Montana last domino to fall in BHE/NWE merger

[image or embed]

— Problembear (@problembear.bsky.social) October 24, 2026 at 11:14 AM

Utilities are not your friends. 

In January the three Earth haters in the South Dakota Public Utilities Cartel approved a rate increase for NorthWestern Energy but the absence of transparency in the proposed merger with Black Hills Corporation is worrying the Montana Farmers Union. 

Now, the five Earth haters on Montana Public Service Commission are scheduled to take up the $15.4 billion merger proposal but non-profit 350 Montana has joined with MFU saying it will place additional financial risks on Montanans. And, if NWE and BHE merge, the deal could mean some $16 million for CEO Brian Bird and probably $30 million for top company executives.

The two parties urge the PSC to reject the merger — or set conditions that protect Montanans, especially from the potential costs of data centers. “In the end, this is not about love. This is about money,” wrote lawyer Monica Tranel on behalf of 350 Montana and Montana Farmers Union. “Enforceable conditions are the necessary prenuptial here.” The new company is named Bright Horizon Energy. If approved, the new company will operate in Montana, South Dakota, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and Wyoming. [UPDATED: Public Service Commission to take up NorthWestern, Black Hills merger]

In a related story NWE is hiding information from the SDPUC about a planned 131-megawatt natural gas fired power plant south of Aberdeen.

Problembear is the online handle used by William Fleischman, a longtime Montana-based progressive blogger, wilderness enthusiast, and political content creator.

Two more Republican-owned sawmills to close

Koch Industries owns Georgia-Pacific LLC, one of the largest forest products ravagers in the United States. 

Interfor is another huge timber multi-national that sold a sawmill to Neiman Enterprises who then shipped salvage logs from California to Wyoming. In 2018 after the Trump Organization gutted the National Environmental Policy Act then was thrown from the White House Neiman closed its Hill City, South Dakota sawmill and is threatening to shutter another in Spearditch announcing layoffs and production cutbacks while blaming the US Forest Service. Neiman purchased Colorado's Montrose Forest Products in 2012 but recently announced it will close, too.

Bearlodge Forest Products will close its sawmill and pallet operations, ending a nearly five-decade run in a community with deep ties to Wyoming’s timber industry. The company cited a number of factors in a Facebook post about the closure, including high input costs, a limited labor pool, scarce housing, and sustained downward pricing trends. Wyoming’s timber industry has also been struggling for years. The business is connected to the Neiman family, which has long played a role in Hulett’s forest-products history. [Cowboy State Daily]

Sawmills in Montana that rely on ponderosa pine are closing in part because of low lumber prices driven by salvage sales after record wildfire seasons caused by human influences on global climate patterns.

“This has been a really hard decision,” 67-year-old Steve Marks, a fourth-generation Clancy rancher, third-generation logger and the founder of Marks Lumber, said last week during an interview in his office, referring to his plan to end operations in early 2027. “These environmentalists are killing us,” Marks said, recalling his company’s planned purchase of nearly a year’s worth of logs, a million board feet, from the USFS in Larabee Hat early this summer. [Jefferson County Monitor]

Tribal cannabis thriving as red state Montana still struggling with regulation

In the earliest years of interested party this columnist advocated for a craft cannabis industry informed by a synthesis of statutes that empower organic gardeners, microbreweries, vintners, greenhouses, banking, fiduciary and insurance participation with ways and means hammered out in committee by each state legislature to guide enforcement. Patients seeking a prescription for cannabis as medication would be seen by health care providers and be excused from paying any excise taxes.

After Montana legalized therapeutic cannabis in 2004 discussions about growing the industry on tribal lands began in 2010 with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai (CSKT). The then-purple state legalized for all adults over 21 in 2020 then opened for business in 2022 but because tribes are sovereign nations, state legalization did not automatically apply inside reservation boundaries. 

In 2025, the now-red state legislature passed a bill that included compacts that would govern tax revenue sharing, cultivation limits and how tribally-owned dispensaries would operate on or near reservations but was vetoed by the governor so each tribe chooses how to regulate the enterprise. 

The Montana Department of Revenue is authorized to issue a total of eight "Combined-Use" licenses that allows exactly one license for each of the eight federally recognized tribes in Montana or an entity majority-owned by a tribe. The state caps tribal cultivation under these specific state licenses at a Tier 1 canopy level, the smallest commercial grow size, which remains a point of regulatory friction. A combined-use license permits the tribe to run both a cultivation facility and a dispensary at a single premises and the Crow Nation passed its own independent cannabis ordinance to levy its own local taxes and regulate manufacturing while other reservations remain entirely dry or prohibit sales. 

Tribal entities can operate these facilities within a 150 air-mile radius of the exterior boundaries of their reservation, or tribal services area for the Little Shell Chippewa tribe, provided the host county allows adult-use sales. In 2026, N8V Grown is renowned as Montana’s most trusted dispensary offering premium cannabis products. Founded by an enrolled member of the Chippewa Cree Tribe the award-winning, Indigenous-owned and operated business that takes immense pride in its heritage and commitment to excellence has expanded from locations near reservations to a retail location outside of Billings because Yellowstone County is green but the city is not.

The Flathead Indian Reservation spans parts of Lake, Sanders, Missoula, and Flathead counties and the CSKT operates as a sovereign entity with its own codified laws regarding possession and distribution. 

But white people are struggling how to regulate the industry in the Flathead Valley. Local county commissioners faced fierce public pushback over how to manage the market so in 2022 they attempted to host a public vote to completely opt out of "recreational" cannabis sales sparking protests at the downtown Kalispell courthouse before the county ultimately backed down.

Today, zoning laws vary statewide as jurisdictions navigate the recreational cannabis industry under the Department of Revenue, which had previously been housed under the Department of Health and Human Services. City and county officials over the last four years have been directing dispensary owners where to cultivate, process and dispense cannabis to allow their businesses to operate while avoiding community conflict. Flathead County in 2023 limited cultivation and manufacturing to agricultural and residential zones, meaning some owners could not grow their plants in business zones where their product is sold. This requires many business owners to operate separate facilities in multiple locations to cultivate, manufacture and dispense their products. [Flathead Beacon]

William Forbes a Ricketts plant: Nebraska Democratic Party

Unaffiliated candidate for US Senate in Nebraska, Dan Osborn is facing Earth hater Pete Ricketts. Similar matchups are happening in South Dakota and Montana where weak, under funded Democratic candidates are running in third place. 

Jane Kleeb is a leader who helped to kill the Keystone XL pipeline.

Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb responded Wednesday to what she called a "frivolous" lawsuit from former Democratic U.S. Senate candidate William Forbes who lost the May primary. He filed a lawsuit earlier this month seeking to force the party to name a replacement for Cindy Burbank, the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate who won the primary but then dropped out. Kleeb said Wednesday that the Nebraska Democratic Party will not back down on the legal question. When asked directly about the "may" versus "shall" language in the two statutes, Kleeb pointed to the structure of the two statutes in the party's defense. "Their lawsuit really jumps to the second section. You have to get to that second section first to get to the 'shall,' which will of course be something that our lawyers are focusing on in the courtroom," she said. [Nebraska Democratic Party pushes back on lawsuit demanding replacement in U.S. Senate race]

Passenger rail a priority for some Montana legislators

Imagine a time when portions or all passenger rail in the United States are elevated for wildlife egress and a corridor between Mexico City and the Amtrak station in Shelby, Montana is a route to the Yukon River in Alaska intersecting with a bridge over or a tunnel under the Bering Strait connecting South and North America to Russia and the rest of Eurasia.

Cheyenne, Wyoming is on board with Colorado for expanded Front Range passenger rail that would connect El Paso to Shelby. I-25, especially from Pueblo, Colorado to Fort Collins through Colorado Springs and the Denver metro, sucks at biblical proportions as does flying into Denver International Airport so growth on the Front Range is driving planners to pick up the pace on passenger rail. Littleton, Louisville and Pueblo are among several Colorado cities pushing for increased passenger rail service.

And, although Amtrak rejected Delaware-based AmeriStarRail plans to utilize existing infrastructure from Amtrak and Norfolk Southern to complete the Transcontinental Chief the company is currently petitioning Congress, the Federal Railroad Administration and the Department of Transportation to pressure Amtrak back to the negotiating table. They are now targeting a revised 2028 launch timeline to coincide with the Los Angeles Summer Olympics.

Calling the potential for passenger rail service "a huge asset" Broadwater, Butte-Silver Bow, Dawson, Gallatin, Granite, Jefferson, Missoula, Park, Powell, Prairie, Sanders and Wibaux counties became founding Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority member counties. Now with twenty counties and several tribal nations on board BSPRA hopes to restore passenger rail across southern Montana from North Dakota to Idaho and include some 47 stops in seven states.

Some legislators, including Billings Democratic Rep. Denise Baum and Missoula Democratic Sen. Andrea Olsen, have pushed for increased access to passenger rail alongside some of their Republican counterparts, including Glasgow Sen. Gregg Hunter. Many transit agencies around the state are interested in this conversation too, as adding train lines could be an opportunity for bus services to expand offerings. One question in the survey asked what type of public transportation would be used if it was offered. Trains were the most popular answer, followed by buses. [Survey shows Montanans interested in more public transit]

Montana loses attempt to block Native voting

In an effort to reverse voter apathy in Indian Country the Montana Democratic Party became the first state party to formally include Indigenous as equitable partners. Montana is home to 12 Indigenous languages three of which are at risk of going extinct after Donald Trump weaponized a novel coronavirus strain killing many Assiniboine, Gros Ventre and Montana Salish elders. 

President Joe Biden restored the White House Tribal Nations Summit after Herr Trump declared war on Indian Country and undercounted Indigenous Americans because Earth hating Republicans want citizens to believe democracy isn’t for everybody. 

Tribal IDs issued by federally recognized tribes verify tribal citizenship, but they are not universally accepted as standalone proof of U.S. citizenship by all federal agencies or law enforcement.

American Civil Liberties Union of Montana, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Native American Rights Fund sued to reverse another attempt to restrict Indigenous people from voting.

A Montana district court has blocked a new state law that would have reduced Election Day voter registration hours, ruling that the measure likely violates the constitutional right to vote and disproportionately harms Indigenous voters living in rural reservation communities. The law, passed during the 2025 Montana Legislative session, would have eliminated the final eight hours of Election Day voter registration access across the state. Civil rights organizations argued that the state failed to justify the restrictions imposed by the legislation. [Montana Court Blocks Law Limiting Indigenous Voters’ Access to Election Day Registration]

Indian Country has won victory after victory by relying on protections in the Voting Rights Act. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Callais weakens the safeguards guaranteed under Section 2 of the VRA, undercutting a critical tool for defending voting rights. Learn more: buff.ly/oyhcHej

[image or embed]

— Native American Rights Fund (@nativerights.bsky.social) May 6, 2026 at 3:05 PM

The SAVE Act is drawing criticism from Native American civic groups concerning its impact on Native voting rights. The bill would require proof of citizenship documents to register to vote, raising questions about whether Tribal IDs can be used. #VotingRights #NativeVote @fdnv.bsky.social

[image or embed]

— Public News Service (@publicnewsservice.bsky.social) February 19, 2026 at 12:00 PM

BHE, NWE merger rankles MFU

Democrat Brian Schweitzer was governor when this interested party was living in Montana but after leaving office he chose not to run for the US Senate allowing raving lunatic Steve Daines to sashay into the seat. In 2021 Schweitzer raked Montana Earth haters after they gave special treatment to NorthWestern Energy calling it "a fine mix of Socialism and Crony Capitalism to match Russian President Vladimir Putin." 

Also in 2021 power lines owned by NWE caused a wildfire that destroyed most of Denton and liability lawsuits from that incident are still being litigated. In 2025, drafted in part by NWE, Kalispell Earth hater Amy Regier was lead sponsor of Montana House Bill 490 that protects utilities from liability for wildfires they start. 

In January the three Earth haters on the South Dakota Public Utilities Cartel approved a rate increase for NWE. And since utilities are not your friends the absence of transparency in the proposed merger of Black Hills Corporation and NorthWestern Energy is worrying the Montana Farmers Union. 

Walter Schweitzer is a third-generation farmer and rancher elected President of the MFU in 2019 and previously worked on his brother Brian's campaigns.

Based on the questions MFU leaders have asked and the [Montana Public Service] Commission docket so far, the proposed acquisition is not designed to help the Montana family farmer. It is designed to build a corporate balance sheet large enough to serve the bottomless appetite of multinational data centers. NWE denies wanting the acquisition for data centers, yet outreach to investors focuses on this acquisition as a necessary step to serve data centers. As in the past, ratepayers are being deceived. We cannot allow a distant holding company to treat Montana’s water and power as commodities to be extracted for Wall Street and Silicon Valley. It is time to put Montana farmers first. [Schweitzer: Northern Ag Network]

In a related story, Blackstone Infrastructure is in the process of acquiring TXNM Energy the parent company of PNM, New Mexico’s largest electric utility for $11.5 billion in a deal announced in May 2025 and is currently undergoing regulatory review while facing significant opposition.

Earth haters are at war with themselves: part n

Ultra-factionalism among Earth haters isn't just happening in my home state of South Dakota. Earth haters Ray Curtis, Aaron Flint, Christi Jacobsen and Al Olszewski are beating the shit out of one another in the race for western Montana's US House seat.

The winner of the Republican primary in the 1st District will move on to the general election. They’ll face the winner of the four-man race for the Democratic nomination, along with Libertarian candidate Nick Sheedy, of Columbia Falls. [KTVH teevee]

Lauren Boebert moved from Colorado's 3rd District to the 4th after being caught groping her date in a Denver theatre. She's one of Colorado's Earth haters who asked a federal judge to block unaffiliated voters from participating in that party’s primaries this year.

The Colorado Democratic Party has welcomed unaffiliated voters’ participation in their primaries and there’s been no concerted opt-out effort among its leaders. [Colorado Sun]

South Dakota will suffer brain drain for years to come and New Mexico has its own set of challenges but living where Earth haters are virtually meaningless and Democrats rule is well worth it.

The Republican Party of New Mexico is in open civil war. The crisis erupted into public view in mid-March when RPNM Chairwoman Amy Barela filed for re-election to her Otero County Commission seat. The GOP cannot afford a civil war — and yet, that is precisely what it has entered. [2nd Life Media Alamogordo Town News]

Earth haters want a police state, Libertarians want anarchy and Democrats just want a good ol’ fashioned representative democracy with all the warts of a constitutional republic so the faster all the deplorables taser themselves in the testicles until their myocardia infarct the better.

Montana Libertarians field candidates for every federal office

Founded in 1979 the Montana Libertarian Party has been a factor in elections in the state for decades often stealing voters from Republicans and since this interested party left Montana in 2011 more Earth haters moved into the state making it ripe for another Copper King era. 

In the 2016 election, some estimates suggested Libertarians took 3% from Trump and 2% from Clinton but today 5% of Earth haters might vote for a Libertarian compared to 2% of Democrats. 

Over 100,000 new residents moved to Montana since 2018, contributing to a 2-to-1 Republican-leaning voter registration edge among new arrivals. This trend contributed to a sweep of statewide elections in 2024, including the defeat of incumbent Democratic Senator Jon Tester by Republican Tim Sheehy, a newcomer to politics. The 2024 election cycle cemented this change, and early candidate filings for 2026 indicate a further push by conservative state leadership to consolidate power, highlighting the ongoing, complex political realignment of Montana.

So, migrating Republicans from California and Washington State warp elections in Montana where conservatives in the eastern district detest Californians even as real estate values soar putting people in the margins who voted for the Orange Julius farther into the boonies where jobs are scarce. So, contradictory occurrences are making Montana politics very weird and rich catholic Californians in the Bitterroot Valley clash with rural eastern Montana-born Protestants.

The Montana Libertarian Party holds online Zoom gatherings for interested parties every Wednesday at 6:00 pm MST.

Libertarian candidate interest is up, party leaders say, and they expect voter interest could be too. The Libertarian ballot is full of candidates, all younger than 50 and none having previously run for office in Montana under the Libertarian banner. In the Western Congressional District, there are 10 candidates — five Democrats, three [Earth haters], an independent [sic] and a [L]ibertarian — lined up to replace retiring incumbent Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke, who is not seeking reelection. All told, there are nine Libertarians on the Montana ballot in 2026, including five for the state Legislature: Dru Koester of Helena, J.C. Windmueller of Missoula, Dave Von Eschen of Great Falls, Jordan Ophus of Havre, and Greg DeVries of Jefferson City. [Montana Free Press]

Pop quiz @SteveDaines: Who attacked the United States on 9/11?

Was it:
A) Sunni Islamist al Qaeda, a known enemy of the Shiites in Iran, or
B) Shiite Islamists in Iran, Hezbollah, and the Houthis

HINT: The US is now backing the group in Syria at Israel’s request https://t.co/KWaHq17aVy

— Montana Libertarian Party (@Montana_LP) March 3, 2026

American Prairie is the largest rewilding project in the US

Despite Montana's Earth haters and the Trump Organization's war on American Prairie its mission to rewild the West continues.

Greece has the Parthenon. North America had the American Serengeti—a wildlife spectacle so vast it rivaled anything on Earth.

In less than 100 years, it was destroyed. Tens of millions of bison, elk, pronghorn, wolves, and grizzlies were decimated. The Great Plains went from the heartland of biodiversity to fences and wall-to-wall cattle ranching.

But in central Montana, something extraordinary is happening.

American Prairie is building a 3.2-million-acre protected landscape by purchasing ranches and converting them from commodity production to wildlife restoration. They're bringing back bison, restoring natural grazing patterns, and letting ecosystems function the way they're meant to.

In Episode 217, Brooke sits down with Daniel Kinka, PhD, American Prairie's Director of Rewilding, to get the inside story on this historic project. They talk about:

American Prairie's strategy for landscape-scale restoration

The power of ecosystem processes (bison, prairie dogs, fire)

Why the area can’t sustain wolves can't yet—but grizzlies, yes

What this project means for climate, biodiversity, and hope

This is one of the most inspiring conservation stories happening right now.

Episode 217 - The Great Plains Comeback: Inside America's Largest Rewilding Project https://rewildology.com/.../the-great-plains-comeback.../

#AmericanPrairie #Rewildology #Podcast #Rewilding

Fire Thunder granddaughter making Montana history

Katie Fire Thunder is a 25-year-old Oglala Lakota activist who was recently appointed to the Montana House of Representatives for District 59. Fire Thunder is a legal assistant at the Gallatin County Attorney’s Office and co-founder of Bozeman Tenants United, a nonprofit fighting for safe and affordable housing. She served as a legislative aide and was a member of the Kamala Harris presidential campaign. Her grandmother, Cecelia Fire Thunder, served as the first female president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe from 2004 until her impeachment in 2006 purportedly for announcing plans sans council approval to open a clinic that would provide abortions on the reservation.

Chaco in Trump's gunsights

When the people of the Chaco Wash were building in what is now northwestern New Mexico the ancestors of the Lakota were living in post-archaic North Carolina. 

Today, the oil field traffic some driven by Black Hills Gas Resources near Chaco Culture National Historical Park, creates hazards for Indigenous and visitors alike. Fracking just outside of Chaco threatens to trigger seismic activity under the fragile sacred site and contributes to the methane bubble over the Four Corners area. In 2015 Santa Fe-based Wild Earth Guardians joined other interested parties in suing the US Bureau of Land Management to stop the encroachment. 

In 2021 New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich asked then-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to end leasing within a 10-mile radius of the park because Chaco is an International Dark Sky Park at risk to flaring. So, in partnership with the Bureau of Indian Affairs BLM completed a draft resource management plan for Chaco and a decision released. 

In 2023, citing the scarcity and fragility of water supplies in the region a three-judge panel on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the BLM didn’t properly gauge long-term impacts under the National Environmental Policy Act so it suspended some 200 permits and blocked others issued by the Trump Organization. Trump's Interior Secretary has been invited to New Mexico to survey the destruction of the area's cultural resources. 

Genetic markers have identified the Picuris Pueblo predominantly among the Chaco descendants.

Mario Atencio (Diné) always looked forward to visiting his grandmother in Counselor, New Mexico. She lived what he describes as a “simple Navajo lifestyle” in the small rural town, raising dozens of animals on her lush green property, which he remembers as a magical and peaceful place. Two years ago, Atencio became the lead plaintiff in what could soon become a landmark climate litigation case. After winding its way through the legal system, the lawsuit will go before the New Mexico Supreme Court, which agreed this month to hear the case. If the court rules in Atencio’s favor, the case would join high-profile decisions like Held v. Montana, a suit brought by young people who accused Montana of violating their constitutional right to a healthy environment by not regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Atencio v. State of New Mexico could end up forcing the country’s second-largest fossil fuel producer to clean up its act. [Western climate litigants keep fighting]

In vindictive retribution and a slap at Native America the Trump Organization nominated New Mexico Earth hater, Steve Pearce to run the BLM.

In a related story, a coalition of community organizers is growing opposition to an extractive industry intent on raping the Black Hills.

ip image.

Old Montana stomping grounds featured in BBC report

Brud Smith is a proud Montana Democrat ranching near the Boulder River in Jefferson County but he also leases property from the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. He was recently interviewed by the BBC's Ellie House for a segment on the federal lands sell-off debate. Also interviewed was former BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning who sees the urban sprawl changing Montana as a destructive trend. 

The above image is posted at Xitter. 

Learn more at Grist.

SD Dems likely to have a US House primary

Exacerbated by low Medicaid reimbursement rates, the rising cost of traveling nurses and supplies for care and services South Dakota is the lowest paying of all the States and Territories so the Bennett County Nursing Home closed in 2023. Facilities in Huron, Madison, Mobridge, Tripp, Sioux Falls, Salem, Elk Point, Amour, Lennox, Clear Lake, Ipswich, Custer, Bryant and Rosholt also suffered as did Presentation College in Aberdeen. Montana saw closures that year, too.

Nikki Mersch Gronli was the US Department of Agriculture's Rural Development State Director in South Dakota for the Biden administration. She just announced for the 2026 Democratic Party primary for the nomination to compete against some Earth hater in the race for South Dakota's At-large seat in the US House of Representatives.

NorthWestern Energy drafts bill to shield Montana utilities from wildfire liability

Since 2018 millions of home insurance contracts have been dropped as companies like State Farm and lobbyists like the American Property Casualty Insurance Association acknowledge humanity's role in a burning planet. 

Now, as utilities scramble to avoid liability for wildfires, insurance companies are bilking homeowners in the wildland urban interface and denying coverage interfering with mortgages, real estate values and property ownership. NorthWestern Energy, Pacific Gas and Electric, Xcel, Black Hills Energy, Hawaiian Electric Company and Public Service of New Mexico or PNM are all responsible for massive blazes causing billions in damages. 

In 2021 power lines owned by NWE caused a wildfire that destroyed most of Denton, Montana and liability lawsuits from that incident are still being litigated. Drafted in part by NWE, Kalispell Earth hater Amy Regier is lead sponsor of Montana House Bill 490 that would protect utilities from liability for wildfires they start.

Some of the state’s largest insurance companies also spoke against the bill, because it would make it harder for them to recover costs associated with fire damages. They said that could ultimately lead to homeowners paying higher premiums, or could cause companies to stop insuring homes in Montana. The state auditor’s office opposed the bill for similar reasons. [Bill would shield utility companies from wildfire liability]

A wildfire sparked by a distribution line owned by Mountrail-Williams Electric Co-op killed two people in North Dakota in 2024. Power lines owned by Southern California Edison are being blamed for the Eaton Fire.

On Monday Democratic former South Dakota legislator, Nick Nemec told an interested party that a wildfire in his part of Hyde County right now would be catastrophic. 

The grassland fire danger index will be in the extreme category Tuesday for much of South Dakota and Nebraska. 

Tribal Nations trapped in South Dakota, other states share funding for buffalo restoration

American Prairie (APR) near Malta in north-central Montana got its first American bison from Wind Cave National Park in occupied South Dakota in 2005. The group hopes to have native animals grazing on some 5000 square miles or about 3.2 million acres of private land including 63,000A. in Phillips County connected with corridors to federal land stewarded by the Bureau of Land Management and to the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. Total land including the purchase of 36 ranches is as big as the State of Connecticut or the size of Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks combined. 

Adjacent is the Fort Belknap Reservation where the Nakoda and the Aaniiih manage a range with more than a thousand bison so building a tourist destination helps economic development for the entire region. Two recent acquisitions totaling 12,534 acres bring APR's deeded and leased property to more than 475,000 acres despite an appeal by the State of Montana and a bunch of Earth haters who failed to stop the non-profit from grazing bison on eighteen BLM allotments in five counties. A recent decision by the BLM allows for 7,969 animal unit months at $1.35 per AUM of permitted use with a 1:1 conversion from cattle to bison. 

And, after Montana's Earth hating governor lost his second appeal to stop American Prairie's leases on public land he's suing Yellowstone National Park over its planned expansion of bison territory into lands managed by the US Forest Service. That Republicans in Montana's executive branch and welfare ranchers are angry about the Interior Department ruling means it's the right thing to do. Since Republicans own the seats of power in Montana they whine YNP neglects its commitments to the management of the park’s buffalo population in order to decrease the spread of brucellosis to cattle but know wapiti spread it far more often than bison do. Brucellosis is a nonnative disease brought into Yellowstone by cattle in the 1900s.

Instead of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, the Department of Livestock is the governing arm for bison that leave the protections of the park and is party to the lawsuit.

In an email to [Montana Free Press], Buffalo Field Campaign Habitat Coordinator Darrell Geist criticized the state’s motivation for filing the lawsuit. [Montana sues Yellowstone National Park over bison management plan]

These days only about 500,000 bison inhabit North America and less than 1 percent of their historic range, just 3 percent of the Earth’s land surface remains untouched by human development and a sixth mass extinction is underway. So, with help from the InterTribal Buffalo Council that started with nineteen tribes and now enjoys the membership of 83 Nations who own 25,000 American bison in 22 states, the Eastern Shoshone Nation will apply a $3 million grant to grow their herd and enhance cultural resilience.

“There’s a big effort to get buffalo out of Yellowstone to tribes,” said Jason Baldes, a Montana State University graduate who is the Shoshone Tribal Buffalo representative. “A lot of tribes are interested in those Yellowstone genetics to enhance the heterogeneity of other herds.” Perhaps even more impactful, however, are three grants of $21.25 million to the InterTribal Buffalo Council to restore and manage native grasslands ecosystems for tribal buffalo restoration in Montana, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Florida, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. [Buffalo rematriation: Grants boost efforts to transfer Yellowstone bison to tribes]

In 2023 the National Park Service rehomed 300 bison in the South Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park to the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation and Standing Rock Sioux. 

In April, 2024 with Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland in attendance and in cooperation with Colorado State University ITBC moved five yearling bulls and five heifers with Yellowstone genetics to the Taos Pueblo. Then with ITBC efforts Grand Canyon National Park sent a hundred critters of some 380 from the North Rim to the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in September.

Learn more at the World Wildlife Magazine.

Today's intersection is the last best continental divide

Self-identifying sovereign citizens are overwhelmingly white christians using a cherry picked, maladapted interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment to rationalize its commitment to a pending race war using links to the federal storming of Ruby Ridge in Idaho and at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas culminating in the Oklahoma City bombing during a Democratic president's term. 

Also during President Bill Clinton's term in 1996 a standoff between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Montana Freemen, a christian "patriot" group with roots in Washington State and accused of billions in fraud, lasted for 81 days near Jordan, Montana. 

During Pres. Barack Obama's tenure a group of armed thugs including a retired Air Force master sergeant from South Dakota allied with mormon Cliven Bundy occupied a national wildlife refuge in none other than Harney County, Oregon.

In 2020 the nearly 50,000 acre Huff Fire burned through Jordan and in 2022 a Republican preacher was tossed from a Sidney congregation after committing multitudinous sins of debauchery, embezzlement and worse during Pres. Joe Biden's term. 

Now, migrating Republicans from California and Washington State are warping elections in Montana where conservatives in the eastern district detest Californians even as real estate values soar putting people in the margins who voted for the Orange Julius farther into the boonies where jobs are scarce. So, contradictory occurrences are making Montana politics very weird and the clash of rich Catholic Californians in the Bitterroot Valley with rural eastern Montana-born Protestants and a record number of Indigenous legislators is already building to the 2025 legislative session destined for explosive results.

Tactical Civics, founded in Texas by retired engineer David Zuniga, seeks to establish so-called citizen grand juries in each county across the United States, telling its followers that they have the power, ordained by God through the U.S. Constitution, to initiate criminal charges against government officials they deem corrupt. In his book, "Grand Jury Awake," Zuniga deems the official story of 9/11 attack as "ludicrous" and past Democratic presidents to be "conductors" for Satan in a spiritual war against Americans. In the sequel title calling for members to form county militias, Zuniga writes that Tactical Civics will develop a training program, to prepare them to act as law enforcement for the county grand jury and, eventually, dispatch them to observe ballot counting. [Rewind: How Tactical Civics ideology traces the Montana Freemen blueprint]

Since this interested party left Montana in 2011 three Earth haters have moved into the state for every two Democrats making it ripe for another Copper King era.

It’s not quite the same as the Copper Kings — who at their peak controlled elected officials from both major parties — but Democrats see parallels. “What do they say — history doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes,” said Monica Tranel, the defeated Democratic candidate in a western Montana House district. “It is very evocative of what happened in the early 1900s. It’s very much a time of change and turmoil and who has a voice.” Driving the growth are transplants from western states dominated by Democrats, especially California, where more than 85,000 Montana residents originated, or about 7.5% of the population, Census data shows. Almost half of Montana residents were born out of state. [An influx of outsiders and money turns Montana Republican, culminating in a Senate triumph]

Learn more at Montana Free Press.

ip image.

Natives push back on faulty exit poll

In an effort to reverse voter apathy in Indian Country the Montana Democratic Party became the first state party to formally include Indigenous as equitable partners. Montana is home to 12 Indigenous languages three of which are at risk of going extinct after Donald Trump weaponized a novel coronavirus strain killing many Assiniboine, Gros Ventre and Montana Salish elders. 

Trump hates American Indians so deeply after losing a 1993 casino case under the 1988 Indian Gaming Act he deployed Covid as a biological weapon in 2020 to exterminate as many Indigenous people as he could and so far he has gotten away with attempted genocide. 

So an exit poll conducted by the National Election Pool and Edison Research then released by NBC of 229 voters who self-identified as Natives that showed Trump winning a majority of NDNs is facing a backlash especially since none of the persons polled were on reservation properties. Even the Indigenous Journalists Association called the poll “highly misleading and irresponsible.” 

For example, in counties with majority Native populations, support for the Democratic candidate was larger than support for the Republican candidate in states such as Montana (67% to 28%), North Dakota (72% to 27%), South Dakota (63% to 33%), and Wisconsin (87% to 12%). [Native American Organizations Respond to Flawed NBC Exit Poll]

President Joe Biden restored the White House Tribal Nations Summit after the former guy declared war on Indian Country and undercounted Indigenous Americans because Republicans want citizens to believe democracy isn’t for everybody. 

November is Native American Heritage Month. 

Women and Democrats did well in parts of North Dakota, too.

On the Red Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota, 92% of voters cast their ballots for Kamala Harris. On the Menominee Indian Reservation in Wisconsin, 80% voted for Harris. In Apache County, Arizona, where the Navajo Nation accounts for two-thirds of the population, 58% voted for Harris compared to 39% for Trump. [Getting the Native Vote Right; The National Media Should Not Rely on Self-Identified “Wannabes”]

Reservation counties in Montana voted overwhelmingly for Democratic Senator Jon Tester. 

During Montana's last legislative session Trump worshiping reactionary Republicans moved to cut funding for Native cultural preservation. Outside Montana’s reservations the state has become the new Orange County, California where the Last Best Place is becoming the next best strip mine and a welfare rancher's wet dream. A transplant to Montana, the state's christianic Republican governor was the richest member of Congress who literally bought his seat in the state’s Executive Branch.

Allison Neswood, a staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund, said Native voters face a range of issues. “These barriers are structural, you know, rooted in the history of colonialism,” explained Neswood. [Native voters still face barriers to election participation]

Learn more at Big Horn County News.

ip photo from the 2012 Santa Fe Indian Market: The Means Justifies the End, Angela Babby.

Drill baby drill is really about mining crypto, abetting Russia

Amid the continual sturm and drang from Senator John Thune (Earth hater-SD) is a constant harangue at his Faceberg page from the far white wing of his political party who revere Donald Trump's patron, Vladimir Putin. And, with Mitch McConnell going away Thune will find himself straddling a very rickety fence especially after voting to aid Ukraine in her fight against King Vlad. 

Stopping the Keystone XL pipeline helped Vlad the Impaler raise the petrodollars he needed to wage war on Ukraine but some eighty percent of the world's oil transactions are priced in dollars subject to enforcement actions by the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice.

Russia is extremely dependent on oil revenues. If something happens to this resource, Russians will face extremely difficult conditions, as they will be cut off from external markets, said Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Professor of Economics Department of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and advisor to the Chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine, Andriy Pyshnyy, in an interview with Ekonomichna Pravda. “If they have petrodollars, then [the economic resource for continuing the war will last for – ed.] a very long time. But if petrodollars run out, then the Russian economy will end within a year,” said Gorodnichenko. [RUSSIAN ECONOMY TO COLLAPSE WITHIN A YEAR WITHOUT PETRODOLLARS, SAYS BERKELEY PROFESSOR]

In September Sibanye-Stillwater mining company in Montana announced the ending of some 800 jobs after Russia flooded the world palladium market sinking Democratic Senator Jon Tester's reelection. 

There is little doubt in my mind that damning evidence linking Trump to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Russia was destroyed on 9/11. In 2018 KSA Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi who was investigating the Trump Organization and Jared Kushner's blood money infusions. 

So why does TrumpWorld want to ditch the US Dollar for crypto? At about half of California’s gross domestic product Russia is virtually irrelevant in the global marketplace and destined to become a Chinese client state sooner than later.

In May, the Biden administration ordered a crypto-mining operation in Cheyenne to divest due to its proximity to F.E. Warren Air Force Base and national security concerns associated with speculations about the business’s ties to the Chinese government. Though they have not publicly stated where they will source the energy for the operations or whether they will try to increase energy consumption there, as well, the former owner of the land at Front Range Business Park, MineOne Partners Limited, previously told the WTE that their Bitcoin mining operation had an energy agreement with Black Hills Energy to deliver up to 45 MW of electric service, with potential to expand to 75 MW. [Company moves into former crypto mine that Biden ordered to leave for national security concerns]

South Dakota's K Street-owned christofascist don Juan Thune was a lobbyist for industrial chemical companies before his handlers bought him a blogger and a Senate seat. Then he went to DC as one of America's least wealthy politicians but after nearly two decades in the swamp and helping to pack the Federal Communications Commission with Trump stooges he's rich.

North Dakota's governor and Interior pick is a crypto guy but Bitcoin mining in the Permian Basin is driving pollution into the ozone, too.

Learn more at Alternative Radio.

2018 image of Thune and others in Moscow is from the Washington Post.

View on Threads