinke was so cozy with corporate execs and so lax on ethics rules that he accomplished the near-impossible; he racked up 18 federal ethics investigations and was fired from the Trump administration for his poor judgment and impressive list of corruption scandals.

He may have lost that job, but it paid off well because it set up his singular stint in life outside Government, as a lobbyist for, you guessed it… some of the world’s largest mining and petroleum companies.67 It’s hard to say what the full extent of his personal financial benefit was, but the graph of his personal wealth disclosures tells quite a story.

All of this should be more than enough to vote him out of office, but it gets much worse. Zinke not only repeatedly personally enriched himself, but he’s also repeatedly praised the president even as he raised tariffs that kill our markets and increase prices for every single working Montanan. Zinke ardently and publicly supported the DOGEing of federal agencies like the VA that help other veterans who don’t have $ 40 million.8 He enthusiastically voted for the recent Republican budget bill that will strip SNAP benefits from millions of the most vulnerable Americans, and he has loudly defended the Republican plan to radically increase health insurance costs for tens of thousands of Montanans, which will impact people all across our state next month.9

It’s all on the line here. The Democratic brand, the fight to lessen the cost of living, the necessity to end corruption, and the battle for the people who make this country go. This seat and this election may well be our national 2026 inflection. MT01 is a Trump+5 district according to Cook Political. Trump won it in 2024 by 11% but Jon Tester won by about 3000 votes. There are plenty of people here who will vote for change, and all of the national trends, like an average 2025 Dem election shift of 13%, point to a fierce, potential majority-making race here. You should take a lot of solace in that, because nothing would be better for this nation than the people of Montana reasserting their remarkable purple influence on this country.

Share

Like many important midterm races coming up in 2026, Behn was running in a red district (Trump+22) in a red state (Trump+29.7). Winning in places like this is now possible because it turns out that MAGA is a disaster for America. But in political strategy terms, winning these races requires firing up the right people, while not inflaming the divisive MAGA culture warring that has cost Dems since 2016. The good news is that much of that happened in TN, which is why the margin closed so much.

Oh…I wish you could see Santa right now; his eyes are twinkling!

Anyway, he wants you to know that there are districts like this all across the nation. In fact, this TN race probably could have been won. So let’s start with the positive lessons…

First, Behn is a hard worker and a great communicator. She emits a magnetic intensity that’s difficult not to like. At 35, she’s always in motion. While she has no military experience, she gives off the air of a focused soldier, sharpened by the reality of ugly combat casualties among her fellow troops.

“This is ground zero,” she repeated with palpable intensity when I met her in Nashville last month. Behn went on to explain that her ground zero fights include organizing against well-publicized and undemocratic expulsions in the TN Statehouse, personally confronting hideous Republican corruption, her battle to repeal the tax on groceries, vehemently opposing massive TN GOP giveaways to Elon Musk, the loss of healthcare for broad swaths of working people, and working to remedy the skyrocketing cost of living for her Tennessee constituents.

Santa wants you to know that everything you read above is spot-on perfect. It’s just what he and the elves need to see to make deliveries possible. In fact, EVERY SINGLE COUNTY in the TN07 district shifted blue. Here’s the map:

But that’s not enough, and here’s where the critical part of the lesson begins: Behn is impressive in many ways, but she also aggressively stepped into the Republican culture war traps. She’s a Gold Award Girl Scout who has also been arrested for her advocacy. She’s a former community healthcare organizer who is no fan of billionaires or what they are doing to Nashville. She’s endorsed by the Democratic Socialists and the AFL-CIO. She holds a master’s in social work and studied at the U.N. She’s disrupted ICE operations in Nashville and is proud of it. There are gems in there, but in total, that’s about as “Stereotypical Dem” as it gets.

In the very blue part of her district (that one county that contains part of Nashville), there’s nothing wrong with that bio. But this is a heavily gerrymandered congressional district that Trump won by 22% and that means that if the Republicans got scared, they would use all of that stereotyped Dem bio combined with culture war bullets and then fire them by the million to frighten and turnout their base in the rest of the district.

That’s just exactly what they did in the closing weeks of this election. One example of ammo they found is Behn’s past calls to defund police and past statements that included tweets like “Good morning, especially to the 54% of Americans that believe burning down a police station is justified.”1

Even with that, Behn made it a contest, and her economic message, combined with the fact that she is a sharp-elbowed fighter, forced Republicans into an embarrassing, expensive rescue mission involving millions of dollars in a district where they didn’t think they’d have to spend a penny. She even forced the Speaker of the House and Trump himself into direct involvement. As proof of the GOP skittishness, national Republicans hastily prepared a Nashville rally where, on Monday, Mike Johnson, looking just as creepy as he always does, held his phone to the mic and Trump’s voice blared desperation to the speakers:

“The whole world is watching Tennessee right now, and they’re watching the district. It’s gotta show that the Republican Party is stronger than it’s ever been. We have a bigger, stronger party than we’ve ever had. We have more members of the Republican Party than we’ve ever had, and we love Tennessee.”2

Behn pounded the economic message and worked hard enough that some polls had the race nearly tied in the closing weeks. But she had not shown voters in the non-Nashville part of her district why she was different than the farthest left boogeymen they’d been warned about. She had also given Republicans just enough ammo to nationalize the race with millions targeting the same voters who elected Trump and other Republicans in past cycles, and it worked.

I get it, you probably don’t live in TN, and you might be frustrated with me now because I am highlighting the need to stay the hell away from the culture warring. You may be gritting your teeth about the need for justice and higher principles.

Here’s the deal: the principle that matters in electoral politics is “losers go home while winners govern.” For the sake of our country, we must win and govern in several “red” districts. So here’s Santa’s hopeful holiday lesson: the same economic anger and MAGA betrayal that propelled Aftyn Behn to tie this race also exist everywhere across this nation, including where you live.

Taking back the house in ‘26 is incredibly important. It will impact almost everything you care about. Healthcare, Public Lands, Rule of Law, Climate, Corruption, the price of reindeer feed; it’s all on the line in this upcoming election.

Santa (looking at you over his glasses now) says it’s time to talk about this over family dinners this holiday season. The truth is that you don’t have to love Democrats to help with what can and must be done in ‘26. Maybe you are a Republican who just wants a return to sanity, or perhaps you are dismayed at the chaos, tariffs, or cruelty, but have been reluctant to vote FOR a Dem. Maybe you don’t like Biden, or maybe you think MAGA will just fix itself. Newsflash! That’s not going to happen. It’s time to take the excellent advice of Sarah Longwell, a former Republican consultant and founder of the Bulwark:

“The only way to get our politics to return to normal is for Republicans to endure sustained electoral defeats.”3

Longwell is right; if you want to return to anything resembling normal, then defeating MAGA Republicans is the only way. If you join us, you’ll get presents from Santa too!

Everyone needs to help, and I know you have energy because a lot of you have sent me questions after reading my updates about particularly horrible policies or appointments from the Trump administration. They all go something like: “What can I do?” Well, here’s your answer: Be an evangelist, a funder, and a volunteer for winning back the House in ‘26!”

Don’t wait for the DC instruction. Forget the slow-motion lethargy of the National Dems and their acronymed committees. It’s time to double-spike your eggnog and get about making a difference in races all across the country yourself.

Santa wants you to think big! We are going to win some surprising races. Remember, Democrats lost 63 seats in the 2010 midterms because, ahem, they dared to improve healthcare for millions of Americans through the ACA. If improving healthcare costs a party 63 seats, what the hell is the price for this disaster?

Santa is so damn tired of hushed tones from DC about maybe winning a few seats. The emerging political reality highlighted by what almost happened in TN07 means we can defeat scores of Republicans who have been VERY bad boys and girls; real villains who should be sent away like the ghost of Christmas past.

And just so you have an idea about how big this map is, here’s the list of the 100 most vulnerable Republican House incumbents, along with the political rating of their districts. If you need motivation, think about their votes on public lands, on cutting healthcare, and SNAP for millions. Think about them looking away from the destruction at the DOJ and cheering on the Trump crypto corruption. Think of them voting to confirm incompetent fools like Hegseth or Howard Nutlick. Then note that all but one of them are in MORE competitive districts than Aftyn Behn’s just-completed TN-07.

• NE-02 Don Bacon R D+3

• NY-17 Mike Lawler R D+1

• PA-01 Brian Fitzpatrick R D+1

• VA-02 Jen Kiggans R EVEN

• NJ-07 Thomas Kean Jr. R EVEN

• CO-08 Gabe Evans R EVEN

• AZ-06 Juan Ciscomani R EVEN

• MI-07 Tom Barrett R EVEN

• CA-22 David Valadao R R+1

• CA-40 Young Kim R R+1

• AZ-01 David Schweikert R R+1

• PA-07 Ryan MacKenzie R R+1

• CA-03 Kevin Kiley R R+2

• IA-03 Zach Nunn R R+2

• WI-01 Bryan Steil R R+2

• CA-41 Ken Calvert R R+2

• PA-10 Scott Perry R R+3

• MI-04 Bill Huizenga R R+3

• OH-10 Mike Turner R R+3

• MI-10 John James R R+3

• VA-01 Rob Wittman R R+3

• WI-03 Derrick Van Orden R R+3

• PA-08 Rob Bresnahan R R+4

• IA-01 Mariannette Miller-Meeks R R+4

• MO-02 Ann Wagner R R+4

• NY-01 Nick LaLota R R+4

• OH-15 Mike Carey R R+4

• IA-02 Ashley Hinson R R+4

• FL-15 Laurel Lee R R+5

• CO-03 Jeff Hurd R R+5

• CO-05 Jeff Crank R R+5

• NC-11 Chuck Edwards R R+5

• OH-07 Max Miller R R+5

• FL-04 Aaron Bean R R+5

• FL-13 Anna Paulina Luna R R+5

• MT-01 Ryan Zinke R R+5

• NJ-02 Jeff Van Drew R R+5

• FL-07 Cory Mills R R+5

• WA-05 Michael Baumgartner R R+5

• FL-27 Maria Elvira Salazar R R+6

• NY-02 Andrew Garbarino R R+6

• VA-05 John McGuire R R+6

• MN-01 Brad Finstad R R+6

• SC-01 Nancy Mace R R+6

• NE-01 Mike Flood R R+6

• AK-AL Nick Begich R R+6

• GA-12 Rick Allen R R+7

• NC-07 David Rouzer R R+7

• SC-02 Joe Wilson R R+7

• AZ-02 Eli Crane R R+7

• NV-02 Mark Amodei R R+7

• TX-23 Tony Gonzales R R+7

• MN-08 Pete Stauber R R+7

• FL-16 Vern Buchanan R R+7

• TX-15 Monica De La Cruz R R+7

• KY-06 Andy Barr R R+7

• FL-21 Brian Mast R R+7

• CA-48 Darrell Issa R R+7

• TX-24 Beth Van Duyne R R+7

• FL-11 Daniel Webster R R+8

• AR-02 French Hill R R+8

• GA-01 Buddy Carter R R+8

• CA-23 Jay Obernolte R R+8

• NC-14 Tim Moore R R+8

• NC-09 Richard Hudson R R+8

• AZ-08 Abe Hamadeh R R+8

• WI-08 Tony Wied R R+8

• FL-02 Neal Dunn R R+8

• TN-05 Andy Ogles R R+8

• WI-06 Glenn Grothman R R+8

• MD-01 Andy Harris R R+8

• CA-05 Tom McClintock R R+8

• IN-05 Victoria Spartz R R+8

• NC-13 Brad Knott R R+8

• NC-06 Addison McDowell R R+9

• NC-05 Virginia Foxx R R+9

• OH-14 David Joyce R R+9

• NC-10 Pat Harrigan R R+9

• OK-05 Stephanie Bice R R+9

• CO-04 Lauren Boebert R R+9

• TX-22 Troy Nehls R R+9

• TX-03 Keith Self R R+10

• NC-08 Mark Harris R R+10

• KS-02 Derek Schmidt R R+10

• AZ-05 Andy Biggs R R+10

• FL-03 Kat Cammack R R+10

• MN-06 Tom Emmer R R+10

• NY-21 Elise Stefanik R R+10

• UT-03 Mike Kennedy R R+10

• UT-02 Celeste Maloy R R+10

• FL-05 John Rutherford R R+10

• WA-04 Dan Newhouse R R+10

• TX-38 Wesley Hunt R R+10

• NY-23 Nick Langworthy R R+10

• NY-11 Nicole Malliotakis R R+10

• UT-01 Blake Moore R R+10

• FL-28 Carlos A. Giménez R R+10

• NC-03 Greg Murphy R R+10

  Share

Any one of these would be grounds for all-hands-on-deck impeachment-level focus in a normal world. But we do not live in a normal world; we live in a world where all of this and more happens at the same time that this administration and its Republican enablers ALSO celebrate a historically horrible cavalcade of unmitigated disaster for America’s public lands.

I know this stuff can get buried by the headlines, but it’s important, so here is a bullet-pointed summary of this week’s public lands news.

1. News broke that former NM Congressman Steve Pearce has been nominated to oversee more than 245 million acres of your public land. In what can only be likened to the insanity of an avowed arsonist being hired to run the nation’s largest fire station, it’s almost impossible to conceive of a worse person to head the Bureau of Land Management than this jackwagon.

   There is a pile of shocking articles about Pearce’s zealotry, and several are footnoted below123, but the best quote comes from Outdoor Life, where my friend and head of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, Jesse Deubel, a longtime conservation champion who is very familiar with Pearce, lays it out plainly;

   He’s as anti-public lands as you can find, which is really concerning, obviously, considering the role he’s about to be in.4

And, of course, key leaders in the Republican Party rushed to praise Pearce’s selection. Despite reams of evidence that Pearce loudly opposes the very idea of public lands, Steve Daines the Senator from Montana, happily offered this full-throated endorsement of Trump’s selection to E&E news:5

“I knew Steve in the House days, and Steve is a great pick. And I particularly like the fact that it’s a Westerner. I think it’s helpful when we have leaders in those important positions that come from the West, when they understand uniquely the challenges we face as it relates to federal land, state land, private land. And Steve Pearce has lived it and breathed it.”

2. On Wednesday, the Trump Administration announced it would dramatically weaken the Endangered Species Act, one of our bedrock environmental laws passed in 1973 that protects imperiled plant and animal species. The ESA is why we still have bald eagles and grizzly bears, and may be the reason we save iconic species like the sage grouse.

   

   The Republican attack on the ESA comes at a perilous time in our history, given this administration’s breakneck push to industrialize our last wild places. It’s clear they aim to move fast enough to literally make species extinct before advocates have the time to protect them, and they need to weaken this law to make it happen. The targeted components of the ESA are being attacked now because they slow this rapid development, and wealthy corporations know it. This paragraph from an NPR story captures the essence of who is behind the move.

   The administration’s announcement answers longstanding calls for revisions to the Endangered Species Act from Republicans in Congress and industries including oil and gas, mining and agriculture.6

   Of course, Republicans like Ryan Zinke, who raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying for ConocoPhillips after being fired from Trump’s first cabinet for corruption (not an easy task), absolutely love this new rollback announcement.

3. On Thursday, the Trump Administration announced it would open more than a billion acres of public U.S. waters to offshore drilling, despite longstanding, widespread, and vehement opposition over concerns about spills and ecological damage to beaches and marine wildlife. This is not something done for “energy independence”; instead, it’s a move in keeping with demands from oil companies who want to export even more petroleum to foreign countries, a practice championed by then Interior Secretary Zinke and labeled “harebrained” by governors in affected states.7

   

   This new push to dramatically and aggressively open even more waters, much off the coast of California and in the vast offshore area formerly known as the Gulf of Mexico, to industrialization met with sharp criticism from Democrats. Jared Huffman, the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee, offered his scathing assessment to Politico.

   “It’s about the dumbest thing you could do with your money, short of buying a Donald Trump meme coin.”8

4. On Friday, I learned that the Trump administration will lease more than 2,100 acres of the last wild, pristine Wyoming sage steppe for oil and gas industrialization. It’s a place that is very important to me and my family, especially my son Lander, who is named for the town just north of this proposed lease site. This parcel is adjacent to the largest sage grouse lek in the world, a place where the majestic bird gathers in the spring to dance and boom. These sites, once common across the West, are almost gone, and an article in the Laramie, WY Boomerang explains why it’s special.9

   Wildlife biologists know the tract, labeled Parcel 0712 in the lease sale, as among the most biologically rich reaches of the sagebrush-steppe biome remaining anywhere on Earth. Just two miles from the boundary of Parcel 0712 is the sprawling Divide Lek, which retired Wyoming sage grouse coordinator Tom Christiansen frequents in the spring. He’s there to count male birds strutting to court mates, and there are a ton of them. “It’s the largest lek on the planet, at least that I’m aware of,” Christiansen said. “The highest (count) was over 300. I don’t remember the exact number, but this last year (the count) was over 200.” Parcel 0712’s proximity to the largest-known congregation of sage grouse, a struggling species, isn’t the only superlative descriptor of its wildlife value. This parcel amid the sagebrush sea also completely overlaps the main thread of the longest mule deer migration corridor known to Wyoming and the world.

As I absorb all these gut-wrenching updates, I think of two things. The first is the memory of my son Lander, running through the Wyoming sage with our birddog Teddy (yes, named after the former President), chasing wild majestic sage grouse without an oil Derrick in sight.

The second is a statement from that father of our public lands, Teddy Roosevelt himself, who issued a clear admonition to fight the sort of evil that would threaten a place like this.

“Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children forever. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.”

T.R. - 1913

And lastly, I think of how it’s high time we take Teddy’s advice.

Share

3

Public Domain

Trump Picks Unwavering Loyalist To Head BLM After Sgamma Debacle

President Donald Trump’s nomination of Steve Pearce to lead the Bureau of Land Management highlights the extent to which the president places loyalty above all else…

Read more

9 months ago · 14 likes · 1 comment · Chris D'Angelo and Jimmy Tobias

The brazenness and details of Mike’s termination are explained in his recent Facebook post, posted on Nov 2 and entitled “When is Ducks Unlimited, a Great Conservation Organization, Not so Great?” It is stunning for several reasons, not the least of which is Furtman’s long history of advocacy, dedication to wild places, and impressive catalog of work.

If a movie director called central casting in need of a conservation champion and seasoned Northwoods hunter, Mike Furtman is the guy they would send. Furtman, now 71 and often camo-clad, has devoted most of his life to writing about and advocating for America’s wetlands, waterways, and wildlife. Mike’s impressive resume includes a dozen books, hundreds of articles, and a highly celebrated 30-year career writing for Ducks Unlimited, which boasts over 1.6 million members and supporters.

Through the decades, Mike has been a trusted fixture at DU. Besides his normal duties as Contributing Editor, the org has often called on him to write stories for children, assist college students with research projects, and contribute his celebrated photography. Furtman’s outlook has been so valued at DU that the organization charged him with writing their monthly “Marsh Watch” column, awarded him their coveted “Communicator of the Year” award, and commissioned him to author “The Ducks Unlimited Story” on the 75th anniversary of the organization’s founding.

Furtman’s impressive writing, advocacy, and photography have earned him immense respect in Minnesota. If you stroll through the Minneapolis airport, you’ll likely see his books or stunning images in the stores showcasing the beauty of his beloved North Star State.

Mike, who loves his isolated cabin near the Boundary Waters, is also an unabashed champion for this most-visited and pristine American wilderness area. This is an important part of the story because DU has a history of accepting significant funding from mining companies, and the Boundary Waters is the very same place where the Trump administration is currently rushing headlong to force a dangerous industrial mining operation that is vehemently opposed by hunters and anglers across the nation.

That’s right. Mike is on the side of hunters, has thirty years of proven history, piles of local and national street cred, awards out the wazoo, a demonstrated dedication to clean water and wildlife, and a near-perfect alignment with the stated DU mission, which is to “conserve, restore, and manage wetlands and associated habitats for North America’s waterfowl.” Given all this, how could a guy like Furtman get fired from a conservation organization?

The answer, according to Mike, is that he was fired because he is hated by ultra-wealthy MAGA types on DU’s board because he is a concerned citizen and activist who dares to criticize Trump and publicly say he is a Democrat. In other words, Mike takes the mission of DU to heart; he’ll fight and vote for it, whereas the DU board will not.

When I called Furtman to ask him about how all of this had happened, he explained that not long ago, a big-time Republican donor from Thomasville, GA, named Monty Lewis had followed him on Facebook despite having no other personal connection. Lewis, who made his fortune through his “Plantation Propane” business, is a significant donor to DU and an emeritus member of the DU board of directors. Furtman was quickly warned by another associate that Lewis was collecting social media intel and getting people fired, but Mike, who thought his work spoke for itself, was emphatic. “I did not think much of it because I’ve never inserted my personal politics into anything I’ve done for DU, and I am proud of my work.”

Despite his long history, Furtman was fired just days after posting his report on the recent No Kings rally, which included several photographs of anti-Trump signage. Mike immediately suspected political persecution and remembered the warning. He then directly confronted both his editor and Lewis, who both refused to deny that the dismissal was due to Furtman’s personal politics.

It’s well known in the outdoor world that ultra-conservative wealthy men like Monty Lewis are welcomed by the organization, and by Adam Putman, a conservative former Republican Florida congressman himself who now makes $600k as DU’s CEO. It’s my own personal experience that many men like this don’t really believe in the mission of the organizations to which they belong. Instead, they see the membership and money as political tools to further their own right-wing MAGA agendas, and if you wonder why organizations are silent as the Trump administration rototills our wild places in this undeniable moment of crisis, this is why.

As proof of this assertion, one need only consider the 2015 story of Don Thomas, a well-known Montanan and former longtime field editor to DU. Thomas, who still lives in Lewistown, was fired from his 14-year DU stint in 2015 after he wrote a story in Outside Bozeman about multi-billionaire Montana import James Kennedy Cox, who was using his wealth and influence to attack the sacred right of Montana stream access, on which many duck hunters depend.

Although Don’s excellent article did not mention DU and was printed in Outside Bozeman, Thomas was quickly fired by DU because Kennedy Cox was a significant donor to DU. Of course, Don stood by his principles and stated his case plainly.

“I think it’s within journalistic license to call someone selfish and arrogant when they’re clearly being selfish and arrogant,”

Thomas’s dismissal garnered attention from the AP and subsequently sparked a firestorm of outrage among DU members nationwide. A snippet from a High Country News article effectively summarized the situation.

“The issue is not just the dismissal of Don Thomas — it’s that D.U. took an unwarranted action that’s contrary to the interests of its grassroots,” says Glenn Elison, a retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist and longtime Ducks Unlimited member. “The issue is that D.U. is not vocally supporting public access. That sends a message.”

I spoke to Don as I was writing this piece about Mike Furtman. In typical Thomas directness, he made his assessment of the past and current DU board actions: “They offered me my job back if I would retract what I said, but I refused because it’s true. The people who did this weren’t about conservation, they were about money.”

Don is dead nuts right, both then and now. I look back and think how prescient he was in 2015. A decade ago, he knew then what so many hunters and anglers still do not get today:

“D.U. might say it doesn’t get involved in politics, but wildlife is politics now.”

The people who truly care about wildlife and wild places would be well served to listen to Thomas. What we care about is all about politics, and we’d also be well served to condemn DU for firing another conservation champion simply because the big money plantation does not like his honesty.

Share

Ranchers across the nation, who mostly supported Trump in 2024 and who have endured a seemingly endless series of droughts and bad market years, did not take kindly to it. It riled them enough that they immediately did something almost unheard of in the Trump era — they issued public protests and demands for reconsideration from reliable Republican voters.

But just as Trump does with so many working people who have proven their MAGA devotion, he responded to these most loyal supporters by letting them know exactly who was boss.

That clapback happened one day later, when on October 22, Trump fired off a social media post in which he emphatically told American ranchers that not only would he continue his plan to import MadMan’s beef, but also that the only reason ranchers had a pot to piss in at all was because of him. That came as a surprise to hard-working American ranchers from Florida to Oregon who regularly endured endless days in the wind, snow, and mud, often tackled weeks of backbreaking fence building, were used to hot summer days stacking hay, and expected dozens of sleepless nights during calving season. Trump made it known that none of that mattered. Ranchers were but a sniveling herd of hind-tit-suckers who owed their very existence to him and his benevolence.

Having grown up on a multi-generational high plains ranch myself and having spent too many days fixing fences and a lot of nights pulling calves, I knew this would go over about as well as a big-city insurance salesman intruding into the ranch during branding.

You might expect Steve Daines, the senior senator from Montana, a place full of ranchers and people making TV shows about ranchers, to throw a hissy fit and get this fixed, but Steve had already been busy bootlicking the very same Argentine madman with whom Trump had just saddled up. Daines had made his position official earlier this year when he posted this celebratory picture of himself smiling with Milei.

Ranchers are right to be pissed about being shot in the back like this by a man who is supposed to represent them. But this picture, which at the time of this writing is still proudly displayed on Daines’s own Facebook page2, is not even the full extent of the proof of the crime. Nope. Ol’ bootlicker Daines went even further; he was so devoted to Argentina that he made it a warm family affair by bringing his wife, Cindy, to an official meeting with Milei. A meeting so crucial that the Argentinian press reported on the front pages as having been held even before Milei met with Trump.3

American Ranchers who are praying that this is all just a bad movie will take no solace from Daines’s toothy smile or from what he must believe is his divine instruction to screw them over. It’s right there in the phrase on that gaudy gold chainsaw they are all fawning over, “Las fuerzas del cielo” or “the forces of heaven.”

Those of us close to Montana politics know this is classic Daines. He’s a professional poser and expert bootlicker who happens to play a senator role in our bad movie. It’s part of a script that should also be quite familiar to all Americans. Every good Western contains a despicable character just like Steve Daines. You know, the worst kind of pick-me politician who makes a big show of religiosity and public virtue, but privately gets off on siding with the criminal gang that’s about ready to rape and pillage the entire town.

Daines would have been great for so many roles, but he seems perfectly typecast as a character like Hedley Lamar, the corrupt Blazing Saddles politician lounging with the meathead villain Taggart, using his tongue to bathtub-scheme about ruining the lives of the good people in Rock Ridge. (watch this clip - and don’t you dare come at me over this - thank God the woke police have not erased all of the true classics from YouTube!)

This clip makes me laugh, but the problem with Daines is that he’s neither funny nor an actor. He really is just a classic old west backshooter, and he really believes his constituents are just as dumb as Mr. Taggart. He believes he can keep fooling them into thinking he’s on their side. But this time, Steve posted pictures of it all to prove otherwise.

Ranchers ain’t buying it. These people, who are struggling to maintain the last true family businesses in American agriculture, are in a constant, margin-stealing battle with four mega corporations that control almost all meatpacking in the United States.

Those big corporations want Argentinian beef imported so beef prices fall and ranches go bankrupt. They are ready to swoop in with their VC buddies to buy the family ranches. It’s what the vultures call “vertical integration,” it’s already happening to thousands of farms, and ranchers are rightfully scared to death of it.4

Almost every cattleman’s association in every state has issued emphatic public statements criticising Trump by name. It’s a huge deal. These are reliably red organizations that have never before criticised anything to do with MAGA. Yes, many also contain caveats, but the anger emanating from ranchers and rural communities is palpable, and the betrayal from posers like Steve Daines is infuriating.

Western Livestock Journal, a widely read, century-old publication that has informed generations of ranchers, including my parents and grandparents, recently issued a shocking and illustrative statement that contained these straightforward words:

“The biggest annoyance in all of this is that the majority of farmers and ranchers supported the president in his re-election bid. He needs to do damage control to return support to those who have supported him.”

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association also issued a rebuke typical of other trade groups across the country.

“The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) and its members cannot stand behind the President while he undercuts the future of family farmers and ranchers by importing Argentinian beef in an attempt to influence prices.”5

Ranchers and farmers are all angry and scared, but Trump is not on the ballot in 2026. His enablers are: Steve Daines, Ryan Zinke, and scores of other republican posers. If all Americans, especially ranchers, want to stand up for themselves, their livelihoods, and the legacy of American independence, then they’ll first need to unelect all of the suckup Republican Senators and Representatives who would rather shoot their own constituents in the back than stand up to Donald Trump and his mad crypto cronies.

Share