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September 3, 2026
With time running out for new bills to be heard in Congress, U.S. Rep. Troy Downing is taking a run at denying HUD funding for “sanctuary cities,” a move that shoots an unmistakable side-eye at several Montana communities that have limited local police cooperation with ICE agents.
Downing’s bill would deny federal housing funding to communities that don’t share information about immigrants with federal officers, or that don’t detain people arrested by immigration agents.
“If a city refuses to cooperate with federal immigration law, it should not receive a dime in HUD funding,” Downing said on social media.
The Republican lawmaker did not respond to questions about how the bill would have affected Helena, which passed a noncooperation resolution earlier this year, then rescinded the policy after Attorney General Austin Knudsen threatened to sue.
In April, Knudsen accused the Gallatin County Attorney’s Office of improperly withholding confidential criminal justice information from federal immigration authorities. He later took control of the office, a move now under review by Montana’s Supreme Court.
Six in 10 Montanans support local police working with ICE, according to MTFP polling. Still, communities have rallied support around residents taken into custody.
Montana has a state law that prohibits cities from giving refuge to undocumented immigrants. Knudsen and Gov. Greg Gianforte emphasized at a press conference earlier this year that community policies opposing ICE violate state law.
Other Montana communities take the position that immigration enforcement isn’t the job of local police. Bozeman police focus on public safety and law enforcement, not immigration. Similarly, Missoula police don’t ask about immigration status during interactions with the public and don’t enforce immigration law.
However, a half dozen Montana counties have signed 287(g) assistance agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Flathead and Gallatin counties have “warrant service officer agreements” allowing trained state and local police to serve warrants on individuals already held in jail or prison. The Montana Department of Corrections also has a warrant service agreement with the feds. Carter, Garfield and Treasure counties have “task force model agreements” to question, detain and arrest people for immigration violations during routine policing.
The odds of Downing’s bill getting a vote before the end of the year are slim, with the House having only 31 scheduled days of work for the remainder of the year.
Downing is up for reelection Nov. 3 in Montana’s Eastern Congressional District.
—Tom Lutey
Ballot Changes
There were several additions and a few subtractions in state legislative races before the secretary of state finalized the November ballot on Aug. 20.
The change to keep an eye on is the substitution of Bozeman Democrat Becky Edwards in House District 57, which produced a historically close finish in 2024 when Scott Rosenzweig defeated Marty Malone by 17 votes.
Both Rosenzweig, a Democrat, and Malone, a Republican, opted against a rematch in HD 57, which stretches 133 miles from Bozeman City Hall to Cooke City with an elevation change of 2,788 feet. The district nearly encircles but doesn’t include Livingston.
Through July, it appeared the HD 57 contest would be between Livingston firefighter Jordan Viegut, a Democrat, and Livingston police officer Bob Crank, a Republican. Then Viegut withdrew from the race to devote more time to his young family.
Enter Edwards, who represented Bozeman’s House District 61 in the 2025 Legislature before running unsuccessfully against Kelly Kortum for the Democratic nomination for Senate District 32. Edwards is the executive director of Mountain Mamas, a conservation group, and lives in the district.
To date, the HD 57 race hasn’t stacked up as the high-stakes race it was in 2024, when per-candidate spending exceeded $70,000. That was the district’s first year on the ballot since being redrawn following the 2020 U.S. census.
Rosenzweig, an entrepreneur, is campaigning in Senate District 29 against Livingston Republican Jason Gunderson, a career firefighter and law enforcement officer. Both have campaigned for the Legislature before.
Senate District 29 wasn’t on the ballot in 2024, as incumbent Republican Jon Esp was in the middle of his final four-year term. The district stretches 46 miles east to west, from Springdale to east Bozeman, touching portions of Gallatin, Park and Sweetgrass counties. Both House districts that compose SD 29 are held by Democrats, indicating that the Senate seat long held by Republicans could flip.
At the west end of Gallatin County, Democratic nominee Deborah Anne Hansen withdrew from the House District 77 race, where incumbent Republican Jane Gillette is now unopposed in the general election.
Hansen told Capitolized she’s moved out of state and is no longer eligible. The Democratic Party didn’t replace Hansen on the ballot. House District 77 includes Three Forks and most of Canyon Ferry.
In Great Falls, Libertarian Dave Von Eschen withdrew from House District 22. Democrat Neal Miller and Republican Jason Lorang are still running in the East Great Falls district, which includes Malmstrom Air Force Base.
On Facebook, Von Eschen said he didn’t want to divide the conservative vote with Lorang, a local sports coach and childcare provider. Miller is a self-described Democratic socialist and former taxi driver.
Check out MTFP’s 2026 Election Guide for more information.
—Tom Lutey
Fourth Time a Charm?
Three courts have rejected state Republicans’ attempts to redefine term limits in Montana, but the battle isn’t over yet.
Attorney General Austin Knudsen has appealed to the Montana Supreme Court to overturn a lower court decision that blocked his attempt to force eight-year legislators to sit out an election before crossing from the House to the Senate, or vice versa.
Recall that the attorney general released an opinion in early August saying legislators can’t simply wrap up eight years in one legislative chamber and then immediately seek election in the opposite chamber, a practice that’s been accepted as legal for the last 15 years based on an earlier opinion by then-Attorney General Steve Bullock.
An attorney general’s interpretations of the law can change the way government works. In this case, Knudsen’s apparent intent was to prevent the secretary of state from allowing two veteran Republican lawmakers, who won their June primaries, to appear on the general election ballot.
Senate President Matt Regier had asked Knudsen for a new interpretation of the state’s term limit law, specifically as it pertains to Regier nemesis Rep. Llew Jones, a Republican pragmatist from Conrad who has over the course of 21 years built functional bipartisan majorities to pass budgets and other key pieces of legislation, to the dismay of Republican hardliners.
Knudsen’s revised opinion meant that Jones and his fellow Republican lawmaker Sen. Steve Fitzpatrick, of Great Falls, would be disqualified from running in 2026.
But Jones and Fitzpatrick sued. Lewis and Clark District Court Judge Christoper Abbott blocked Knudsen’s opinion from affecting the two lawmakers, ruling that the legislators’ case against Knudsen’s opinion was likely to succeed on its merits.
Knudsen followed that decision with a failed attempt to get the state Supreme Court to intervene, given that time to knock Jones and Fitzpatrick’s names off the ballot was running out. The Supreme Court ruled that if time was so critically of the essence, Knudsen should have opined on term limits sooner.
The day after the state Supreme Court rejected Knudsen’s request, Regier and other Republicans tried to get a district court in Park County to take up the matter. The Park County court rejected that request as well.
Knudsen then circled back to the state Supreme Court on Aug. 27, this time with a full-blown appeal to reverse the lower court’s decision. He asked the justices to decide the matter on an accelerated schedule so their ruling would arrive before candidates who win the Nov. 3 election are certified for the legislative roster.
Knudsen’s appeal reminds the Supreme Court that in rejecting his earlier request for intervention, it concluded that “this case raises novel legal and Constitutional issues which require careful consideration by the Court.” He’s asking the justices to whip that careful consideration into shape in about 24 days.
—Tom Lutey
