The first year of President Donald Trump’s second term is giving Helena coffee roaster Steven Ladefoged the wrong kind of jitters.

Trump rolled out tariffs of 10% to 15% on green (i.e., unroasted) coffee bean imports in April 2025, which then escalated to 50%. The fever didn’t break until mid-November, when the White House exempted green coffee from import tariffs entirely. But because roasters often buy months’ worth of green beans at a time, some still have tariff beans in the roaster. 

“When Trump was originally kind of negotiating those deals, it was kind of weekly, depending on deals that were made with different countries … There was a lot of, like, imported food goods, coffee being included, excluded, from those tariffs as well. And so that kind of dramatically changed prices …” Ladefoged said.

Federal lawmakers in the House and Senate tried filing bills to exempt coffee from the Trump tariffs. Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nevada, and Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, introduced a bean-exempting bill 18 days before Trump exempted unroasted beans on Nov 14. Reps. Ro Khanna, D-California, and Don Bacon, R-Nebraska, had done the same in the House on Sept. 19. The bill attracted 11 cosponsors in the House, but Bacon was the only Republican to sign on.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Feb. 20 that the president did not have legal authority to levy the tariffs that affected U.S. trade from April 2025 until the court’s ruling. By that time, green coffee was three months into its exemption, but instant coffee from Brazil was still being charged a 50% tariff on the customs value. 

After the High Court’s decision, Trump rolled out a new batch of tariffs that, because of the court’s ruling, will have to be reviewed by Congress after 150 days. The new tariffs kicked in at midnight on Feb. 24.

Asked how Congress might use its court-recognized tariff authority 150 days from now, members of Montana’s all-Republican federal delegation didn’t speak to the issue directly. 

“The President’s tariffs have broadened market access for American producers, brought in billions in revenue, and precipitated historic trade deals,” Rep. Troy Downing said in a text message. “My focus has been and will remain centered on the needs of the central and eastern Montanans greatest affected by tariffs like our producers and job creators as Congress evaluates its role in trade policy.”

“Everyone drinks coffee, and it can’t be grown in the U.S.,” said Katie Bennett, of Café Imports, a Minneapolis-based green bean wholesaler used by coffee roasters across the country, including Ladefoged.

Trump’s bean tariffs depended on the country where they were grown. Brazil hit 50% for a while. Vietnam was briefly at 46%. Coffee from India had a 26% tariff, while Indonesia had 32%. The fluctuating and various rates caused uncertainty in the business, Bennett said.

“We put the tariff cost into the price per pound immediately,” Bennett said. “When they were removed, we removed those costs from our coffee. So ultimately the roaster was paying that additional cost, and it was up to them whether they passed that along to their consumers.” 

The tariffs also hit while poor growing conditions were already affecting the availability of beans. 

“We were reaching sort of unprecedented highs last February. Adjusted for inflation, I don’t think it’s the highest they’ve ever been, but without adjusting for inflation, it was the highest that we’ve seen since maybe the ’80s,” Bennett said. 

Shortages in Brazil, a major coffee grower that experienced extreme drought conditions before 2025, were a root cause of rising prices before tariffs, Ladefoged said. 

Green coffee bean prices had risen about $1.50 a pound on the commodities market, Bennett said. Any price increase higher than that cuts into the profit margins of roasters. In February 2025 the commodities price for unroasted beans had climbed to $4.26.

Green coffee prices spiked, then, weeks later, retail coffee prices did too. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this month that January 2026 set a record for ground roast coffee at $9.37 a pound, up 33% from January 2025. 

Tariffs have also produced wins for Montana, said Western District  U.S. House Rep. Ryan Zinke. Tariffs on palladium imports have helped the Sibanye-Stillwater mine near Columbus. 

“President Trump is using targeted tariffs exactly as intended to protect American workers and strengthen American industry,” Zinke said in a text message. “Nowhere is that more clear than in Montana, where the President’s 132% tariff on Russian palladium is ending a hostile foreign power’s market manipulation.”

In February, the New York Federal Reserve estimated that American businesses and consumers paid 94% of the costs of Trump’s tariffs. 

Trump’s tariffs were improving the economy, said Gabby Wiggins, a spokesperson for U.S. Sen. Steve Daines.

“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 [U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer] to level the playing field.”

Not all Montana farmers considered the tariffs beneficial. Montana Farmers Union President Walt Schweitzer praised the Supreme Court for ruling against Trump’s tariffs, which he said were harming the foreign trade relationships farmers depend on. 

“This is a win for Montana family farms and ranches and American families, but we’ve got a long ways to go,” Schweitzer told MTFP after the Supreme Court ruled.

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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.

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ESSEX — Over the winter, those in the tiny mountain hamlet of Essex, on the southern edge of Glacier National Park, said something felt amiss around LOGE Glacier, the beloved old railroad lodge better known as the Izaak Walton Inn. Perhaps it was the lackluster snow covering the cross-country trails or the recent departure of a popular employee at the inn, they thought. Even when the trail-grooming machine the inn had been leasing this winter was suddenly repossessed a few weeks ago, locals hoped that maybe someone had made a mistake and missed a payment. 

Regardless of what they thought, no one expected that the inn was just weeks away from shutting down as a result of “significant” financial challenges for its Washington-based parent company, which had purchased and remodeled the inn just a few years ago. 

Now locals in Essex are wondering what their community will do without its beloved gathering spot, and employees are wondering where they will go once their jobs are eliminated and employee housing is shuttered. 

“We were all blindsided,” said Fantasia Knight, a housekeeper at the inn since LOGE reopened it in 2024. “A lot of us moved our entire lives up here, and some of us have nowhere else to go.”

‘THE INN BETWEEN’

While there are a number of historic lodges in and around Glacier National Park, few are as connected to their communities as the Izaak Walton Inn. While there are more than 30 rooms in the lodge itself, plus a number of rail cars-turned-cabins scattered across the grounds, on a Friday or Saturday night, you were just as likely to run into a local bellied up to the basement bar as you were a tourist. 

While Essex has built a reputation in recent years as a haven for outdoor recreation, it began as a railroad town. Shortly after the Great Northern Railway built its main line over nearby Marias Pass, Essex became a “helper station,” where extra locomotives were added to trains for the climb over the mountain. It was also where plows were stationed to keep the tracks clear in winter. Every winter, the Great Northern would have about 200 railroaders based in Essex. But in 1935, the “beanery” that fed and housed those workers burned down. For a few years, the railroad had its employees stay in old boxcars, but the accommodations were far from attractive, and managers had difficulty finding people willing to work out of Essex during the winter.

In 1939, the railroad made a deal with the Addison Miller Company to construct a hotel and lunch room next to the tracks in Essex. The Izaak Walton Inn opened later that year. While the inn’s primary purpose was to serve railroaders, the evocative name honoring a popular 17th-century outdoorsman and the Tudor Revival style were meant to attract tourists as well. Located about halfway between West Glacier and East Glacier Park, the Izaak Walton earned the nickname “the inn between” and was known as a quiet oasis away from the park’s busier east and west sides.

In 1957, the Addison Miller Company sold it, and the inn passed through several private owners. One of the most consequential was the Veilleux family, which owned it from the early 1980s until 2006. During their tenure, the family helped develop a system of cross-country ski trails and leveraged the inn’s railroad connection by buying old cabooses and converting them into cabins. The family even sought permission from the railroads to paint the cabooses into the appropriate colors, logos and all, representing the companies that operated in Montana. Over the years, the inn became popular with outdoor and railroad enthusiasts alike. In 2006, the inn was sold to Brian Kelly, who helped the business grow by acquiring a nearby motel and a cafe within Glacier Park. In 2022, Kelly put the inn and surrounding property up for sale, and nine months later, it sold to LOGE Camps for $13.5 million. 

THE LOGE ERA

LOGE Camps (pronounced “Lodge” and standing for “Live Outside, Go Explore”) was founded in 2016 with the mission to find “forgotten motels near our favorite towns and trails, and bring them back to life.” Suggesting that the Izaak Walton was “forgotten” irked some locals and long-time visitors, and eyebrows raised even further in 2023, when the hospitality company announced they were shutting the inn down for a major renovation. As part of that, the company held an auction in which it sold hundreds of pieces of memorabilia from the walls, along with furniture and just about anything else that wasn’t nailed down. After the auction, the inn closed, and over the next year, LOGE undertook a major renovation, including upgrades to the water and heating systems, new wiring and a brand-new kitchen. Some of those upgrades, management later admitted, were not part of the initial plan but were required (most notably the outdated electrical system). 

But with the inn, along with its restaurant and bar, closed, many locals found themselves without a centralized gathering spot, said Brian and Lisa McKeon, whose family has owned a cabin near the inn for decades. 

“Without the inn, it’s just a remote neighborhood,” Brian McKeon told Montana Free Press this week. “With the inn, it’s a community.” 

“The energy was completely different when the inn was closed,” Lisa McKeon added. “It was kind of sad and lonely to go up there. There was a desolate energy about the place.” 

That lonely era came to an end when the inn reopened under a new name, LOGE Glacier, in the fall of 2024. Inside, guests and locals found refreshed rooms with new furniture and modern amenities. Some of the railroad memorabilia from the inn’s previous iteration had also been squirreled away before the auction and made an appearance inside the hallways and downstairs bar. 

“We knew we had something special here,” general manager Lucas Hillman told the Flathead Beacon in late 2024. “You don’t buy a place like this and then change everything.”

Locals said that Hillman and the rest of the LOGE staff made a concerted effort to be good neighbors and invite the locals to the inn by hosting trivia nights and other community events. While some changes irritated locals — like painting the old cabooses a generic blue, no longer picking up guests from the Amtrak station in Essex and a limited menu in the restaurant — they generally gave the local management positive marks, said longtime resident Larry Epstein.

“When it reopened, it quickly became our community center again,” he said. 

Meanwhile, LOGE was rapidly expanding across the region, opening locations in Washington, California and Colorado. It also opened a hotel in Missoula, and said it saw additional opportunities in Montana. 

‘WE WERE SHOCKED’

But the company was struggling financially. According to a report from the Flathead Beacon, which broke the news late last week that LOGE Glacier was closing, the company’s board of directors discovered in late 2025 that the company was in “significant distress” and lacked the money to continue operating. According to emails reviewed by the Beacon, LOGE CEO Cale Genenbacher had told the board that the company had refinanced one of its properties. But in reality, LOGE had repurchased it after the lender foreclosed on the property, according to the Beacon. Genenbacher resigned in November, and last month the company retained a chief restructuring officer and insolvency counsel, who typically guide a company through restructuring or bankruptcy. 

In January, LOGE’s board of directors decided to begin winding down operations. 

“The board did not make this decision lightly, but this was required due to a lack of cash flow at the property level and the inability to continue paying required operating costs,” the board wrote in an email, according to the Beacon. “The company is doing everything in its power to look for ways to continue maximizing value in these properties, but cannot risk additional liability that would come from missing payroll obligations or other obligations to critical vendors.”

LOGE did not respond to a request for comment from MTFP.

Last week, word spread that LOGE properties across the region were closing, including the hotel and cafe in Missoula. Knight, the housekeeper, said she and the rest of the staff were informed last Friday that they were losing their jobs. 

“We were shocked,” she said. 

While some LOGE properties have already closed, the Izaak Walton is expected to remain open until March 1. Knight said she suspected the facility in Essex is staying open longer because it has two weddings scheduled for the end of this month. While LOGE has informed the 17 full-time employees that they will be out of work at the end of this month, Knight said it has provided little additional information.

“We have been getting a lot of phone calls, but we don’t have a lot of answers,” she said.

Knight said that she and the rest of the staff are committed to one another and to finishing the job they were hired to do. But they’re also trying to figure out what’s next. Most full-time staff live in employee housing, which will also be closed, so most people will not be able to stay in Essex. Knight said she was unsure where she would go. Some were unsure how they would leave town, as not everyone owns a car. Others were dealing with the logistics of moving with the pets they had brought with them to Essex. Knight has organized a GoFundMe to raise money that will be split among the employees to help with moving expenses. As of Wednesday night, it had raised about $1,300. 

Local residents told MTFP that they were concerned about the staff, many of whom had become friends over the years. But they were also wondering what would happen to the community of Essex now that the inn at its heart is once again about to be closed, this time, with no firm plans about its future. Thane Johnson, an attorney who splits his time between Helena and Essex, said the inn is in great shape and would be an attractive business for a new owner. Although if LOGE declares bankruptcy, Johnson said it could be months before the legal issues are resolved and the inn is reopened. Others expressed concern about the impact of an extended closure on a historic building in a rugged environment. 

“It would be devastating if no one bought it,” Johnson said. “Our community would survive — we’re close-knit — but there would be a hole in that community.”

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Glacier National Park announced Wednesday that it is ending its ticketed-entry system, which has dictated summer access to some of the park’s most popular areas for the past five years. Instead, it will introduce new parking limits at Logan Pass and a reservation system for shuttle buses along the Going-to-the-Sun Road. 

Late last year, Superintendent Dave Roemer said the park was likely to discontinue the ticketed-entry system for the west side of Going-to-the-Sun Road, which has long been one of Glacier’s most congested areas. However, since then, National Park Service officials have remained silent about their exact plans, saying they were still assessing options. In previous years, Glacier typically announced its plans for the following year in November or December.

In a press release Wednesday, Roemer said he hoped the new system would enable more people to visit Logan Pass, the Continental Divide and the summit of the Sun Road by implementing a three-hour parking limit there. Park officials stated that this would give visitors enough time to see the Visitor’s Center, participate in an interpretive program, or even take the short hike to the Hidden Lake Overlook. 

Those planning longer hikes from Logan Pass, such as the iconic Highline Trail to the Granite Park Chalet, would need to use one of the express shuttles from either the east or west side of the park. 

“With the new trial measures, we aim to improve the public’s ability to visit Logan Pass for short durations and allow the shuttle system to perform more reliably for a more specific purpose,” Roemer said in the release. “This initiative reflects our continued learning and listening as we refine park transportation and access to better serve the public and safeguard the integrity of the park’s resources.”

Parking limits at Logan Pass were expected to begin on July 1, typically around the time the entire Going-to-the-Sun Road opens. Meanwhile, the new express shuttle system will provide direct service from the Apgar Visitor Center and Lake McDonald Lodge on the west side to Logan Pass. Unlike previous years, it will not stop at the Avalanche Lake or Trail of the Cedars trailheads. The shuttle will make afternoon stops at the Loop, a popular endpoint for hikers from Logan Pass. On the east side, the shuttles will depart from the St. Mary Visitor Center and Rising Sun. 

Shuttle reservations will cost $1 per person and are required for anyone 2 years and older. Tickets will be available on a first-come, first-served basis through Recreation.gov or via phone at 877-444-6777. A portion of tickets will be made available 60 days in advance, beginning at 8 a.m. on May 2. The remaining tickets will be released at 7 p.m. for next-day entry starting June 30. 

Glacier Park first instituted a ticketed-entry system on the Going-to-the-Sun Road in 2021, as concerns about skyrocketing visitation and construction projects inside and outside the park came to a head. Since then, the Park Service has fine-tuned the system, and last year it was in place only on the west side of the Sun Road during certain hours in the summer. 

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Dreaming of a job as a boiler operator, dentist? Gov. Greg Gianforte wants to explore making the path into those the rest of the state’s 50 licensed professions easier for Montanans by streamlining licensing standards. 

The catch? Getting professional associations and the state’s 176,000 licensed workers, many of whom like the rules the way they are, on board. To that end, the governor has assembled legislators, state agency heads and industry association representatives onto a Licensing Reform Task Force in an attempt to build support for licensing changes ahead of next year’s legislative session. 

Gianforte, a Republican, has long argued that bureaucratic inefficiencies around the licensing process prevent many working age Montanans from finding jobs.

“We have 100,000 people sitting on the sidelines,” Gianforte said at the task force’s inaugural meeting on Feb. 10. “So you can help us with this. We can and must tear down barriers to employment to grow our labor force.”

The group hasn’t outlined which specific parts of the licensure system it hopes to modify, but its 28 members represent a total of 18 industry associations, indicating which professions will have a voice in drafting legislation ahead of the 2027 session.

That list includes dentists, funeral directors and contractors. Associations from the health care industry, ranging from nurses to pharmacists to physician assistants, make up the plurality.

The state offers 233 distinct professional licenses, grouped into roughly 50 professional categories. An additional 25,000 workers have state-issued independent contractor certificates, which will also be examined by the task force.

Industry associations that represent licensed professions have typically argued in recent years that strict licensure requirements ensure a well-qualified labor force. Free market advocates have countered with allegations that licensure boards gatekeep industries and prevent fair competition. 

Gianforte made similar pushes to relax licensing requirements in recent legislative sessions with mixed success. Though he signed licensure reform bills in the 2023 and 2025, debate over some of those policies revealed deep divides over seemingly banal professional distinctions. 

2025’s House Bill 218, which would enable optometrists to perform certain surgeries currently authorized for ophthalmologists, spurred rigorous debate. Its hearing in the House Business and Labor Committee lasted one hour and 45 minutes. In its Senate committee, the hearing lasted two hours.

One of the bill’s opponents, Rep. Courtney Sprunger, R-Kalispell, worried that letting medical professionals with less training expand their scope of practice would lead to worse patient care. She said during debate on the floor of the House of Representatives that she credits an ophthalmologist with saving her mother’s life.

“She had ocular melanoma. He was certified to diagnose that. He saved her life. Had it been someone else who didn’t know what they were looking for, she would have died,” Sprunger said. 

But bill sponsor Ed Buttrey, R-Great Falls, argued the legislation permitted optometrists to perform only the procedures they had been trained in. He said the policy shift would increase rural health care access and accused ophthalmologists of gatekeeping. 

“If you haven’t figured out what this is about, it’s about turf. The procedures proposed in this bill for optometrists are currently only performed by ophthalmologists in Montana, and these are the folks that are opposing the bill,” Buttrey said during the House floor debate. “So this is about competition.”

HB 218 ultimately passed the Legislature with bipartisan support and received Gov. Greg Gianforte’s signature on April 16, 2025.

During the 2023 session, Gianforte tasked Lt. Gov. Kristen Juras with cutting bureaucratic red tape to boost the private sector. She backed a package of 159 bills intended to streamline redundant laws and sunset outdated statutes, some of which addressed professional licensing. That year’s Senate Bill 166, for instance, exempted hair-cutters who worked in detention centers and prisons from needing a state barber license. House Bill 87 contained a more sweeping overhaul of reform across all public licensing boards. The Legislature passed about 90% of the 159 bills.

But, much to the governor’s dismay, a long line of dissenters picked apart his central licensure reform bill, House Bill 152, during its first hearing. The Montana Medical Association, for example, worried changes shifting licensing authority into the labor department bureaucracy would erode the authority of medical practitioners to review alleged misconduct by their peers.

Katiana Stutzer, representing the Montana Athletic Trainers Association, said it removed the wording that differentiates certified athletic trainers from nonlicensed professionals and other health care workers.

“Eliminating this title protection places the health and welfare of Montana citizens at risk while not increasing clarity or efficiency necessarily of the laws enacted to ensure Montanans have access to the highest level of quality health care,” Stutzer said.

Jack McBroom, representing electrical workers unions, said the bill reduced the qualifications necessary to be an electrician.

“We don’t need our homes burning down because someone that didn’t have the proper qualification, or do the test properly, failed to do their job and caused a fire,” McBroom said.

At a press conference a few days after the hearing, Gianforte called the industry opposition a “comment on human nature.”

“Everyone hates red tape unless it’s their red tape,” Gianforte said. 

By the time the bill passed out of its first committee, amendments had slashed it from 234 pages to five. It ultimately died in the Senate. 

Now the governor is courting workers and industry associations well before the session. 

Jen Hensley, a longtime lobbyist who also advocated against the 2023 legislation, now sits on the newly created task force. She maintains that the licensing requirements currently on the books were put into place after careful consideration. She also said that the professional associations she lobbies for, including physician’s assistants, occupational therapists, speech language pathologists and optometrists, will want to retain control over their licensing process.

“They don’t want a bureaucrat deciding what a professional standard should be,” Hensley said. 

Hensley also said she feels better about the new task force than she did about the governor’s push for reform in 2023. 

“It’s doing what should have happened prior to the ‘23 session,” she said.

Task force chair Sarah Swanson, the commissioner of the state Department of Labor and Industry, said during its initial meeting that the task force will include four subcommittees, one focused on unwarranted barriers to entry and another on sunsetting outdated regulations. The other two will center on licenses in the construction and healthcare industries. Members of the task force also said they wanted a fifth subcommittee to examine professional requirements outside of those two fields. 

In the past, Gianforte has created task forces in efforts to move the needle around challenging policy topics. He assembled a task force in 2022 to address affordable housing and another in 2024 to handle rising property taxes. Both produced packages of legislation that the governor and his allies shepherded through the legislative process. 

Interested members of the public can submit comments or sign up to receive updates about the task force on a dedicated webpage. The group has its next full-group meeting set for April 13. It plans to present final recommendations to Gianforte in September.

This story was updated on Feb. 18, 2026, to clarify that the 50 professions licensed by the state include 233 distinct licensing categories, and also that independent contracting certificates will be included in the scope of regulations scrutinized by the task force.

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Five years after Glacier National Park first introduced a ticketed-entry system to handle ever-increasing summer crowds, the park plans on eliminating the at-times controversial system. 

At least that’s what the superintendent said during a chamber of commerce meeting late last year. Since then, despite promises that details would be announced soon, the National Park Service has remained mum about what the busy summer season will look like in Glacier. 

“There’s definitely some confusion,” said Sarah Lundstrum, Glacier program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, an independent nonprofit that supports national parks. 

The ticketed-entry system was first launched in 2021, when the park faced a perfect storm of rising visitation and summer construction projects both inside and just outside the park that threatened to wreak havoc. Former Superintendent Jeff Mow noted that it was actually the state of Montana that requested a ticketed system that year because of a major construction project on U.S. Highway 2 near West Glacier and the concern that traffic would back up for miles when the park became overloaded with visitors (which happened on multiple occasions the previous year, sometimes forcing park officials to close the entrance). 

That first year, the ticket system was only used on the Going-to-the-Sun Road between West Glacier and St. Mary. In 2022 and 2023, the system was expanded to include other areas, like Polebridge, Many Glacier and Two Medicine. Since then, the system has been tweaked further, and last year, the park used a timed-entry model, where visitors who wanted to enter the west side of the park between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. had to get a ticket and show up at a specific time. 

“It has been a learning process, and every year has been a little bit different,” Mow, who retired from the Glacier in 2022, told Montana Free Press.

The reservations and ticketed-entry systems haven’t always been popular. In 2023, Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke called for changes to the system after meeting with local business owners who complained it was hurting tourism in the area because visitors were struggling to get tickets. But Mow said that as tweaks were made, the system became more popular as people grew accustomed to it and came to enjoy less congestion in the park. 

But in December, during a Columbia Falls Chamber of Commerce meeting, current park Superintendent Dave Roemer said Glacier National Park intended to eliminate the ticketed-entry system in 2026. According to the Daily Inter Lake, Roemer said one issue with the timed system was that more people were driving to Logan Pass at night, which is not ideal for safety or for Glacier’s wildlife. Roemer added that the park was considering instituting reservation systems for parking at Logan Pass, a common choke point, and for the Sun Road shuttles, which are popular with hikers. 

But since Roemer made those comments in December, the National Park Service has said little about its plans for this summer. MTFP has reached out to a park spokesperson multiple times since December to request details on its plans for a ticketing system, but has received the same canned response each time. 

“The National Park Service continuously reviews Glacier National Park’s pilot operation programs to determine adjustments for the following year,” the spokesperson wrote. “Visitor use data, gate counts, congestion monitoring, traffic operations, and feedback from the public and gateway communities help inform strategies the park uses to manage congestion, shuttles, parking, and visitor access. We will update the public once a decision for the 2026 season has been made.”

In previous years, Glacier Park announced its plans for the following summer as early as November or December. 

Glacier isn’t the only park where there’s uncertainty surrounding the ticketed-entry system, or possible lack thereof. Multiple parks across the West have not announced whether they plan to use a ticket system. In the case of Mount Rainier National Park, it announced online that it wouldn’t use it, then backtracked, stating it hadn’t made a decision, according to SF Gate. Cassidy Jones, senior visitation program manager for the NPCA, put much of the blame for the confusion around the ticketed-entry system on NPS officials in Washington, D.C., and the Trump administration. 

“The administration is really putting parks in an impossible position, and the visitors are the ones who are going to suffer for not having information,” Jones told SF Gate. 

Zak Anderson, executive director of Explore Whitefish and the Whitefish Convention & Visitors Bureau, told MTFP that he and other tourism officials are eager to communicate what the park plans this summer. He also emphasized that he believed Superintendent Roemer and other officials at Glacier were doing the best they could “despite a lack of communication coming from Washington.”

“​​We’re still waiting on the National Park Service, and I think that to a certain degree the park superintendents are waiting on Washington,” Anderson said. 

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The post To ticket or not to ticket, that is the question in Glacier National Park appeared first on Montana Free Press.

Dozens of local Montana businesses closed or adjusted their operations Friday as part of a loosely organized national protest against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

The protests are part of a “no work, no school, no shopping” strike that activists pushed for nationally in order to pressure ICE over aggressive tactics it and other federal agencies have used in Minneapolis and elsewhere since President Donald Trump took office for his second term last year.

“We are stepping away from business as usual to stand with those who are being harmed by systems rooted in fear, racism, and violence,” Noteworthy Paper and Press, a Missoula stationary store, wrote on Facebook. “We’re choosing solidarity over sales, care over convenience, and people over profit.”

Protesting businesses were concentrated in Missoula, Helena, Livingston and Bozeman, according to social media posts reviewed by Montana Free Press, with fewer participants in Billings, Great Falls, Kalispell and smaller Montana communities. 

Some establishments offered messages of solidarity online, but said they were unable to close their doors for a day. Helena’s Sunflower Bakery wrote on Instagram that, though it supported the strike, it would be open on Friday.

“Sourdough is a process that takes days in the planning and execution, and to shut down for one day impacts three days of work, leading to lost income and food waste we can’t justify at the moment,” the post read. 

Rihanna Thomas, owner of Bozeman-based Big Sky Fertility and Wellness, said on Facebook that she supported the movement but intended to work. 

“Today I’ll be working. Not because I don’t care — but because I do,” Thomas wrote. “I fully support immigrant communities and stand against ICE and fascism. I also run a small business, I’m a mom, and I don’t have the luxury of unpaid days off — just like many of the women I serve.

More than two dozen Missoula businesses were named as participating in the strike in a document circulated on social media, including many within the downtown area. About 18 of those were listed as “closed in solidarity.” Others were described as open to the public but not conducting business or open for business while pledging a portion of their proceeds to related charities.

Clyde Coffee, which operates a location at the Missoula Public Library and another on Higgins Ave., posted on Facebook that it would participate in the strike by halting sales Friday while leaving its spaces open as a community gathering space.

In Great Falls, Hi-Line Climbing Center announced it would be closed. 

“We support the people of Minnesota in their quest for fair and equitable governance,” the business wrote online. 

Two other Great Falls businesses, Cassiopeia Books and Luna Coffee, said the decision to remain open was a result of pragmatic assessments of the community’s needs.

Millie Whalen, who owns Cassiopeia Books, said she supported the strike and would have participated, but chose to keep the store open because she only learned about the movement the day before. She thought closing on short notice would disrupt the shopping plans of her out-of-town customers.

“The problem is I get a lot of people who come in from Choteau and Augusta to do their weekly shopping here, and they don’t come back for another month,” Whalen said.

Matt Pipinich, who was born and raised in Great Falls and works as the managing owner of Luna Coffee, said in a Friday interview that he chose to remain open because his business serves as an inclusive community space for minority and marginalized communities. He highlighted that is relatively rare in Great Falls and noted the local LGBTQ Center announced on Friday that it was permanently closing. 

“We weren’t going to sacrifice our local community for something that might have had a marginal impact,” Pipinich said. “I don’t want to belittle anything, but the work we do outside of being a business, the work we do to support our community, is reliant on our being open.”

Pininich believes more impactful political action would require businesses and community members coordinating an intentional, local campaign. That didn’t happen ahead of Friday.

“When I tried to reach out to other businesses in our network, they hadn’t even seen that it was going to be a thing today,” Pipinich said.

In Livingston, Creative Reuse Montana, a second-hand craft store, said on Facebook that it would open its space for a pay-what-you-can-donation session on Friday.

“We believe in the power of community resources and collective creativity,” the business wrote. “Call your senators. Call your representatives.”

Bozeman’s Country Bookshelf said on Facebook it will remain open “with no expectation of sales.” 

“If you need a welcoming space to sit, read, make signs, write to your senators, or simply connect, we will be here with free coffee and donuts (while supplies last) and community (unending supply),” the business wrote online.

The store plans to donate 10% of Friday sales to the National Immigration Project.

In Helena, downtown coffee shop Montago Coffee Co. announced it would be open for business on Friday, but that all proceeds will go to the legal fund of Roberto Orozco-Ramirez, a Mexican citizen and diesel repair shop owner arrested in northeast Montana’s Froid earlier this month. 

“We really struggled with the decision in how we should support the national ICE OUT protests that feels right to us and have decided to keep our doors open to the community,” Montago said in its post. “We love having a safe space for community discourse and want to provide that to those who want it.”

This story was updated Jan. 30, 2026 to include statements from additional businesses.

The post Montana businesses close, shift operations to participate in national strike over ICE activities appeared first on Montana Free Press.

After several years of rapid expansion during the COVID-19 pandemic, Montana’s population growth rate has continued settling to a slower pace according to 2025 figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau this week.

The Census Bureau estimates Montana added 7,137 residents between mid-2024 and mid-2025 for an annual growth rate of less than one percent. That’s a modest increase from the roughly 5,900 residents added the previous year but remains far below the nearly 18,000 added in 2021, the peak of the pandemic migration surge. 

The past two years have also seen slightly slower population growth than the pre-pandemic years. Between 2011 and 2019, the state averaged around an annual population increase of 8,800 residents, an annual growth rate of 0.86%.

By comparison, the 7,137 residents added in 2025 translated to a 0.62% increase, the second-lowest growth rate in the past fifteen years after 2024.

Migration continues to be the primary factor driving Montana population change. In 2025, net migration, the number of people who moved into the state minus the number who moved away, added an estimated 7,247 residents. The vast majority, 6,348, moved from other U.S. states while just under 900 were international arrivals, the bureau estimates. 

Without migration, Montana’s population would have barely changed as the state recorded 90 fewer births than deaths in 2025, a reflection of Montana’s older population and low birthrate. While the state has typically seen a few more deaths than births in recent years, the bureau’s statistics saw that trend reverse for the first time since 2019, with 12 more births than deaths.

County-level population data slated for a March release and city-level population expected for May will let statisticians and the public evaluate growth trends specific to different parts of the state. The 2024 data indicated that Kalispell was the fastest growing urban area while Bozeman’s historic growth was slowing.

These annual estimates are part of the Census Bureau’s efforts to track population change between the once-every-ten-years decennial censuses, which is mandated by the U.S. Constitution. Each year’s figure reflects the population as of July 1, so the population growth figure for 2025 estimate measures changes from July 1, 2024, to July 1, 2025.

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