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If you’ve been following the national debate about President Donald Trump’s behemoth budget policy, you’re probably aware that a proposal to sell 500,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management holdings in Nevada and Utah has generated a lot of conversation — and political consternation — over the past couple of months.
That proposal was amended into the bill by the House Natural Resources Committee in early May, and then stripped out of the bill by the House’s Budget Committee hours before the full chamber passed the package by a razor-thin margin. After that vote, public land advocates thanked Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke for his leadership on the issue — he’d told his Republican colleagues that he wouldn’t vote for the 1,000-plus-page bill with the public land sale in it — and breathed a cautious sigh of relief.
It didn’t last long.
Earlier this week, POLITICO’s E&E News reported that Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, plans to add the public land sale component back into the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on the Senate side.
That very quickly put Montana’s senatorial delegation in the hot seat. All of Montana’s congressional delegates have made some form of the slogan “public lands in public hands” a cornerstone of their campaign pitch to voters, drawing a distinction between themselves and Republicans in Utah and Wyoming who have supported federal land transfer. Their stance also marks a departure from the official platform the national Republican Party adopted last year. It calls for opening “limited portions of Federal Lands to allow for new home construction.”
On Wednesday, Montana Free Press emailed Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy to request interviews to learn whether Daines, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and Sheehy, the freshman Republican who assumed Democrat Jon Tester’s seat in November, would vote for the bill if the federal land sale is amended back in.
Communications staffers for the senators didn’t grant our requests for interviews. Instead, they provided emailed statements that didn’t directly answer our question.
“Sen. Daines opposes public land sales,” Daines’ spokesperson Matt Lloyd wrote in an email. He also pointed us to Daines’ Wednesday appearance on Fox News, where he was asked to respond to Elon Musk’s scathing critique of the fiscal footprint of the bill, which is expected to increase the national debt by $3.8 trillion. Daines praised Musk as “one of the geniuses of this economy,” and then stumped for the proposal.
“Failure’s not an option. We must pass this bill,” he said. “We face a $4.5 trillion tax increase if we don’t.”
MTFP’s interaction with Sheehy spokesperson Tate Mitchell followed a similar trajectory, albeit with a slightly longer statement.
“There’s no question that public lands belong in public hands. That’s not just a slogan, it’s a way of life and one thing most Montanans agree on regardless of party. I will always fight to protect our right to hunt, fish, and recreate on our public lands,” Sheehy said in the statement.
The national conversation escalated another notch Thursday, when E&E reported that Daines was pushing Lee for changes to a land sales amendment, reportedly urging consideration of sales that are “very, very narrow in scope” and explicitly barring federal land sales in Montana.
Public land advocacy groups pounced on the story, and a flurry of statements ensued.
“Senator Daines: Giving an inch is taking hundreds of thousands of square miles. You’re either opposed to selling public lands or you’re not. There is no in-between. There is no ‘narrow in scope’ when it comes to selling off public lands in order to give tax breaks to billionaires,” American Hunters & Anglers Co-Chair Land Tawney said in a Thursday morning statement.
Meanwhile, Daines’ staffers engaged in damage control, issuing a Thursday afternoon statement saying there’s been “some confusion out there” about Daines’ stance on the sale of public lands. They insisted he has been and remains against the sale of public lands and is merely “holding discussions with his colleagues in the Senate and bringing up his strong concerns.”
Clear as mud?
Next week, there will be an opportunity to gauge the effect of Daines’ conversations with Lee. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is set to take up the Interior Department portion of the budget bill Wednesday morning. That will give Montanans — who overwhelmingly opposed in a poll earlier this year federal land transfer — an opportunity to assess how Daines has exerted his leadership in the Senate.
—Amanda Eggert
Fire Lookout 🔥
Cutline: A slide from a June 2 presentation prepared by Dan Borsum, a predictive services meteorologist with the National Interagency Fire Center, indicates a dangerous fire season.
At a briefing Monday for Gov. Greg Gianforte and state and federal emergency response agencies to discuss the upcoming fire season, predictive services meteorologist Dan Borsum with the National Interagency Fire Center shared some bad news.
“At some point during the spring, I pulled up the forecast in May for the summer of 2021 and I compared it to this summer’s forecast, and they’re almost identical,” Borsum said. “And 2021 was a big fire year.”
Although this winter brought more snow than the one prior, Borsum said, “recent hot weather has been doing a number on the snowpack.”
“That is a significant concern because high-elevation fires are more challenging, they’re longer-living on the landscape, and unfortunately, the news is that we are probably going to see that area available for fire activity,” Borsum said.
Borsum is expecting a hot and dry July across western Montana. Some areas have experienced 8- to 16-inch shortfalls of precipitation over the last three years. This August, he anticipates similar fire-prone conditions to spread to central and eastern Montana. The pattern is unlikely to break in late summer: Monsoon season does not appear likely to bring moisture into the state. Instead, precipitation along the southern Rockies could produce a meteorological phenomenon known as a heat dome, prolonging fire conditions in Montana.
Roughly 240 firefighters are already deployed to the Banana Lake Fire, a nearly 1,000-acre blaze just north of Plains near the western edge of the Flathead Indian Reservation. It is the largest fire in the state.
Watching alongside Gianforte were 10 leaders across emergency response agencies. After a question from the press attending the briefing about the potential impact of federal cuts to the Forest Service, Deputy Regional Forester Ben South said the entity has the same number of crews as last year and resources for firefighting.
—Zeke Lloyd
Musical Chairs 🪑
One of Montana’s most influential state lawmakers will be the next leader of one of Montana’s most influential health care associations.
Rep. Ed Buttrey, R-Great Falls, the architect and long-time sponsor of the state’s Medicaid expansion program, starts as CEO and president of the Montana Hospital Association on July 1.
In some ways, the lawmaker and the hospital association have already spent years working together. MHA has been one of the state’s most forceful industry groups behind establishing and then repeatedly renewing Medicaid expansion. Buttrey has carried bills to advance that policy since 2015. He has also spent several years on the board of the Great Falls-based Benefis Health System, one of the largest hospitals in MHA’s network.
Speaking to Montana Free Press on Thursday, Buttrey said that his goal as a state legislator has long been “to unify hospitals, who are in a very competitive market, and get them to be better at telling their story to lawmakers.” This session’s wide-margin renewal of Medicaid expansion, he said, was one example of that tactic working.
Buttrey is term-limited from being elected again to the state House of Representatives, though he could run for a seat in the Senate during the next election cycle. He said he plans to remain in his House seat for the remainder of the interim, but his workload with MHA would make it difficult for him to serve in the Senate.
Montana law bars lawmakers from becoming registered lobbyists for at least two years after their term ends. Buttrey said that he didn’t foresee that prohibition applying to his new CEO role, as MHA has a team of lobbyists to work on policy issues.
“A lot of it would be behind-the-scenes strategy,” Buttrey said about his new MHA position. “I don’t know that there’s anything in law or policy that would stop me from continuing the legislative role, but with the focus that it will take to run the MHA, I don’t think there’s a way I could run [for the Legislature] in the future.”
Outside of state policy, Buttrey said his near-term work will be focused on tracking policy changes coming out of Washington, D.C. That includes federal grant cuts under President Donald Trump’s administration, as well as the budget bill currently working its way through Congress. Among other things, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would require states to adopt Medicaid work requirements in an effort to shrink enrollment and cut costs.
Buttrey said Montana’s Medicaid expansion program already includes work requirements that align with the proposals in the federal budget bill. Those conditions have never taken effect, given the shifting priorities of the Biden and Trump administrations.
But Buttrey noted that the budget legislation could evolve during deliberations in the U.S. Senate. He said he has been in touch with Montana’s federal representatives and senators about how other changes to Medicaid policy could negatively impact Montana hospitals — including a decrease in how much the federal government pays into Medicaid.
“Now we just have to really be careful and watch what they do in the Senate,” Buttrey said. “We just don’t know.”
—Mara Silvers
By the Numbers 🔢
The number of people the census estimates Kallispell added to its population from 2020 to 2024. That’s the most of any community in Montana and 12% of the 50,000 residents the state gained overall during that time.
For some points of comparison, Billings has nearly five times the population as Kalispell, but census estimates put its growth at 4,250 during the same period. Even Bozeman, long Montana’s fastest-growing city, barely cracked 4,000, despite being nearly twice the size of Kalispell. Put another way, while Kalispell’s growth rate was 24%, Billings and Bozeman grew at 3.6% and 7.5%, respectively.
Kalispell has added the most residents in three of the last four years and was the state’s fastest-growing city by percentage in 2022. East Helena beat it out in 2023 and 2024, but it is a much smaller community, adding fewer than 300 residents while Kalispell added more than 20 times that.
There is a lot to dig into in the most recent census data and the table at the bottom of this MTFP article aims to make it easier to look through than the raw data the U.S. Census Bureau released in mid-May.
—Jacob Olness
Hot Potato
Gov. Greg Gianforte and state Rep. Braxton Mitchell this week chided the Missoula City Council for its vote to allow the display of LGBTQ+ Pride flags at government buildings via a loophole in a new state law meant to limit flying certain flags or banners. At least one other Montana city is considering a similar approach.
House Bill 819, carried by Mitchell and signed by Gianforte, limits the display of flags or banners on government property to the U.S. flag; an official flag of the state, other municipality or special district; tribal nations’ flags; foreign nations’ flags; and certain historical, military, law enforcement and school flags. The bill states that no flags may be displayed on state property that represent a “political viewpoint.”
The bill specifically exempts the Gadsden flag, known as the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, which Missoula City Council members argued has political connotations.
In a social media post Tuesday, Gianforte, a Republican, wrote that the city council should be “ashamed for imposing a pride flag on schools and dividing their community.”
“Last night, nine members of the Missoula City Council made clear their top priority is flying a divisive pride flag over government buildings and schools — all while ignoring the city’s housing affordability crisis, raising taxes by 17% because of over spending, and refusing to take firm action to end encampments in the city. Missoulians deserve better, and fortunately, two council members voted against imposing this divisive, far-left agenda on their community.”
A majority of the city’s 17% tax increase last year was part of a voter-approved fire levy.
Council Member Jennifer Savage, who proposed the flag recognition, told MTFP the change does not impose the flag on anyone but offers an option taken away by the new law.
“HB 819 was a bill meant to silence marginalized people in Montana, and we responded to that,” she said. “I think we’ve actually done quite a bit in Missoula to address houselessness and we’ve tried many things, we’ve pivoted, we have spent truly countless hours working on houselessness. I do think we are taking on the big issues in the community.”
In the last year, the city council has adopted rules restricting camping on city property and creating a vehicle permit system, amended those rules to ban camping in city parks, and started the phased closure of the Johnson Street emergency homeless shelter and a related effort to house as many shelter residents as possible by the end of August. The city also recently adopted a new three-year strategy to address houselessness.
Mitchell, a Columbia Falls Republican, said in a written statement to MTFP that “the pride flag, like any other political symbol, has no place replacing a city’s identity.” Mitchell said he will ask the Legislature to amend the law next session “to make sure no city can make a political symbol their official flag.”
Council Member Savage said while it’s the Legislature’s prerogative to change the law, “as a taxpaying Montanan, I would hope they would work on meaningful legislation that could positively affect the lives of everyday Montanans.”
During the city council meeting on Monday, Council Member Mike Nugent said the city’s recognition of the flag means other local governments can display it.
Bozeman, which started flying the Pride flag at its city hall in 2021, recently removed it to comply with the new law, said Takami Clark, the city’s communications manager. Deputy Mayor Joey Morrison told MTFP that some commission members have discussed recognizing the Pride flag using a strategy similar to Missoula’s and that those conversations will likely continue next week.
The Butte-Silver Bow consolidated city-county government declared June to be LGBTQ+ Pride month but will not fly the flag over the courthouse this year due to the new law, according to a story from NBC Montana. Butte’s chief executive did not respond to an inquiry about whether Missoula’s action will change that decision.
Helena has not flown the Pride flag at any city building since at least 2021, said Jacob Garcin, public information officer for the city. The city commission has not discussed HB 819, he said.
—Katie Fairbanks
Highlights ☀️
In other news this week —
- The Trump administration’s cuts mean about 75,000 pages of Indian boarding school records sit in online storage systems that are now inaccessible.
- Local concerns over long-term sustainability led some public schools to opt out of the Legislature’s hallmark effort to boost teacher pay.
- Some justices made accusations of bias in a recent state Supreme Court order.
On Our Radar 
Katie — I recently finished listening to the audiobook “Everything is Tuberculosis,” John Green’s latest nonfiction exploring the history of the disease. The author’s passion for the topic comes through in his narration of the book, which is a concise blend of personal anecdotes, historical context and the current challenges of addressing the ongoing spread of the world’s leading cause of death.
Holly — I recently pulled some sourdough starter out of the freezer after about two years, and the defrosted version was way more robust than the stuff that lives in my refrigerator. I’m about to use it to make one of my favorite sourdough recipes, the English muffins from Tartine. They’re especially fun to griddle on a flattop.
Zeke — The folk band Caamp has gently waded back into the spotlight with their June 6 release of Copper Changes Color. Their fifth studio album is reminiscent of the group’s first record from 2016 but feels better suited for porches, campfires and romantic roadtrips.
Nora — I can’t stop thinking about this piece on the deceptive nature of AI. It’s haunting.
Mara — Following up on my recent theme of road trip hacks, I’m considering the brilliance of adding a “carbage can” to my long-distance vehicles. Unnecessary? Tell that to the sadly neglected state of my car floors.
Eric — I’ve been following an Australian YouTuber’s years-long effort to recreate a 2,000-year-old astronomical calculator recovered from a Mediterranean shipwreck, gleefully watching him travel down the DIY archeology rabbit hole of experimenting with metalworking techniques that would have been theoretically achievable in an Ancient Greek workshop — and occasionally detouring to publish academic research. My favorite installment so far has been watching him build a metal lathe from scratch.
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