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March 26, 2026
The TSA crisis at Butte’s Bert Mooney Airport looked much different this week than the video footage of chaotically long security lines cycling across cable news.
The issue in Butte was keeping the airport’s 13 federal security agents fed and their living expenses covered after three federal pay periods with little to no compensation. The Butte airport averages about 1,700 boardings a month, according to state data. Transportation Security Agents screen each passenger before boarding.
“They’re not all full-time workers, but there are 13 TSA workers at the Bert Mooney Airport. A lot of these workers, they need to support their families. For some of them this is a second job, for some it’s their only job,” said Stephanie Sorini, who serves on an airport subcommittee as executive director of the Butte-Silver Bow Chamber of Commerce. “What we know is that we need to step up and take care of our own.”
Sorini told Capitolized the Butte community has been passing the hat a lot lately because of government shutdowns. This is round two for TSA agents since October. There was also an earlier charitable drive for local beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which lost funding during the record-setting 43-day government shutdown last fall.
TSA workers have gone without pay most recently because of the 41-day political tug-of-war in the Senate over Department of Homeland Security funding. The D.C.-shorthand summary of the cause of the fight is that Democrats want to “rein in ICE.”
At the heart of the debate are the January killings of two Americans by DHS agents on the streets of Minneapolis, including the Jan. 24 killing of Alex Pretti. House lawmakers had voted two days before Pretti’s death to fund all 16 major components of DHS. Seven Democrats voted with Republicans to pass the bill, which then headed to the Senate. Pretti’s death changed the debate for Senate Democrats, who began demanding tighter controls on DHS immigration agents. Federal funding ran out Jan. 30. A four-day mini-shutdown ensued at DHS, followed by a funding package that lasted less than two weeks, and then the current shutdown.
Pretti’s death sparked protests across the country, including in Montana.
It wasn’t just the shootings that complicated the funding of DHS, it was the way the department attempted to spin the deaths. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem initially described Pretti as a “domestic terrorist wishing to inflict harm” on federal agents. U.S. Border Patrol “commander at large” Gregory Bovino said it was “a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
Public video of Pretti’s killing taken from multiple angles deflated Noem and Bovino’s “terrorist” narrative, which had also been used to explain the killing of Renee Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis mother shot by an ICE agent on Jan. 7.
Bovino has since retired and Noem is no longer DHS secretary.
Republicans want to fund DHS and move on without the checks on DHS that Democrats are demanding. Footage of long TSA lines at major airports has become an exhibit against Senate Democrats demanding tighter controls. Daines incorporated the b-roll into a cable news presentation on March 24.
“As we take a look at these images of airports around the country, it looks like a Walmart on a Black Friday with these huge lines, this is nonsense. The Democrats have blocked [DHS funding] now 14 times in the last 39 days,” Daines told his Fox audience.
The 14 times referenced by Daines include more than recorded votes. There have been six Senate votes to fund DHS since TSA employees were last paid. Five of those attempts were by Republicans. Montana’s Republican Sens. Daines and Tim Sheehy voted yes all five times to fully fund. The sixth time, on March 20, was a TSA-only funding bill proposed by Democrats — a vote for which Daines and Sheehy were absent.
“The longer the Democrats’ DHS shutdown continues, the more hard-working Montanans feel the impact,” Daines said Wednesday in response to questions by Capitolized. “TSA agents, both in Montana and across the nation, have gone without pay for more than 40 days at a time when security threats to our nation are heightened. I’m working with President Trump and my colleagues in the Senate to end this nonsense and fund DHS.”
On March 22, Trump said on Truth Social that he would consider a $5 billion cut in ICE funding if the agreement included Democrats’ “approval of Voter I.D., (with picture!), Citizenship to Vote, No Mail-In Voting (with exceptions), All Paper Ballots, No Men In Women’s Sports, and No Transgender MUTILIZATION of our precious children.”
In Butte, Sorini said the community will take care of its own for as long as it needs to.
—Tom Lutey
Passing Lane
Bozemanite and Trump nominee Katie Lane was vetted for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench on Wednesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Republicans zeroed in on Lane’s work ethic and principles, while Democrats raised concerns about her experience.
But Lane’s most beneficial attribute might have been a lack of inflammatory tweets to answer for. Lane was one of four nominees heard Wednesday. The other three were Sheria Clarke, District of South Carolina; Evan Rikhye, District of the Virgin Islands; and Kara Westercamp, Court of International Trade.
The combined duration of Lane’s answers to questions was less than 10 minutes, as other nominees were pressed about social media posts regarding members of Congress, Trump pardons for Jan. 6, 2021, rioters, and whether the nominees believed the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.
“Ms. Westercamp, throughout your prolific inflammatory social media career, you launched personal attacks on multiple members of the Senate. You repeatedly referred to Sen. Mitch McConnell as ‘Cocaine Mitch,’” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, scolded Trump’s nominee to the Court of International Trade.
Lane’s questions were more about her familiarity with legal procedure. The 2010 Bozeman High School graduate is a few decades younger than the judges currently on the federal bench in Montana. She has about nine years of legal experience, counting internships. She worked for Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, and more recently for the Republican National Committee. Before attending law school at George Mason University, Lane worked as a congressional intern for U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, who introduced Lane to the committee.
“Katie Lane has the right temperament as well to serve as United States District Court judge. She grew up in Montana. In fact, she grew up in Bozeman, my hometown. She attended kindergarten through 12th grade, as I did, in Bozeman, although I went before her, and graduated from my alma mater Bozeman High School,” Daines told the committee. “She spent her summers during those formative years skiing, camping, hiking in Montana, which instilled in her a deep love of the Treasure State and the values that make Montana the last best place.”
U.S. district courts are trial courts of general jurisdiction. Assimilating details on the fly and managing a busy caseload are the name of the game.
“As an attorney representing my client’s interest, I get up to speed very quickly on both the facts and the law and grasp really complicated issues quickly,” Lane told Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee. “If I have the privilege of being confirmed to the District of Montana, I would take that same diligence with me, and not only work really hard to get it right, but also to manage my docket efficiently and to understand all the different legal and factual issues that come before me.”
The American Bar Association, which recommends a minimum of 12 years of professional experience for federal judges, didn’t score Lane’s nomination.
Carl Tobias, an expert on judicial nominations at the University of Richmond, in Virginia, said he expected Lane to be approved along party lines, but said her experience is a concern. There are more experienced conservative attorneys in Montana who could have been nominated, he said. Tobias previously taught law at the University of Montana.
“I’m sure there’s someone presently sitting on the Montana Supreme Court,” Tobas said. “They just named [Bill Mercer], who was the U.S. Attorney for Bush. So, it’s possible to do, and it’s not clear why they’re doing this, except that she’ll serve forever. She’ll be the chief judge and all of that.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee will next determine whether to send the nominations to the floor for a confirmation vote.
Lane would replace Judge Susan Watters, who announced in 2025 that she will take senior status June 8.
—Tom Lutey
The Park County Bench
Rebecca Swandal appears on track to become the next state district judge in Park County. Swandal was the only person to apply for the Sixth Judicial District seat currently held by Brenda Gilbert, who announced her retirement earlier this year.
The public comment period on Swandal’s application ends April 16. The position will be Gov. Greg Gianforte’s 14th judicial appointment.
Swandal’s father, Nels, was the district judge in Park and Sweet Grass counties for several years.
—Tom Lutey
