Author: Reilly Lowery

A bill to name a ridge east of the Paradise Valley for an Air Force bomber that crashed there in 1962 is headed to the desk of President Donald Trump. The B-47 Ridge Designation Act passed the U.S. House unanimously on Monday, clearing the final hurdle between it and the president. The bill would dub a ridge off the southwest side of Emigrant Peak as B-47 Ridge and allow the placing of a memorial plaque at the crash site. It’s where four Air Force pilots died in 1962 while flying a training mission through Montana. Debris from the wreck is

Montana Senator Steve Daines on Sept. 16 stumped for legislation he helped draft, saying more forest management would protect communities from wildfires. Republican Daines presented his Emergency Wildfire and Public Safety Act of 2020 to the Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands, Forests, and Mining. He said the bill, which he wrote with Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, restores forest health and supports timber jobs. “We have been working together on this important piece of legislation that addresses forest management. As we say in Montana, either we’re going to manage our forests or our forests are going to manage us,”

Savanna’s Act, a bipartisan bill that addresses the missing and murdered Indigenous women epidemic, unanimously passed the U.S. House of Representatives Monday. The bill unanimously passed the U.S. Senate in March and now awaits President Donald Trump’s signature. Named in honor of Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, a 22-year-old pregnant Spirit Lake tribal member who was killed in 2017, Savanna’s Act requires federal agencies to update databases and create protocols to guide law enforcement entities. Specifically, the bill requires the U.S. Department of Justice to provide training to law enforcement agencies on data entry, educate the public on the database, help tribes and

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Steve Daines today announced that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Assistance to Firefighters Grant (AFG) Program will be directing $333,333.33 to the Vaughn Volunteer Fire Department. “This is about ensuring our firefighters in Vaughn have the critical support needed to keep our communities safe during this fire season,” Daines said. “I will continue working to ensure all of our brave firefighters have the help they need as they work to battle wildfires across Montana.” The AFG program makes funds available directly to fire departments, State Fire Training Academies and non-affiliated EMS organizations to support enhanced

U.S. Senator Steve Daines sent a letter urging the Administration to direct additional Census resources to Montana in the final weeks of the field data collection operations to ensure all Montanans are represented. “Given the rural nature of Montana and the additional challenges brought about by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of Montanans may go uncounted and entire communities could be underrepresented at the federal level,” Daines wrote. “I am requesting that trained Census personnel from states which are nearing full enumeration be relocated to Montana as soon as possible.”

In a political era when Republicans and Democrats rarely agree on anything, the catastrophic wildfire season now raging across the American west could prove compelling enough to rally bipartisan support for legislation to change how forests are managed. That is the hope of Sens. Steve Daines and Dianne Feinstein; one a Montana Republican the other a California Democrat, who on Wednesday spoke in common support of the Emergency Wildfire and Public Safety Act, a bill that would substantively alter fire suppression practices in the United States. U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont.“We are at a critical time,” Daines said in his