California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks after he and other lawmakers signed the "Election Rigging Response Act" in Sacramento, California, U.S. August 21, 2025. REUTERS/Fred Greaves
Last week’s column noted the dismal approval ratings for Trump and even worse for Montana’s all-Republican Congressional delegation. Indeed, with one in three (or fewer) Montanans approving the delegation and the record low national approval of the president, it seemed like the propaganda about how great everything is was, well, running into the hard wall of reality.
Then came Tuesday’s elections and the reality-TV president and his gobbling MAGA sycophants nationwide went down hard as the voters “just said no” to the anger, lies, and aggression spinning out of the White House.
Chief among Tuesday’s most decisive rejection of the president and his unending threats of retribution was the election of 34-year old Zohran Mamdani as New York City’s next mayor. He was vilified as a “lunatic Communist” by Trump, who threatened to cut off federal funding for the city if he was elected.
Yet Mamdani cruised to victory — and he didn’t pull any punches in his victory speech, saying: “After all, the conventional wisdom would tell you that I am far from the perfect candidate. I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim. I am a Democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this.
“In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light. New York will remain a city of immigrants — a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and as of tonight, led by an immigrant. So hear me, President Trump, when I say this: To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.
“Together, we will usher in a generation of change. And if we embrace this brave new course, rather than fleeing from it, we can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves. After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him. In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light.”
Nor was he alone in securing victory by speaking truth to power as MAGA candidates and issues fell by the wayside nationwide. Far from being just a “blue state” rejection as claimed by the GOP, a sheriff who embraced ICE was defeated in Pennsylvania; progressives won all the open seats on Texas’ third largest school board; Georgia elected its first Democrats to the Public Service Commission since 2007; the Republican supermajority in Mississippi no longer exists for the first time since 2012; Colorado approved higher taxes on households with more than $300,000 income to fund free school lunches; and Maine voters rejected a MAGA initiative to make voting more difficult and did so by a whopping 60%
Surely given their already terrible approval numbers, Montana’s GOP Congressional delegation — and governor — should be having second thoughts about their unquestioning support for everything that splurts from Trump’s mouth and his cadre of wealthy, racist and hard-hearted cronies.
Denying Supplemental Nutrition (SNAP) funding for low-income families while blaming Democrats isn’t working since it’s the GOP that controls all three branches of government but can’t seem to govern.
Then there’s the job cuts, which are up a whopping 175% since the same time last year with more than a million jobs lost since Trump took office.
The takeaway? It’s long past time for our governor and congressional delegation to get back to being “public servants” rather than MAGA puppets — or come next election, they’ll likely be joining their ousted fellow MAGAs on the loser’s bench.