In Montana, Democrats and Moderate Republicans Have Joined Forces to Defy the MAGA Agenda

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment for This Post)

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what’s goin’ down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin’ gets done and where there’s a lone soldier on the cross and smoke pouring out of the boxcar door.

(Apologies to the shebeen for the delay in our semi-regular weekly survey. There was an unavoidable pontifical interruption late in the blogging day on Thursday. We will resume our regular schedule next week. Thank you for your attention to this matter.)

We begin in Indiana with the latest in brutal local policing. From The Indianapolis Star:

Some regarded the officers—young, aggressive and White—as the “future of the department,” a former Elkhart police captain said. Another described them as a “gang in blue” that operated like “special ops.” Inside the police department, they were known as the Wolverines. An IndyStar investigation found members of the group abused their power for years, cloaking themselves in a code of silence and operating with impunity. Department leaders who often looked the other way enabled their violent and racist actions.

Nowhere is the notoriety of the Wolverines more prevalent than in Elkhart’s Black community, where the group’s brutal tactics fueled a lingering distrust of police. Black residents make up about 12% of the manufacturing-heavy city of 53,000 people that sits just south of the Michigan state line. “Those people that this happened to 30 years ago, they had kids and grandkids,” said a current police department employee who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation from fellow officers. “Those stories have been passed on throughout the community. Our Black community doesn’t trust us.”

The Star deserves great credit for bulldogging this story for three years.

IndyStar’s investigation pulls back the curtain on this dark chapter in Indiana policing to reveal the tactics and impact of the officers who brazenly crossed the thin blue line.

Some officers identified by former colleagues as Wolverines espoused racist beliefs and used slurs against people of color.

They used the city’s Black neighborhoods as their playground, sometimes looking to “kick some ass” or competing to see who could make the most arrests.

They used excessive force—a reputation a former captain said “everybody took pride in.”

An outside study found that tolerating misconduct “had become ingrained” in the agency’s culture.

The city settled many lawsuits and misconduct claims with payouts to accusers. The officers faced minor, if any, consequences. Instead, some got promoted—only to reoffend.

Armed with greater authority as they rose through the ranks, some faced more troubling accusations: Lying, fabricating evidence and using false witnesses to frame innocent people.

One wonders if the Wolverines would face any consequences if they were just starting their “special ops” brutality today. During the campaign last year, the president promised to give police immunity from prosecution. And once in office, he acted to “unleash” local cops. The Wolverines had their timing wrong—as well as a lame nickname.

We move on to New Hampshire, which is deep in its quadrennial political hibernation from which it will not awaken until the minicams return to Manchester late in 2027. Alas, the state still has to govern itself in the interim. Recently, the state house of representatives passed a quite reasonable bill that would make it easier to recycle old paint cans. The bill made sense on both an environmental level—it would keep the old cans loaded with “forever chemicals” out of the state’s landfills—and a personal convenience level as well. Naturally, this being the United States of America in 2025, there has arisen a daffy, MAGA-tinged ideological opposition to the paint-can bill. From the New Hampshire Bulletin:

Amateur and professional home remodelers would take their paint cans to their local participating retailer, who would accept them at no cost. Those same retailers could then arrange with PaintCare, the American Coatings Association’s nonprofit that already operates the program in 10 states, to pick up the collected cans. To pay for the program, a fee would be added to new paint cans, ranging from 30 cents to $2.45 depending on the can’s size.

Oh noes, cry the libertarian woodchucks in the state’s politics. This looks and smells like ... a tax! Unclean! Unclean!

Among the opponents is Sen. Victoria Sullivan, a Manchester Republican who presumably arrives at the State House on session days via public roads paved and maintained thanks to funds we all contribute. But here’s what she said of this no-brainer bill: It’s “a tax on every single can of paint that is purchased,” and “the same paint tax that we’ve been fighting for years.”

The difference between New Hampshire wing nuts and South Carolina wing nuts? Flannel shirts.

We zip on over to Montana, where mobilized common sense has taken over what had been a wing-nut hootenanny in the state legislature. From High Country News:

Since November, national Democrats have struggled to forge an identity after losing the White House and both houses of Congress. But in Montana, where Democrats have been the minority in the Statehouse since 2011, the party has quietly produced some surprisingly tangible results. Seven Democrats, including Tuss, outperformed Harris, and the party flipped 12 seats in the state Legislature, its second-largest gain in the country after Wisconsin. Since Montana’s biannual Legislature convened in January, the Democratic minority in both chambers has locked arms with a group of moderate Republicans to isolate the far right and protect the public services that Trump and Elon Musk have placed on the federal chopping block: Medicaid, public schools and a nonpartisan judiciary, among others.

The group shrewdly took control over the important legislative committees, completely outmaneuvering the conservative bloc and short-circuiting the wing-nut wish list.

Several Republican priorities, like a bill requiring that the Ten Commandments be displayed in public school classrooms, were quickly killed. Meanwhile, moderates waited for the state budget to wend its way out of the House and through Senate committees. Then, they amended the bill on the Senate floor—over and over again—pushing tens of millions of dollars toward various public health programs, such as requiring hospitals to hire full-time nurses, as well as funding a pre-trial diversion program.

A similar pattern played out in the House, where moderate Republicans torpedoed an Arizona-style school voucher program, which has contributed to a $1.4 billion budget shortfall. With Democrats, they also renewed $100 million for an expanded version of Medicaid and allocated another $100 million to boost teacher pay, which ranks 46th in the country. “I’m not elected by my party. I’m not elected by a single person in charge of something,” said Rep. Ed Buttrey, R-Great Falls, who carried the Medicaid renewal bill. “I’m elected by the people of House District 21, and as long as I’m working hard for them and getting things done, they seem to want to send me back.”

I am sorry, sir, but One America News regrets to inform you that it has no openings at this time.

And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, whence Blog Official Rabelo Boat Inspector Friedman of the Algarve brings us the tale Governor Kevin Stitt, who again demonstrated that it’s Not About Race because it’s Never About Race. From KOCO:

On Monday, which marked Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Day, Stitt turned away a bill funding the OSBI unit focused exclusively on those cases. In 2021, he signed a bill creating that office. “I cannot endorse legislation that singles out victims based solely on their race,” Stitt said in a message. “House Bill 1137 requires the creation of a unit within the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) that focuses exclusively on missing and murdered Indigenous persons.”

There is a crisis in Oklahoma involving missing and murdered Indigenous people. From NewsChannel 8:

According to the National Institute of Justice, Oklahoma is the third highest state in the country for missing Indigenous people, and this year, so far, we’ve seen 89 missing Tribal people. ... In a statement from Olivia Gray, the CEO of the Indigenous Advocacy Institute and Founder of NOISE, said, “Governor Stitt’s veto of HB 1137 is not just a political maneuver—it is a willful act of harm against Native families across Oklahoma. It is one more example in a long line of decisions that make clear where his priorities lie, and Native lives are not among them.”

My guess is that, if 89 people had disappeared from the wealthiest suburbs of Oklahoma City or Tulsa since January, Stitt would have kept the veto stamp in his desk drawer.

This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.