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montana 2 bak

720 main guk see oops other bak

SEE MONTANA PLAN 10 25

SEE OCT JULIANA WINS

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JF SENT 10 25 ~ CU

introducing-caps-plan-to-beat-citizens-united

oct event tester

undoing-citizens-united-and-reining-in-super-pacs

panel

Panel Discussion

CAP Senior Vice President for Structural Reform and Governance Ben Olinsky will moderate a conversation with Jeff Mangan, Sarah Haan, and Tom Moore about the national debut of a bold new approach that rewrites the rules of money in politics. The panelists will take questions at the end of the discussion.

Panelists

Founder

Transparent Election Initiative](https://transparentelection.org/about "Jeff Mangan")

Sheridan Albert ’48 Professor of Law

Brooklyn Law School](https://www.brooklaw.edu/contact-us/haan-sarah/ "Sarah Haan")

Senior Fellow, Democracy

Center For American Progress](https://www.americanprogress.org/people/tom-moore/ "Tom Moore")

Moderator

Senior Vice President, Structural Reform and Governance; Senior Fellow

Center For American Progress](https://www.americanprogress.org/people/olinsky-ben/ "Ben Olinsky")

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mta 8 25

john rob

Transparent Election Initiative - Our Fight Against Corporate Money in Politics

The Montana Plan, a breakthrough legal strategy, will stop corporate and dark money cold. It's how Montanans will beat Citizens United and take back our politics. Learn about what it is and how it's headed toward Montana's 2026 ballot. Montana can do it, and your state can too!

an 10 25

Late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel could barely get the words out of his mouth when he had to say: “I agree with Marjorie Taylor Greene.”

It was his second time this month, he noted, and added “I need something to wash out my mouth.” But in truth, the issue at hand, which is access to health care, is no laughing matter.

Greene’s latest defection from the MAGA cult of loyalty for which she has been a leading figure popped up in an exclusive interview with CNN in which she didn’t beat around the bush concerning the effect of the House-passed budget bill that, due to not reauthorizing Affordable Care Act subsidies, has caused the shutdown of the federal government.

“Everybody is just getting destroyed” Greene told reporters. “This cliff is coming for millions and millions of Americans where their health insurance premiums are about to skyrocket. Republicans, you have no solutions. You haven’t come up with a new plan in place, and we’re not even talking about it, and it is hurting so many people.”

Greene’s concerns are at odds with the narrative the GOP is trying to spin on the shutdown — namely that it’s all the fault of Senate Democrats. Instead, Greene says the healthcare crisis now facing millions of Americans, including her kids and constituents, is a direct threat to Republicans in the polls and voting booths.

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It’s worth noting Greene is also one of four Republican House members who signed the discharge petition to force the release of the Epstein files, telling The Hill: “I think when it comes to women being raped, especially when they were 14 years old, that’s pretty black and white.” Moreover, she said Speaker Johnson’s attempts to keep the House shut down was “wrong” and they should reconvene to take care of the vast spectrum of Congressional business.

For his part, Johnson doesn’t want to reconvene the House due to the recent election of a Democrat who, when sworn in, will provide the final signature to force Johnson to deal with the “Epstein bomb”.

What could this MAGA rebellion by Greene have to do with Montana? Well, it’s not so dissimilar from a group of nine Republicans who broke with their own leadership over any number of issues. Chief among them was health care, and support for a bill by fellow Republican Ed Buttrey to lift the pending expiration of Medicaid expansion for low income people that the Senate’s GOP President, Matt Regier, opposed.

Like Greene, Buttrey noted that healthcare was critical and Republicans had no other plan: “We have 10 years’ worth of data that shows that the program we designed is working and working well. There’s no need to change it, it’s a savings to our budget, it is providing help for people all across the state, it’s helping save our rural health care facilities. Why would you want to change that or come up with another plan?”

It’s fair to say the GOP tends to “keep its soldiers in line” when it comes to supporting or opposing leadership positions. Yet, just as Greene defied Johnson on Medicare funding and Trump on the Epstein files, Buttrey and his nine “rebels” defied their own leadership and governor to support Medicaid expansion.

None of this spells the end of MAGA, of course. But it shows that when it comes down to the critical issues that affect the citizens of our nation and state, party affiliation is not and should not be the determining factor — especially when it comes to taking care of each other.

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AN 12 25

After President Donald Trump returned to the White House, his administration aggressively downsized a wide range of federal government agencies with the help of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its then-leader, Tesla/SpaceX/X.com head Elon Musk. Democrats warned that the cuts — which targeted everyone from the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) to the National Weather Service (NWS) to the Internal Revenue Service (IRA) — would have painful results in the red states that voted for Trump in big numbers in 2024, but Trump claimed that he was only targeting "waste, fraud and abuse."

In an article published by **Politico on December 15, Montana-based journalist Cassidy Randall details some of the negative effects that Trump Administration/DOGE cuts are having in her state — which Trump carried by roughly 20 percent in 2024.

According to Randall, "DOGE cuts to public lands agencies" are "hitting rural, conservative communities — one of this administration's strongest voting bases — the hardest." And the result, according to Politico, is a "revolt" that threatens to "wake a sleeping political giant" in a deep-red state.

"Starting in February," Randall reports, "an estimated 5200 people have been terminated from the agencies that manage the 640 million acres of federal public lands in the U.S. That number doesn't include the many who took the (Trump) Administration's buyout or early retirement offers also meant to cut staff. Further, Trump's 2026 budget proposes more budget cuts and a reduction of nearly 18,500 more public lands employees."

Terry Zink, a 57-year-old hunter who lives in Montana, voted for Trump in 2024 but is now criticizing the effects that Trump Administration/DOGE cuts are having on rural public lands.

Zink told Politico, "You won't meet anyone more conservative than me, and I didn't vote for this…. We have to listen to our wildlife biologists. We have to be strong advocates for those people."

Zink said of rural areas, "You cannot fire our firefighters. You cannot fire our trail crews. You have to have selective logging, and water restoration, and healthy forests."

*Read Cassidy Randall's full article for Politico at this link.

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AN 5 25

Harsh DOGE-related cuts are endangering a research facility serving as a huge economic driver for in Montana’s town of Hamilton.

Built in the middle of a conservative, blue-collar community of 5,000, Rocky Mountain Laboratories generates hundreds of millions of dollars for the local economy through spillover to other industries and retail. But NPR reports Hamilton is “a prime example of how the Trump administration's mass federal layoffs and cancellation of research grants are being felt in communities far from Washington, D.C.”

Former Rocky Mountain Labs researcher Kim Hasenkrug said he despised President Donald Trump's vow to let Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "go wild" on health issues.

READ MORE:A veteran tells Trump 'to go straight to hell'

"We're beginning to see what 'going wild' looks like," Hasenkrug said. "These cuts will not streamline research. They will throttle it."

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Forty-one Rocky Mountain Labs workers were let go or told their contracts would end this summer, and nine more took advantage of time served to retire early. The departures come as the Trump administration slashed at least $29 million in grants to Montana recipients, from university scientists to the state health department. Research has slowed, and NPR’s local affiliate reports scientists have struggled to buy basic gear. Researcher say even more cuts are planned for workers who buy and deliver critical supplies such as antibodies.

City Councilor Darwin Ernst told NPR that people are already leaving the town due to layoffs.

"Someone recently left with her entire family. Because of the layoffs, they can't afford to live here," he said. "Some people retire here but that's not everyone."

The conservative town contains a diverse assortment of ranchers, outdoor workers and scientists. Nearly 70% of county residents voted for Trump in 2024, but now NPR reports residents and leaders are worried about the economic consequences of an exodus of federal workers and their salaries.

READ MORE: Struggles to 'even finish a sentence': Behind the obvious signs of Trump’s growing dementia

Ernst told AlterNet the town is already reeling from earlier federal cuts to the U.S. Forest Service, which fired workers who cleared trails and maintained the government-managed public land that comprises “72 percent of the county.” He's not pleased to see that federal threat extend to Rocky Mountain Labs, which funds satellite contractors and suppliers. The company's well-paid employees also spend generously at local shops and businesses.

"We wrote a resolution from the city, and we sent out a letter of support to the National Institute of Health and one for the people laid off from the Forest Service to protect our area,” said Ernst, an independent. “Not everybody has the National Institute of Health in their backyard."

NPR reports the Trump administration is trying to eliminate at least 1,200 jobs at the NIH and shrink its budget by 40%.

Read the full NPR report here.

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RWW

04/24/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

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rww

04/18/2025

an 4 25

Chaos as Montana GOP kicks 9 senators out of the Republican Party

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AN 3 25

It wasn’t a typical Friday night event in the downtown of Montana’s largest city.

The only music played at the event was a closing song, “America,” which brought the crowd of nearly 1,000 to its feet.

About the only people missing from the event that filled the spacious Lincoln Auditorium in Billings (capacity: 1,636) were the three chairs reserved for Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy as well as Rep. Troy Downing whose congressional district covers the Magic City and all of eastern Montana.

Not unlike dozens of other town-hall style meetings across America, the purpose was to ask questions of leaders about what is happening in Congress, with President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. And not unlike many recent meetings, the elected leaders did not show up.

That did not stop residents, some from as far away as Missoula and Wibaux counties, from showing up, standing in long lines to ask a question, and former Gov. Marc Racicot from urging the crowd to fight for democracy. Racicot himself has been an example of the changing political winds: The former chairman on the Republican National Party was booted from the state Republican Party after criticizing the direction of the party and Trump.

The Daily Montanan reached out to all three Congressional representatives who were invited. Only Sheehy’s office responded.

“Here is my response to media asking if I will attend Democrat dark money group Indivisible’s left-wing rallies: No, I will not legitimize a radical group that wants to defund the police and abolish ICE,” Sheehy said.

Indivisible, a national group that started in the wake of George Floyd’s death, started as a movement to rein in abuse and to curtail funding to police and other law enforcement agencies. Yellowstone Indivisible organized the event, although during the event, not a single speaker spoke about defunding law enforcement or police brutality.

“There have been town meetings since this country was just 13 colonies and ruled by a king. We want to make it clear to our elected officials that we still don’t want a king,” said Yellowstone Indivisible co-leader Elizabeth Klarich. “We could be doing March Madness, or we could be attending the boys basketball tournaments at the Metra, but we decided to do democracy tonight.”

President Donald Trump campaigned on a far-ranging platform of reform, including to reshape government as well as reduce consumer prices and curbing inflation. Montana is also a heavily Republican state with every member of the Congressional delegation and the five state “constitutional officers” all being Republican. In Montana, Trump took 58% of the vote in the 2024 Election.

Speakers who asked questions and told raw personal stories drew applause, sometimes standing ovations, including for the opening Pledge of Allegiance.

“If we were hired to do a job and refused to do it, we’d get terminated,” Klarich said. “Have they forgotten we have the power to fire them?”

The organizers recorded the meeting, and said they will be delivering a copy of the video to Daines, Sheehy and Downing so they can see the response and turnout.

Billings resident Elizabeth Halvorson worried about the impacts of tariffs on Mexico and Canada, since they represent a combined 93% of imports to Montana.

“What are you going to do protect ag producers? What are you going to do to protect us from higher costs?” she asked.

Throughout the meeting, residents spoke to the trio of empty chairs, each with a placard naming the Congressman who didn’t show.

Steve Held, who ran for Congress as a Democrat and whose daughter was part of the historic youth climate trial that bears his name, spoke on climate change.

“Climate change doesn’t give a damn if you live in Broadus or Bozeman, and the Montana Club will not protect you,” Held said, traveling from Broadus to attend.

Bailey Desper, who is a transgender woman worried about Elon Musk, a common concern at the meeting in Billings and at other meetings, was using government data.

“How are they going to make sure that our rights to privacy are entrusted?” she asked.

Jason Severeid of Billings said that he’s been living independently for two years thanks to help from insurance programs like Medicaid. He has an autoimmune disease that requires infusions every three weeks. Without those programs for him, it’s literally a matter of life or death.

“What assurances can you give me so that my treatment can continue? Please don’t touch Medicaid,” he said.

Maybe the longest and most thunderous applause came for Peggy Wellknown Buffalo, a member and leader on the Apsaalooke (Crow) reservation. She has been lauded for her efforts of providing more than 2 million pounds of food during the COVID-19 pandemic on the reservation in southern Montana, and still runs a food assistance program.

At first she addressed the empty “Congress chairs” in Crow. Then, she spoke in English.

“Your First People are worse off. How much more do we have to give up?” she asked.

Randi Hall of Billings said she’s met Daines previously and voted for him.

“Canada is our friend. You’ve been to the Hi-Line and seen the flags together. You are turning our greatest ally into an enemy. Who would have thought that would happen? Who would have seen the day when Albertans refuse to buy from us? I voted for you and I feel betrayed. I am Montanan and begging you to start voting and acting like one,” she said.

Political science professor Paul Pope, who teaches at Montana State University-Billings, said he wasn’t speaking on any particular issue, but made a different kind of plea.

“If any of you want to seek public office, I am offering my help to run against these absentee representatives,” he said.

Sheehy ousted former three-term U.S. Senator Jon Tester, 53% to 45%. Downing won handily in the conservative Second Congressional district, capturing nearly two-thirds of the vote. And, Daines was the head of the National Republican Senate Campaign Committee that helped the GOP regain control of the U.S. Senate. He will stand for re-election in 2026.

Elizabeth Sillerud, a pastor at American Lutheran Church, described the immigrant families her congregation has helped. Quoting from the Bible, she ticked off passages that urged kindness and hospitality toward foreigners and strangers.

“How are you all — descendants of immigrants and people of faith — responding to immigrants?” she asked.

Gerald Kessler, a retired school teacher and counselor, said he feared for America’s standing in the world.

“You have turned the world order upside down,” he said. “Russia, North Korea and Israel are now our friends when Canada, the U.K. and Denmark — Denmark, really? — are turned against us? In 1949, George Orwell wrote a book called ‘1984’ and I am sorry to say the only thing he got wrong was the date.”

Megan Cassel of Billings said she worried about how this period in history will be remembered.

“History will not remember that we made America great for all the casual pain and hate,” she said.

Laura McGee, a member of the Blackfeet Nation, said that she had spoken repeatedly to Daines’ office about fraud and waste but hasn’t received an answer.

“We demand our treaties, our healthcare, our education and to protect our tribal colleges and universities,” she said.

University of Montana student Shannon Sheehy had pointed words for Montana’s newest senator.

“I’m Shannon Sheehy — no relation,” she said, as the audience laughed. “I am the only Sheehy with courage to get on stage. I am a student at the University of Montana. There is fear there because the climate studies students fear that their program will be dismantled. Trans students are told they are not safe here. And I am worried about student loans. You are not here tonight, and it is clear that no Republican is willing to stand up.”

She also had a different, more personal message for Sen. Sheehy, who often uses his last name as a recurring joke about pronouns, she and he.

“Also, don’t ever use my name as a transphobic punch line again,” she said.

Ryan Chaddick, a pastor in Billings, spoke about his concerns for those who are neurodivergent.

He said that politicians see neurodivergent folks as those who are broken or needing to fix.

“I live with an invisible disability and don’t always show it,” he said. “Many of our leaders are invisible tonight, but my message is that we are neurodivergent; we are here; and we are watching.”

Dozens of people spoke during the event. As the time wound down, ending before all could make it to the microphones, many left questions in a basket that would be forwarded to the trio of absent leaders.

As the town-hall style meetings have spread throughout the country in the wake of the upheaval of the Trump administration and Musk’s action, Republicans who have shown up to these meetings have faced stiff opposition and anger, even from people identifying as Republican. One of the more notable events happened when Rep. Harriet Hageman of Wyoming appeared at an event in Laramie this week.

That event saw Hageman roundly booed, as she said it was “bizarre” that the audience members were so focused on the federal government. She urged them to calm down and suggested they were “hysterical.”

At a similar town-hall style meeting in Bozeman on Friday, an estimated 350 residents gathered but no member of the Congressional delegation attended.

Republican strategists and leaders have urged Republicans not to show up for the meetings, which is why Racicot appeared to lend some perspective as a Montana leader. Former U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, who was beaten in November by Sheehy, sent a message to the Yellowstone County crowd, too.

In a state where politicians brag about how many miles they put on cars traveling to meet constituents, the lack of participation is something new to Treasure State residents. The Daily Montanan had reached out to Pope, a noted political scientist, prior to the event to ask about the shift and the strategy behind not attending these events.

“By not attending, they simply can avoid saying the wrong thing or just defending their actions or inactions. The risk of making people angry by not showing up may be perceived as less than if they did and add fuel to their fire. They forget, they represent us, and the Constitution requires them to defend their own powers against a president who is trying to usurp both their law making and budgetary powers. I believe they are doing this out of party loyalty,” he said.

Pope did not mince words in his analysis of the dangers that the American democracy faces at this particular moment.

“If Congress and the courts fail to hold the President accountable to the Constitution and the rule of law, then they have no ability to constrain the people to the rule of law. This creates chaos and that kind of chaos often leads to violence. In short, Congress’ inactions to constrain the president could literally mean the end of the union,” he said.

Racicot spoke to the crowd and delivered a message to the crowd as people shouted “Racicot for president.”

He spoke about the crafting of the Constitution and the dangers of defying the rule of law, villainizing judges, and reaping pain by creating emergencies.

“It reveals a complete lack of respect for the rule of law. We have had a democratic republic for 237 years, and yet it is fragile and based on the concept that every American must choose it and practice self discipline to maintain order and a respect for fellow citizens,” Racicot said. “To those who seek to lead us at this existential moment of peril, we will strive to be informed and learn. And we will demand loyalty to the Constitution and the rule of law.”

The event closed after singing “America” twice, but not before Klarich declared the event a successful example of democracy alive.

“You beautifully saw how democracy works. We will not brandish pitchforks, we will join arms and not tear each other down,” she said. “The selfish greed of power-hungry oppressors will not rob us of seeking our dignity and our joy.”

Daily Montanan is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Daily Montanan maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Darrell Ehrlick for questions: info@dailymontanan.com.

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an 2 25

'Incites hostility': Republicans pass bill to require Ten Commandments in Montana schools

master plan 11 4 24

immed after ruling hockey stick dk money? politics by extortion?

ATP ATI montana amicus brief said 2 claims demo BS bullock WHITEHOUSE w/ mccain VS MCCONN AMICUS

11-1179-Senators-Whitehouse-and-McCain-Cert-Amicus

sep by other reps

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12 24 YMAIL

Today, the highest court of Montana agreed: Children have fundamental rights to a safe and livable climate!!

16 Montana youth held their government accountable for harming their fundamental rights to health, safety, liberty, dignity, equal protection of the law, and a clean and healthful environment. Our youth clients’ voices were heard. The Montana Supreme Court has upheld science-based protections for a safe and healthy climate, affirming that fossil fuel pollution is incompatible with children’s constitutional rights and that an environmental life support system includes a stable climate system.

This was a resounding 6:1 victory!

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an 8 24

The cost of living remains a major issue for American voters heading into the November election. And one Democrat hoping to unseat an incumbent Republican may have hit a nerve with her latest campaign ad.

In a new 30-second ad posted to her official X (formerly Twitter) account, Monica Tranel — a plaintiffs' attorney and former Olympic athlete — booked the Airbnb owned by Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Montana), who she is hoping to unseat this fall. She showcased the average-sized home and its mediocre fixtures as an example of Zinke "buying up properties across Montana and jacking up the rent."

"$16,000 a month for this place," Tranel said, before showing a clip of her yelping when the rental's Murphy bed fell out of its wall compartment.

READ MORE:['The company is bleeding cash': GOP Senate candidate's failing business becomes a liability

"Housing profiteers like Ryan Zinke are the reason it's so expensive to live here," she added.

In the ad, Tranel showed an Airbnb listing entitled "Our Montana Retreat at Bay Point on Whitefish Lake," which is a two-bedroom, two-bathroom home listed by a host named "Lolita" (Lolita Hand is Zinke's wife). In the ad, the cost breakdown shows an "accommodation" cost of $16,800, a cleaning fee of $200 and an Airbnb service fee of $1,537 for a month-long stay, with a "monthly stay discount" of $2,520 for a total pre-tax cost of $16,017 for one month.

When attempting to book the rental for the month between March 5 and April 5, 2025, AlterNet found an accommodation cost of $18,600, a $200 cleaning fee and a $732 service fee. However, the "monthly stay discount" now shows $11,904 for those dates, suggesting Zinke or his wife may have adjusted the listing since Tranel released her ad.

"This retreat comfortably sleeps 8, featuring two Murphy beds for added flexibility," the listing reads. "Complete with a fully equipped kitchen, with luxurious furnishings throughout. Welcome to your perfect Whitefish getaway!"

READ MORE:[Busted: GOP Senate candidate running on rural roots grew up 'three miles from a Trader Joe's'

The median home price in Montana is much larger than the national average, with Realtor.com pegging that figure at $624,950 — well above the U.S. median home price of $420,000. And that price can fluctuate depending on which city in the Big Sky State a potential homebuyer is hoping to land. The median home price in Billings is $439,000, while the median climbs to as high as $889,000 in Bozeman. Median monthly rents in those cities are at $1,350 and $2,300, respectively.

According to a January article in the Great Falls Tribune, home prices in Montana have grown by 105% since 2017. The Montana Department of Commerce wrote in a study that homeownership for the state's low-income and middle-class residents is a "near impossibility" given the explosion in housing costs.

Watch Tranel's ad below, or by clicking this link.

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READ MORE:[GOP Senate candidate running on 'bootstrap' narrative got 6-figure investment from his parents

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an 2 24

montana lawmakers are in a standoff with the state’s health department over a package of sweeping changes to child care licensing rules that includes a disputed provision to allow religious exemptions to routine vaccinations for children and workers.

Both Republican and Democratic legislators on the Children, Families, Health, and Human Services Interim Committee voted Jan. 18 to renew their informal objection to the proposed child care licensing rules, which the committee has blocked since November. The vote prevents the state’s Department of Public Health and Human Services from adopting the rules until at least March, when committee members say they will debate a formal objection that could delay the rules’ adoption until spring 2025.

Committee members renewed their objection after complaining that health department officials had not contacted them to discuss revisions to the proposal.

“It’s really quite frustrating to see some necessary rule changes that providers in our communities are really asking for, along with other rule changes that are burdensome and unnecessary,” said Democratic Rep. SJ Howell, the vice chair of the committee, during the hearing. “I do hope we can find a path forward.”

Health department leaders have not decided on a course of action, spokesperson Jon Ebelt said in an email.

“We anticipated that the interim committee would extend its informal objection to our child care rules package and we continue to weigh options,” Ebelt said. “Increasing access to affordable, high-quality child care for hardworking Montana families remains of utmost importance to us.”

Child care providers are frustrated by the delay of what they say are much-needed changes to the child care licensing rules. The package would simplify the licensing process, reduce paperwork required from providers and parents, and create a new type of license for providers who operate outside of school hours, among other changes. Rachel Wanderscheid, the director of the Montana Afterschool Alliance, told the committee that the rules have been in the works for at least three years and that the panel should let them move forward.

“They are good for providers, they are good for families,” she said. “There are a couple of different areas of contention, but I would say overall — 95% — they’re great.”

The most contentious provision in the 97-page rules package would require large child care facilities to enroll children who, for religious reasons, have not been vaccinated. Montana, like 44 other states, already allows religious exemptions from immunization requirements for school-age children. But this proposal would add a religious exemption to its immunization requirements for younger kids in the state.

Health care advocates worry that, if more parents claim vaccine exemptions, levels of community immunity to preventable infectious diseases, such as measles and pertussis, will drop and result in outbreaks.

The health department’s proposal also would eliminate a requirement that child care facilities send home infected and unvaccinated children and staffers when someone at the facility becomes sick with a vaccine-preventable disease.

Health department officials originally proposed the vaccine rules in 2022. The committee blocked the proposal then, too. In response, the department said it would not enforce the ban on religious exemptions.

In November, KFF Health News was the first to report that health department officials had tucked the exemption 45 pages into the draft licensure rules. Department officials said then that the rules package was needed to align with laws passed by the legislature in 2021 and 2023. One law, the Montana Religious Freedom Restoration Act, generally prohibits the state from infringing on a person’s right to the exercise of religion. Another act bans discrimination based on vaccination status.

Mississippi began allowing similar exemptions for schools and child care centers in July following a court ruling that the state’s lack of a religious exemption violated the U.S. Constitution’s free exercise clause. But other states, including California, New York, Connecticut, and Maine, have removed religious exemption policies during the past decade.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has called for elimination of nonmedical vaccine exemptions, arguing they are “inappropriate for individual, public health, and ethical reasons,” according to a 2016 policy statement.

The Montana health department has the option of waiting out the legislative committee’s objections and adopting the rule. An informal objection by the committee can be renewed for up to six months, after which the department can implement the rule. In this case, that renewal option would expire in April.

But if the committee votes to make a formal objection, the rule can be blocked until the end of the next legislative session, in spring 2025, said Maddie Krezowski, an attorney for the legislature. That would give lawmakers a chance to address the law underlying the rule during the session.

The committee also could file its formal objection with the secretary of state to be published with the adoption of the rule, creating implications for any legal challenges that follow. The burden of proof in court would shift from anyone potentially suing the health department to the department itself, said Krezowski.

*KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism.

Daily Montanan is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Daily Montanan maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Darrell Ehrlick for questions: info@dailymontanan.com. Follow Daily Montanan on Facebook and Twitter.

an 5 23

~ data havoc

https://www.alternet.org/Bank/montana-attorney-general-anti-trans/

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Will Supreme Court Reconsider Citizens United? Two Justices Hope So##

Last Friday night at the close of business, she wrote a statement in which she was joined by Justice Stephen Breyer suggesting that the controversial Citizens United case should be revisited.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg knows an opportunity when she sees one.

Last Friday night at the close of business, she wrote a statement in which she was joined by Justice Stephen Breyer suggesting that the controversial Citizens United case should be revisited.

Citizens United held that the government cannot ban campaign spending by corporations in elections.

Ginsburg had voted against Citizens United in 2010, and in Friday's statement she was signaling that a new case might give the court the opportunity to look at Citizens United again.

The statement did not come out of the blue.

Last December the Montana Supreme Court issued an opinion that appears to directly contradict Citizens United, upholding a Montana law that prohibits campaign expenditures by corporations. Opponents of the decision asked the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington to step in and block the Montana decision.

"If Montana is allowed to flout this court's holdings in Citizen's United in such a willful and transparent fashion, respect for the Constitution, the rule of law, and this court will be eroded," wrote James Bopp, a lawyer for plaintiffs challenging the Montana ruling.

The Supreme Court did step in at 6 p.m. on the eve of a three-day weekend to put a temporary hold on the Montana Supreme Court's ruling. Ginsburg agreed with the decision. "Because lower courts are bound to follow this court's decisions," the stay was necessary, she said.

But then she went further.

Ginsburg and Breyer (another Citizens United dissenter) said in a statement attached to the court's order: "Montana's experience, and experience elsewhere since this court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC makes it exceedingly difficult to maintain that independent expenditures by corporations 'do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.'"

She quoted a key part of the Citizens United decision.

Ginsburg, of course, recognizes that the five justices who ruled in favor of Citizens United still sit on the bench.

Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21,who is a fierce critic of Citizens United, explains her strategy.

"If the court takes this case, it will create the opportunity on the highest legal stage to present a compelling case to the Supreme Court that it was dead wrong in the Citizens United decision. That may not convince the five justices who decided the case to change their opinion, but it will be part of building the case that will ultimately prevail that Citizens United was wrongly decided and must be reversed."

Ginsburg references the current state of affairs in elections. She says, "in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates' allegiance " the Court should have the opportunity to explore whether Citizens United "should continue to hold sway."

Even though the Supreme Court granted the temporary stay, it does not mean that the court will automatically take up the case and hold hearings. It could "summarily reverse" and send the case away without merit briefs or arguments.

Tom Goldstein, publisher of the influential ScotusBlog, says that the court could summarily reverse a decision with only five votes, but a different "rule applies when four justices are willing to vote for plenary review - i.e., the "four votes to grant" rule takes precedence over the "five votes can summarily reverse" rule.

While the majority of the Montana Supreme Court distinguished its case from Citizens United by saying that the Montana case "concerns Montana law, Montana elections and it arises from Montana history" Justice James C. Nelson dissented.

Nelson said that while he "thoroughly" disagrees with Citizen's United, "the fact remains that the Supreme Court has spoken."

"Like it or not, Citizens United is the law of the land as regards corporate political speech. There is no 'Montana exception," he said.

"The Supreme Court could not have been more clear in Citizens United v. FEC: Corporations have broad rights under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution to engage in political speech, and corporations cannot be prohibited from using general Treasury funds for this purpose based on antidistortion, anticorruption or shareholder-protection interests," Nelson wrote.

Two years after the Citizens United case, those on opposing sides seemed to be getting even further apart when it came to the issue of campaign finance. But Ruth Bader Ginsburg is laying down a marker.

---

Montana extremism watchdog is warning against the state's Office of Public Instruction's (OPI) recent approval of educational materials from the right-wing organization Prager U, News From The States reports.

Per the news outlet, "Montana follows Florida and Oklahoma in approving the license for PragerU in the state, as first reported by Montana Free Press. However, a public schools official said approval of teaching the controversial content in classrooms will be in the hands of local school board trustees in Montana."

The news outlet notes:

Some examples of PragerU Kids Media Matters listed in the summary of its analysis:*

According to the report, Montana Human Rights Network's Cherilyn DeVries said, at first the video seems reasonable. It sounds like 'Oh, patriotism is good' or you know, 'We all want a healthy economy' or 'We should all get along.' And then they kind of dive into some of the racism and minimize anti-Semitism."

She noted that "in the wake of the pandemic, kids are still struggling and looking for something strong to believe in, and PragerU can seem very convincing," saying, "This seems to be a reasonable position, and then suddenly they are getting partisan and extremist propaganda mixed in with their curriculum at school. This is how these kinds of positions and groups get normalized.”

DeVries emphasized, They cast doubt on the realities of climate change and the brutality of slavery. They make completely false claims about public school curriculum. They dismiss well-documented incidents of discrimination. Organizations promoting misinformation and openly partisan agendas like this have no right to force their way into nonpartisan public schools."

READ MORE:'I refuse':Oklahoma teachers allowed to push PragerU’s 'revisionist propoganda'

---

===

6 23 y mail montana

June 16, the court will hear testimony from Dr. Lise Van Susteren, a psychiatrist and expert on how the climate crisis affects the physical and mental health of youth; Mark Jacobson, Director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University; and youth plaintiffs Olivia and Lander.

https://www.eenews.net/articles/meet-the-kids-behind-the-historic-montana-climate-trial/

https://www.eenews.net/articles/montanas-pro-environment-constitution-goes-on-trial/

[pix of flood house MT

montana’s decision to give the environment a prime perch in its constitution has long served as a model for other states. A landmark trial this week is poised to test the boundaries of the Treasure State’s promises to protect its citizens.

Environmental activists in other parts of the country said they will be paying close attention to the climate case that begins Monday in Montana court.During the trial — the first of its kind in the United States— 16 young people will argue that state officials are violating the Montana Constitution’s right to a “clean and healthful environment” by ignoring climate change and approving fossil fuel development.

That constitutional guarantee may have boosted Montana’s climate case after other similar youth-led lawsuits have stumbled.

"We’ve seen youth bringing cases, but they often have lost at the early stages,” said Delaware Riverkeeper Maya van Rossum. “In Montana, I felt confident that this case would play out differently because Montana has this powerful, constitutional green amendment language.”

Enacted in 1972 amid a national wave of environmental awareness, Montana’s Constitution puts the right to a “clean and healthful environment” at the top of the document — ahead of freedom of religion and speech.

For years, Montana law has been the inspiration for van Rossum, who used similar language in Pennsylvania’s Constitution — enacted one year before Montana’s — to topple a 2012 Keystone State law designed to boost natural gas drilling.

“A lot of state constitutions talk about environmental rights and environmental protection, but beyond Pennsylvania, there was only one other state to lift up environmental rights so they were on par with other fundamental rights,” said van Rossum, who founded Green Amendments for the Generations to advance similar constitutional language across the country.

Van Rossum argued successfully before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2013 that parts of the state’s fracking law violated the state constitution, which requires Pennsylvania to “conserve and maintain” public resources “for the benefit of all the people.”

After her court win, van Rossum said she began studying state constitutions across the country and found only Montana could match Pennsylvania’s environmental guarantees.

“I decided that had to change and we needed that kind of amendment in every state across our nation,” she said. “We could not have defeated [Pennsylvania’s fracking law] without this higher constitutional power.”

She developed criteria for so-called green amendments, wrote a book and began pitching the idea. She said “people’s jaws drop” when she tells them Montana and Pennsylvania are the models for constitutional environmental protections.

Since then, lawmakers in more than a dozen states have pushed for similar constitutional language. New York in 2021 became the third state to approve a robust environmental constitutional amendment.

“We definitely looked to Montana as a model,” said Katrina Fischer Kuh, a law professor at Pace University, who chaired a New York bar association task force that examined constitutional environmental issues.

Hawaii is also considered to have a strong constitutional amendment, though it is structured differently. Kuh noted that the Hawaii Supreme Court recently cited the state constitution’s guarantee of a clean and healthful environment in a ruling that upheld a rejection of a biofuels plant.

Kuh, who sits on the board of Green Amendments for the Generations, said there is considerable interest in Pennsylvania and Montana “and the value that their constitutional environmental rights have had.”

The environmental clauses in the Montana, Pennsylvania and New York constitutions have several features in common, including that they are self-executing, which means they do not require a state legislature to pass laws and enforce remedies. That was a major selling point for New York voters who were worried about contaminants in drinking water that were not covered by existing law, Kuh said.

“It was important to New Yorkers that it be self-executing,” she said. “Having a constitutional right that simply allows for the enforcement of existing statutes would have done no good in the context of emerging contaminants.”

Not every push for a pro-environment state constitution has been a success. Bills that would have put a green amendment on the ballot were introduced by legislators in 12 states this year, including fossil fuel-rich states like Texas, West Virginia and New Mexico.

In some states, those efforts have drawn opposition from green energy developers, who say they fear potential new avenues for lawsuits or permitting hurdles will slow the nation’s shift toward renewable sources. New York’s environmental provision is already showing up in lawsuits over landfills and other issues.

Van Rossum said the energy industry’s fears are overblown.

There has been no “massive onslaught of litigation” in any of the states with environmental protections in their constitutions, she said.

Van Rossum said that because Montana officials have challenged the fact that the state’s constitution doesn’t mention climate change, she tells lawmakers and activists who want to back green amendments in their states to clearly include climate in the language.

Other states are “getting the benefit of learning from what has happened in Pennsylvania and Montana,” she said.

“If you’re clear and explicit, you can avoid the waste of time and resources on these challenges,” she said.

‘Entitlement for citizens’

While van Rossum and others argue that the placement of environmental protections in the Montana Constitution’s bill of rights implies considerable authority, the intentions of the state’s framers have long been a matter of dispute.

Martha Davis, a law professor at Northeastern University who has studied state constitutions, said the provision’s prominence in the document gives Montana courts the authority to find government officials in violation of the law and the power to monitor compliance.

“The placement of an environmental right in that area signals that it’s meant to be something that is enforceable,” Davis said.

Other states have protective language about the environment in their constitutions, she said, but they don’t always extend a cause of action to individuals. In Massachusetts, for example, the state constitution includes rights to clean air and water but no private enforcement mechanism.

Montana’s Constitution, on the other hand, provides “an entitlement for citizens of the state,” Davis said.

Van Rossum said Montana’s constitutional language has been tested “multiple times and found to be protective.”

She pointed to the Montana Supreme Court’s finding in 1999 that pumping arsenic-tainted water from a gold mine into two rivers violated the state’s constitutional right to a clean environment. The operator of the mine had argued that the constitutional protection only applied after actual harm, but the court found that the document was intended to “provide language and protections which are both anticipatory and preventative.”

Former Justice Terry Trieweiler memorably wrote in that case that the Montana Constitution “does not require that dead fish float on the surface of our state’s rivers and streams before its farsighted environmental protections can be invoked.”

The case “made very clear that because of the constitutional language, environmental rights do get that highest constitutional standing and protection,” van Rossum said.

Judge Kathy Seeley — who will oversee the Montana climate trial that begins Monday — has already leaned on the state constitution in an order last month rejecting the state’s efforts to torpedo the 16 young activists’ case.

She wrote that “the Court has repeatedly found that the Framers intended the state constitution contain ‘the strongest environmental protection provision found in any state constitution.'”

‘More aspirational’

Some legal scholars and Montana officials, however, have argued that the state’s constitutional provision is merely a guideline.

John Horwich, a retired law professor at the University of Montana who has written extensively on the subject, has called the provision “a moral statement more than it is a legal statement.”

In a 2001 Montana Law Review article, he called the state Supreme Court’s 1999 decision in the arsenic pollution case an “inadequate effort to address the meaning of Montana’s constitutional environmental provisions” and said the court should withdraw it or “otherwise repudiate it.”

The 16 youth in the climate lawsuit that will be argued starting Monday claim that state officials have breached their “affirmative duty to protect and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana.” They quote a delegate to the 1972 constitutional convention, who called the document the “last bulwark and protection that the people have.”

But state officials involved in the climate case have argued otherwise, pointing in court filings to another section of Montana’s Constitution that says lawmakers “shall provide adequate remedies for the protection of the environmental life support system.”

“Thus, the Legislature is assigned the task of enacting laws to implement the right to a clean and healthful environment,” Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, a Republican, wrote in a court brief.

State Supreme Court decisions since the 1999 arsenic pollution case show that the pro-environment constitutional provision is not as robust as its supporters believe, said Montana state Senate Majority Leader Steve Fitzpatrick, a Republican.

“What has happened is that the courts have come to conclude, more or less, that it’s unworkable and they really can’t develop a body of law around it,” he said.

In 2007, the Montana Supreme Court ruled in a dispute between private landowners and a mining company that if litigants are able to raise common law arguments such as trespass or nuisance, they “don’t get to bring these constitutional claims,” Fitzpatrick said.

The ruling did not expressly block lawsuits that rely on the Montana Constitution’s right to a clean and healthful environment, but it put a damper on those claims, he said.

State lawmakers, Fitzpatrick said, instead view the Montana Constitution’s environmental protections as “more aspirational and something we would want to achieve.”

no lnx 2/29

ft p?

Badge, left, and Lander Busse, teenage plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the state of Montana saying it violates the state Constitution that guarantees ‘the right to a clean and healthful environment.’” Photo Credit: Matthew Hamon forThe New York Times

“A lot of this is just rooted in how many Montanans, including us, live life on an everyday basis, and how ingrained the wildlife and the land and the nature is in who we are.” – Lander Busse, one of 16 young Montanans who have sued their state.

“There have been almost no trials on climate change. This is the first that will get into the merits of climate change and what needs to be done, and how the state may have to change its policies.” – Michael Gerrard, director, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia Law School.

“In the courtroom, the truth still matters.” – Nate Bellinger, lead Montana attorney at Our Children’s Trust.

===

WTF?!

https://montanafreepress.org/2022/11/10/zinke-wins-race-for-montanas-western-u-s-house-district/

https://www.eenews.net/articles/trump-launches-presidential-run-with-climate-fallacies/

e&e

former President Donald Trump is returning to the campaign trail with his energy and environmental legacy in tatters.

Trump’s policies to boost fossil fuel production, roll back environmental standards and stymie international climate action largely have not survived, less than two years after the Republican left the White House. Some were unwound by President Joe Biden, others tossed by the courts and a few nixed by Congress.

But in announcing his third run for president Tuesday, Trump returned to his familiar rhetoric on climate.Namely: ridiculing efforts to reduce planet-warming emissions from oil and gas production, which scientists say is necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.   “The Green New Deal and the environment, which they say may affect us in 300 years, is all that is talked about,” Trump said, inaccurately describing the timeline for climate impacts, which are already occurring. “They say the ocean will rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 200 to 300 years, but don’t worry about nuclear weapons that can take out entire countries.”

Trump accused Biden of ignoring the threat of nuclear war with Russia, predicted gasoline prices would rise and argued that the country would be better off if his own energy policies were still in place. By focusing on climate policies, Biden “has intentionally surrendered our energy independence,” Trump said.

Trump’s rhetoric dismissing the value of any climate action matches how his administration governed, according to experts. He sought to undermine U.S. climate action in general — and unwind the policies of President Barack Obama, who many Republican voters blamed for killing coal jobs.

“For the Trump administration, their regulatory agenda was overwhelmingly negative. And that really was a departure [from past Republican presidents],” said Philip Wallach, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

The administration of former President George W. Bush, for instance, wanted to implement market-based systems to achieve some environmental protections, he said.

“They had an agenda,” he said. By contrast, “the Trump agenda really was overwhelmingly: Roll back Obama regs.”

Trump enters the 2024 campaign as the favorite for the GOP nomination. He’s not a lock, and some Republicans are already turning to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

But some observers think that’s a distinction without a difference. Trump’s influence over the Republican Party is evident in how his challengers have sought to frame themselves: Trumpism without Trump.

“Would it be terribly different under DeSantis? Not necessarily,” said Michael Gerrard, director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. “The two have different styles, but substantively they don’t seem that far apart.”

Trump’s influence over climate policy isn’t totally gone. His appointees continue to constrain Biden’s actions. The Supreme Court is the most dramatic example, where Trump appointed three of the six justices who voted in West Virginia v. EPA to limit the federal government’s authority to regulate carbon pollution from power plants.

With 234 confirmed judges, Trump reshaped the entire federal judiciary to be more hostile to climate action. That’s already had implications for Biden’s policies. It was a Trump appointee — Judge Terry Doughty of the Western District of Louisiana — who first ordered Biden to resume leasing federal lands and waters for fossil fuel development (*_{Energywire}_*, June 16, 2021).

Trump appointees still matter outside the judiciary, too. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission may soon lose its chair — and Democratic majority — leaving Trump’s two Republican appointees in a deadlock with the commission’s remaining two Democrats. Chair Richard Glick, a Democrat, is set to leave by the end of the year after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) blocked his reconfirmation over climate disputes. That could hamstring Biden’s renewable energy agenda (:{_{Energywire}_:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, Nov. 11).

But few of Trump’s climate policies remain intact.

Biden tightened Trump’s lax vehicle pollution standards, one of the most consequential U.S. climate regulations. He rejoined the Paris climate agreement. And he’s made it more difficult for new fossil fuel development on federal lands.

Bipartisan majorities in both the House and Senate voted to strike down Trump’s loosening of methane pollution rules under the Congressional Review Act. And a week after Trump left office, a judge struck down EPA’s “secret science” rule — one of several conservative attempts to constrain federal rulemaking itself.

That rule would have constrained regulators from considering studies that haven’t published their raw data. The Trump administration also sought to exclude some benefits of air regulation from consideration (:{_{Greenwire}_:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, June 9, 2021). Critics also saw Trump’s move of the Bureau of Land Management headquarters to Grand Junction, Colo., as an effort to cull federal workers.

Republicans likely will continue to focus their ire on the federal workforce. Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, newly elected as a Republican representative for Montana, has already signaled that he wants to rein in federal workers.

That’s a prominent focus for Republicans, said Wallach of AEI, because theysee the secret to making agencies more GOP-friendly is “somehow getting a handle on the deep state.”

“That’s definitely going to be of big interest in another Trump administration,” he said, “but probably in a DeSantis administration — or whoever — as well.”

===

april 26, 2023 

Tags: Brian Kolfage Leonard Leo Ted Cruz Tucker Carlson Round-Up Zooey Zephyr Moms for Liberty

===

Rep. Zooey Zephyr will not be allowed on the floor or gallery of the Montana House of Representatives for the remainder of the legislative session and will only be allowed to participate via Zoom after Republicans on Wednesday voted to punish the Missoula Democrat for what they said were her breaches of decorum and House rules.

The House voted 68 to 32 on party lines after providing notice Tuesday it would take action with respect to her conduct. Republicans Casey Knudsen of Malta and David Bedey of Hamilton, who have previously taken votes in support of Zephyr, said they had to support the motion given events of Monday.

The censure motion followed a protest that erupted in the House gallery two days earlier. Majority Leader Sue Vinton, R-Billings, read the motion, which elicited gasps from members of the public watching from a conference room because the gallery was closed to the public.

Vinton said Zephyr had disrupted orderly proceedings and put legislators, pages and others at risk of harm as a result: “Freedom in this body involves obedience to all the rules of the this body, including the rules of decorum.”

Since last week, Speaker Matt Regier, R-Kalispell, has not recognized Zephyr’s attempts to speak on behalf of her constituents after she said Republicans would have “blood on (their) hands” if they supported Senate Bill 99, which would ban gender-affirming care for minors if signed by Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte.

Wednesday, Zephyr spoke prior to the vote and said she was defending democracy and her community, whose art, history and health care she said has been systematically targeted.

“When I rose up and said there is blood on your hands, I was not being hyperbolic,” Zephyr said, who has had friends die by suicide. “I was speaking to the consequences of the votes that we as legislators take in this body.”

:{ Rep. Zooey Zephyr, D-Missoula, gestures to members of the public in the gallery who were being removed for being disruptive, and chanting, “Let her speak” in the Montana House on April 24, 2023 (Photo by Blair Miller for the Daily Montanan).

}:

 Republicans have asupermajority this session, and hardliners in the Freedom Caucus misgendered Zephyr in a statement last Tuesday calling for censure.

Youth suicide rates are high in Montana, and suicide among transgender youth are even higher. A story in the Guardian from December 2022 said more than 50% of transgender and non-binary youth in the U.S. considered suicide in the past year.

Zephyr is the first openly transgender legislator serving in the Montana House.The controversy has drawn national media attention since last week.

In not recognizing Zephyr, Regier has argued she breached decorum in telling Republicans they should be “ashamed” of themselves for voting in favor of SB99, but Zephyr has stood her ground, and constituents and other supporters have backed her.

Monday, an estimated 200-300 demonstrators rallied at the Capitol to support Zephyr, privacy and democracy, and later on the House floor, protestors broke into chanting to let Zephyr speak after Regier again did not recognize her attempt to be heard on a bill.

“Bullshit!” one person yelled. Others soon joined in, chanting, “Whose house? Our house,” and calling on Republican leadership to “let her speak.”

Regier had asked people in the gallery to remain quiet, and after people started chanting, law enforcement forcibly removed people from the area. Seven people were booked and released in the county jail for trespassing.

In response to the calls to allow Zephyr to speak, Regier has said he isn’t silencing Zephyr at all, but rather, maintaining decorum via House rules. He has requested an apology from the freshman representative.

“The choice not to follow House rules is one that Representative Zephyr has made. The only person silencing Representative Zephyr is Representative Zephyr,” Regier said Tuesday.

During the protest that erupted on the floor, lawmakers were moved to the wings of the House floor, and Republicans largely left the chamber. Democrats stayed in the chamber in support of Zephyr.

Zephyr stood mostly alone on the floor watching as people yelled in support of her and aspolice – some of them in riot gear– were brought in to clear the gallery.

:{ Five people who were detained during a protest on Monday, April 24, 2023, sit on the south end of the Montana State Capitol await transport to jail. They declined to provide their names. (Chamrong Pich, YSEALI Professional Fellow, University of Montana Mansfield Center, for the Daily Montanan)

}:

“When my constituents and community members witnessed my microphone being disabled, they courageously came forward to defend their democratic right to be heard — and some were arrested in the process,” Zephyr said in a statement that evening. “I stood by them in solidarity and will continue to do so.”

In the notice of action Tuesday, Regier, Speaker Pro Tem Rhonda Knudsen, and Majority Leader Sue Vinton said they would close the gallery to take up the 1 p.m. motion to “maintain decorum and ensure safety.” The notice said the public could observe the proceeding from the legislative website or a committee room with televised public viewing.

The Montana Constitution says no one will be deprived of their right to observe public bodies unless privacy rights exceed the merits of public disclosure, and it also protects people’s right to participate.

Republican leadership has not responded to a question requesting the legal rationale for the closure. House Democrats opposed it.

“Montana’s Constitution guarantees citizens the right to participate in their government, and that includes the right to observe a floor session from the gallery. It’s disappointing, but not surprising given the GOP’s disregard for Montanans’ rights throughout this session,” said House Democrats.

The Senate gallery also was closed Wednesdsay.

On several occasions starting last Thursday, Democrats protested Zephyr’s lack of recognition on the floor, but all but two or three Republicans have voted to support Regier’s ruling that Zephyr should not be recognized because of what the Speaker says are her violations of decorum rules.

“It’s up to the speaker on who gets recognized and who doesn’t,” Regier told reporters last Thursday. “So, until that trust is restored, and I can assure the integrity of the House is a priority, then I think it’s going to be a pause.”

Tuesday’s floor session was canceled as leadership considered its next steps and looked at the state Constitution and the House and joint rules to see what kind of further action to pursue against Zephyr after Monday’s protests.

Notice

House Republican leadership sent notice to Zephyr and every member of the House of Representatives on Tuesday evening notifying them they would bring a motion related to Zephyr’s conduct on the floor on Monday, when she stood with a microphone in the airas dozens of protesters chanted to “Let Zooey speak.”

The letter said the body would determine whether Zephyr’s conduct “violated the rules, collective rights, safety, dignity, integrity, or decorum” of the House and whether to “impose disciplinary consequences for those actions.”

The letter also said the House gallery would be closed for the day.

Regier, Speaker Pro Tem Rhonda Knudsen and Majority Leader Sue Vinton issued a news release Monday evening in which they called what transpired Monday a “riot by far-left agitators” which they said “endangered legislators and staff.”

On Tuesday, House Minority Leader Kim Abbott, D-Helena, said the floor session would be canceled, which was confirmed about a half-hour later when Regier held a news conference to say Zephyr was not being “silenced” and that “the only person silencing Representative Zephyr is Representative Zephyr.” He left his brief news conference without taking questions from members of the Montana press.

Earlier that morning, Regier had also told the Senate Finance and Claims Committee that an affordable housing bill he is sponsoring, which had been supported by Abbott, that he didn’t know the future of the bill due to “recent events that have happened over in the House.”[ltr]

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drilled

fines boost $150,000 but 10x for organizing (not even on site) 1.5 mil$

treas state...front montana

witchita regional CoC = koch

BP, exxon, API, trade groups; koch reg to lobby ark and alabama...

https://drillednews.com/another-line-3-battleground-free-speech/...

">We’ve covered the ongoing, fossil fuel-backed push to criminalize protest before. In 2017, Oklahoma passed the first of these bills, specifically citing the Standing Rock protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. ThenAmerican Fuel and Petrochemicals Manufacturers (AFPM), the trade group for refineries and petrochemical facilities, crafted sample legislation based on the Oklahoma bill, and pushed the American Legal Exchange Council (ALEC) to adopt it. In 2020 , the Covid-19 pandemic slowed things down a bit, but in 2021 things are speeding up. In January, Ohio passed a bill that’s been debated for years, bringing the total number of states with so-called “critical infrastructure laws”in place to 14....

what’s defined as critical infrastructure varies a bit from state to state, but pipelines are always included; penalties range, too, but across the board these laws increase both the criminal and financial penalties of protest, potentially landing protestors in jail for years with fines up to $150,000. It’s worth noting that all of these states have trespassing and property damage laws already, it’s not as though those things have been going unpunished; the new laws merely make the consequences much tougher. They also add penalties for organizers and organizing entities.

In Montana, for example, a proposed bill would fine organizations up to a million dollars for being involved in protest....All of which comes into play in Minnesota, where the fight against Line 3is underway. There are currently six bills under consideration in the state, packaged into four legislative packages. If any of them pass, not only could protestors be facing stiffer penalties but also the organizations involved, most of them led by Native women, could find themselves slapped with large fines too.

In this interview, researcher Connor Gibson walks us through the origin of these laws, why they’re picking up steam, and what to expect this year...There’s only one state this year that really has a high profile pipeline protest going on, that’s Minnesota.<...>PBS News Hour: 30 years ago this week, the line three pipeline in northern Minnesota ruptured, spilling one point seven million gallons of crude oil into a frozen river near Grand Rapids, Minnesota. If the river had not been frozen, the oil could have seeped into the Mississippi River and contaminated drinking water for millions. Downstream protests have been ongoing to stop construction, rerouting a section of the line three pipeline, which could impact indigenous communities and local waterways.

Amy Westervelt: Hello and welcome to Drilled, I’m Amy Westervelt. You might have heard recently about the...Line 3 pipeline project in Minnesota. Some people are calling it the next Standing Rock because it’s been at the center of protests for years, particularly from indigenous tribes in the area. Activist and author Winona LaDuke has been involved in that fight for seven years. Here she is talking to PBS news about it earlier this month.<...Winona LaDuke: I’m a grandmother, you know, and we’re standing out there. I have six charges against me for this pipeline. And there’s a bunch of us that are facing charges for, you know, trying to be a water protector.

PBS News Hour:LaDuke and others have been part of this seven year fight opposing the project throughout the state and federal review processes....It is the largest tar sands pipeline in the world. This pipeline is the equivalent of 50 new coal fired power plants. So, you know, if you’re trying to save the planet, this is not the way to do it....Amy Westervelt: I couldn’t get to Minnesota myself. I’m not vaccinated yet, so I don’t want to impose myself on the community. Plus I have kids. But also this is one of those stories where I want to hear from local, and particularly Native journalists. I did want to see, though, whether the evolving Line 3 story dovetailed at all with something else I’ve been tracking: fossil fuel-backed anti-protest bills.

I’ve written about this a few times. A bunch of other journalists have done some great reporting on it as well. There’s some good stuff in Huff Post and The Intercept. I’ll drop some links in the show notes for those of you who want to read more.<...These bills have been passed in 14 statesnow and proposed in about half the states in the country. They differ a little bit from state to state, but in general they increase the fines and jail time associated with trespassing dramatically. They often bump trespassing up from a misdemeanor to a felony. And they seem to be specifically targeting organizers and the organizations they work with, with steep penalties for organizing or training activists who then trespass.

So even if the organizer isn’t there at the protest, they can still be charged.And it turns out there are six—six—anti-protest bills making their way through the Minnesota state legislature right now. Some of them are bundled together, so it amounts to four different legislative packages. But still, that’s a lot. And it’s important because on top of cracking down on pipeline protests, there’s growing concern that these bills will be used to quell other sorts of protests, too. And remember, Minnesota was ground zero for last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests in the days after police murdered George Floyd....to talk about Minnesota’s proposals, where these laws came from in general and how they’re moving through the country right now, I asked researcher Connor Gibson to join me.

He’s been keeping tabs on these bills really since they started to pick up steam in the wake of the Standing Rock protests. That conversation coming up right after this quick break...it seems like all of a sudden the pace has picked up again, but I don’t know if that’s just like a feeling or if that’s actually what happened. So I’m curious to see what you’ve seen on that fron...Connor Gibson: Yes, it is the case that the fossil fuel infrastructure, anti protest bills are currently gaining steam in the 2021 legislative sessions of many states. I think the main difference between this year and last year is last year the pandemic really just messed up the strategy. We still saw plenty of bills and laws passed in twenty twenty. But I think it’s it was reduced by the impact of the pandemic, the confusion and cancelations and delays that caused the state legislature. So I suspect what we’re seeing in twenty twenty one is a lot of what companies intended to do last year. They just weren’t able to do as much as quickly as they would have liked. But that said, bills still passed into law during the pandemic in West Virginia and Kentucky. 

And this year we’re seeing more states continue the trend, including some states that failed to pass bills last year, like Illinois, like Alabama. And there’s only one state this year that really has high profile pipeline protests going on, that’s Minnesota, with the Line 3 revamp being done by Enbridge and being hastened along by many other players in the oil industry, so that makes the situation a little bit more relevant and urgent in Minnesota than in other states. I can’t tell you why Arkansas cares so much; its big pipeline resistance kind of happened a couple of years ago with the Diamond Pipeline,...Amy Westervelt: Connor, did that come into play in Oklahoma, too? Is it the same pipeline, the Diamond pipeline?...Amy Westervelt: Yep, it was. I checked. So in early 2017, local newspapers in Arkansas and Oklahoma were reporting that tribes, mostly in Oklahoma, did not approve of the Diamond Pipeline and that several Indigenous activists plan to protest it. There was a lot of hand-wringing about whether this would be the “next Standing Rock.” I’m noticing a theme here. In February 2017, Oklahoma Representative Scott Biggs proposed the anti protest bill that the rest would be based on. Here’s a bit of tape from that session. The person you’ll hear pushing Biggs for answers is Representative Cory Williams...">

Rep Scott Biggs: This issue has definitely risen to the level of concern here in Oklahoma, giving our state status as an oil producer, energy producer and what’s going on in other states. So we took what happened or what bill we passed last year with the critical infrastructure bill regarding flying drones over refineries or Cushing or places like that. And we’ve now expanded that to provide some greater protection for those those critical infrastructures that are necessary for the state to operate. So the proposed committee sub basically lines out. Trespassing helps defines what critical infrastructure is and provides for some enhanced penalties for damage caused by trespassing...

Rep Cory Williams: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When I was looking through some of the definitions on this, and I am. A lot of them I can see, but a couple of them, I thought, well, that’s pretty open ended if we wanted to prosecute it just as railroad tracks. That’s that’s pretty open ended thing to consider to be critical infrastructure that would have this enhanced penalty along with it. I mean, I understand like a power generation facility and substations and things like that. I guess my question is twofold. Do you think that in a couple of these definitions might be a little bit open ended and allow some abusive prosecution? And then secondly, can you tell can you elaborate more on you said that this has risen to the level of a need. Can you describe the incident that there are incidents that have brought to the forefront?...Rep Scott Biggs: Answer your questions, number one. Absolutely not. I do not believe the prosecutors are abusive in their discretion and their role and their function to protect the state. I know you disagree with me on that. And we have for four years.

But no, they’re not abusive in their discretion. No, I do not disagree, you know, agree with you that these definitions are open ended. I believe that if you have an issue with the rail industry, I’m pretty sure the rail industry could demonstrate how they’re vital to Oklahoma. You know, there in Cushing, just south of your district, is extremely vital. The oil gas industry for all the rail pumping in this crude oil, because the pipelines have been protesting, the pipelines have been built. So now they’re using rail to move that oil, to move those products into our state....

Amy Westervelt: The Oklahoma bill was pointed to as the one that all the other bills were modeled after, but not without some help from the fossil fuel industry. In fact, industry reps were there the day Oklahoma’s bill was introduced. Ready to answer questions...Rep Cory Williams: in your last response, I didn’t actually hear you elaborate on the incidents. It was it just the pipeline incident or I don’t think they did damage to property, but obviously There,...I’m pretty sure they did a whole lot of damage to property in North Dakota....Yes, please join if you want to learn more. We actually have a meeting here at four o’clock today with some individuals from North Dakota that are here to talk to us, talk to the industry about what they’re having to deal with, the aftermath of those protesters up there as four o’clock and McBryde as sponsoring that open meeting to the public. But, yes, that is the main reason behind this.

Amy Westervelt: So there’s a bit of background on the origins of these bills. Now back to my conversation with Connor for more.

Amy Westervelt: OK, so actually maybe I’ll have you back up a little bit and give folks a brief sort of history of these bills that, you know, they sort of started to appear with the Oklahoma bill shortly after Standing Rock, and very much were a reaction to that protest.

Connor Gibson: Sure thing. I’m actually going to take us way back in time to September 11th, 2001, terrible day in world history when the World Trade Centers went down and the Pentagon was attacked and the country was in a state of fear and confusion and very much ready to accept some draconian government restrictions in the name of our national security and not having to live through anything like that. Again, there were some industries that were starting to have this kind of conversation and the first more coherent discussion that I saw about critical infrastructure. And upping penalties for people that are trespassing on it or near it or certainly damaging any of the equipment, those conversations, as far as I can tell, were starting to happen in two thousand three, two thousand four. There was a law that was passed in Louisiana, Act one fifty seven, that set in motion the idea that there would be heightened penalties for trespassing on critical infrastructure sites. I don’t think oil pipelines were included efforts in that Louisiana law. They added that in twenty fifteen.

But at that point, some companies, including oil companies, started talking about this. And there is a group that’s similar to ALEC, but not nearly as captured and partisan called the Council of State Governments.It is a bipartisan consortium of state legislators. They do produce some model legislation in a way that’s similar to ALEC. But in addition to working in ways that are much more broad than Alec does a bunch of different kinds of legislative trainings and working groups on various issues, the Council of State Governments produced a a report that was financed by BP and others that embellished upon some of this. And then I couldn’t really tell you what happens between twenty six 2006] and twenty fifteen. As far as my research went, there didn’t seem to be any major events, but twenty fifteen. And this is before standing rock and before the Dakota Access Pipeline was being hotly protested, Louisiana started updating that critical infrastructure law that it had passed in 2004.

Amy Westervelt: Interesting.

Connor Gibson: And. It wasn’t until 2017 the end of the year, December, that theAmerican Legislative Exchange Council ended up creating a model bill, which is just to say that there were some states starting to field test different avenues with which to restrict oil and gas.Protesters specifically including Alabama, including Michigan, including Washington, they just hadn’t taken coherent shape in terms of this play that we’re seeing now where it’s felony level penalties for people who are committing nonviolent acts of trespass, coupled with compounded fines and jail sentences, often for organizations or individuals who are found to be affiliated with those protesters. They don’t have to have trespass themselves. They don’t have to have damaged anything themselves. If they’re affiliated with somebody that did they wind up being charged in the first state to pass both of those things in a pretty clear and coherent way with Oklahoma in 2017. And that’s usually where the story starts in terms of people that are following and talking about the issue.

But I do think it’s important to know that it didn’t just explode randomly or not so randomly, but in reaction to standing rock, there was activity happening in a lot of these states leading up to that point. And in twenty seventeen things really became codified into the strategy that we’ve seen. It was later that year the American Legislative Exchange Council passed its model bill internally within itself at a meeting in December of that year. And there’s really there was some excellent reporting that was done that actually has really helped inform and understand how this trend took off. There was a letter that was written to the legislators who participated in that specific ALEC meeting in December 2017.

They had not yet approved this critical infrastructure felony law template law yet. And the American Chemistry Council, which is chemical manufacturers, lobbyists, and theEdison Electric Institute, which is electric utility lobbyists and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, which is the refinery companies, in addition to Marathon Petroleum and the American Gas Association, which is gas utility companies, they all signed a letter to ALEC’s legislators and said, please make a model bill out of this, do it at this meeting, do it in the next few days. And they listed a bunch of reasons justifying why a law was needed. One of the examples used was the valve turners, a nonviolent protest that occurred in order to stop the development of the Keystone XL pipeline and and the the valve turners example was the only example that was used by these lobbyists to justify these laws that didn’t have to do actually with oil industry, ex employees or people suffering from serious incidents of mental illness, committing acts of sabotage against U.S. infrastructure.

So much like we’re seeing with the Capitol riots, where George Floyd gets murdered by police, a bunch of time goes by. Republicans theorize about ways to punish the people who are reacting in outrage to the murder of black and brown people in this country by police officers. Then the Capitol riots happen. A bunch of white supremacists stormed the Capitol and now we’re going to be passing riot laws to go after Black people, essentially for the sins committed by white nationalists.

This trend in the oil and gas industry struck me as starkly similar there, justifying going after environmental protesters who are largely nonviolent, committing acts of civil disobedience in order to stop the fossil fuel buildout and blaming them with behavior that actually was had nothing to do with environmental activism. Some of the tribal groups in Montana who protested the bill that is currently making its way through that legislature a terrible, terrible bill, maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, max, fines of one point five million dollars.

If you linked to somebody who was arrested under those offenses, it’s an individual protester in Montana would be subject to a max fine of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which is atrocious. That is way bigger than most of these states. The penalties in these states, which are draconian enough, tends to cap around like twenty or twenty five thousand dollars. Montana has upping it to one hundred and fifty thousand, but times ten if you are found to be a supporter of a protester arrested. And of course, Keystone XL cuts through at least one of the reservations in Montana. And I believe that’s the Flathead Tribal Reservation, the LAS. The bill was protested in committee by a lot of different indigenous peoples from different tribal nations and different native organizations, non-profits in Montana, and they were all concerned not only about the ongoing fight over Keystone XL, but just once the laws on the books, who knows what it will be used to punish people for in regard to any future infrastructure project that qualified for critical infrastructure.

Amy Westervelt: And it’s quite broad, right? The definition of critical infrastructure.

Connor Gibson: Yes. And I would have to look at Montana’s definitions again, because all of the states are a little bit different. But roughly following the trend that was set forth by the state of Oklahoma and by the American Legislative Exchange Council is model bill. It includes utility infrastructure, electric transmission lines. It includes pipelines of all kinds. That includes water infrastructure. Some of them include dams. The Louisiana leveeswas attempted to be added to the definitions last year, which failed gas compressor stations, refineries, export terminals. Pretty much everything you can think of that is dirty energy infrastructure qualifies as critical under this bill. Right.

Amy Westervelt: Right. I do wonder how much some of these laws could be used to tamp down on various other types of protests like the Black Lives Matter protests, some new research done, and I’m not sure if it’s out there yet or not around some groups that have been looking at what Gibson Dunn has done in response, both to indigenous tribes in Ecuador suing Chevron and to the standing rock protests against their client energy transfer partners and using RICO. I definitely hear echoes of in these in these anti protest laws, especially the recent ones where they’re going after the quote unquote organizers there.

Connor Gibson: It…the plot thickens, Amy, because in the bill that’s currently being considered in Kansas and it has already passed theSenate in Kansas, it actually has a hearing in the House tomorrow, which is March 17th. That bill includes a RICO provisionand what I believe is the first overlap between corporations using racketeering, anti mafia laws to go after their critics or attorneys representing plaintiffs that inconvenience them or whatever it might be, an anti protest, the fossil fuel anti protest laws specifically, I believe RICO is also starting to creep into the broader trend of riot redefinition and protesting laws where you find the lowest common the common denominator way to accuse somebody of rioting and then you get to charge them with very, very serious felonies. And if some of these states succeed, potentially racketeering implication, as well as if civil disobedience is organized crime.

Amy Westervelt: In very simple terms, that is the attempt that’s underway: it’s to redefine civil disobedience as organized crime. And people should know that the RICO laws were created to to deal with the mob.

Connor Gibson: Yeah, I’m sorry. Just like the more extreme. And I don’t even want to use that word because there’s no explosions or violence or threats involved. But like an activist cutting a fence or throwing a carpet over the razor wire and trespassing or even shutting off a pipeline valve, I’m sorry. That’s not like walking into somebody’s store and breaking their kneecaps for not paying their dues that month or even nearly as threatening about that.

Amy Westervelt: Do you have a count of how many states have enacted these laws and then how many are sort of in play right now?

Connor Gibson: I do. OK,there are a total of 14 states that have so far passed the fossil fuel infrastructure, anti protest bills since twenty seventeen. The most recent one was in 2021 two thousand twenty one. But the the fight actually started years previous, and that’s Ohio. They just passed a law in January. That bill carried over from the previous year. After that, we’ve seen bills pop up in Minnesota for a grand total of six bills. I don’t know, they’re just really disorganized or what. Some of them are concurrent. So it’s really it’s basically four legislative packages in Minnesota in the form of six bills.

Amy Westervelt: That’s really interesting to me in the context of the Line 3 protests right now. Is there any sense that like the number of proposals or the movement on them recently is connected to some sort of reaction to that protest?

Connor Gibson: That’s a great question. I’m going to say my gut tells me yes, because in 2018 there was only one bill. In 2019 there were two bills. And I believe they were they might have been concurrent.And then 2020 there were also two bills. And then suddenly this year are six. There’s also there’s a little bit of difference between some of them. Some of the bills are more focused on the felonies for the individuals, including the loophole that you’re trespassing on a fossil fuel infrastructure facility with the intent to impede or inhibit or and another bill with the intent to disrupt the operation.

I’m going to go ahead and say a aggressive prosecutor would slap me with a felony charge if I was sitting in front of a road because that would impede or inhibit the operation of the facility or disrupt the operation. So that’s like that’s where the loophole is. You’re right. They frame this as if it’s about property damage, as if it’s about violence. Guess what? All of that’s already illegal everywhere it has been. Right.All of this nation’s recent history and all of the state’s recent history. You can’t hurt people. You can’t blow stuff up. You can’t damage property, you can’t trespass. There are laws on the books to deal with those things. So what these bills really aimed to change, then the mills to the Minnesota bills illustrated well is that there is a loophole put in there that if you’re disrupting or interrupting the facility in some minor way, you’re on the hook for the same level felony offense that is normally reserved for somebody who is abusing or hurting another human being.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah, I think that’s a that’s a good way to put it. And an important thing for people to understand that it’s not like in the absence of these bills, there has just been a blanket permissiveness for trespassing and property rights.

Activists protesting you know, the people at Standing Rock in addition to getting blasted by the cops, water cannons and freezing cold temperatures and attacked by dogs and having their arms blown off by concussion grenades and stuff like that, like the people who are arrested, like trespassing in those situations. They do without having to get charged with things. And they do end up having to fight that out in court. And I know that for skeptics of like kind of protest culture and this like perhaps what’s seen as a really self-righteous liberalism to stand up for what’s right, that really irks some people. But I don’t think they think about how the people who engage in acts of civil disobedience really have a lot of shit to deal with after that happens. Or I’ll use myself as an example. Right. Like people are annoyed that somebody like me, this college educated white kid like goes and protest the Keystone XL pipeline in 2011 at the White House, which I did, there was a mass civil disobedience. We all got arrested. We went to jail.

We didn’t have to go to a cell. We just had to pay our hundred dollars and forfeit and we got to leave, you know, but in many of these situations, that is not what happens. You go to jail, you get held, you get out, you have to talk with lawyers. You have to show up for court hearings. Several months to several years of your life is potentially disrupted. Even if you don’t end up going to prison or paying thousands of dollars in fines, you would lose a lot of time and you lose a lot of money in order to take that principled stand. So it’s not just a bunch of spoiled kids that don’t have to deal with any consequence. And they’re really abusing, you know, major loopholes in our legal system. They are accepting those consequences. Right. Or the kind of higher calling and saying no more fossil fuel infrastructure is not OK. More oil spills are not OK, more disruption to the sovereignty of indigenous nations. Treaties we have violated over and over and over again is not OK.

Amy Westervelt: [00:27:22] OK, so you were saying there’s Minnesota, there’s four different legislative packages that are kind of in play in Minnesota.

Connor Gibson: Right. And they’re all aimed in differing ways that felonies for individual violators as well as going after people affiliated with them as well. So you don’t even necessarily have to commit the crimes. And this is so if you’re a Sierra Club or a Greenpeace or any other organization, maybe the American Civil Liberties Union and you’re you’ve been on email threads with these activists, it raises the question, are you liable for the crimes they commit? Like a fool I met could go do something like spray paint, a piece of equipment.

And, you know, that just strikes me as exceptionally unfair that I can possibly held be held to account for that thing that I didn’t give permission to be affiliated with and I wouldn’t have recommended and yadda, yadda. So that’s a big problem with in Kansas. There is a similar bill, as I believe I said earlier, that is part. Out of one of the legislative chambers and it has a hearing tomorrow, there are some groups locally opposing it, Kansas Interfaith Action as testified against the bill, the Kansas Sierra Club has testified against the bill and showing up against them, of course, is the American fuel and petrochemical manufacturers, as well as the Wichita Regional Chamber. I’m going to go ahead and guess much means Koch Industries and Cessna. I don’t know who else in Wichita is a particularly large company. And I’m going to go ahead and guess that Cessna doesn’t care about this law. And the lobbyist did mention we’ve heard a lot from our members about this one. And I was like, yeah, I bet I can tell you which one.

Of the other bills, there’s one in Montana. That law is being supported again by trade associations that represent many of the usual suspects, TransCanada, Enbridge, Exxon Mobil. It’s the but it’s being done through groups that are not quite so, obviously. So in Montana, one of the groups that is supporting the anti protest law is called the Treasure State Resource Association of Montana State Resource Association, it turns out, represents oil and gas companies, among among others. I saw the American Chemistry Council is in there. Enbridge andExxon Mobilare members in Montana Petroleum Association, also supporting the bill in Montana. And I believe it’s pretty much the same oil companies that are the members of the Montana Petroleum Association as well. The other states that are considering bills, Alabama and Arkansas. In Alabama, that bill has not yet moved. Arkansas’s bill has passed in the House and it’s working its way through the Senate. I could not tell you in either of those states who is advocating for it. If those states disclose that information, I haven’t been able to find it. They certainly don’t disclose it. And lobbying registrations, although I can’t say that Coke KOCH] is registered to lobby in both of those states. I noticed.

And then the the kind of outlier, the state that I’m afraid will take a little too much interest for some of the wrong reasons is Illinois because a Democrat is sponsoring the bill in Illinois, and that has been the situation in Illinois since the beginning. So in Illinois as well as Wisconsin, there has been a. A different strategy than has been used in most other states, and that is the oil industry appeals to local trade unions, to the messaging in their hands. This is exactly what happened in Wisconsin. I’m not sure about Illinois. The American Petroleum Institute put messaging and talking points into the hands of the local trade unions who then lobbied Democrats in the legislature and championed the law that passed in Wisconsin and Illinois.

I suspect the trend is similar because just in the last 36 hours, in addition to Enbridge and theAmerican Petroleum Institute and some Illinois based lobbying organizations, there are a lot of trade unions that have just signed on in support of the bill in Illinois. They’re supposed to be hearing today. And I heard that this bill was taken out of the calendar for discussion. I don’t I don’t know why I don’t have more details, but, yeah, it means I have no idea what direction the bill is heading towards. I don’t know if that indicates some sort of conflict or stall or if it’s just a there was some procedural reason why they delayed. But I would keep my eyes out for Illinois. They tried to pass a law in twenty nineteen. It went through one of the legislative chambers, but not the other. And and I’m sure they’re going to try and fight like hell again this year to get a law on the books, because this is a third year in the row that they’ve they’ve tried pushing bills in Illinois. [end]

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A group of 13 youth climate activists has filed a lawsuit accusing their home state of Virginia of backing fossil fuel projects that contribute to the climate crisis in violation of their constitutional and public trust rights. The plaintiffs are aged 10 to 19 and are represented by Our Children’s Trust. In related news, another group of young activists announced their historic climate trial against the state of Montana will begin next February.

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an hunter kos 10 21

Here's an entire New York Times story about a genuinely bad, malevolent person. It's not framed that way, of course, because Neutrality, but the Times tossed a reporter in the direction of Great Falls, Montana, to give us another report from the Trumpian underbelly of America and once again, it's a paranoid, conspiracy-obsessed, strategically dishonest sh-tshow that explains a lot about why the True Americans nesting comfortably in Trumpism have steadily been gravitating toward fascism as a matter of natural course.

The Times story is a long explainer about Rae Grulkowski and her quest to keep local civic-minded Montana residents from getting a token amount of federal funds by designating a chunk of the state a "national heritage area." It's a largely meaningless designation that provides minor federal funds to help preserve local points of interest and boost history-minded tourism.A bunch of Montana folks got a bee in their bonnets about it, part of the general True American suspicion that the federal government is evil and just out to trick people (thanks again, Ronald Jackass Reagan), and it became the local version of critical race theory, and hydrocorto-whateveritall, and ingesting horse dewormer because some friend of a friend of a cousin of an Online Influencer said horse paste cures gunshot wounds or whatever the latest version of that theory is.

But here's the thing: Rae Grulkowski—hero of the paranoid Montana class and partial impetus for Montana's reporter-attacking Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte's theatrical ban on the federal government from creating any such heritage designation in the state—attacked the civic-minded proposal by lying her ass off, constantly, inventing or perpetuating a web of fabricated claims that the tourism designation would, in the Times'telling, "forbid landowners to build sheds, drill wells, or use fertilizers." It would ban septic systems! It would raise taxes!

And it was all utter bullshit. As the Times noted and gave evidence of, Grulkowski was lying about all of it.

It was a local campaign dependent on crafting outright propaganda against something she didn't personally like, disseminating it to people who didn't give a damn whether it was true or it was false, rallying a crowd of like-minded liars to attack the opposition with furious disinformation, and turning it into the nextFarm Bureau and Republican paranoia campaign in which allies compared the National Heritage Area program to Hitler and nobody involved can stammer their way through any plausible defense of the nonsensical claims they're making.

So then, what are we to make of this? Well, Grulkowski and her allies are flat-out liars, that's for sure. They have disseminated provably false information as a political strategy, and local Republican (Trump) voters snorted it all up like ideological cocaine.Team Lying Bullshit has done its level best to make the lives of those evil civic do-gooders miserable.

It's only in the very last quarter of the story that we get to the kicker that explains all the rest of it: Rae Grulkowski is apparently a "QAnon" devotee, according to The New York Times. She claims to believe in conspiracies about "child trafficking that leads to everything," and believes that Donald Trump won the November election even though he most demonstrably got flattened, and thinks Black Lives Matter supporters were the actual culprits behind the Jan. 6 insurrection, and there we go. She appears to be someone who read a lot of hoaxes on Facebook and turned them into a personality, just one of a new "movement" of Americans radicalized by a single company's eagerness to monetize the nation's most deep-seated paranoias.

Well of course someone who believes an assortment of the most malevolent, antisemitic, racist, pro-fascist conspiracy theories being passed around the internet is going to be similarly loose when inventing anti-government reasons to oppose whatever her neighbors are doing. But—and this is the crux of the Times story and the lesson to be taken from all of this—it worked.

It worked, because of course it did. The propaganda effort was overwhelmingly successful, enough to gain the support of conservative state lawmakers who did not give a damn whether the claims were true. Nobody involved appears to have given a damn whether they were promoting lies. The invention of propaganda was the core strategy: taking a minor civic issue and turning it, through lies, into a new conservative touchstone.

The lying part is the most consequential "value" at play here. "Heritage" designations have nothing to do with any of it. Nobody gives a flying damn whether or not local historic landmarks get new plaques or whether they don't. The important part is for local Republicanism to stick it to anyone who tries to do an inch of good by inventing whatever lies are necessary to do it.

In battling a largely meaningless recognition of the area's rich history, Grulkowski was following the playbook of Steve Bannon, and Stephen Miller, and Donald Trump himself. It is the fascist playbook: If the facts are against your beliefs, ignore those facts and lie. Create new "facts" that will galvanize the movement despite their fraudulence; rather than seeking the consent of the governed by explaining why the movement's ideas will solve current problems, manufacture a new reality in which the "problems" are whatever hoaxes the movement needs to produce in order to justify taking whatever actions the movement wants to take.

We are in a world of danger when flagrant political lies can so swiftly result in success rather than condemnation. That is the endgame to all of this. If a government can be established that governs the nation through fraud—and it is happening, in each Republican-held state using provably false election hoaxes to justify new voting restrictions, and in the establishment of Facebook as the nation's new news source, one in which false information is treated by the company as marketable entertainment rather than a poison, and in the pre-disgraced thug of a Montana governor adopting ananti-government propaganda campaign to attack a federal government program instituted by Ronald Reagan himself as a supposed secret attack on True American rights—then elections are already irrelevant.

Central to battling all of it, however, is to recognize that Rae Grulkowski disseminated lies in order to attack an action she didn't like; she did so while wallowing in an absolute sea of other lies. She succeeded in mustering a populist revolt against better people and better ideas by lying, outright, about the thing she was fighting against.Now, says the Times, she has further political ambitions, given that her equally toxic and cowardly neighbors proved to be so furiously supportive of her campaign of lies.

This is a person who should be scorned. This is a person who should be shunned, boycotted, considered a crackpot, and treated with universal contempt. This is a person who is attacking democracy itself, by attacking it at its root premise: Whatever civic challenges are presented to the voters, they must be based on truth. Democracy is meaningless, is absolutely meaningless, if each election is a competition not of competing solutions to civic problems but of the inventiveness of each campaign in creating new hoaxes and convincing the governed to believe them.

Instead, we get national debates over whether some of the most infamously dishonest people in government have been treated too roughly if private restaurant owners do not want to serve them. The pressure is not to shun liars as anti-American, anti-democracy propagandists seeking to manipulate public opinion through rampant dishonesty, but whether we are allowed to direct any scorn their way at all.

How did it come to this?

The short answer might be Bernard Goldberg. Goldberg was one of those who made a name for himself insisting that American journalism was intrinsically "biased" against conservatives, a claim which is now taken as a central movement tenet because it fits pleasingly with every other movement theme of displacement and victimhood. The evidence for this "bias," even decades into the claims, was almost always an assertion that because conservative ideologues were not given exposure equal to actual issue experts, it amounted to oppressing the conservative "side" of an argument.

Ideological claims, in other words, were being shortchanged because journalists were looking to scientists, medical experts, historical data, and other providers of hard facts rather than letting lobbyists, think-tank heads, and other professional political provocateurs speak with equal authority and at equal volume.

From there conservatism moved to a very successful crusade to reformulate "news" so that facts were always debatable, so long as there was a single professional spinner who could be paid to claim they were. The cable networks, especially, transitioned from that into new forms that rarely gave scientists or other experts a voice at all, preferring instead to pit one pre-determined ideologue against another for orchestrated spats in which nobody could beproven to have lied because the segment would be over before any actual journalist or expert could even phone the studio.

We moved on to public bellowing about "the elites must respect my beliefs," where "beliefs" consisted of believing that climate scientists were sabotaging world government or, eventually, that livestock dewormer was a miracle cure for a pandemic hospitals themselves could not keep up with.

But it was the Goldberg camp that insisted that liars and propagandists should not just be heard from but also treated with respect.That if there was a conflict between facts and conservatism, then it was biased to highlight one over the other. It was treated as a given, from the beginning, that conservatism was a counter to scientific and policy expertise. It was treated as a given that conservatism was the rightful and just opposition to such expertise.

We have reached that conservative promised land. All of the news now follows the formula of pitting ideologue against ideologue, the facts wedged in somewhere—or not, depending on the journalist—but with no reproach given to those who insist that the facts are something else. The paid propagandists and crafters of outlandish, impossible lies are now treated with impeccable respect by the media. The American people are taught to treat professional liars as dignified combatants—nay, true Americans, speaking powerful emotions in the face of uncomfortable, irritating data.

And, after hounding media relentlessly into giving respect to professional fraudsters, the conservative movement itself has now shed from itself everything but the professional fraudsters. The lies are the movement; the movement is defined by the lies, and shifts as rapidly as required to adopt new ones. tucker 1/6 false flag]

You need not look at anything beyond the last election to see that. Respecting, or actively propagating, the anti-American hoax that claims Republicans secretly "won" the last election only to have it stolen by invisible forces, is now a requirement inside the so-called "conservative" movement.Trump lied constantly, about everything, in genuinely malevolent ways, and he was a product of both Bernard Goldberg's insistence that sneering know-nothings be given media respect and the shouter who finally erased all further attempts to pretend Republicanism was anything but a collection of spite-based antipathies and hoaxes.

But Rae Grulkowski is, genuinely, a bad person. Steve Bannon is a liar, a propagandist, and a hack. Stephen Miller is a white nationalist who crafts propaganda demonizing immigrants to justify brutality against them. Mitch McConnell is a relentless liar, one who flaunts his absolute contempt for whatever ideal he blustered about a month, a week, or a day beforehand in order to invent an entirely opposing one. Sarah Huckabee Sanders promoted fraudulent information as a professional, and ideological, career move. Donald Trump is quite possibly the most loathsome sack of malignant neuroses to ever have shuffled through Washington and that is saying something.

Creating hoaxes for the purpose of manipulating public opinion is contemptible, evil behavior. It deserves fury. It deserves the scorn of the entire nation; journalism, and political media especially, should have such seething contempt for the propagandists that exposure of each lie and value judgments about those that perpetrate them should be, as they once were, the profession's central ambition.

It is not enough to point out that this or that person is fabricating a hoax in order to deceive their fellow Americans into holding a new political position. Those that do so are enemies of democracy. They are, in the true sense of the word, anti-American. They are frauds. They are doing direct harm to their neighbors, their towns, their states, their nation. They are ideological soldiers seeking to do harm to the government by taking, from the public, the ability to use their vote as means of steering that government. They are anti-civil rights. Their propaganda is stealing democracy by stealing votes by stealing political debate itself so that voters simply cannot discern what government is doing, what the parties are doing, what the issues are, where the dangers are, and where the future catastrophes lie.

These are all bad, evil, rotten people who need to be shunned with ferocity. They do not warrant respect. They do not warrant civil treatment. They do not warrant malicious burbles about how dare Americans seek consequences for their fraud; newspaper editors should be devoting themselves to identifying each face and name and lie and treating them as public enemy, not both sides denizen.

These are the footsoldiers that will end democracy, if we cannot throw them from our civic spaces and treat them with the contempt that hoax promoters deserve. These are not the days of tar and feathers, but they can certainly be the days of belittlement, consequences, and public reproach. These are the vapid, self-serving cowards whose lies spur domestic terrorists to violence, and who kill Americans by the thousands by pushing fraudulent information about a deadly pandemic. These are not people who lie of happenstance or impulse, but people who specifically seek to bend government through a pattern of anti-American deceit.

There is no neutrality to be had in reporting like this. Someone who manipulates American politics by lying to the American public is acting with malevolence; reporters should feel a civic duty not just to expose them, but to strip them of the usual deference and pleasantries. Treat propagandists with more scorn than those who craft financial hoaxes to prey on the elderly, or those who hide the deadly effects of a product so that they may sell more of them. The propagandists are attacking the soul of our very democracy. To hell with them. Shun them and those who enable their plots out of greed, ideology, or apathy.

Conservatism has now reached Bernard Goldberg's promised land in which facts and malevolent fictions are treated as equals. The movement itself has become a mass of hoaxes cowering under a red hat. If it cannot be condemned as a fraud, it will grow in power until it strips all truth from around us.

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https://www.adl.org/resources/reports/the-constitutional-sheriffs-and-peace-officers-association-cspoa-and-richard-mack

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report

Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) and Richard Mack: How Extremists Are Successfully Infiltrating Law Enforcement

Constitutional Sheriffs

Sections

Key PointsIntroductionThe Emergence of Richard MackMack’s Public Speaking Crusade - Including White Supremacist VenuesRichard Mack and Indoctrinating Law EnforcementMack and CSPOACounty Membership'Training' Law EnforcementPolicy Recommendations

FULL REPORT

KEY POINTS

The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) is an anti-government extremist group whose primary purpose is to recruit sheriffs into the anti-government “patriot” movement.

CSPOA is led by Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff who gained celebrity on the right in the 1990s after suing to overturn a prominent gun control measure, the Brady Law, especially after the Supreme Court ruled largely in his favor.

The central tenet of CSPOA, borrowed from the anti-government extremist sovereign citizen movement, is that the county sheriff is the ultimate authority in the county, able to halt enforcement of any federal or state law or measure they deem unconstitutional.

Mack primarily marketed this (false) claim as a way to oppose gun control measures, but in 2020-21, he has also used it to exploit anger and frustration over federal and state measures to combat Covid-19.

Mack crisscrosses the country for speaking engagements where he promotes himself, CSPOA and his county sheriff thesis.

Increasingly, he seeks out law enforcement audiences, billing his extremist events as “trainings.”

In a disturbing development, in 2021, Mack was able to win official state approval for his “trainings” in Montanaand Texas, which allows attendees to receive continuing education credit for attending Mack’s events.

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https://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/anti-union-agent-says-he-didnt-coordinate-with-candidates/article_e96313fb-3cd2-5946-b911-4b733960bb1a.html

Anti-union agent says he didn't coordinate with candidates

MATT VOLZ Associated Press Apr 5, 2016 Updated May 13, 2016

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HELENA – A former Right to Work operative whom Montana officials allege ran shadow campaigns for select Republican candidates says in a sworn statement that he never helped candidates in exchange for their support of anti-union policies once they were elected.

Christian LeFer's affidavit was filed as part of a federal lawsuit Monday, three days after a jury found Rep. Art Wittich coordinated with LeFer and the National Right to Work Committee in 2010. Wittich faces possible fines and expulsion from the Montana Legislature, and the case's outcome could affect a pending lawsuit by the state against LeFer, his wife Allison and several Right to Work-affiliated groups.

The Wittich case also could help the state defend itself against a federal lawsuit challenging Montana's low campaign contribution limits. A federal appeals court has said Montana must show the limits are preventing corruption, and Commissioner of Political Practices Jonathan Motl points to the Wittich case and others like it as evidence of political corruption.

The statement by LeFer was filed in the lawsuit challenging the contribution limits.It is the first public response he's made to the allegations that he illegally coordinated with 14 Republican candidates in exchange for their loyalty to Right to Work's cause, and the causes of affiliated pro-gun, pro-resource development, anti-tax and anti-abortion groups.

In his statement, LeFer said he only referred candidates to his wife's print shop, Direct Mail and Communications, and he mailed issue ads to voters from Montana Citizens for Right to Work independent of the candidates. His organization, Montana Citizens for Right to Work, was independent of the National Right to Work Committee, and his wife's print shop operated independently of his organization, he said.

"At no time did I make an arrangement, explicit or implied, with a candidate that, in exchange for any efforts to get them elected, they would act in an official government capacity at my or MRTW's direction as a public official," LeFer's affidavit said.

The services LeFer and his wife's printing company offered included a direct mail program, campaign consulting, voter data, opposition research and website design, according to Motl. Right to Work-affiliated groups also blanketed voters with letters supporting their chosen candidates and attacking their election opponents.

It is illegal in Montana for candidates to take corporate in-kind contributions and to coordinate their campaigns with corporations. Exchanging those services for a pledge of fealty from the candidates amounts to corruption, Motl alleges.

A former LeFer staffer testified during Wittich's trial that LeFer's campaign operation did just that. Candidates such as Wittich were required to sign a survey showing they backed the group's principles before they were offered the package of services LeFer called "the works" or "Smart Simple Campaigns," former Right to Work staffer Sarah Arnold said.

LeFer disputed that account, saying he didn't recall using the term "the works," and if he did, he probably meant his wife's mail program.

Motl on Tuesday dismissed LeFer's statement, pointing to the jury's verdict finding Wittich took $19,500 worth of unreported corporate contributions from the LeFer-led groups. LeFer's words are meaningless until he appears in Montana where he can be cross-examined, Motl said.

"I don't believe a word that Christian LeFer is saying, and I would welcome the opportunity to have him say what he has to say in a forum where the truth can be explored," Motl said.

LeFer has repeatedly declined or not responded to requests for interviews.

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https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/25/keystone-xl-protests-pipeline-activism-environment

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Keystone XL: police discussed stopping anti-pipeline activists 'by any means'

This article is more than 7 months old

Revealed: records show law enforcement has called demonstrators possible ‘domestic terrorism’ threats

Demonstrators against the Keystone XL pipeline walking to a federal courthouse in in Rapid City, South Dakota, in June.

Demonstrators against the Keystone XL pipeline walking to a federal courthouse in in Rapid City, South Dakota, in June. Photograph: Adam Fondren/AP

Sam Levin and Will Parrish

Published onMon 25 Nov 2019 06.00 EST

US law enforcement officials preparing for fresh Keystone XL pipeline protests have privately discussed tactics to stop activists “by any means” and have labeled demonstrators potential “domestic terrorism” threats, records reveal.

Internal government documents seen by the Guardian show that police and local authorities in Montana and the surrounding region have been preparing a coordinated response in the event of a new wave of protests opposing the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which would carry crude oil from Canada to Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska.

Civil rights organizations say the documents raise concerns that law enforcement is preparing to launch an even more brutal and aggressive response than the police tactics utilized during the 2016 Standing Rock movement, which drew thousands of indigenous and environmental activists opposed to the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) to North Dakota.

At Standing Rock, law enforcement organized repeated rounds of mass arrests and filed a wide array of serious charges in local and federal courts against activists. Police also deployed water cannons, teargas grenades, bean bag rounds and other weapons, causing serious injuries to protesters.

The documents are mostly emails from 2017 and 2018 between local and federal authorities discussing possible Keystone protests. They show that police officials are anticipating construction will spark a sustained resistance campaign akin to the one at Standing Rock and that police are considering closing public lands near the pipeline project.

The new records have come to light as the Keystone pipeline project has overcome numerous legal hurdles with help from the Trump administration, and as the project’s owner, TC Energy (formerly TransCanada), is moving forward with initial construction efforts.

Among the major revelations in the documents:

Officials at a 2017 law enforcement briefing on potential Keystone XL protests said one key tactic would be to “initially deny access to the property by protestors and keep them as far away [from] the contested locations as possible by any means”, according to an email summary from a US army corps of engineers security manager in Nebraska in July 2017.

Officials with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said in 2017 that the bureau had 10 armed officers in Montana and was prepared to “work with local [law enforcement] to deny access to federal property”. In 2018, army corps officials were also in discussions with the Montana disaster and emergency services department to discuss ways to “close access” to lands near the pipeline route, including areas typically open for hunting and other activities.

A “joint terrorism task force” involving the US attorney’s office and other agencies, along with federal “counterterrorism” officials, said it was prepared to assist in the response to protests and a “critical incident response team” would be available for “domestic terrorism or threats to critical infrastructure”.Authorities have also pre-emptively discussed specific potential felony charges that protesters could face, noting that a “civil disorder” statute was used to prosecute activists at Standing Rock.

Authorities have been preparing for possible protests in the Fort Peck area, home to a Native American reservation and indigenous people opposing the project.

“There is a lot of muscle behind this effort to make sure that Keystone is constructed,” said Alex Rate, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana, which obtained the documents through records act requests and shared them with the Guardian. “There are historically marginalized communities, primarily indigenous folks, who have grave concerns about the impact of this pipeline on their sovereignty, their resources, their religion and culture. They have a first amendment right to assemble and make their viewpoints heard.”

Revealed: how the FBI targeted environmental activists in domestic terror investigations

Read more]

Remi Bald Eagle, intergovernmental affairs coordinator of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe, which is located along the pipeline route, said the police buildup was part of a long history of armed subjugation of native people in the region.

“This is an experience of the tide of Manifest Destiny still coming at us,” Bald Eagle said, referring to the 19th-century belief that US settlers had the right to expand across the continent.

The files follow repeated revelations that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have investigated environmental groups and leftwing activists as possible “terrorists”.

Opponents of the Keystone XL oil pipeline are seen demonstrating in sub-freezing temperatures last month in Billings, Montana.

Opponents of the Keystone XL oil pipeline are seen demonstrating in sub-freezing temperatures last month in Billings, Montana. Photograph: Matthew Brown/AP]

Keystone XL was rejected by the Obama administration and then revived by Donald Trump shortly after his inauguration in 2017. The $8bn project has been subject to multiple legal challenges, including over the environmental review process, but pre-construction efforts are now under way.

Opponents of Keystone XL have warned about the environmental and cultural impact of the project for a decade – concerns that came into sharper focus last month after the existing Keystone pipeline, which follows a similar route, leaked 383,000 gallons of tar sands into a swath of North Dakota wetlands.

The new Keystone records, which come from a number of government agencies and were released after a protracted legal battle, also show that officials have specifically met with police involved in the Standing Rock response to discuss “lessons learned”. North Dakota police officials told law enforcement prepping for Keystone that one of their biggest mistakes was their failure to keep activists far away and shut down access to nearby lands.

In one 2018 BLM document, labeled “KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE PUBLIC SAFETY ISSUES”, officials discussed the “available resources” to respond to protests in Montana.

“The FBI will have primary investigative authority for all national security investigations, including but not limited to international terrorism, domestic terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction,” BLM wrote.

US border patrol would also be available to assist law enforcement around the border and has access to “drone assets”, the document continued. Border patrol also provided a surveillance drone that police used to track Standing Rock protesters.

BLM also discussed purchasing “riot batons”, helmets and gas masks in advance of possible protests.

Mike Glasch, an army corps spokesman, said that the “by any means” comment came from the agency’s security chief, who was “relaying talking points” from police officials in Mandan and Morton County in North Dakota, adding: “Any method that we would employ to protect the safety of our employees and the public, as well as property and equipment, would be within the limits of the law and be the least invasive possible, while still protecting the public’s first amendment rights.”

A spokesperson for the Morton county sheriff, Kyle Kirchmeier, said he advises law enforcement that “may be involved with potential pipeline protests to make it their goal to keep protesters off of private property and any areas that may be considered a public hazard, such as ditches or highways”, adding that he “is supportive of people’s right to protest, but they need to do so in a lawful manner”. Kirchmeier said he did not recall the 2017 briefing.

A Mandan police spokesperson declined to comment.

Glasch said the army corps had not closed access to its land around the project, but added: “Since a construction site comes with inherent hazards, options are being analyzed for methods to keep any non-essential personnel away from potential construction sites, while at the same time considering constitutional rights.” He said it was too early to speculate about specific potential closure plans.

A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office did not respond to questions about the “terrorism” references but said the office’s “goal is to provide coordinated assistance to local, tribal and state law enforcement to protect public safety and civil rights, and to protect federal lands, while enforcing federal law”.

The FBI declined to comment.

A border patrol spokesperson said the agency would “assist, upon request, with any law enforcement activities within the border area near the pipeline”.

Spokespeople for BLM and TC Energy did not respond to questions.

“Law enforcement are getting ready. They’ve been having meetings behind closed doors,” said Angeline Cheek, an indigenous organizer from the Fort Peck reservation. “We know that they’re preparing … We’ve been preparing for the last three years.”

Rate, from the ACLU, said there was no legal justification for the government to pre-emptively shut down lands in an effort to stop protests.He said it was also troubling for law enforcement to prepare a “militarized” response and suggest that activists could pose terrorist or criminal threats before any actions had even begun.

“They are thinking of them as potential ‘domestic terrorists’. There is simply no support for adopting that paradigm,” said Rate. “The public justifiably thinks of BLM as a land management agency and not necessarily in the business of arming themselves and going out and squelching protesters.”

Candi Brings Plenty, an Oglala Lakota Sioux activist working with the ACLU of Montana, said they were not surprised to learn that law enforcement was talking about stopping indigenous activists “by any means”.

“That is the type of language that has been spoken to us our whole lives,” they said, adding: “We live these injustices on a daily basis. This is finally being unveiled for what it is.”

Brings Plenty, who led a two-spirit camp at Standing Rock, said they would not be intimidated by law enforcement and hoped people would still support the fight against Keystone – instead of just accepting the pipeline.

“It’s almost become the norm for folks to look the other way, feeling like there isn’t something they can do, that it’s beyond their grasp,” they said. “I want folks to see these pipelines the way they do the glaciers in the arctic. This is happening right here in their own front yard.”

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