President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House on Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
It sure didn’t take long for the chaos that seems to be a trademark of the GOP’s one-party government to flare across the nation.
Only one week into his presidency, Donald Trump’s radical approach to gutting government backfired spectacularly, giving full proof that running the federal government like it was “The Apprentice” reality TV show doesn’t work.
In the meantime, here in Montana the one-party GOP rule is wrapped around the axle as it tries to deal with the actions of the former Senate President, who is facing ethics charges over a last-minute buddy-buddy contract deal to shovel some state money to a pal.
Make no mistake, there is no other way to paint Trump’s executive order to halt all federal funding for a huge swathe of the nation as other than a total disaster. Within hours of scratching his signature with a fat Sharpie on the order, chaos broke out as, among many, many other significant problems, the Medicaid offices went offline in all 50 states, pre-school programs were halted, and even the EPA was told to stop planned expenditures.
And even though a federal judge halted the order minutes before it was to take effect, Senator Lisa Murkowski said GOP phones “were ringing off the hook” as confusion swept through federal employees and their constituents reacted in shock at the poorly-worded and highly ambiguous memo emanating from the executive order. Despite the sorry attempts at spinning the disastrous policy decision, it was quickly halted in an attempt to beat down the widespread and rapidly spiraling backlash.
Unlike reality TV shows — or private businesses — short-sighted “you’re fired!” mandates really don’t work that well when you’re dealing with 334 million Americans and a vast federal government network.
Closer to home the current Senate President, Matt Regier, has the past Senate President, Jason Ellsworth, on the hot seat and headed to what amounts to a tribunal before the Senate Ethics Committee. The issue in question is whether Ellsworth pulled off a last-minute contract for $170,000 of state money to one of his former business associates to monitor the outcome of a number of Senate bills — and split the contract in two phases to stay under the $100,000 limit for state contracts and thus avoid having to bid the project out.
The Legislative Auditor’s office, which oversees government spending and accountability for the Legislature, issued the alert about the contract manipulation and now has been drawn into the fray, which has quickly grown into a controversy so red hot both the Ethics Committee and Ellsworth have lawyered up as charges and counter-charges fly.
You really can’t make this stuff up. At both the federal and state level the GOP holds Congressional and legislative majorities as well as the White House and governor’s office. One might think somehow they’d be able to get on the same page and roll smoothly along given they have full control of the agenda, the hearings, the floor debates and the votes.
But it’s increasingly clear that is simply not the case.
Congress is struggling under the tidal wave of hateful and hurtful executive orders emanating from the White House while enduring an avalanche of constituency blowback. And the Montana Legislature’s progress has been abnormally slow as the infighting divides, not unites, the GOP caucus.
As for the Democrats — remember the Democrats? They’d do well to heed the sage advice from none other than Napoleon: “Never interfere with an enemy in the process of destroying himself.”
Tough to argue with that logic when chaos rules the GOP.