Corruption usually just slips in through a side door wearing a badge, an emergency waiver, and a very straight face. Spotting it isn’t just about throwing stones at the power structure; it means having the discipline to open the closet when it’s in our own room.

When federal agencies hand out billions in public contracts without open competition, they rely on a legal shield known as unusual and compelling urgency.
Under Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 6.302-2, the government can bypass standard bidding if it proves that taking the time to solicit competing offers would cause serious or national security harm.

Under the $46.5 billion border infrastructure package passed via the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Customs and Border Protection invoked this exact rule to direct massive contract volumes to a small group of pre-approved builders.

Chief among these builders is Bozeman-based Barnard Construction Company, led by chairman and founder Tim Barnard.

Federal Election Commission (FEC) data records show that Tim Barnard and his wife have contributed millions of dollars over the years to Republican candidates, committees and conservative causes. This includes more than $1 million directly to Donald Trump’s campaign committees alone.

Together with its subsidiaries such as BFBC LLC and joint ventures, Barnard has secured over $7 billion in cumulative lifetime federal border wall awards. More than $5.6 billion has been allocated since 2025 alone.
In total, border barrier construction now accounts for over 80% of the firm’s total federal contract value.

However, a paper trail in Presidio County, Texas, dismantles the central argument used to justify skipping the competitive process for politically connected firms.

I. The Math of the Bidding Process
Under standard federal procurement rules (FAR Part 5), when an agency opens a public tender for major civil infrastructure, it grants vendors 14-30 days to submit competitive cost bids.
Even running inside a closed pool of pre-approved contractors, which CBP already maintains, running a mini competition for a special project typically takes two to three weeks.
The government didn’t argue it had weeks to spare. They deemed the national emergency too acute, and the requirement for immediate mobilization too pressing, to wait for rival contractors to submit competing price quotes.

The timeline on the ground in Presidio County tells a completely different story:

• January 28, 2026: An engineer-in-training for Barnard emailed Presidio County Road and Bridge Supervisor Ruben Carrasco inquiring about local wastewater permits, explicitly writing: “We are building the border fence... We will have to build an RV park that will require septic.”

  

• Early February 2026: Barnard representatives approached the Presidio Municipal Development District seeking space at a local industrial park to set up a 500-unit workforce camp.

• March 5, 2026: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) formally signed and obligated the $960.4 million Presidio County contract.

II. The Illusion of Urgency
The 36-day gap between Barnard’s initial site scouting and DHS’s formal contract obligation exposes a fundamental contradiction:

If the situation on the border was so catastrophic, DHS could not afford 14 days to request competing price proposals from the other 10 pre-qualified heavy construction firms in its vendor pool, how in the hell did Barnard have 36 days to scout land, meet with municipal boards, and organize septic permits before having an active contract?
The 36-day window proves that time was not the constraining factor.

The agency had more than enough time to run a competitive price evaluation among pre-approved contractors, and by choosing not to, the government didn’t save critical time; it simply eliminated price competition.

III. Locking out the Market
By allowing a preferred major Republican donor-backed contractor an unannounced 36-day head start to scout staging grounds, contact local officials and plan logistics, DHS effectively manufactured Barnard’s operational advantage.
When the contract was officially logged on March 5th, Barnard appeared to be the only contractor to deploy on Day 1, simply because no rival had been given the same advance notice.

The dynamic here forms the core of an ongoing bid protest lawsuit filed in the US Court of Federal Claims by rival pre-approved builder Posillico Civil, Inc.
(Posillico Civil, Inc. v. United States).

The filing alleges that CBP improperly directed approximately 73% of all new Texas and New Mexico border wall funding to just two companies, Barnard Construction and Fisher Sand and Gravel.
Fisher’s president and CEO is Tommy Fisher, a well-known GOP donor. The Pentagon’s inspector general ordered an audit of a $400 million contract that Fisher’s company was issued in 2019 to build a span of new barrier across an Arizona wildlife refuge but later found no evidence of improper political interference.

Fisher is known for its controversial work and has financial ties to We Build the Wall, a scandal-ridden nonprofit whose board included Trump strategist Steve Bannon.

Posillico argues that by misusing urgency exemptions, the government locked out other qualified bidders and stripped away the basic requirement that public funds be awarded through fair and open pricing.

Even Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed called for an investigation into the contract, calling it a “no-bid contract to an apparently politically-connected, private contractor,” and a Government Accountability Office report the following year advised the Army Corps to rethink its procurement strategy.

IV. What’s the Real Cost of Bypassed Bids?
When competitive bidding is preserved, contractors compete to lower costs and protect public funds. When competitive bidding is set aside under the guise of “urgency” that a 36-day calendar disproves, the taxpayers absorb the hit, paying per-mile rates that investigative reports show reaching as high as $33 million per mile.

The Presidio paper trail demonstrates that emergency mobilization was never an insurmountable constraint; it's an administrative justification used to route billions of dollars in public funds to a preferred donor, while the clock runs silently in the background.


V. The Defense: We’re Just Doing Preliminary Legwork and Scouting
In normal commercial contracting, early reconnaissance happens all of the time.
However, when you try to apply it to federal border wall procurement under emergency rules, that defense falls apart for a few critical reasons.

1. The legal contradiction of “emergency” is used to bypass competitive bidding.
The legal premise is that the situation is so acute and dire that the government cannot afford another single day of delay.

If the threat requires such immediate mobilization that DHS can’t wait 14-21 days for a standard mini competition among pre-approved firms, the contractor shouldn’t have the luxury of spending weeks scouting land, coordinating septic permits with county supervisors, and designing 500-unit workforce camps before the ink dries on the damn paper!

Pre-scouting also implies that Barnard either knew the timeline well in advance or had assurances long before any bidding process.

2. The “Pre-Approved Pool” Advantage
These firms were already vetted, and standard federal procedures dictate that if an agency needs to move fast, they run an internal mini-competition among those 11 firms.
If Barnard was out scouting locations 36 days early while the other 11 firms were kept in the dark, it proves the playing field wasn’t level. One preferred vendor was given an unannounced head start to lay the groundwork, effectively locking out the rest of the pool before the competition really began.

3. The Reality on the Ground
When an engineer tells a county road supervisor, “We are building the border fence. We will have to build an RV park that will require septic”, that isn’t framed in a speculative “trust me, bro”. It’s an operational certainty.

Combine all of this with millions in Republican donations it starts to look like insider alignment.

Take Action & Think On This

• Dig Into the Local Paperwork: Don’t just take word-of-mouth or press releases at face value. Use the Montana Secretary of State’s Citizen Portal, FEC.gov public records requests under the Montana Department of Justice to track where money, property, and influence intersect.

• Support Independent Watchdogs: Keep local, independent journalism alive by subscribing to, sharing, and funding investigative reporting that refuses to look away.
  
  One last question to chew on: If a multi-billion-dollar corporation can secure a 36-day head start on a no-bid public contract while everyone else is locked out of the room, exactly who is the “emergency” actually serving?
  
  -Andy B.
  
  

  Unredacted is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

When over $3 million in out-of-state dark money flooded Montana’s quiet Democratic Senate primary, it looked like a standard blitz to boost a little-known underdog.
Now, in hindsight, it looks to be another status quo failure.

The FEC paper trail linking the Delaware-based dark money nonprofit Contours Inc. and $2.6 million to the Progressive Vet PAC.

Party figures like former Montana state legislator and PAC treasurer Moffie Funk and the PAC’s sudden post-primary exit from Montana after boosting Alani Bankhead on TV and then calling her “unviable” shortly after she won the Democratic primary fueled the fire.

Here is the official Statement of Organization filed with federal regulators, listing former state Representative Moffie Funk as Treasurer for the Progressive Vet PAC.

Then a stranger political scheme began to emerge. What was supposedly a calculated status quo strategy to manufacture a primary winner and clear the election lane for Seth Bodnar backfired the moment the Democratic candidate Alani Bankhead said what basically amounted to a “Hell no!”

Even a harassment campaign against her personal network, including her minor child, couldn’t stop Alani.

The Smoking Gun on Social Media
This host reservation clearly places Funk on the host committee for Seth Bodnar, who’s endorsed by heavy-hitter status quo figures like former Montana Governor Marc Racicot and former Montana state Dem Executive Director Sheila Hogan.

If there is any lingering doubt about the projected endgame, it evaporated with the circulation of a formal host invitation on social media.

The Backfire
When Bankhead responded with what amounted to a “hell no”, she broke the strategist’s math. The consultants and donors went into a tizzy.
Instead of clearing a two-way match, Contours Inc. and Moffie’s wasted $2.6 million experiment has created a 3 way race, proving that even multi-million dollar dark plays run aground when a candidate refuses to abide by their script.

The Timeline Above Tells the Story
1. First, Funk serves as a treasurer of a pop-up PAC that drops millions in out-of-state dark money to basically hand the primary election victory to Alani.
2. Next, her PAC shuts down operations in Montana, claiming a Democrat can’t win and Alani is “unviable”.
3. Bodnar supporters then aggressively attack Alani to drop out; Alani says “hell no”.
4. Finally, Funk appears on the Independent candidate host committee, raising money for the exact independent candidate designed to capture that same voter base as Alani if Alani dropped out.

That, folks, is the circle of failure.

When dark money strategists and the donor class conspire and try to treat elections like a spreadsheet calculation, they routinely forget the human element.
The moment someone speaks out of script, the multimillion-dollar plan unravels into a textbook display of complete political miscalculation and leaves the architects scrambling to keep their digital footprint on full display.


Respecting the Resistance
Having spent years watching how campaign operations work behind closed doors, I know firsthand how ruthless these political machines can be. When millions in dark money flow into a state like Montana, it comes with quiet expectations. The operatives writing the checks don’t view primary candidates as independent leaders; they view them as chess pieces.
The playbook was clear. Elevate an underfunded candidate, cut off donor class funding from the DSCC, etc., and let her fold under pressure like they expected a political newcomer to do.

Alani Bankhead didn’t.
Whatever your political leanings, there is mad respect for someone who stands up to powerful people and their monied interests. By refusing to bow out, Bankhead didn’t just protect her own campaign; she exposed the entire dark money apparatus and proved Montana candidates can’t be bullied and pushed around.

For readers who want to explore different filings, campaign reports, or candidate disclosures, check the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices Portal or search PAC filings through the Federal Election Commission PAC Search.

-Andy B.

The Bozeman 4th of July Parade is a morning full of sensory overload. Kids perched on curbs eating popsicles, classic cars revving up, and community groups marching for their cause.
But in 2010, as I stood in a crowd of Bozemanites watching the procession was a line-up of words that I’ll never forget from all corners of the political spectrum: Green Coalition of Gay Loggers for Jesus.

I stood there blinking.

The text was visually striking and delightfully absurd, and right then and there I had to figure out the story.

I. Beyond the Banner
This curiosity turned into a dive to understand what was actually going on. That’s when I learned about Brian Leland, the mind behind the brilliant concept.

At the time, the local Tea Party was gaining visibility across Montana politics, and public displays of rigid partisan rhetoric were becoming the norm.
Brian’s strategy wasn’t to get in screaming matches in comment sections; instead used spectacle and satire.
By wrapping logger culture, evangelical branding, enviro language, and LGBTQ+ Pride into a single banner, Brian effectively disrupted the standard political script.
He created a brilliant counterweight and a reminder that public spaces in Bozeman can still be playful, unpredictable, and irreverent.

II. The Great Permit Heist: Outsmarting the Bureaucracy and the Tea Party
To understand how the Green Coalition of Gay Loggers for Jesus came to be, you have to look back at the saga of the 4th of July parade permits.
Back in 2009, the newly formed local Tea Party wanted to do a standalone march down Main Street for a tax protest.
Instead of filing their own standard parade application, members showed up to a City Commission meeting demanding it. The city granted it, but as soon as locals learned that closing Main Street for their own parade would cost city taxpayers $1100 in public overtime and city staff, there would be hell to pay, no pun intended.

Knowing Brian, he is a man of satire, and the irony was thick for him. This was an anti-tax, fiscally conservative anti-government spending group, based 30 miles outside of Bozeman, using city dollars to fund their own private protest rally.

He then decided to check city regulations to see how to respond, and he discovered a loophole.
City code specified that parade permits could only be issued to registered organizations, not private individuals.
To get around the rule, Brian sat down and crafted the ultimate big-tent umbrella organization, one designed to cover every part of the political spectrum: The Green Coalition of Gay Loggers for Jesus was officially born.
Brian then filed for a second standalone parade permit under the new name for the same day, pledging his group would raise the $1,100 to cover the 2009 standalone street closure costs.

Both groups marched in 2009 in their own parade, and Brian’s coalition raised over $2,600 through t-shirt sales and donations, paying for the street closure for both events that day and donating $1,500 to the local food bank.


III. How Brian Shut Down the Tea Party’s 2010 4th of July Parade Permit
To prevent dueling parades on Main Street and a repeat of 2009, the city revised its policy for 2010. It would only issue one permit for July 4th, awarded on a first-come, first-served basis starting in January.
Knowing the new rules, Brian went to City Hall early in the year and secured the sole permit.
When Tea Party organizers later arrived at City Hall to secure the permit and their usual parade spot, the city delivered the news: You can march on July 4th if you want, but you have to be in the parade with The Green Coalition of Gay Loggers for Jesus.
Of course, they refused to march under Brian’s big tent and abandoned their plans for Main Street and moved their event out of downtown.

Using the city’s own administrative code, Brian had effectively checked the Tea Party’s public presence off the parade route.

IV. Long-Term Impact and T-Shirt Sales
What started as a clever permit maneuver turned into long-term mutual aid. Over the years, the coalition has sold over 2,700 shirts with orders spanning from Bozeman to the Pacific Rim and military service members abroad.
In total, merchandise sales have raised over $8,000 for local food banks.

Standing on that sidewalk years ago, I thought I was just looking at a funny parade sign. Looking back, it was a masterclass in local activism. He outsmarted rigid political rhetoric and local bureaucracy with humor, reclaiming public space and turning satire into tangible community support.

If you want to order merchandise or follow the group’s updates:
Official Facebook Community Page

Buy T-shirts with proceeds going to local food banks

If you live in or are ever in Bozeman, the t-shirts can be bought at Cactus Records.

I’ll finish with this…..
What began as a double-take for me on a crowded Bozeman sidewalk turned out to be one of the most effective pieces of grassroots satire in local history.
Brian leveraged wit and a big tent spirit. He didn’t just outmaneuver a political shift on Main Street; he transformed an eye-catching parade banner into long-lasting community care.

One lesson I’ve learned in all of this is that when you meet rigid rhetoric with political humor, you can reclaim a public space and build on it for years to come.

-Andy B.

Standard political logic says parties unite behind the primary winner. As you have probably noticed, it’s a little different this go-around in Montana.

An “unendorsement”, or a coordinated political freezeout, is the exact opposite of an endorsement.

This occurs when the donor and consultant class decide that a candidate poses a threat to their high-dollar strategy. Rather than honor the results of a democratically held election, the political machine steps in to strip away support.

Phase 1: The Tactical Wedge
Before primary ballots are counted, institutional forces and a mystery PAC, in this case the dark money Progressive Vet PAC, identify a candidate with strong optics and minimal funding.

Outside money pours in to elevate them over better-funded candidates, not to build a long-term champion, but to split the primary vote to pave the way for an independent.
Their goal was to elevate a low-fundraising candidate into the general election so the consultant class and their polls can claim the Democrat as non-viable.

Phase 2: Cutting off the Pipeline
The moment the primary winner was declared, the national apparatus locked down the cash. The DSCC and its donor networks withhold access to voter data, coordinated campaign staff, and joint fundraising lists.

The very PACs that spent millions during the primary to elect Alani suddenly pull out entirely, declaring that Democrats can’t win.

Sounds like terrible strategy and a waste of money to me.

Phase 3: The Pressure Campaign and the Undendorsement Letters
When withholding funds doesn’t force a candidate to resign quietly, party elites pivot to public pressure.
Sitting lawmakers and party elder statesmen issue open, coordinated letters urging the primary winner to drop out before critical deadlines.
And the independent pivot?
Status quo figures direct their donor base towards the independent option, like Seth Bodnar, and actually frame the party nominee as the “spoiler”.

I. The Underlying Reality
When the status quo from Helena and D.C. justify why they won’t support a primary winner, they point to consultant math and balance sheets.
Beneath the carefully scripted press releases and carefully worded withdrawal letters from party bosses lies a starker truth about how the modern machine works.

The primary excuses the Dem status quo has given us about viability are a self-fulfilling prophecy. The excuse for Alani is her campaign bank account.

What’s really disturbing is that party influencers such as Nancy Keenan, Jon Tester, and Carol Williams conveniently omit that they helped to build the very deficit they say hurts Alani’s chances.
Why? A multi-way general election disrupts the donor and consultant class’s playbook.

The most concerning reality exposed by Bodnar supporters’ coordinated “Drop Out” campaign is their disregard for ahem…democracy.
When party elders, sitting state legislators, and national dark money groups try to force a primary winner out, they aren’t only giving failed tactical advice; they are asserting that a handful of consultants in backrooms in Helena have veto power over tens of thousands of voters.

II.Reality vs. Rhetoric
To justify all of this, elders and leaders rely on a well-scripted set of talking points. They frame their pressure tactics as “pragmatic” and a “civic duty”. When you strip away the polished press releases and briefing notes, the real motives become clear:

Status quo talking point: “We are stepping aside to give Montanans a clear choice”
The political reality: They are attempting to narrow the field to candidates backed by millions.

Talking point: “This is pragmatic decision-making based on polling”
Political reality: It’s an institutional gamble to bypass the party’s own primary base in favor of a consultant-designed ticket.

Talking point: “She should step down for the good of the party”
Political reality: Demanding a primary winner quit proves the party machine values outcome control over internal democratic mandates.


III.How the GOP Capitalizes on Dem Status Quo Dysfunction
Montana leadership’s attempt to order a freezeout hands an enormous advantage to Kurt Alme. By refusing to back their own primary winner, the Dem elders do the heavy lifting for MAGA.

While Trump and the Republican establishment roll out the red carpet for Kurt Alme, Democratic elites in Helena and Washington are doing their heavy lifting for them—publicly tearing down their own nominee instead of fighting back.

Rather than Bodnar drop out and face a unified base, Alme’s handlers get to watch the opposition split resources, momentum and grassroots energy.
Also, when the Dem old guard publicly declares their candidate is unviable, the primary talking point for Alme’s cabal are she’s unviable, without having to spend a single dollar on a negative campaign ad.

It’s that easy for them. This is why Seth Bodnar needs to drop out.

See how that sounds, Jon Tester?

IV. The Mandate Belongs to Voters
The campaign to pressure Alani off the ballot isn’t about strategy or math; it’s about control.
When the D.C. beltway and Helena insiders demand a primary winner step aside, they are sending a clear message to everyday Montanans. Your vote only counts if you pick the candidate we pre-approve.

I have to give Alani some props. She has not bowed to dark money or the Republican or Democrat status quo. She isn’t just defending her campaign; she is drawing a line in the sand for grassroots democracy. I appreciate the hell out of that.

-Andy B.

For years, Aaron Flint branded his show “fair and balanced”. If you ever had the chance to listen to a show, you know that’s the furthest thing from the truth.
Every day it was the high-octane culture wars bullshit and blanket support for the MAGA agenda, even 16 Viagra commercials in between breaks.
The usual morning conservative talk radio drivel.

I’ll never forget calling into his radio show, Montana Talks.

Whenever I called to offer a different perspective or nuance to his listeners, I learned how the show was run. Aaron didn’t just disagree; he would hang up the phone on anyone who dared step out of line on his show’s script.

This didn’t happen once or twice, but was a pattern for anyone who stepped out of line, aka “having a different point of view.”

Hell, I had to change my name just so I could sneak in a call.

I was no longer Andy the Bernie communist; I was Billy from Big Timber, and I made a lot of sense to his listeners, as some would call Aaron and say.

Now that Flint is running for Congress, his loud, shock jock, unchecked persona is suddenly quiet, and I see the same kind of hang-up mentality playing out across his campaign.
Instead of hosting open, unscripted town halls where folks can take the mic for once and ask him the hard-hitting questions, his operation is built on slick photo ops and tightly controlled press releases.
He’s used to this. Running a radio show means you can cut the call whenever you want.

Aaron, serving in Congress is different. You don’t get to mute the people you’re running to represent.

Meanwhile. I’m watching Sam Forstag hosting town halls and talking to Montanans about the issues that matter most to them.
Here is a picture of him in Ravalli County just last week.

Aaron Flint, on the other hand, is treating the election like his studio set, his safe space for when things get uncomfortable.
So, where did that noise go?

-Andy B.

Have you read the items on the page?

Bodnar operatives didn’t list door-knocking schedules, ad buys, or policy.
They highlighted a link to a “Bankhead contacts spreadsheet of people close to Alani Bankhead”.
This is a target list extended directly to her family and those close to her. Hell, the doc kindly instructs volunteers to ping Signal and WhatsApp numbers if they are ready to exert pressure.

When Bankhead called out the safety risk to her minor child, she deactivated her Facebook account to protect her family.

An apology from Bodnar did eventually come.

Let me completely clear how the apology machine works.
An apology after a document is suddenly released isn’t an awakening to ethics; it’s just PR damage control on aisle 4.

I. The Paper Trail of Amateur Hour
Setting aside the sheer malice of bringing in people close to someone and involving them in a political hit job shows the sheer incompetence of the job itself.

1. If you’re going to coordinate a high-pressure operation, don’t leave a paper trail through Google Docs.

2. Messaging on Signal doesn’t make you message classified when you literally publish the contact numbers and action items on a public-facing action sheet.

3. Calling a targeted list “voter outreach” is a level of spin that belongs in a satire column.

The Bottom Line

Political campaigns can really suck. I know this. They are aggressive and ruthless.
However, there is a clear and unmistakable line you don’t cross. If you do, you never knew the line in the first place. This goes between political contrasts and crowdsourcing a sheet of an opponent’s child.

Nothing kills an engineered pressure campaign faster than someone having the actual PDF, and in this case, the receipts speak for themselves.

Mic Drop…..

At the end of the day, political campaigns will always fight dirty. When your grand scheme relies on weaponizing contact lists that include minor children and hiding behind signal numbers, you haven’t lost just the moral high ground; you handed your opponent the receipts to tear you down.

-Andy B.

If you have felt a strange sense of deja vu reading the energy headlines in Montana lately, no one can blame you.

The ghost of the Keystone Pipeline (KXL) has officially returned.

It’s called the Bridger Pipeline Expansion. It’s a proposed $2 billion, 650-mile steel straw designed to move up to 550,000 barrels a day, and potentially 1.13 million barrels at full capacity. This is heavy Canadian crude straight through the heart of Big Sky Country down to Guernsey, Wyoming.

Two-thirds of the pipeline will lie right here in Montana.

Naturally, the corporate PR machine is running on high-octane Albertan bitumen.
They say it’s about energy independence, lower prices at the pump, and infrastructure efficiency. If you peel back the press releases and look at what’s been happening in Helena’s regulatory offices, a far more troubling pattern appears. A state regulatory agency is cutting procedural corners for multi-billion-dollar corporations, some of whom are coming off their largest quarter ever.


I. The DEQ’s Secret Waiver: Regulatory Capture in Real Time
I want to start with a regulatory scandal that almost nobody was supposed to know about.

Let’s find out.

Under Montana's Major Facility Siting Act (MFSA), energy developers seeking to build massive infrastructure projects are legally required to jump through strict transparency hoops. Companies must submit financial disclosures, economic viability data, and comprehensive environmental evaluations.
This includes analysis of alternative pipeline routes to earn a Certificate of Compliance. Without this certificate, you are not allowed to lay one single foot of pipe.

Of course, in January 2026, Bridger Pipeline LLC formally asked the state for a pass. They requested a waiver to omit financial information, economic impact data, and alternative route analysis. BP LLC argues the information was “irrelevant.”

Under Montana law, granting a waiver of this magnitude requires two things. A public notice and a formal public hearing.

Instead, the MT Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) approved Bridger’s waiver without issuing public notice or holding a hearing.

For months, while the Feds and state agencies held public comment windows on early environmental assessments, everyday Montanans were invited to weigh in.

The catch? The public was unknowingly commenting on an incomplete and heavily sanitized application stripped of key economic data and alternate route evaluations.

II. How Two Montanans Caught the State Off Guard
The secret arrangement held until mid-2026.
Represented by the legal non-profit Earthjustice, two MT residents, Derf Johnson of the Montana Environmental Information Center and eastern MT rancher Wade Sikorski.
They filed formal legal affidavits challenging the DEQ’s actions. They exposed that the state agency had violated MT law and its own administrative rules to shield a Wyoming-based corporation from public scrutiny.

"The law requires the disclosure of information to the public that is incredibly important for evaluating the potential impacts of the pipeline on Montana's environment and people," said Derf Johnson.
"It's incredibly alarming that DEQ has allowed this Wyoming corporation to bypass the law through a waiver, but didn't follow the steps in place to assure that such a waiver was appropriate and legal."

Now they were caught, and the DEQ had to backtrack. On July 22nd, 2026, the agency officially withdrew the waiver, forcing Bridger to stop the clock and submit the missing data before their application was complete.

As Earthjustice attorney Lars Phillips put it:
“It is unfortunate that it took two Montanans standing up to big oil to force the DEQ to require Bridger to comply with Montana law.’

III. Debunking the Pro-Pipeline Myths
Now that the regulatory curtain has been pulled back, let me address the core economic and safety arguments the mainstream oil lobby uses to sell these projects.

Myth 1
“The pipeline will lower prices at the gas pump”
It’s heavy bitumen, not local petrol. The product sloshing through this pipe will be heavy Albertan tar sands. Montana neither refines nor consumes the vast majority of this product.
“The destination is oil export markets”
The oil moves south through Wyoming, and links up with existing networks, towards the Gulf Coast, and is refined for global markets or loaded onto tankers overseas.
”Global markets set the pump price”
Gas prices in Billings, Missoula, or Great Falls are set by global benchmark prices (WTI/Brent) and regional refining capacity. A transit highway moving Canadian crude to Texas refiners doesn't add a single drop of refined fuel to Montana's local market.

The ones making out like bandits here are the Canadian oil sands producers getting cheap takeaway capacity and midstream operators collecting tariff fees per barrel.

Myth 2: “Pipelines are safer than rail or trucks”
Proponents love to claim pipelines are the safest transport method, but that depends on what you're measuring. If you measure safety by traffic accidents, buried pipe wins. If you measure safety by volume spilled into the environment, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, multi-decade records show that pipelines consistently release far more crude per incident, averaging over four times the spill volume of a freight rail release. When a train car leaks, you lose a localized tank; when a high-pressure 36-inch pipe breaches, thousands of barrels flood the surrounding soil before automated valves can react

Myth 3: “It will create a boom of permanent, high-paying jobs”
This is perhaps the most seductive argument for rural communities along the route.
The construction surge is temporary.
When you build a 650-mile pipeline, it requires a massive skilled workforce. This includes welders, heavy equipment operators, pipe fitters, and safety inspectors.
Hundreds of workers will fill local hotels, eat at local diners, and buy fuel at local gas stations.
Once the pipe is welded and buried, the entire operation packs up and moves to their next project.

Pipeline construction also requires specialty labor from out of state. This is because many positions require specialized certifications and unionized specialty crews, rather than training residents for the short-term gigs.
The permanent jobs reality is this. Pipelines are fundamentally used to move massive amounts of liquid with minimal human intervention. Operations are governed by AI valves, remote pressure sensors, and out-of-state central control rooms.

To put all of this into perspective, federal reviews of KXL estimated that while construction requires thousands of temp workers, the long-term footprint required less than 50 jobs across the multi-state route.
For MT, the long-term direct employment isn’t sustained job growth. It’s a transit route run by a few regional maintenance managers and corrosion control specialists.


Myth 4: The Tax Benefits are Worth It
Whether the tax benefit is “worth it” comes down to a fundamental balance between short-term revenue and unfunded long-term liabilities:

Property tax revenues are highest the day a pipeline goes into service. As the steel equipment depreciates over time, the assessed value and therefore the annual property tax payout to the county gradually declines, even as the physical risk of pipe aging and corrosion increases.

Because the crude in a transit pipe passes directly through the state without being refined, distributed, or sold locally, it generates no local fuel price savings or downstream industry jobs once construction ends.

The county essentially functions as a “pass-through corridor.”

A single major pipeline release, especially one impacting a rural agricultural aquifer, irrigation canal, or river crossing, can easily cost tens of millions of dollars in environmental remediation, crop loss, and property damage.

If state oversight or corporate bonding falls short, the local agricultural economy and municipal water systems bear a burden that far outweighs an annual county property tax check.


IV. Asymmetric Risk: Montana’s Land Vs. Corporate Balance Sheets
When big corporations are pulling in record profits, asking Montanans to serve an uncompensated transit corridor requires a serious reality check.

What does Montana actually get out of this deal?
A short-term construction boom, a modest bump in county property taxes, and long-term ecological liability.
When a heavy crude line ruptures, corporate executives hundreds of miles away suffer a minor earnings blip; local communities lose their drinking water.

Bridger's track record in Montana is theory. In 2015, the Bridger Poplar Pipeline breached near Glendive, dumping over 30,000 gallons of Bakken crude directly into the Yellowstone River, fouling the municipal drinking water system.

The proposed pipeline route crosses major eastern Montana watersheds. In a state where 90% of rural residents rely on groundwater or private wells for drinking or agriculture, a substance like bitumen isn’t a minor inconvenience; it’s a disaster.

VI. What You Can Do Right Now
The reversal means the clock has officially been reset, and public oversight isn’t over.
Here is how you can get involved.

1. Submit public comments to the MT DEQ
Focus your comments on water resources, route alternatives and financial assurance.
Where to submit your public comments.
Watch the Montana DEQ Public Comment Portal or email written comments directly to deqmeic@mt.gov referencing the Bridger Pipeline Expansion Certificate of Compliance.

2. Share the Facts, Not the Myths
The oil and gas lobby relies on public apathy and the assumption that people think pipelines automatically lower gas prices. This is a myth.
Share this piece, talk to neighbors, and bring up the facts.

Montana should not take on 100% of the long-term environmental liability for a transit pipe that offers local fuel savings.

3. Support Local Watchdogs Keeping Helena Honest
The secret waiver would have completely flown under the radar if two local citizens and watchdog organizations hadn’t filed legal challenges.

Montana Environmental Information Center (MEIC)- meic.org
Earthjustice Northern Rockies- earthjustice.org
Northern Plains Resource Council- northernplains.org

V. The Bottom Line
The debate over the Bridger Pipeline Expansion isn’t about whether America needs energy; it’s about who bears the risk versus who pockets the profit.

Montana is being asked to serve as a 400-mile carpet for out-of-state and international oil interests. The DEQ’s recent attempt to grant secret regulatory waivers shows how easily state oversight can be subverted when nobody is paying attention.

If corporate executives want to run a massive tar-sands highway through our backyard, the absolute bare minimum we should demand is complete transparency, strict enforcement of state law, and an immediate end to the insultingly fake narrative that it will make your commute to work any cheaper.

With the DEQ now forced to restart the process in broad daylight, Montanans will finally get the chance to see the full financial data before any final decisions are made.

-Andy B.

P.S. Stay tuned!
I will continue to follow this story and any new developments that may come. .

Right now, a quest for one of the most important seats in Congress is up for grabs. It’s turned into an absolute clown show.

The Helena Independent reported Bodnar loyalists showing up to crash Bankhead events like an ex- that just won’t let go. We’ve got shadowy Super PACs pouring dark money into mailers while everyone else “pinky promises they’re anti-establishment.

Kurt Alme is hiding behind Trump and Daines, and the GOP online “pundits” are treating it like a fantasy football draft.

It’s entertaining if you're in high school drama class with a five-figure ad budget.
Here’s the problem: This isn’t a bad episode of The Apprentice (they all were pretty bad).

It’s a US Senate seat.

Montanans aren’t asking for much. We don’t want more rounds of snarky press releases, anonymous quote dumping to reporters, or proxy fights in the comments section.
If these candidates want to represent a sovereign state in DC, they should have the basic intestinal fortitude to stand on a stage and talk to us all like adults.

We need a debate. A real one.

Put Alani Bankhead, Seth Bodnar, Kurt Alme, Kyle Austin and Jamie Woodman on the stage.

No prescreened softballs, no dark money funded proxy shields. No yelling over one another at campaign stops. Just five people. One microphone each and a full two hours of substance.

-Bankhead can tell us without party bosses holding her leash or being heckled from the front row, how she plans to lower housing costs and navigate the state’s political divides.

-Bodnar can explain how independent his coalition functions when the rubber meets the road instead of lofty press releases.

-Alme can step out of the GOP establishment bubble and defend his record directly to working-class Montanans. Will he perpetuate more wars in the Middle East?

-Austin and Woodman can force them all to stop ignoring the system, federal overreach, and corporate influence.

If any of these candidates think they are too good or too precious to stand on stage and debate the issues that matter, that tells you exactly what they’ll do when they get to DC.

Enough with the hyperbole. Enough with the dark money barons.

Get on stage, answer the damn questions, and let Montanans decide.

-Andy B.

Stop everyone! The US Senate race just got a late game-changer!

Jami Dee Woodman officially filed her Declaration of Intent and oath of candidacy as a write-in for the US Senate.

So, naturally, I reached out to Woodman.

Her response was pure political art:

” Hi Andy. I simply bought a line on the ballot so Montanans have a choice.”

There is so much to unpack from these 13 words.
First, buying a line on the ballot” for a US Senate race makes it sound like reserving a spot at a Saturday morning farmers market or paying four bucks for an extra parking space.

It gets infinitely better when you look at the actual paperwork filed with the state.

The Fine Print

When you file as a write-in candidate under Montana law, the form requires you to list all of the acceptable name variations, initials, nicknames, or diminutives that election workers should count on your vote total. You want to make sure that if a voter writes down J. Woodman or JW, the election staff knows who to credit.

Jami filled out her variations as follows:

• Jami Woodman

• J.W.

• “None of the above”

Let that sink in for a moment.

Under the penalty of election laws, on an official state affidavit, she listed “None of the above” as an acceptable variation of her own name.

A Bold New Strategic Paradigm

Look, political consultants spend millions of dollars trying to figure out how to capture the anti-establishment, disaffected voter. Jami solved the equation in a single stroke of a pen.

If you’re fed up with the two major parties, frustrated with state political machines, and sitting on the fence thinking, “Man, I wish ‘None of the Above’ was on the ballot,” congratulations: you now have a candidate who literally certified herself as the legal embodiment of “None of the Above.”

If an election judge sees a voter write “None of the above” in the write-in slot, according to page two of this filing, that’s a point for Team Woodman.

Democracy is alive, wild, and deeply unpredictable in Montana. Updates to follow as this historic campaign rolls forward.

How Do Write-Ins Work In Montana?
Under Montana law (§ 13-10-211, MCA), running as a write-in isn’t just a matter of telling your friends to scribble your name on the ballot.

You actually have to file an official Declaration of Intent and Oath of Candidacy with the Secretary of State, pay the standard filing fee of $1740, and formally submit every acceptable variation or misspelling of your name that election judges are legally allowed to count.
If a voter writes in a name that isn't explicitly listed on a candidate's certified filing sheet, election workers legally can't count the vote, which makes paperwork accuracy a pretty big deal unless, of course, your goal is to legally capture the "None of the Above" vote.

-Andy B.

Less than ten years ago, Jon Tester was taking Raytheon cash and AIPAC endorsements like it was standard operating procedure.
These were the days when Nancy Keenan told me the only way Montana Democrats could win was with more money.
AOC was still tending bar and Mamdani wasn’t even on the board. If you told me back then that a progressive insurgency would actually build sustained momentum, I’d have asked you what’s in your water.

Now the dynamic has been completely flipped. Taking Raytheon or AIPAC cash was seen as a badge of honor for Blue Dog Democrats. This was a sign that a candidate was ready for prime time.
Today, in a growing number of areas, these checks act like a giant yellow hazard sign for voters. What used to be the gold standard is now high-grade political liability.
The status quo keeps waiting for the fever to break, completely blind and out of touch that the climate has already changed,

Yet here we are.

What used to seem like a harmless exercise we all had fun with has turned into actual, terrifying momentum to the establishment, and I’m happy as hell about it.

That was the trick, wasn’t it? The establishment built an entire industry around the lie that you couldn’t keep the light on without big defense money and dark money bundling. They didn’t just control the messaging; they controlled the tollbooths.

What happened?
Once you can prove that a candidate can raise three million bucks in twenty-dollar increments while actively irritating the corporate lobby, you’re onto something.
When this happens, you don’t need a high-dollar consultant in your ear telling you what’s viable and what's not.

Consultants are Panicking
The campaign consultants whose entire business model requires skimming 15% off the top of TV ad buys are watching candidates build massive on-the-ground digital direct voter contact operations for the cost of a ring light and a Substack account. When you cut out the bundlers, you cut out the handlers. You get politicians who actually answer to the people paying their salaries rather than the corporate lobbyists funding their media blitzes.
It turns out when you treat political strategy like a luxury real estate transaction, the middle man is the first to go.
When political candidates realize they don’t need the DC Beltway playbook to win, the consultant class doesn’t only lose clients; they lose their leverage.
Losing leverage is THE existential threat to the consultant class.

The political industrial complex built a multi-million-dollar tollbooth on the assumption that visibility had to be bought through DC power brokers and six-figure ad buys.
Watching legacy handlers and the old guard try and navigate decentralized digital movements is like watching someone trying to fax a TikTok. They aren’t just out of touch with the electorate; they’re structurally obsolete. Losing leverage in DC isn’t just an inconvenience; it's a crisis.


The “New Baseline”

This isn’t just a bump in the road for the status quo; it’s a hostile takeover of its baseline. When you stop needing high dollar consultants to grant you “visibility”, you stop asking for permission to speak. The political establishment has spent 50 years convincing everyone that grassroots movements are fantasy and corporate compromise is “pragmatism”. They built an empire based on fear and fee structures.

Now watching them scramble as the electorate changes the locks on the party doors is the most satisfying spectator sport in American politics.

The best part of watching this all unfold is listening to cable news on “What went wrong?”
They keep running the same post-mortems: Was the message too radical? Did they alienate so and so? Why didn’t they hire a $900/hr messaging strategist to run focus groups in the suburbs?
The consultant class cannot process a world where a candidate wins not because of a slick ad of a candidate shooting a gun, but because they actually organized their district and told the truth.
The old guard isn’t just losing primary challenges, their losing their religion. They have spent half a century believing that corporate cash was the fuel and the consultants are our saviors.
Watching them realize that the engine runs just fine without both is sweet irony, and the rest of us are building what’s next.

Hell no. I didn’t see it coming a decade ago, but now that it’s here, I am going to enjoy every single second of it.

-Andy B.

As the West burns and we face the daily reality of climate change and changing weather patterns, official campaign finance reports reveal GOP US Senate candidate Kurt Alme is quietly funding his war chest with corporate lobbyist cash funded by the oil and gas industries.

Companies such as Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips, which both recorded record-breaking profits in the 2nd Quarter.

None of these dollars came from local Montanans or small businesses. They flowed directly from company headquarters in DC and Texas.

I. The Receipts: $12,500 in 15 days
Federal disclosures from fec.gov highlight a concentrated two-week window from late May through primary day on June 2nd, during which three leading fossil fuel industry PACs funneled $12,500 into Alme for Senate.


Phillips 66 PAC
Operating out of DC, P66 is one of the largest petroleum refining and logistics conglomerates in the US. They actively lobby on federal emissions standards and pipeline routing permissions.

Exxon Mobil PAC
Headquartered in Irving, Texas, ExxonMobil remains one of the largest multinational energy corporations, routinely investing heavily into Congressional races to influence energy policies, offshore drilling rights and environmental compliance.

US Energy PAC (American Exploration and Production Council-AXPC):
AXPC represents the largest oil and natural gas exploration and production companies in the US. Their primary legislative focus includes expanding leasing access on federal public lands and rolling back environmental regulations.

II. Alme Teaming Up with Big Oil While Montanans Pay the Price

Montanans are feeling the burn these days at the pump.
Gas prices are over $4.20 a gallon across the state, up nearly a dollar from last year. This means filling up a pickup, your farm equipment, your family van, or Subaru is taking a real bite out of your budget, and Alme is teaming up with them!

Every single dollar we all spend at the gas station goes straight to the bottom line of the fossil fuel conglomerates.
Instead of holding these corporations and lobbyists accountable, Kurt clinks fine wine with them.


III. Whose Interests Is Alme Really Looking Out For?

A true champion for Montana would stand up for its clean air and water and stand up to the corporate monopolies threatening our livelihoods.
Instead, DC disclosures show Alme quietly taking DC cash from Big Oil PACs in DC and Texas.

Aligning himself with corporate energy giants at the very moment Montanans are getting squeezed at the pump makes Alme’s priorities abundantly clear.
He’s protecting corporate margins over family budgets. When execs come knocking for a vote against consumer protections or price transparency, who will he turn to?
He’s also backing industry over community. We don’t deserve a Senator who looks out for out-of-state energy interests while working people foot the bill. Nope.

IV. The Bottom Line

Alme’s rapid consolidation of corporate support closely followed his last-minute entry into the race.
That’s awful fast.
So my question is this…..
Will Kurt Alme represent the working Montanans paying at the pump, or the corporate PACs paying for his campaign?

-Andy B.

This article is part of UnRedacted’s ongoing series tracking corporate influence, campaign finance logs and government accountability in the 2026 election cycle.

The 1956 Republican platform shows some fascinating contrasts to modern political alignment.
It reflects Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Modern Republicanism, an era where the GOP embraced a role in social safety nets, labor rights, and civil rights alongside fiscal restraint.
Rather than attempting to dismantle Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies, Eisenhower stabilized and institutionalized them much to the dismay of the party's right wing.

Here are a few planks from the 1956 Republican Platform that will probably make your head explode.

1. Taxation: High-Top Rates vs Supply Side Slashes

1956 GOP: During the Eisenhower administration, the top marginal tax rate sat at a staggering 91%. The platform did not call for sweeping tax cuts for high earners or corporations. Instead, it targeted tax relief for low- and middle-income families.

MAGA GOP: Modern GOP policy revolves around supply side economics:
lowering corporate tax rates, slashing top marginal income brackets, prioritizing deregulation as an economic driver, and favoring big business and the wealthy.

2. Safety Nets: Expanding Social Security vs Entitlement Reform

1956 GOP: Rather than seek to dismantle FDR’s New Deal, Eisenhower institutionalized it. He took victory laps for expanding Social Security to an additional 10 million people. He also created Social Security Disability Insurance. He famously warned that if any political party attempted to abolish Social Security, it would be “negligible and stupid.’ The party platform also backed federal healthcare access.


MAGA GOP: The surrounding legislative consensus frequently targets structural entitlement reforms, stricter working requirements for those on Medicaid and SNAP, and statutory spending cap requirements. Modern GOP healthcare revolves around privatization, deregulation, and giving subsidies back to the people.

3. Social Planks: The Equal Rights Amendment vs Cultural Conservatism

1956 GOP: Decades before the Equal Rights Amendment became a battleground issue, the 1956 Republican platform explicitly endorsed it.
”We recommend to Congress the submission of a Constitutional Amendment providing equal rights for men and women." It also demanded federal action to guarantee “equal pay for equal work”.

MAGA GOP: The modern platform has dropped support for the ERA entirely, shifting its focus to cultural and social issues towards family structure, restricting gender affirming care, limiting federal involvement in local curriculum, and appointing originalist judges. The current conversation revolves around culture wars and


4. Civil Rights: Federal Enforcement vs. States’ Rights

1956 GOP: The platform explicitly endorsed the Brown v. Board of Education SCOTUS decision, which outlawed school segregation. It pledged federal action to enforce desegregation with “all deliberate speed” and supported federal legislation to safeguard voting rights.

MAGA GOP: The modern movement places a heavy emphasis on local control, states’ rights, and curtailing federal agency jurisdiction. Civil rights discussion under the MAGA umbrella often centers on limiting federal intervention, challenging affirmative action, and curtailing voting regulations enforced by the Department of Justice.


5. Conservation and Public Lands

1956 GOP: Their platform boasted about launching Mission 66, a massive 10-year $785 million ( $8 billion today) federal program to modernize and repair the National Park System. Explicitly endorsed wilderness protection and expanding federal land & soil conservation. Eisenhower saw these things as public investments for the people.

MAGA GOP: Modern platform revolves around “drill baby drill” and maximizing pollution on our federal lands through mineral extraction and fracking. Spends its time trying to curb EPA protections, opening federal lands for private development, and transferring federal lands to states.
Montana’s own GOP US House candidate Aaron Flint has stated he wants to see federal lands transferred to the states.
This goes completely against what our granddaddy’s GOP wanted.

6. Organized Labor
1956 GOP: The platform celebrated union growth, backed collective bargaining, and protected pension funds. These were the days when people could buy a house, a car, and support a family on minimum wage. Ah, the good ol days.

MAGA GOP: Favors flexible labor markets, right-to-work laws, and reduced regulatory oversight such as union busting.

Conclusion: Total Ideological Flip

Eisenhower’s GOP and their ideas weren’t something on the fringe. The 1956 GOP represented the mainstream of post-war America. They were the majority.
A GOP that viewed taxing the rich, taking care of people, race and gender equity, and land conservation for the public good as a priority for a growing post-war nation.

Comparing MAGA to 1956 isn’t trying to score political points.

Quite the contrary.

It’s my illustration of how the boundaries of conservative ideology have shifted and been completely redrawn.

Where grandaddy’s GOP trusted federal stewardship to build interstate highways, protect Social Security, and public schools, the modern MAGA movement is led by skepticism of federal power, supply-side economics, resource extraction, and cultural traditionalism, all laid out in Project 2025.

Laid out in P25 include eliminating the Department of Education, bringing federal law enforcement under Presidential control, rolling back climate research and even outlawing birth control!

Saying “today’s GOP is not your grandaddy’s GOP isn’t a partisan accusation or slanted reality. It’s a historical fact. Understanding this is the key to understanding modern American politics and your own ideology's history.

Eisenhower and my grandaddy must be rolling in their graves……


-Andy B.

When Minnesota State Senator Matt Klein bet $50 on his own congressional primary last October, he said it was plain curiosity and nothing nefarious. He claimed he didn’t know how prediction markets worked, which may be true.
At the same time, Virginia Independent candidate Mark Moran wagered $100 on his own race for another reason: a deliberate bet to see if anyone was watching.

They got their answer.

Amid a surge in disciplinary actions, Kalshi issued 5-year platform bans and thousands of dollars in fines against Moran, Klein, and Texas Republican primary candidate Ezekiel Enriquez for betting on their own elections. These actions represent the first formal crackdown on candidate self-trading. This is far from settling the issue; the disclosures have uncovered a massive gray area in modern political finance.

What is Kalshi?

Platform compliance records show that prediction market exchanges are actively penalizing political candidates who trade on their own elections.

Kalshi issued five-year platform bans to Moran, Klein and Enriquez. While both Klein and Enriquez both placed small wagers under $100 and settled for fines of $539.85 and $780.00, Moran refused to sign Kalshi’s settlement agreement, which required a public statement on X, was hit with a penalty of $6,200.

These cases highlight a striking spectrum of candidate motives: Klein apologized for his $50 curiosity bet while simultaneously co-sponsoring Minnesota legislation to ban election betting platforms entirely, whereas Moran intentionally triggered the platforms' surveillance mechanisms as a deliberate policy stunt to draw attention to the wild west of election prediction betting and it’s influence on American politics.

CBS News Minnesota Coverage
This video details the fallout following Minnesota State Senator prediction market fine.


——————————————————-

The $500 Cost of Doing Business
While Kalshi’s compliance system successfully identified candidates using their identities, critics argue penalties are toothless. US Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA) summarized on social media. “That’s not punishment, that’s a parking ticket”.

These fines stem from internal platform agreements rather than civil or criminal penalties from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC); they function as private contractual enforcement rather than federal law.
For a low-visibility primary candidate or an insider looking to cash in on non-public polling, a $780 fine is a negligible operating cost compared to tens of thousands of dollars in payouts.

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The Campaign Blind Spot
The deeper problem lies where the campaign logs can’t catch. Campaign staffers, consultants, and data vendors—the people on the inside.

While the STOCK Act strictly prohibits members of Congress and key aides from trading equities on material non-public info, federal law and standard campaign disclosure agreements remain completely silent on prediction market trading. Standard campaign contracts include non-disclosure agreements that protect against press leaks and voter file theft, but virtually any campaign explicitly prevents their staff from betting on prediction outcome markets.

As election season accelerates, an operative holding political polling, advance notice of an ad-buy cancellation, or word of impending dropout can front-run markets into total obscurity, especially on decentralized crypto-based platforms like Polymarket, where pseudonym wallets replace names.

If platforms are struggling to deter candidates from making obvious $50 wagers under their own names, the political finance system is unprepared for the operatives and consultants silently monetizing real intelligence.

I’ll be watching…..
This is something I’ll be watching as the election season heats up. Watching who’s profiting and pouring money into these platforms and if the insider dynamic actually materializes, or if it’s just a fun exercise with online forensics.
It’s an essential check on a totally unregulated corner of political influence.
I’ll keep an eye on the books, the ad buys and the paper trail and bring the data back to UnRedacted.

I’ll end with this…..
Political prediction markets have blown up into multi-billion-dollar gambling hubs, but the legal framework is stuck in the dark ages.

Right now, campaign staffers, consultants, and political operatives are holding the right insider information…non-public polling, ad buy cancellations, or word of impending dropout.

Standard NDA’s don’t even mention contracts, and the STOCK Act has a tremendous blind eye to prediction markets. While regulated platforms like Kalshi hand out tiny fines to candidates betting $50 on themselves, under their real names, millions can run through proxy accounts and pseudonymous wallets long before the FEC can catch it.
Connecting those dots comes down to a simple paper trail: matching timestamped campaign filings, ad cancellations, and internal leaks to the volume spikes on the blockchain.

The candidates are paying parking ticket fines, while the real money moves right in front of us.

-Andy B.

Forget the Capitol building in Helena. If you want to see where important legislation and data center incentives are drafted, you don’t need a civics textbook and good intentions; you need a tee time in Flathead County.

The Montana Chamber has claimed for years that corporate political spending is just “free speech”, but every day working folks can’t drop thousands of dollars to buy a weekend with a lawmaker to discuss their electric bill.

Working folks get three minutes in front of a microphone in Helena, and hope for the best. Corporate execs get unlimited access for three days on the golf course, fancy dinners and the skeet range.

When thousands spent their time signing for Initiative 194 to strip artificial personhood from corporations, roughly 400 elites were making plans for a 3-day weekend.

They call it the Governors Cup.

I call it the “Special Interests Scramble” or the “Montana Chamber Lobbyist Cup”.

—————————————————

36 Holes, 1000 Megawatts, Zero Public Records

This isn’t an accidental run-in at the coffee shop. This is a meticulously planned marathon.

Thursday Night: The “Ace in the Hole” BBQ at Flathead Community College, where over 600 corporate sponsors and elected officials will clink glasses.

Friday and Saturday: A 36-hole scramble across three Flathead County courses. Buffalo Hill, Northern Pines and Meadow Lakes, and a trap shooting session for those who like gunpowder with their policy decisions.

All Weekend: Multi-hour, unrecorded face time where high-level policy is smoothed out over private dinners and shanks on #9.

When a working-class Montanan drives to Helena to give their 3-minute mic drop to a committee meeting, they take time off of work and away from their daily lives.
When a corporate sponsor or out-of-state tech exec buys into a tournament flight, they get 5 hours of uninterrupted access on the golf course over beers, cigars, etc.

——————————————————-

The Big Tech Power Drain

Take Quantica Infrastructure, one of the headlining companies on this year’s sponsor list. Quantica is pushing for a 5,100-acre data center campus northwest of Billings.

To power it, Northwestern Energy, also a sponsor, signed off on delivering 1,000 megawatts of electricity to the facility. To put that into perspective, that single data center will consume more power than all 500k residential homes in Montana combined.

How are they awarded under state law? With Class 17 property tax status that slashes their tax rate down to a dirt cheap .9%.

While local families watch their residential property taxes skyrocket and scramble to pay monthly utility bills, Amazon and Google negotiate terms with our elected officials on massive grid drawdowns.

Where do these high-stakes conversations such as the hypothetical one above get greased?

On the golf course, of course,

—————————————————

A Who’s Who of Corporate Montana

Quantica isn’t riding solo in the carts. The Chamber’s roll reads like a corporate monopoly roll call:
Signal Peak Energy
CoreCivic
Northwestern Energy
AT&T
Verizon
Amazon
BNSF Railway
Exxon Mobil

The Pay to Play System

This is one of the greatest political fights of our time.
From the Copper Kings to the corporate out-of-state data companies today, the strategy hasn’t changed, only the venue.

The Montana Chamber isn’t afraid of ballot measures, because they have proven that with enough capital, you don’t need to break campaign finance laws to buy political influence.
You just need an invite-only retreat, a golf cart, and a weekend with lawmakers.

While everyday Montanans are out gathering signatures and fighting for clean elections with I-194, big business is literally buying our elections in broad daylight on the fairways in Kalispell. It’s subtle, it’s legal, and completely unacceptable.

It’s time to call the Lobbyist Cup what it really is: a corporate coup in golf shoes.

-Andy B.

Drive North 19th in Bozeman, cut across the Home Depot lot in Great Falls, or roll past a strip of stores in Kalispell, and you’ve probably passed one with no pause or curiosity.

Look up, and you’ll spot the setup: a thin metal pole, hardware perched eight, maybe twelve feet off the ground. A squat black rectangular box and a solar panel cocked at an angle. These are not used to catch folks who run traffic lights.

They are Flock cameras, manufactured by an Atlanta startup called Flock Safety.

To understand why these devices are popping up around the Big Sky, you have to look at how the company got its start and why business grew so quickly.

Flock Safety was founded in 2017 by Garrett Langley and Paige Todd. The official origin story is straightforward. Langley lived in an Atlanta neighborhood that experienced a rash of break-ins. When residents spoke with local police, officers noted that while they had general descriptions of suspect cars, they lacked specific license plate numbers or distinct vehicle features to make an arrest.

Langley set out to build a tool specifically for that gap. But instead of selling expensive security hardware to wealthy homeowners or government agencies, Flock created a completely different subscription model.

First, they made the hardware cheap and accessible. Traditional law enforcement license plate readers cost tens of thousands of dollars per unit, requiring hardwired powerlines and complex server setups. Flock packaged their hardware into self-contained, solar power units running in cellular networks, charging an annual fee instead of a massive upfront cost.

Old-school plate readers only matched numbers against a database of stolen vehicles. Flock built a proprietary machine called Vehicle Analytics. The camera does not read the plate. It captures make, model, color, roof racks, bumper stickers, body dents, and custom rims.

Here is where the BIG problem lies.
When private entities buy these cameras, they are given the option to share their live camera feeds with local law enforcement. This has created a network of expanded local surveillance without requiring any votes from city councils, public hearings, or votes on infrastructure budgets.

I. The $8.4 Billion Data Machine

The real story behind Flock Safety is not about hardware. It is about data.

Flock leases its cameras for roughly $3,000 a year. Flock estimates $150 million in annual leasing revenue, and Silicon Valley investors value the company at over $8.4 billion!

Why is that? It’s a massive gap that exists only because investors do not view Flock as a camera manufacturer. They view it as a real-time data broker.

How did this happen?

The company removed standard clauses promising that customer footage would never be owned or retained by the firm. In its place, Flock inserted language granting itself a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide license to retain and use collected data, even after a customer terminates their contract.

When you pull into a commercial lot, you aren’t being checked just for local security; you are feeding a database that logs your vehicle’s entire footprint indefinitely.




II. The Legal Wall: Montana Privacy vs Private Enterprise

The corporate data capture hits a major speed bump in Montana.
Article II, Section 10 in the Montana Constitution gives an explicit guarantee of individual privacy that is much stronger than the federal 4th Amendment. Montana also passed Senate Bill 282, closing the law enforcement data broker enforcement loophole and making Montana the first state in the nation to prohibit government agencies from buying private location data without a warrant. Under Title 46, Chapter 5 of the Montana Code, law enforcement face strict limits on automated tracking and surveillance.
When it comes to surveillance, Montana knows what it’s doing.
This landscape creates a sharp divide on what police can and private corporations can’t do.

Cascade County Sheriff Jesse Slaughter spoke openly about this boundary on local radio, explaining why law enforcement cannot simply set up dragnet camera networks on public roads.

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“The Montana Constitution’s enhanced privacy law really prohibits facial recognition and license plate readers,” Slaughter noted. “Can a law enforcement officer run your plate? Yes, they can, but believe it or not, they have to have a reason to run your plate. We’re not allowed to randomly run plates. We can’t even, in law enforcement, go through a parking lot and run all the plates to see who has a warrant.”

Slaughter pointed out that while out-of-state databases help track severe interstate crimes like human trafficking, using automated tracking locally on citizens who have done nothing wrong crosses a dangerous line.

“As a citizen, I don’t want any part of them,” Slaughter said. “It comes down to a fundamental constitutional question: How much of the Constitution are we shredding away with all this tech? Having freedom is inherently dangerous. If you want total protection, total surveillance, everything monitored... or do you want freedom?”

Mr. Slaughter and I don’t agree on much, but we do agree on privacy rights.

So how are these cameras operating in Great Falls, Bozeman, Missoula, and Billings if the state constitution limits government dragnet tracking?

The answer is private property.

Because private corporations own commercial shopping centers, they operate outside the legal constraints that bind government agencies. They do not need a warrant, public approval, or city council oversight to install an AI-driven camera network on their own land.

III. Montana Municipal Hot Spots

This dynamic creates a bizarre double standard across Montana.

When the City of Missoula looked into upgrading its security cameras, the proposal immediately ran into legal friction over AI capabilities and state statutory limits. Public purchases require open commission meetings, budget line items, and strict legal reviews. The citizens of Missoula knew this and pushed back, thus delaying the process.

Yet while city governments struggle to navigate state privacy laws, national corporate chains are quietly installing the same tech on private commercial land across the state!

Here is where cameras have already been spotted and verified across Montana on Deflock.org:

• Bozeman: The primary hub is the Lowe’s parking lot off North 19th Avenue. Cameras are positioned at main lot entrances, capturing vehicles entering the store as well as drivers passing along the adjacent thoroughfare.

• Kalispell: Four nodes were installed at the Lowe’s parking lot. The local pushback here went physical: all four camera lenses were recently found covered in spray paint.

• Billings: Widespread commercial presence including entrances around Scheels Sports, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Albertsons on 6th and Central, and the Elks Lodge lot area.

• Great Falls: Installed around major retail corridors including the Home Depot parking lot.

• Missoula: Positioned along perimeter entrances at Southgate Mall and the local Lowe’s.

• Polson: Verified node near the Polson Airport.

• Superior / I-90 Corridor: A camera node logged right in the median of Interstate 90 near Superior, operating on federal highway right-of-way that bypasses state land restrictions.
  
  
  
  IV. What Can Be Done to Stop the Flock Network in Montana
  
  Because Montana state law already restricts state and local government agencies from operating dragnet license plate readers on public roads, the proliferation of Flock cameras relies on private commercial property. Stopping their expansion requires targeted strategies at the municipal, corporate, and grassroots levels.
  
  While city councils cannot easily prohibit a private business from installing Flock cameras, they can cut off the primary incentive for businesses to install them: direct law enforcement integration.
  
  1. Passing non-integration ordinances, which could enable cities to enact policies prohibiting the local police from subscribing to or receiving automated alerts without a specific judge-signed felony level warrant.
  
  2. Enforce right-of-way zoning codes. Most commercial Flock units are positioned to capture traffic along public streets and thoroughfares. Montana cities can update zoning and sign codes to repel any unauthorized zoning or encroachment violation.
  
  3. The public should require surveillance audits. Mandate that any local law enforcement agency accessing external camera feeds publish annual usage and audit logs, making every query a matter of public record.
  
  4. Citizen mapping and transparency are key. These cameras are installed quietly on private lots, meaning public awareness is needed to fuel local policy debates.
  Citizens can document solar-powered camera nodes and log them directly onto open-source mapping projects like DeFlock.org.

  
  5. Citizens can file state public records requests with county sheriff’s offices and city police departments to track which private feeds are linked to local dispatch networks and how often those feeds are accessed.
  
  
  V. The Road Ahead
  

  Montana’s constitution promises a right to privacy that is second to none. However, as Silicon Valley startups and corporate landlords quietly construct an automated surveillance web, that guarantee is being tested in real time at the entrance of nearly every major shopping center in our state.
  
  They want us as their guinea pig, and we don’t have to allow it.

  
  Whether through municipal non-integration ordinances, zoning enforcement, customer pushback at store management, or crowd-sourced mapping, Montanans have the tools to draw the line.

  Surveillance networks only expand in the dark.
  Once you know what to look for and where the data goes, the conversation changes.
  
  -Andy B.
  
  

  UnRedacted is reader-supported. To receive new posts on UnRedacted, consider becoming a free subscriber. To receive reports like the one you just read, please consider becoming a paid monthly subscriber for the price of a cup of coffee.

Bonus feature
For a deeper look into the physical camera locations across the state, the recent spray-painting incident on cameras in Kalispell, and the legal questions surrounding Montana MCA Title 46 and SB 282.
Watch this field report from the Living in Montana channel:
Watch: Flock Cameras Have Made It to Montana

Missoula City Councilwoman Stacie Anderson raises her hand as if she is being sworn in at a Missoula City Commission meeting.

A recent story in the Missoulian pointed out connections between a local dark-money web and Missoula City Councilwoman Stacie Anderson.

It didn’t just drop a scandalous detail….
Oh no, it’s much more than that.

The Missoulian described how anonymous cash arrives at her non-profit, then slips into a set of friendly channels never to be “seen” again.
The cash then reappears in a convoluted web of PACs and the networks around them.
A good chunk of money gets paid out to the consultants, the network gets reinforced, and their agenda moves along.

Why do Missoula’s policy decisions seem strangely separated from what residents actually believe?
Let’s trace the whole route.
This includes who builds the narratives to fit it, who gets the grant money, and the cycle that ends up giving status quo priorities a protective layer from transparency.


2021 Election: Laying the Foundation

Missoula’s ‌current ‌City ‌Council didn’t drift into its “closed-loop” political style overnight. There must be a foundation for this to happen. A plan.
Here is a clean example from the 2021 election.

Just imagine: the yard signs were out, dogs barking, handshakes at the doors, conversations were happening… the usual.

Behind that, something more sinister was happening.
A calculated trade was taking shape: money in exchange for manpower.

At the time, Ms. Anderson was handling the day-to-day work as executive director. She was in charge of directing millions in dark money towards allied advocacy groups. Later in the cycle, the same groups that received grants ended up acting, in practice, as core boots on the ground that drove her reelection effort.

In the 2020 cycle, the pattern was already visible. Anderson’s nonprofit, A Better Big Sky, sent $31,650 to Montana Conservation Voters (MCV) during that stretch.

A table from A Better Big Sky’s 2020 Form 990, Schedule I, detailing cash grant recipients to Montana Conservation Voters

The ‌strategic ‌payoff ‌was clear. Not long after the grant, the Montana Conservation Voters Action Fund endorsed Anderson’s 2021 re-election bid.
Yes, the group she funds is now throwing her campaign endorsements.
Time and money went into her campaign. What started as a donor coalition’s check ended up helping carry her across the finish line on Election Day.
Sounds shady.

Montana Conservation Voters web page detailing candidates endorsed by the organization who won their 2021 elections in Missoula. Ms. Anderson is highlighted in yellow.

The fact that Montana Conservation Voters endorsed multiple sitting council members suggests their process functions less as an independent evaluation and more as a coordinated ‘stamp of approval’ for an entrenched political bloc.”

I can’t imagine how difficult it is for Ms. Anderson to manage the appearance of her conflicts of interest.

Middle Fork Strategies and “The Loop”

When I think of old city council playbook sessions, I think of the old stereotype. Gruff men chomping on cigars in a smoke-filled back room discussing a clean corporate payoff.

Missoula runs on something different, and can be confusing for a political neophyte or even myself to understand

Instead of one big bribe, the committees and consultants steer the narrative through a purposely assembled echo chamber that quietly narrows what counts as “common sense” in local decisions. If you’re trying to see how unseen money can tilt neighborhood zoning, recast the property-tax narrative, and gently shove city ordinances into the right grooves, there’s a single trail that matters.
If you track it long enough as I have, you don’t discover a web of separate routes.

It circles back, over and over. Round and round it goes; where it ends up, we surely know!
In the consultant’s pockets!

The well-connected pipeline then continues to feed on itself, then uses that fuel to keep moving.

The ‌setup is obvious. Rather than separate a part-time public position from outside interests, Ms. Anderson holds influence at all the critical junctions, where the money comes from, how the lobbying is run, and the vote that ultimately locks it in.

The conflict of interest pipeline functions as a closed loop.
Here is how it works.

The Funder: Ms. Anderson serves as Executive Director of A Better Big Sky, a political hub that raked in over $7.73 million in revenue in 2024.

A screenshot from the Nonprofit Explorer profile for ‘A Better Big Sky,’ a 501(c)(4) nonprofit based in Missoula.

The Firm: As of the latest 990 tax filing, Ms. Anderson was Board Chair for Helena-based Middle Fork Strategies, which specializes in narrative inoculation and push polling.

A screenshot of a table from the Nonprofit Explorer profile for ‘Middle Fork Strategies Inc.’ listing board members and officers, including Executive Director Brandon DeMars and Board Chair Stacie Anderson, whose entry is highlighted in yellow.

The Transaction: A Better Big Sky funneled $150,000 in grants directly into the accounts of Middle Fork Strategies under Ms. Anderson’s leadership.
These funds are known as “dark money” and are used to normalize specific political agendas that may otherwise face stiff resistance from the local community.

A table from A Better Big Sky’s Form 990 Schedule I listing dark money grant recipients and their respective cash grant amounts, including Middle Fork Strategies
and the Montana AFL-CIO

The ‌Narrative: ‌With that cash in hand, Middle Fork Strategies begins a campaign to intentionally steer public mood with tightly aimed opinion drives and so-called “push polls” around Missoula. The folks at Middle Fork try out different keywords and tags. They want to see what sticks, and often look for language that stifles neighborhood pushback when policies are on the table.
Here is a link to the polling page on their website.

The Vote: After the changed narrative makes it back to the Missoula City Council, the vote goes to Anderson, who sits on several subcommittees.
She is now in a position to cast votes that can turn these narratives into actual law.

I don’t view a closed-loop structure like this kindly.

If an elected official is also tied to the dark-money nucleus that bankrolls the firm leaning on the public, transparency doesn’t just fade; it collapses.
What happens is Missoula residents end up in a backward fight: they’re trying to petition a local government that’s spending hundreds of thousands in anonymous funds to influence them.

That’s the loop.

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The 2025 Missoula City Commission Ward 3 Race

With ‌the 2025 municipal cycle, the coordination between private donor circles and local candidate advocacy wasn’t merely there; it had settled into a pattern of infrastructure you could run again and again. A self-sustaining loop.

Missoula’s Ward 3 City Council race, where Jennifer Savage beat incumbent Daniel Carlino, gives a clear look at how this seasoned infrastructure worked on the ground.

In 2025, the A Better Big Sky donor alliance became one of the heavier funding streams in Montana’s political landscape, writing big checks to advocacy groups, including a $280k grant to Montana Conservation Voters (MCV).

A financial table from Nonprofit Explorer shows grant distributions to various organizations, including a highlighted row for ‘Montana Conservation Voters’ with a distribution amount of $280,000

Targeted electoral support: Once that money had passed through the network, Montana Conservation Voters stepped in to do what they always do.
Influence elections with dark money.
It was no surprise the group formally backed Jennifer Savage in Ward 3 and named her, in plain terms, their choice for the district.

The post text announces endorsements for pro-constitution and pro-conservation candidates, specifically highlighting Jennifer Savage for Missoula City Council, Ward 3.

Public integration of roles: Stacie Anderson, serving as a sitting councilmember, even used her public standing with her fellow past MCV endorsees to openly promote Savage’s run in a Missoula Current op-ed

A screenshot of a Missoula Current article showing a political endorsement for Jennifer Savage by several local officials including Stacie Anderson.

Her move created a visible partnership between an elected official and a candidate, which MCV was also strengthening.
By 2025, the dark money alliance had become a central funding source for advocacy groups that effectively served as the field operation for particular municipal candidates.

The result is a feedback loop: Anderson’s private choices help finance organizations that then shape the political composition of the same Council on which she sits, bringing the underlying conflicts of interest into sharper focus.

Proof of Recusal Omission and Structural Incompatibility

The question of whether this system operates with transparency has now been answered by the City of Missoula itself.

In response to a formal public records request, the City Clerk confirmed that there are no conflict-of-interest or disclosure statements on file for Councilmember Anderson.

The city’s review of votes taken since Anderson took office found no recorded abstentions.

This is conclusive evidence that Ms. Anderson functioned as an elected official with zero formal recusal or documented disclosure. As of this update she still has not attempted to justify her dealings.

An email from the City of Missoula confirms that no records of conflict-of-interest or disclosure statements are on file for Councilmember Stacie Anderson.

My Final Thoughts

Middle ‌Fork and A Better Big Sky point to something pretty stark in Missoula: the conflict-of-interest problem isn’t just a handful of isolated deals or a few random favors.

It runs much, much deeper.

In the middle, you have the puppeteer pulling the strings.
That person is Ms. Anderson.

On one side, she pulls the donor class strings and their flow of money, an operation pumping in more than $7.7 million in 2024 alone.

On the other, she pulls the strings on votes and issues. She helps to not only manage, but fund the same jurisdiction that the donor network is actively trying to reshape.

I’d say it’s a pretty bad look because it creates conflicts that cut against the basic promise of public service. That promise is to be truthful and fair.

In ‌2024, ‌Anderson made $102,375 a year running her nonprofit. In that role, she’s expected, first and always, to put the group’s mission above everything else.

As an elected city councilwoman, her priority should be to the public.
When the donor alliance’s strategy begins to push and pull, she positions herself and votes that public-first duty conflicts with her non-profit.

The issue is structural, and the arrangement itself makes the idea of a “neutral representative” harder to live up to, maybe even out of reach.

When a single person is effectively directing the money pipeline for the lobbyist, the pollster, and the candidate at the same time, the “independent” judgment the job demands doesn’t really stay with the council member.

Instead, it ends up sitting with the donor alliance.

My point is to show the self-contained setup and the conflicts of interest that have come to run municipal politics as we know it.

Constituents deserve to know about these pipelines.

When groups and elected officials try to conceal their misgivings, Missoula voters end up with the appearance of choice, while decisions get steered by a sheltered bloc that answers first to donor-friendly priorities, not the needs of Missoulians.

It’s past time to insist on the transparency we were told we’d get from the Missoula City Commission.
We must demand it.


UPDATE 7/30:
It’s been several weeks since the Missoulian article and my first report on Ms. Anderson’s conflict of interest.
Thank you to the ones who have shown up at city council meetings to express their displeasure.
She remains defiant about her legal corruption.
I will continue to push her on this important issue as long as needed, and I encourage you all to do the same.
Click here to learn about how your voice can be heard.

-Andy B.