More hard feelings erupt in the state Senate. State lawmakers appear poised to ban trans women from competing in women's sports. And Sen. Tim Sheehy says Elon Musk is doing a great job.
Capitol Talk is MTPR's weekly legislative news and analysis program. MTPR's Sally Mauk is joined by Montana Free Press State Editor Holly Michels and Lee Banville, Director of the University of Montana School of Journalism and Professor of Political Reporting.
Sally Mauk: Holly, I feel like we've talked way too much this session about Senator Jason Ellsworth, but there's been yet another twist in the investigation of his awarding of a state contract to a former business associate. Tell us the latest.
Holly Michels: Yeah, Sally, we had quite the day on the Senate floor up here in Helena. So what happened is this investigation is now going to the state Department of Justice. What appears to have triggered that was during the floor session of the Senate on Thursday, Senator Tom McGillvray made an attempt to remove Senator Ellsworth from the Senate Finance and Claims Committee while the investigation into him plays out by the Senate Ethics Committee. This Finance and Claims Committee is one of the most powerful ones in the Legislature because it can really dictate which major bills live or die in a legislative session. So after that attempt, Minority Leader Pat Flowers brought his own motion, this time to pause the Senate Ethics Committee investigation into Ellsworth and instead kick the whole thing to the State Department of Justice.
During the floor session over debate on that, McGillvray read a text he received from Attorney General Austin Knudsen, who runs the DOJ, with Knudsen, saying he didn't think his office could even take up this issue on referral from lawmakers.
But after this really chaotic scene where senators at one point had to pause their floor session to review the rules of their chamber during this string of substitute motions flying around trying to stop Flowers, the Minority Leader actually got the votes to do this. That took a small group of Republicans, along with all Democrats, voting to shift this investigation to the DOJ and essentially pause the Senate's work for now.
Flowers and other Democrats argued on the floor that Republicans have said there are claims of criminal violations against Ellsworth, so the DOJ is really the appropriate place for this. And Flowers very forcefully was saying yesterday he thinks the whole thing has just become too political for Republican lawmakers to handle. He pointed to the initial hiring of an attorney who'd been very critical on social media of Ellsworth as evidence of just some prejudgment by Republicans going on.
Republicans, on the other hand, counter that Flowers is the one being political here, saying he's leveraging this entire thing in Ellsworth to capitalize on this divide between moderate and more conservative members of the Senate Republican caucus.
The debate we saw on Thursday was some of the most intense back and forth from senators I've seen in my time up here. After these 27 to 22 votes to send this to the DOJ, you had a string of Republicans get up making really strong criticisms of members of their own party who sided with Democrats and Democrats as well. We had tears and there were a lot of really raw emotions. We saw Senator John Fuller, a Kalispell Republican, get up and say that he was very angry, and he holds very long grudges.
So now I think we're waiting to see what, if anything, the State Department of Justice will do with this. And, of course, what the Senate's going to do when they gavel in next, they're all going to be in the chamber together. This is only day 25 of the session. We're still four weeks out from transmittal break. So, there's a lot of time to see how these dynamics are going to go over the rest of our 90 day term up here.
Sally Mauk: Actually, not that much time, Lee. I mean, there's a lot of work to be done. And here we're having this really messy fight that just seems to have no end.
Lee Banville: Yeah, it definitely seems to have no end. I was very excited to hear we were going to talk about Jason Ellsworth again, but I think it's worthwhile because I think, you know, what happened yesterday could have long fingers throughout the rest of the session because it really did seem so very personal for a lot of the Republican legislators that what do you come back to work the next day that you were so boiling, raging mad at each other and be like, 'Okay, well, let's get to work on property taxes.' I think that the likelihood that you're going to see continued reverberations of the division between the so-called moderate and conservative Republicans, it's a wound. The question is, is it going to scab over and they're going to get to work or are they going to continue to be at each other and potentially inhibit the work of the big-ticket items that are still on the docket to come?
Sally Mauk: Holly, this week President Trump signed an executive order banning transgender women from competing on women’s sports teams. There is a bill in the Montana legislature to enact a similar ban. The bill is supported by state school Superintendent Susie Hedalen, who had this to say:
Susie Hedalen: 'We must protect the integrity of women's sports by ensuring that female athletes compete on a level playing field.'
Sally Mauk: And supporters of the ban are basically using a biological argument, Holly.
Holly Michels: Yeah, that's what we're hearing, Sally. After the initial vote in the House chamber this week, Republicans held a press conference with party legislative leadership, along with Lieutenant Governor Kristen Juras and also athletes who are advocating for this policy, saying that point that you just made, that it's about making sure there's a fair playing field for women.
What we're hearing from Democrats and those who are opposed to this bill is that they want to see lawmakers instead focus on things that they say would actually make a level playing field like equal funding for women's sports. And they're also raising concerns about the legality of the legislation.
This bill is meant to ban trans women from participating in women's sports. It would apply to K-12 and higher education teams that receive state funding. And it's similar to a bill from a previous legislative session that was actually blocked by the state Supreme Court, who ruled that it's actually at the collegiate level, the Board of Regents in Montana, who decide those kinds of policies, not the Legislature.
In addition to Susie Hedalen weighing in, we heard from the Montana University System. During an early hearing they came in opposed to this session's version of the bill, saying it would put them at risk of breaking NCAA rules.
But since that first hearing, I've also seen major changes at the federal level where President Trump and his administration said they're not going to enforce protections for trans athletes under Title IX. So that's a significant reverse from the Biden administration's policy there.
So, again, this bill is House Bill 300 in Montana this time around. It's from Representative Kerri Seekins Crowe. It's cleared the House and it's now on the way to the Senate. Based on Republican margins we have in the Senate how similar bills have done in the past, I think we're going to see this bill advance. And we could probably read into the lieutenant governor being at that press conference in support of it as to predict what Gov. Greg Gianforte will do if the bill reaches his desk.
Sally Mauk: Lee, in the wake of the Trump order, the NCAA has said it will also ban transgender women from competing in women's sports. So does that make it easier for schools like the University of Montana - which has had a trans athlete compete in the past —- is that going to make it easier for them to comply?
Lee Banville: It certainly eliminates their major criticism that they came forward with when this was first proposed, which was that the NCAA is telling us we have to do this one thing, you're telling us to do the exact opposite, and that would threaten our standing within the athletic association. And so that argument's gone. I think there is still the underlying — as Holly was just talking about — the, is this really the Board of Regents role or is it something that the Legislature can do?
You also might see something different at the state level that isn't playing out at the federal level, is that we also have a constitutional right to privacy in Montana, which is much more explicit than the kind of implied right to privacy at the federal level. I think that many of the things that tripped up the last attempt to do this during the last legislative session has sort of been cleared, right? The federal level stuff has changed. The NCAA stuff has changed. But there are still a few sort of windows of like, was this really the responsibility of the Legislature and will it actually infringe on the rights of privacy of individuals in the state? Those are the two questions that are still outstanding.
Sally Mauk: And those windows could include a lawsuit eventually.
Lee Banville: Yeah. Almost assuredly it will include a lawsuit.
Sally Mauk: Holly, about 100 people braved frigid temperatures at the Capitol this week to protest what the Trump administration and Elon Musk are doing to the federal government. And Helena resident Joanne Gores is worried about Musk's effort to get rid of thousands of federal workers.
Joanne Gores: 'We need our jobs. We need our security. We need our safety. That is what our taxes pay for. They don't pay for billionaires to go to Space X."
Sally Mauk: This was one of several protests around the country, Holly, but did it have any impact on lawmakers at the state Capitol?
Holly Michels: I think it's hard to say, Sally. This was a rally outside the building. And like you said, weather was pretty rough that day. So it wasn't one in the rotunda that legislators would see sort of as they're working their way between hearings and floor sessions. So in terms of visibility, I'm not quite sure what effect it may have had.
It was, like you said, a part of efforts across the country to have these rallies in opposition to the Project 2025 agenda, which is this Conservative wish list we heard a lot about in the election and President Trump disavowed while running. But now that he's in office, he's executing policies similar to what's in that agenda. And one of the coauthors of it was also just confirmed to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget. And like we heard there, these protesters are also raising concerns about Elon Musk's role in the government.
This rally did come after one tie to the Legislature; the state House recently passed a resolution to congratulate President Trump on his victory. And in that legislation, they took a fair amount of opportunities to make swipes at Democrats. Resolutions like this are often called 'Letters to Santa' because they don't really have the same impact as bills do. But this one, for example, it would require the Secretary of State to send a copy of the resolution to Trump and his vice president, as well as the federal delegation, and include the names of those who co-sponsored and voted 'yes' on it.
But it's hard to say, I think, how much we're hearing about what these federal policies at the federal level will mean for Montana at the Capitol. For the most part, we are hearing Republicans praise Trump and Democrats highlighting concerns of his actions so far. I think we're also still hearing a fair amount of blame for Biden when people are talking about economic frustration. So, you know, it's always hard to say how much federal stuff trickles down during the legislative session, even though there's a lot of connections and tie ins and so we'll see how that shakes out through the session.
Sally Mauk: Well, I'm anxious to hear what Santa has to say about all this. Meanwhile, Lee, our new U.S. Senator, Tim Sheehy, told CNN this week he thinks Elon Musk is doing a great job.
Sen. Tim Sheehy: "It's about time we do some very serious forensic introspection to figure out how we can be better stewards of our taxpayer dollars. That's what's going on here in the fact that we have the most successful businessman—-arguably one of the smartest men in the world — doing it for free, I think it's pretty good deal for the American people."
Sally Mauk: He's all in, Lee, with the Musk purge.
Lee Banville: Yeah, it's certainly a fascinating moment because so much is happening so quickly, which is what's unusual about this. This is not some evolution of the government. It really is sort of a revolutionary change at the federal level. And we are seeing lawsuits. We are seeing all sorts of conversations about what are going to be the implications.
But oftentimes I think, what's interesting is probably the longer-term effects of what's happening at the federal level, it's going to take some time to actually show up. And are we going to start to see policies that people really like suddenly start to be implemented more inconsistently and like not be as reliable for people? Maybe not, but if we do start to see things that people rely on — small business loans and things like that, start to be affected by this policy, you may see blowback later on, but it's going to take time to develop because again, I know it feels different than that, but we are only a couple of weeks into this transition moment. It's going to take time for what it really looks like.
But right now, the Republicans are saying, 'What's happening is phenomenal.' As Senator Sheehy was saying, 'What we should have been doing for years — taking a hard look at how we're spending taxpayer money,' that might be how it ends up looking like it. But if we start to see things that people really like start to malfunction because of a lack of federal support, that may come back to be a sort of endorsement that doesn't look so great in a year or two.
Sally Mauk: We're out of time, Holly and Lee. Good luck with your snow shoveling and I'll talk to you next week.
Tune in during the legislative session online Friday afternoons and on-air Saturdays at 9:44 a.m. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
