This piece is part of MTFP’s 2026 poll week, where we’re exploring data on how Montana voters feel about their elected officials, environmental concerns, immigration enforcement and other issues.

Montana is, in many ways, a land of two halves: a western Montana of snow-capped mountains and national forests and an eastern Montana of wide-open plains and flatland agriculture.  

It’s a time-honored divide: peaks versus plains, Missoula versus Miles City, Flathead versus Fort Peck lakes. But where exactly would Montanans place the dividing line?

As it turns out, there’s no clear point of consensus — at least according to an MTFP-Eagleton poll conducted this winter, which asked Montana voters about that crucial geography question alongside weighty issues like the president’s immigration policy and support for a statewide sales tax.

None of the options we presented as eastern Montana’s official starting point — ranging from the Continental Divide to the city of Billings — garnered approval from more than a third of respondents. Billings was the closest, at 31%.

Next up was the Continental Divide, which snakes along mountain ranges from just south of the state’s western “nose,” before passing east of Butte, west of Helena and northward through Glacier National Park. That’s Montana’s portion, of course, of the hemispheric Continental Divide, which extends from the Cape Prince of Wales in Alaska to the Strait of Magellan in Chile. 

Nearly a fifth of Montanans, 18%, named the Divide the best dividing line on our list. That would place the state capital of Helena, in eastern Montana alongside Dillon and Havre.

Other respondents split among points between the Divide and Billings: Bozeman, Great Falls, Livingston and Lewistown. None of those options garnered more than 12% support.

A few others cheekily declined to pick one of the options on our list, offering their own descriptions instead. 

One respondent said eastern Montana is “the mostly flat part.” A few others cited the Rocky Mountain Front, where the mountains meet plains — most prominently to the west of Great Falls.

Others named extremes: The North Dakota state line in one case (i.e., Montana’s eastern border). Lincoln County in another. 

For the record: Lincoln County, where Libby is the county seat, is nestled up against Idaho in Montana’s Northwest corner — a definition that would put Kalispell and Missoula in eastern Montana.

Think you can do better with an Eastern Montana definition? We’d love to hear how you’d draw the line and why. Assuming we get enough insightful — or at least creative — responses, we’ll mention the best ones in Friday’s edition of our Lowdown newsletter. Email your submissions to news@montanafreepress.org.

The post Where does eastern Montana start? Montanans disagree appeared first on Montana Free Press.

This piece is part of MTFP’s 2026 poll week, where we’re exploring data on how Montana voters feel about their elected officials, environmental concerns, immigration enforcement and other issues.

Montana voters’ generations-long aversion to a state sales tax is alive and well, according to a poll conducted by Montana Free Press and the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.

Despite support in recent years from business groups that argue the state’s tax structure should adapt to an increasingly tourism-focused economy, a majority of voters polled in late December and early January said they would prefer to keep the state one of the few in nation without a sales tax — even if the revenues are used to reduce property tax bills.

In the poll, 48% of respondents indicated that they “strongly” oppose a statewide sales tax “if the revenue was used to reduce property tax bills,” with another 12% saying they are “somewhat” opposed. In contrast, only 33% indicated strong or lukewarm support, putting the idea underwater by 27 percentage points.

That opposition held up across party lines. Only 34% of Republicans, 38% of Democrats and 32% of independents voiced support for a sales tax.

Montana is currently one of five states without a sales tax. Instead, the state’s current tax system relies heavily on income and property taxes, which are the primary revenue streams for state and local government, respectively. Historically, property tax revenues were anchored by payments from large industrial properties such as mines and timber mills, many of which have closed or scaled back their operations over the past several decades. That means the cost of paying for local services such as schools and law enforcement has to fall elsewhere.

In a series of presentations last summer, Montana Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Todd O’Hair contended that the long-term decline of property-intensive mining and timber industries has undermined the foundation of that tax system. O’Hair, who represents the state’s largest business lobbying group, said he believes it’s time for Montana to consider other options for the revenues necessary to fund public services without placing undue burden on homeowners and businesses.

Meanwhile, opponents of a sales tax argue that shifting to a general sales tax model would result in a heavier tax bill for lower- and moderate-income families. 

Montana voters have historically voted down sales tax measures by large margins, defeating referendums in 1971 and 1993 — with the latter failing by 49 percentage points. Voters also passed a constitutional amendment in 1994 that caps any future state sales tax at 4% unless that state constitution is amended again.

As such, while some Montana resort communities levy sales taxes as local-option taxes, the state remains one of five in the country without a statewide sales tax.

The MTFP-Eagleton poll surveyed 801 registered voters through telephone interviews and text-to-web questionnaires. Data was collected from Dec. 23, 2025 to Jan. 3, 2026. The poll, which was weighted to reflect the state’s electorate, has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points. 

This piece is part of the Montana Insights project, which commissioned a poll to help MTFP readers understand public sentiment on key Montana policy issues.

The post Most Montana voters don’t want a statewide sales tax appeared first on Montana Free Press.

Gov. Greg Gianforte said Thursday that a “technical glitch” has spurred the state to extend an application deadline that thousands of Montana landlords need to meet in order to avoid the state’s new second-home tax. 

The deadline, which had been set for March 1, has now been pushed back to midnight on March 20, according to Gianforte and the Montana Department of Revenue.

Officials cited issues with the revenue department’s online application portal amid a slew of last-minute filings as the reason for the extension.

“This extension is a direct response to intermittent technical issues with the department’s online application portal caused by a high volume of last-minute filings,” the agencies wrote in a Thursday release.

The second-home tax was passed by lawmakers last year in an effort to lower taxes on year-round resident housing. The concept, developed by Rep. Llew Jones, R-Conrad, was a major plank in Gianforte’s 2024 re-election campaign.

The policy works by raising default tax rates for residential properties and offering exemptions that provide lower tax rates on owner-occupied homes and long-term rentals. Applications for those exemptions are necessary because the state’s tax code hasn’t previously required the revenue department to differentiate between residential properties being used as owner-occupied residences or long-term rentals versus second homes and Airbnb-style short-term rentals. The legislation’s backers wanted to tax the latter at higher rates in order to offset tax relief for resident housing. 

MTFP reported earlier this week that the landlords for more than 100,000 rental units hadn’t applied for the exemption as of Feb. 19. That means they — and potentially their tenants — could be saddled with hefty tax bill increases as the second-home tax law treats their properties like vacation homes.

Most Montana homeowners, in contrast, were automatically qualified for an exemption by the revenue department after successfully applying for a property tax rebate last year. Homeowners who weren’t automatically qualified must also apply by the deadline now amended to March 20.

While the second-home tax legislation explicitly required the application period to run from Dec. 1, 2025 to March 1, the revenue department said in Thursday’s release that a crush of last-minute applications had “created extenuating circumstances.”

“Our priority is to ensure that no Montanan is penalized due to technical difficulties with our filing systems given the magnitude of last-minute applications,” revenue director Brendan Beatty said in a statement.

The governor offered similar comments.

“State government should be customer-friendly and responsive,” Gianforte said. “Because of the overwhelming number of Montanans utilizing the portal to claim the lower tax rates, we are extending the deadline to ensure that no one is penalized by a technical glitch.”

Homeowners who live in their properties for at least seven months a year and landlords who rent to tenants on a long-term basis can apply for exemptions at homestead.mt.gov.

Homeowners, landlords and tenants can also check their home’s application status via a lookup tool on the revenue department website.

The post Gianforte extends deadline for landlords to avoid second-home tax appeared first on Montana Free Press.

With a March 1 deadline looming, data from the Montana Department of Revenue indicates that landlords for as many as three-quarters of the state’s rental housing units haven’t applied for an exemption that would shield their properties from hefty tax increases as the state’s new second-home tax is fully implemented on this fall’s tax bills.

Unless tens of thousands of landlords successfully apply in the coming days, long-term rental properties across the state could be hit with a double-digit increase on tax bills — an expense that could translate to steep rent hikes for tenants.

In a Monday email to Montana Free Press, revenue department spokesperson Jason Slead said the state agency is working diligently to get the word out about the March 1 application deadline.

“The Montana Department of Revenue is committed to ensuring every eligible property owner benefits from the reforms passed by the Legislature,” Slead wrote.

John Sinrud, the president of the Montana Landlords Association, said in a Monday interview with MTFP that he’s hearing from many landlords who are confused by the revenue department’s guidance materials. 

Among other issues, Sinrud said some property owners are worried that reporting the business information required by the exemption application could expose them to legal liability if it doesn’t precisely match the income tax forms they file with a different branch of the revenue department.

“They don’t want to be brought up on some type of fraudulent charge,” Sinrud said.

Landlords can apply for the exemption at homestead.mt.gov, where forms ask for information on annual rental income, annual expenses and monthly rents. Tenants can also check their landlord’s application status via a lookup tool on the revenue department website.

The applications to exempt long-term rentals from higher tax rates are required as part of the second-home tax, passed by lawmakers and Gov. Greg Gianforte last year. That legislation sets higher default tax rates on residential properties, but reduces rates for properties that qualify either as owner-occupied principal residences or long-term rentals.

Supporters intended to offer tax relief for housing being used as homes for Montana residents, offsetting that relief with higher taxes on second homes and Airbnb-style short-term rentals.

In response to inquiries from MTFP, the revenue department said in a Feb. 19 email that it had received applications for long-term rental rate exemptions for about 19,100 properties associated with roughly 31,700 living units. Another 4,000 to 5,000 paper applications were still pending, the department said.

In comparison, data from the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that Montana has about 147,000 units of renter-occupied housing. If each of the pending paper applications represents one housing unit, that leaves about 110,000 renter households unaccounted for — nearly three-quarters of the state’s rental stock.

The census data doesn’t align precisely with the property designations the state uses for tax purposes, but revenue department officials, who have cited similar census data in the past while assessing the tax system, declined to provide MTFP with an alternate figure for the number of likely eligible rental properties. The state’s tax code hasn’t previously required the department to keep tabs on which residential properties are and aren’t being used as rental housing.

Sinrud, with the Montana Landlords Association, also said that the second-home tax law and department application materials don’t line up with some landlords’ specific circumstances, such as when people rent out rooms or housing units on the same property as their primary residence.

“There are dozens of different scenarios that this bill didn’t cover,” he said.

In contrast to rentals, the new law has automatically qualified most owner-occupied homes for “homestead” treatment after successfully applying for the property tax rebates issued by the state last year.

In response to questions from MTFP, the revenue department said that it had granted primary residence exemptions already to about 230,300 properties and had 9,076 more applications pending as of Feb. 19. Primary residences also face a March 1 application deadline.

Given the complexity of the state’s property tax system, it isn’t yet clear how tax bills will shift for individual properties that do or don’t qualify for lower rates. A preliminary analysis by the revenue department last year indicated that an average home that isn’t exempted from the second-home tax as a principal residence or rental could see its tax bill rise by 50% between 2025 and 2026.

Mara Silvers contributed reporting.

The post Many Montana landlords haven’t filed to avoid second-home tax appeared first on Montana Free Press.

As the U.S. Supreme Court declared many of President Donald Trump’s import tariffs unconstitutional Friday, business leaders reached by Montana Free Press were split on whether the ruling will make life easier for Montana businesses that have struggled to navigate the president’s often-volatile trade policies.

The state’s all-Republican federal delegation did not provide answers to a question from MTFP Friday about whether they would support congressional action to restore the tariffs. 

Brigitta Miranda-Freer, the director of the University of Montana-affiliated Montana World Trade Center, said in an interview that the ruling invalidates some of the president’s most sweeping “economy-wide” tariffs, likely pushing the administration’s trade policy toward narrower-scope tariffs targeted to national security concerns or unfair trade practices.

“I think that’s good news for businesses that are trying to navigate this on a daily basis,” Miranda-Freer said.

Montana Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Todd O’Hair, in contrast, said in an interview that he’s worried about what might come next, given the likelihood of litigation over tariff refunds and an uncertain reaction from the White House.

“The president is committed to some sort of a tariff policy. It’s unclear what he pivots to next,” O’Hair said. “There’s just going to continue to be uncertainty.”

The president said Friday that he will be imposing a 10% “global tariff” using an alternative approach.

Over the past year, O’Hair said, Montana businesses have had to contend with wild swings as the president has advanced a “spectacular” variety of tariff proposals. 

“We don’t know what the rules of the game are going to be — or if they’re going to change in six months, or tomorrow afternoon,” O’Hair said.

For example, Miranda-Freer said many Montana businesses have taken a productivity hit as they’ve had to assign staff to respond to successive shifts in tariff policy, rather than focusing on other aspects of their operations. 

Additionally, she said, consumer-facing businesses have had to contend with the possibility that turmoil in the administration’s trade policy turns off their customers.

“Customers overseas vote with their wallets, and they can make that decision on a case-by-case basis to not purchase American products based on the things we’re all seeing in the news cycle,” she said.

She also said that tariff uncertainty has made it hard for Montana’s industrial manufacturing companies to provide customers with accurate price quotes, given that they can’t confidently predict how much raw materials or imported components will cost them. She said that puts American companies at risk of developing a reputation as unreliable.

Walter Schweitzer, president of the Montana Farmers Union, echoed that concern in a separate interview with MTFP, saying he worries that fallout from the Trump administration’s trade wars has damaged business relationships with overseas customers that Montana agriculture boosters have spent decades developing.

“This is a win for Montana family farms and ranches and American families, but we’ve got a long ways to go,” he said of the Supreme Court’s decision.

Paddy Fleming, director of the Montana State University-affiliated Montana Manufacturing Extension Center, also said that uncertainty over the tariffs has prevented some businesses from investing to take advantage of them. Even if tariffs on imported wood products mean more immediate business for a Montana sawmill, he said, spending millions on an upgraded production line to serve that extra demand is a risky proposition if the tariffs are lifted before the investment pays off. 

“I think people have been holding off on investing in things based on tariffs, waiting to see how long they’ll be in place,” Fleming said.

The 6-3 Supreme Court decision, which addresses tariffs the president imposed via executive orders last year, faulted the Trump administration’s legal rationale for implementing them. Instead of obtaining congressional authorization for the tariffs, as is generally required by the U.S. Constitution unless otherwise stated by law, the administration claimed the authority under an emergency-powers law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The court declared that approach unconstitutional.

“When Congress has delegated its tariff powers, it has done so in explicit terms and subject to strict limits,” the court wrote.

The decision doesn’t directly affect tariffs that were implemented under other legal justifications. For example, tariffs on steel and aluminum have been imposed under a separate law that lets the president use tariffs to address national security concerns.

None of the U.S. senators and representatives in Montana’s congressional delegation provided answers Friday to emailed questions from MTFP about how they believe the ruling will affect Montana businesses, and whether they would support congressional action to restore the president’s tariffs.

Spokespersons for U.S. Sen. Steve Daines and U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy provided statements that addressed the ruling broadly, but didn’t directly answer either question.

“Senator Daines commends President Trump for working to address trade imbalances for Montana farmers, ranchers, and manufacturers and will continue to work closely with President Trump and USTR Greer to level the playing field,” a Daines spokesperson wrote, referring to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.

“Senator Sheehy is reviewing the decision issued by the Supreme Court and will continue fighting alongside the Trump administration to lower prices, level the playing field for American producers, and unleash investment and jobs across the country,” a Sheehy spokesperson wrote.

A spokesperson for U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke indicated the congressman was traveling Friday and wouldn’t be able to respond to MTFP’s inquiry. The office of Rep. Troy Downing didn’t reply in time for publication.

Schweitzer also said that Friday’s ruling addresses some of the tariff concerns articulated by a Montana-specific tariff lawsuit that was filed by Blackfeet tribal members last year. The farmer’s union has sought to join that lawsuit.

In addition to faulting the emergency-powers authorization, that case alleged that the Trump tariffs violated the 1794 Jay Treaty, which recognized the rights of Native Americans to freely trade and travel across the U.S.-Canada border. Schweitzer said Friday he expects the Jay Treaty portion of the case to proceed in federal court.

The post State business leaders react as Supreme Court nixes many Trump tariffs appeared first on Montana Free Press.

It’s getting harder for Montana schools to win voter approval for discretionary funding levies, according to an analysis by the Montana School Boards Association.

School districts ask voters to approve school levies — a fixed-term increase in property tax — to cover schools’ operational expenses that aren’t fully funded by the state.

The data, presented Thursday to a study commission examining school funding issues in advance of the 2027 Legislature, indicates that the passage rates for routine funding requests, once higher than 90%, have plummeted in recent years. That’s despite fewer districts putting those requests before voters.

Lance Melton, the school board association’s executive director, wrote that levy passage rates began declining during the Great Recession, then accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re down to a smidgeon here — we’re down to the point of ‘why are people running levies any more?'” Melton said at Thursday’s commission meeting.

The state’s complex K-12 funding formula requires school districts to put mill levy requests before their voters if they want to grow their General Fund budgets beyond a minimum threshold specified by the Legislature. Those requests, which often share a ballot with school board elections, ask voters to authorize property tax increases to channel extra money to their local schools.

In theory, the system gives voters some discretion over whether they want to prioritize extra school funding or lower taxes at a community level. However, as inflation and other factors have squeezed school budgets in recent years, Melton and other education leaders have argued that funding from voted levies is increasingly necessary to support basic services.

In 2006, Melton’s data indicates, Montana districts proposed 73 elementary levies and 52 high-school levies, with all but five passing. Last year, districts proposed about half that number of levies — and saw nearly half of the proposals voted down.

The trend for school bonds, which typically fund major construction projects, rather than ongoing school operations, is less clear-cut, but still shows decreased voter enthusiasm for school measures over time, according to data presented to the commission Thursday. 

Eleven of 12 bond measures proposed in 2016 were approved by their districts’ voters, that data indicates, compared to 9 of 16 proposed in 2025.

The school funding commission is tasked with developing recommendations for changes to the state’s school funding system that could be adopted by lawmakers next year. As the once-a-decade study progresses, some school advocates have signaled they may be preparing a court challenge that argues the state Legislature isn’t fulfilling its constitutional obligation to fund a system of “free quality” K-12 schools.

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February 12, 2026

An invitation received this week to a Feb. 24 Mountain States Policy Center dinner in Helena promises a curtain raiser on the think tank’s 2027 legislative priorities, plus a discussion about rewriting Montana’s Constitution. The evening’s special guest? Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte.

The governor’s staff this week clarified that Gianforte himself will not be discussing a rewrite of the state Constitution, which at least one Republican officeholder in recent years has characterized as a “socialist rag of a constitution” that should be “thrown out.”  

“He will not be speaking in support of a constitutional convention, as it is not part of his agenda,” Gianforte spokesperson Kaitlin Timken confirmed this week. Timken said the governor plans to talk about his income tax goals for the 2027 Legislature, which will be Gianforte’s last regular session before his second and final term as governor ends in 2028.

The question of whether to hold a constitutional convention to rewrite Montana’s Constitution will be on the ballot in 2030, as it has been every 20 years since the state’s current Constitution was approved by a slim majority of voters in 1972. The Mountain States Policy Center has produced an eight-part series of policy papers promoting changes to Montana’s Constitution, most recently suggesting that its water rights provision be amended. That provision currently declares that for the common good, all waters are the property of the state.

“The state should be able to own water, but the fiction that the state owns all of it should be abandoned,” writes Rob Natelson, the think tank’s senior fellow of constitutional studies.

Natelson has also twice run as a Republican candidate for governor of Montana, having lost in GOP primaries to incumbent Marc Racicot in 1996 and to Racicot’s eventual successor, Judy Martz, in 2000. Between those campaigns, Natelson convinced Montana voters to amend three sections of the state’s Constitution to require a public vote on nearly all state and local taxes. Constitutional Initiative 75 was enacted with 52% of the vote in 1998. A year later, the Montana Association of Counties sued to overturn it, and prevailed, arguing that distinct amendments to the Constitution require separate votes. 

Natelson was employed as a professor at the University of Montana law school for 23 years, ending in 2010. That position both gave him credibility on constitutional questions and created a target for political opponents. Campaigning in 1996, Racicot rarely acknowledged Natelson by name, referring to him only as “the professor” in primary debates. The incumbent trounced the professor 76% to 24%.

Now, 30 years later, Racicot has been excoriated by the Montana GOP for making legal arguments against letting Donald Trump run for president in 2024. Once Montana’s attorney general, Racicot filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that allowing Trump on the 2024 Colorado ballot violated the 14th Amendment, specifically concerning the presidential oath of office relative to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Natelson was a guest speaker at the Montana Republican Winter Kickoff the weekend of Feb. 7, where he appeared by video to rail about several state Supreme Court rulings against Republican legislation.  

“The fault here is not with the Legislature. Republican legislators have not been deliberately or inadvertently passing unconstitutional bills,” Natelson said in the recorded presentation. 

Whose piggy bank supports the think tank? According to tax data aggregated by ProPublica, Mountain States Policy Center, based in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, receives support from Yes Every Kid, Inc, part of the Stand Together Network affiliated with Charles Koch, a billionaire champion of libertarian ideals. Another supporter is NetChoice, which serves as a bridge of influence between tech companies and the American Legislative Exchange Council, the conservative bill mill known as ALEC. Four other contributors are the donor-advised funds National Christian Charitable Foundation, Fidelity Charitable, American Online Giving Foundation, and Donor Advised Charitable Giving.

—Tom Lutey

D Trip’n in MT-01

If the four-deep line of Democrats vying for a chance to run against Republican U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke in Montana’s Western Congressional District isn’t a strong enough measure of liberal interest in the district, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee offered more Tuesday. 

The “D Trip,” as the main campaign committee of U.S. House Democrats is known, announced that Western Montana’s House District MT-01 is one of 44 Republican-held districts nationwide now considered “in play” in 2026.

“Zinke’s addition to the DCCC’s Districts in Play sends the clear message that Democrats know Montana voters are souring on his wildly unpopular record of raising costs, attacking affordable health care, and hurting working families,” the campaign committee said in a press release.

Historically, special recognition by the DCCC has been an unreliable indicator of committee investments in Democrats’ House campaigns, or in race outcomes. In 2024, after including Montana’s Western District in its “Red to Blue” program, the PAC spent $95,000 in independent expenditures, coordinated costs and communications supporting Democrat Monica Tranel. The PAC reported spending nothing opposing Zinke, who was reelected by seven points.

In 2020, the DCCC added Montana’s then single House district to its “battleground map” and spent $190,157 coordinating with the campaign of Democrat Kathleeen Williams. That year the DCCC spent $1.57 million opposing Republican Matt Rosendale, who won more than 56% of the vote. 

Williams had also received the “Red to Blue” designation in 2018, when she got a $744 donation from the PAC, which spent $380,000 opposing incumbent Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte, who won by 5.1 percentage points. Two years later, Gianforte was elected Montana governor. 

—Tom Lutey

‘We’re vetting some candidates’

Will the Montana GOP, the official organizing body for the state’s dominant political party, take sides as Republican candidates compete against each other in the GOP primary election in June?

It’s an open question — and one that has for months been the subject of accusations by incumbent Republican lawmakers who are on the outs with GOP leadership after bucking the party line during last year’s Montana Legislature. Some of those incumbents have argued the state party is looking to punish them in ways that depart from past practice.

As state party chair Art Wittich took to a country club podium last week in Great Falls to introduce the party’s 2026 legislative candidates, he offered a few hints — but stopped short of offering a firm answer.

“This year we’re doing a few extra things,” said Wittich, a former Senate majority leader and longtime hardliner who was elected Montana GOP chair last summer. “We’re vetting some candidates, we’re asking some questions.”

Fallout from contentious legislative votes on property taxes, budget bills and whether to expel former Senate President Jason Ellsworth over corruption allegations remains a flash point for Montana Republicans. The state party organization has, for example, spent months using its website and social media feeds to highlight criticism of the second-home property tax measure passed last year. That policy, a centerpiece of Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte’s 2024 reelection campaign, was ultimately passed after its Republican backers negotiated with some Democrats to overcome opposition from elements in both parties.

While formal candidate filing doesn’t open until Feb. 17, public announcements and campaign finance reporting indicate that a slew of districts will see competitive GOP primaries. In many cases, candidates aligned with the party’s hardline right wing are teeing up to challenge Republican lawmakers who bargained with Democrats on the property tax bills and other issues last year. The results of those races will, in all likelihood, determine whether similar wheeling and dealing across party lines is a significant factor in 2027.

Among the major contests shaping up are for control of north-central Montana’s Senate District 9, where House Appropriations Chair Llew Jones — a longtime legislator from Conrad who championed the property tax measure — is facing Rep. Zack Wirth, a Wolf Creek lawmaker who is campaigning against “career politicians.” At the southern tip of the Bitterroot Valley, Rep. David Bedey, currently chairing a once-a-decade study of the state’s school funding system, is running for Senate District 43 against Rep. Kathy Love, who has criticized Bedey for supporting what she calls “the most confusing property tax shift in the nation.”

Some of the aisle-crossing Republicans, like Bedey, have accused the state party of interfering in primaries already, pointing to a party candidate questionnaire they say is intended to collect evidence to justify endorsing their opponents. Such endorsements, Bedey wrote in a November letter published by the Daily Inter Lake, would be a departure from the Montana GOP’s past practice.

“At issue is whether the party will remain a ‘big tent’ coalition that welcomes a broad spectrum of conservative voices, or is to become limited only to those who swear allegiance to a narrow, right-wing definition of conservatism and obediently follow the party line,” Bedey wrote.

At last week’s event, Wittich described the questionnaire as more common sense than sinister.

“Party designation matters. When voters see an R or a D, it matters,” he said. “And so we decided that this cycle, when people file for office, we’re going to send a very simple questionnaire as to why they’re running and self-declared as a Republican. The Republican Party has a very clear platform.”

Standing before a crowd of Republican candidates, with the party’s most prominent dissenters notably absent, he also denied that party leaders have even decided what to do with questionnaire results yet.

“We have made no decision as to what we are going to do with that information,” Wittich said, noting that candidate filing will be open through March 4. 

“We probably will do something with that information,” he added, “because we think that that serves Montana voters.”

—Eric Dietrich

A governor’s dozen

Gov. Greg Gianforte has made 13 Montana district court appointments and will make his 14th when he replaces Judge Brenda R. Gilbert, who serves Park and Sweetgrass counties in the Sixth Judicial District.

Gilbert has announced she will step down June 1. Any attorney who’s been admitted to practice law in Montana for at least five years, and who has resided in the state for at least two years, can apply.

The application deadline is March 16. The public can comment on nominees for 30 days after the filing deadline. 

—Tom Lutey

The post Constitution on the Menu appeared first on Montana Free Press.

Montana U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy has added his name to an amicus brief supporting the Trump administration’s effort to challenge the United States’ longstanding policy of granting citizenship to nearly any child born in the country as the matter is heard before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Sheehy is one of 12 Republican senators and 16 Republican representatives who have signed onto a brief headlined by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, which argues for a narrower interpretation of which children count as falling under U.S. “jurisdiction” for the purposes of the automatic citizenship guarantee enshrined in the 14th Amendment.

“The Framers would have recoiled at the present debasement of citizenship, understanding that ‘jurisdiction’ requires more than mere physical presence,” the brief reads in part. “It demands total allegiance to the sovereign. To hold otherwise places sovereignty, citizenship, and our nation’s survival in jeopardy.”

The case arises from President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order that sought to end the practice of automatically granting citizenship to babies born to parents who are in the U.S. temporarily or without legal authorization. That order was subsequently challenged by civil liberties groups, which have argued the Trump administration’s position conflicts with the longstanding interpretation of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause as applying to all U.S.-born children with narrow exceptions, such as children born to foreign diplomats or invading soldiers.

The 14th Amendment, ratified following the Civil War in 1868 to grant citizenship to former slaves, specifies in part that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Sheehy’s involvement in the brief was criticized this week in a statement by Michael Black Wolf, a Fort Belknap Indian Community member who is seeking the Democratic party’s nomination to challenge Montana’s other U.S. senator, Republican Steve Daines, in this year’s election.

Black Wolf faulted the brief in part for citing an 1884 case where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Native Americans shouldn’t be granted citizenship under the 14th Amendment because they owed allegiance to their tribes.

“He wants to replace our birth right with a litmus test of earning your citizenship through ‘singular allegiance,’” Black Wolf wrote. “Senator Sheehy is reviving the logic that being ‘too Indian’ makes you ‘less American.’ This is a 19th-century prejudice being used as 21st-century law.”

The 1884 ruling was later superseded by an act of Congress, the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act.

Daines, a Republican, is not among the lawmakers who signed onto the Cruz brief. A Daines spokesperson, Gabby Wiggins, didn’t provide answers to questions from Montana Free Press Wednesday about why Daines didn’t sign onto the brief and about his specific opinion of birthright citizenship but did provide a statement emphasizing the senator’s general support for the president’s immigration policies.

“Sen. Daines supports the administration’s immigration policies to secure the border and enforce the rule of law and looks forward to this case being before the Supreme Court,” Wiggins wrote. 

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