U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks during a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron in the East Room at the White House on Feb. 24, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Macron was meeting with Trump on the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Donald Trump and Elon Musk might as well be on Mars since the actions they’re taking certainly have no connection to what’s going on here on Planet Earth.
Their “shock and awe” campaign to dismantle the federal government rushes full speed ahead as they continue firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers, cutting agency budgets, and cancelling prior Congressional appropriations.
They aren’t sending ripples out to the nation, they’re sending tidal waves that are now crashing into the states and impacting millions of citizens who suddenly see their futures evaporating in the vast cloud of ego-driven insanity emanating from the White House.
For states like Montana, that have a huge reliance on federal funding, services, and agencies, the future will likely emulate the chaos and havoc these wannabe dictators are now wreaking in the nation’s capital.
Let’s see — right out of the chute we have two of the most popular national parks, Yellowstone and Glacier, that may not be able to hire seasonal workers when they need to be doing so to prepare for the millions of visitors that flood them each summer. You can’t run campgrounds, lodges, clean outhouses, and maintain roads without employees.
Same goes for the Forest Service. No employees means an abrupt halt to a vast array of agency functions from having trained and ready wildfire crews on hand to ensuring the campgrounds, boat launches, and latrines are clean and operable, noxious weed infestations are controlled, and logging roads reclaimed. It will certainly impact our tourism economy, but the impacts and concurrent confusion and insecurity will go far beyond inconvenience when the climate-driven wildfires rage this summer.
And what happens when the federal “pass through” funds for highways, education, health, and many, many more government agencies, grants, and functions dry up? These are enormous amounts of money, especially in a vast rural and agricultural state like Montana.
Most, if not all, state agencies rely significantly on federal dollars, including the departments of Transportation, Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Environmental Quality, Natural Resources and Conservation, Public Health and Human Services, and a host of farm and ranch related agencies, services and subsidies.
Toss in the planned reduction of the EPA workforce by 65% and, well, let’s just say the future doesn’t look too bright for the remediation of Montana’s Superfund sites…or regulating the industries that tend to create Superfund sites.
These are the agencies charged with making sure the air we breathe and the water we drink is clean, reviewing and issuing permits for water and discharge permits, subdivisions, wastewater and water treatment plants, and providing a vast array of human health services — including dealing with the bird flu epidemic that’s already severely impacting dairies and egg production nationwide. Without federal funds these agencies will grind to a slow and painful halt with widespread negative consequences for the citizenry, economy and our environment.
It’s truly ironic that as Trump and Musk crash the federal government Montana’s GOP-dominated Legislature is working to produce a balanced budget as required by our constitution. But how can they if they have no assurance whatsoever for what level of federal funds or services will be available? Instead, the governor and Legislature will likely see a series of special sessions as they struggle to make state government work without federal flow-through funds and employees.
Business, government, and the citizenry all rely on certainty and stability. But that’s all gone now thanks to the MAGA madmen dismantling the federal government. Instead, we face a future filled with widespread pain, crashed economies, poisoned lands and waters, and horrifying destruction.