Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bring their "Fight Oligarchy" tour to Missoula, and their populist message has a familiar ring. Republican leaders criticize the tour as being out of touch with Americans' real concerns. Lawmakers continue to grapple with how best to keep a campaign promise to lower your property taxes.
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, Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez brought their 'Fight Oligarchy' tour to Missoula this week, and they drew an overflow crowd to the University of Montana's Adams Center. What struck me about their message was the emphasis not on partisan politics per se, but on the class struggle of haves versus have-nots. And here's Bernie talking about rich people buying elections:
Sen. Bernie Sanders: I may be a radical from Vermont. And maybe I'm old fashioned, but I believe that democracy is one person, one vote, not billionaires buying elections.
Sally Mauk: And both he and AOC, Holly, went after what they call America's oligarchs.
Holly Michels: Yeah, they did, Sally. Both Sanders and AOC really focused their talks on concerns about classism and the outsized role of money in politics, like we heard in that clip from Sanders there. This rally drew a huge capacity crowd to the Adams Center on the UM campus. That was about 7,500 people. And then there was an overflow — about a thousand more people- unable to get in. And they heard this message that Sanders and AOC have taken around the country, which is that there's too much money in politics, the people who have that money have too much control, that Trump is a danger to democracy. And at one point, AOC said outright that Trump is a criminal, of course citing the 34 felony convictions that Trump had last year for falsifying business records.
The senator and the representative also focused on Elon Musk as a very specific example of the role wealthy people in government have right now. And Sanders said that taking on what he's calling an oligarchy is difficult because people with wealth, control the economy and what he said is most of the media plus Congress and the White House, but he did return to this message that he says there's power with the people - the '99%' as he put it, that's bigger than the 1% of the population that's ultra-wealthy.
We also heard them criticize deportations and the federal budget that was recently voted for by all four of Montana's members of our delegation to Congress.
Then attendees at that rally also heard from Montanans who talked to the crowd about the impact that federal cuts, both to jobs and grants, have had in Montana. I think the stop in Missoula is an interesting place to go for this tour especially that' being in western Montana., we still have the fairly new western House seat which is one that Democrats in the state still see, or hope to see, as competitive in an increasingly red Montana. And that seat's up for election next year in the midterm, so I'm sure that was some part of the strategy of the tour stopping in Missoula.
Sally Mauk: Well, Lee, as Holly pointed out, both Sanders and AOC emphasized that people, average citizens, have the power to change the politics in this country. And here is Ocasio-Cortez.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Missoula, it will never be just our institutions or officials or politicians alone that uphold our democracy. It will always be the people, the masses, who refuse to comply with authoritarian regimes, who are our last and strongest defense of our country and our freedom.
Sally Mauk: And that's a message people attending the rally very much wanted to hear, Lee, that they have some power over what is happening that they don't like.
Lee Banville: Right. Since President Trump took office and there's been this just barrage of federal moves and this ongoing court saga, as much of this stuff lands there. And Congress has been largely quiet about all of this. There is a sense that a lot of this is beyond the control of an individual to really affect, that this is just happening to you and you don't really have much say in what's going to happen.
What's interesting is, underlying all this is a central message of populism, right? That the power should be in the people. Which ironically is actually also what helped fuel the rise of Donald Trump, and that they both represent this, 'Institutions have failed us. We need these powerful voices. We need to stand up for ourselves.' And obviously it's almost the diametrically opposed political view of it, but this core message of frustration with what our government, what our big business is doing is sort of a constant theme within it.
What's interesting is obviously with the rise of Elon Musk and the perception of these mega wealthy people driving the government decisions. If that really settles in, that that's how voters are starting to see what the Trump America looks like, that may be a fault line that actually could really start to affect the voting blocks that have really empowered and driven the Trump vote, which is that blue collar folks, ordinary folks, are just really frustrated and they need an outlet for that frustration. And if it turns on President Trump, well, that's an interesting question, because that's actually really what he was able to use to turn on the Democrats for the last few election cycles.
Sally Mauk: Yeah. Irony is not dead. Montana Republicans were quick to criticize the rally speaker(s), and here's Senator Tim Sheehy going after them for opposing the arrest and deporting of immigrants without due process.
Sen. Tim Sheehy: They had nothing to say about the constitutionality of your tax dollars flying in violent criminals, but now they apparently say it's unconstitutional to kick them out. That's the base of the Democrat party. Anarchy, violence, crime in the streets. They put the interests of criminals above those of our citizens. Let's not forget the 'Summer of Love' in 2020 when our cities were being burned to the ground by Antifa and BLM, the Democrats supported them. The Democrats fundraised for them to give them money to burn your cities down.
Sally Mauk: I don't know, Lee, what cities he's talking about that were burned down. I don't know of any, but Sheehy's message, it resonates with a lot of people.
Lee Banville: Well, I think there is still powerful concerns about questions like immigration, right? And we've seen repeatedly in elections here in Montana that voters are concerned about immigration policy, and they do want to see changes, they do want to see strengthening of the border. And so, when he counters a message of populism and of empowerment of all the people with the message of, 'But there's things we need to be scared of of what happens if we do do that.' That's really one of the core political arguments that it might be playing out over the next election cycle or two is like, what is the bigger danger? Is the bigger danger that oligarch idea that they're driving the change in the government, they're devaluing institutions and changing America in that way? Or is it that the alternative leads to open borders and this fear of a wave of immigration that may change America? That's a really fundamental question and I think it really does break very differently depending on how you view the current situation.
Sally Mauk: Speaking of immigrants, Holly, the current administration suddenly, and with no explanation, revoked the visas of three graduate students studying at Montana State University. And the ACLU has filed a lawsuit on behalf of two of them to try to keep them in school.
Holly Michels: Yeah, Sally, so MSU discovered last week during a routine check that the visas of two international students had been revoked. This also happened at the University of Montana, but that student had already graduated and is living in a different state. But those two MSU students, like you said, are now represented by the ACLU of Montana and they've sued over that visa revocation, and a federal judge in Great Falls has issued a temporary restraining order blocking the federal government from actually revoking those visas, and saying the federal government can't take any action to detain or transfer these students.
This has been happening around the country, and the two students at MSU were not given any reason for why their visas were revoked, which is similar to how the Trump Administration has acted elsewhere in the United States.
What an F-1 visa does is it allows a student to enter the country and study at an accredited university. And the youth system in Montana has 714 international students and the vast majority of them are studying under F-1 visas, though the Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education said they're not aware of any other visas being revoked.
So in his order, this Great Falls judge wrote that the termination of the visas violated the U.S. Constitution's right to due process. And he also wrote that plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their arguments that the government's actions weren't constitutional. So, the next step is there's a hearing in this case April 29th, so we'll be watching to see where things go from there.
Sally Mauk: Lee, MSU and the University of Montana, like colleges around the country, seek out foreign students who bring not only expertise but also a lot of money to the schools. In this climate, what foreign student do you think would want to risk studying in the U.S.?
Lee Banville: Well, it's interesting. We're actually seeing similar moves abroad too. There are four visas that were revoked in Germany, including one for an American for pro-Palestinian protests. And so, I mean, it not just America, but there is obviously this sort of wave of evaluation of who is an appropriate student that somebody at the federal government is doing and they're making these decisions.
What was interesting - this started with mainly protest organizers or participants, is kind of how we saw the first wave of revocations roll out. What's notable about the MSU ones is there doesn't seem to be a specific reason. It just seems to be that they just are revoking it. Government may have a process for doing that, but it's very opaque right now. And that's what the judge is raising in the due process claim.
But in terms of your question about who would come to the United States, I mean, I think there still is an enormous desire to access higher education from a lot of different countries. But now that desire for opportunity is being balanced against a real fear of potential retribution and/or just the uncertainty of why and how you may have that opportunity taken away from you and you find yourself being deported. I think right now as we're at the very beginning of the recruiting for next year, we're really going to start to see our students no longer coming to America for that opportunity because that will affect not only their opportunities, but also what the universities attract and gain by having international students among them.
Sally Mauk: And what they risk losing, too. Lastly, Holly, and back at the legislature, lawmakers are still struggling with what kind of property tax relief to pass. They all agree it's needed, but they haven't figured out yet what it should look like.
Holly Michels: Struggling is right Sally. Lawmakers have just about 13 days left before the 90 days they're allotted up here are done and there's still not agreement on which of the various property tax bills that have been debated so far this session is the right vehicle. Right now the fight is centering on how to handle any sort of shift in the property tax burden, because if you ease it up somewhere, you have to push the burden somewhere else, and lawmakers are hearing a lot from lobbyists who represent businesses that fear that they could end up bearing more of the burden under some of these proposals.
So where we're at right now, and this is something that is changing almost minute to minute up here, is both the governor's big bill that came out of his property tax task force that met through the interim - this homestead exemption we've heard so about - that's currently not alive. Neither is a competing Democratic proposal, but those have kind of been up and down in recent days, so that probably could change at some point.
There's another bill, this is Senate Bill 90, that would leverage some lodging tax revenue toward rebates to alleviate property taxes. That's also dead, though it's been the subject of many attempts to revive it. That's the one that opponents say will only give really small rebates and that lobbyists are pushing because it's the one that they feel keeps their business clients most protected in all of this.
And then there's also a bill that would have just adjusted the rates of different classes of properties that those different classes are charged. That's basically what we heard Democratic governor candidate Ryan Busse discuss in his campaign last year. That bill was dead, but as of this recording, it's back alive now.
And then there's this 'Plan D', that's Senate Bill 542 from Senator Wylie Galt. It would just freeze property tax values for two years, though there's some discussion, because this is a bill that's still alive, it could become a vehicle for other policies to be folded into if needed.
So, like you said earlier, Sally, there is agreement among everyone that something needs to happen about property taxes, but between Democrats and Republicans and even in individual caucuses, there's still nothing settled on what's the right route right now. So, I think at this point we're just buckling up to see what happens in the coming days.
Sally Mauk: Lee, if legislators somehow fail to pass property tax cuts, if they can't agree to do this major thing they promised to do, there might be hell to pay with their constituents. What do you think?
Lee Banville: I mean, when you get your property tax bill, you're going to feel it, right? So I think that it is one of the primary things that people have talked about from before the election, through this entire legislative cycle is the fear of affordability of living in Montana. A lot of that lands on property taxes because we can't really say, 'Okay, houses should be cheaper.' And so, what's notable is just how little it seems the legislature and frankly the governor can do to really move the needle on this because it is a very hard question to answer - like how do you fix a tax system that is built around essentially just taxing property, when property values have soared. There's really not a lot you can do and so you can throw a rebate on that but if your tax bill is jumping by double digit percentages, what's $300 going to do when it's jumped a thousand bucks? It's still going to hurt. And I think when people are hurting and when they're feeling squeezed out of the lifestyle that they feel like they've worked really hard to earn, yeah, they get angry. And so, it will be interesting to see who gets blamed at the end of this. Assuming that they're not able to pass something, but even if they're able to something, the question is, will people feel it? Or will it just feel like a band aid on a sucking chest wound that is really going to just leave people feeling that the government didn't really address the core issue that people are upset about.
Sally Mauk: Well, the clock is ticking on the Legislature and on us. Holly and Lee, we're out of time. I'll talk to you next week. Thanks.
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