George Ochenski, Daily Montanan

Cracks start to show in the MAGA cult — even in Montana

Late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel could barely get the words out of his mouth when he had to say: “I agree with Marjorie Taylor Greene.”

It was his second time this month, he noted, and added “I need something to wash out my mouth.” But in truth, the issue at hand, which is access to health care, is no laughing matter.

Greene’s latest defection from the MAGA cult of loyalty for which she has been a leading figure popped up in an exclusive interview with CNN in which she didn’t beat around the bush concerning the effect of the House-passed budget bill that, due to not reauthorizing Affordable Care Act subsidies, has caused the shutdown of the federal government.

“Everybody is just getting destroyed” Greene told reporters. “This cliff is coming for millions and millions of Americans where their health insurance premiums are about to skyrocket. Republicans, you have no solutions. You haven’t come up with a new plan in place, and we’re not even talking about it, and it is hurting so many people.”

Greene’s concerns are at odds with the narrative the GOP is trying to spin on the shutdown — namely that it’s all the fault of Senate Democrats. Instead, Greene says the healthcare crisis now facing millions of Americans, including her kids and constituents, is a direct threat to Republicans in the polls and voting booths.

It’s worth noting Greene is also one of four Republican House members who signed the discharge petition to force the release of the Epstein files, telling The Hill: “I think when it comes to women being raped, especially when they were 14 years old, that’s pretty black and white.” Moreover, she said Speaker Johnson’s attempts to keep the House shut down was “wrong” and they should reconvene to take care of the vast spectrum of Congressional business.

For his part, Johnson doesn’t want to reconvene the House due to the recent election of a Democrat who, when sworn in, will provide the final signature to force Johnson to deal with the “Epstein bomb”.

What could this MAGA rebellion by Greene have to do with Montana? Well, it’s not so dissimilar from a group of nine Republicans who broke with their own leadership over any number of issues. Chief among them was health care, and support for a bill by fellow Republican Ed Buttrey to lift the pending expiration of Medicaid expansion for low income people that the Senate’s GOP President, Matt Regier, opposed.

Like Greene, Buttrey noted that healthcare was critical and Republicans had no other plan: “We have 10 years’ worth of data that shows that the program we designed is working and working well. There’s no need to change it, it’s a savings to our budget, it is providing help for people all across the state, it’s helping save our rural health care facilities. Why would you want to change that or come up with another plan?”

It’s fair to say the GOP tends to “keep its soldiers in line” when it comes to supporting or opposing leadership positions. Yet, just as Greene defied Johnson on Medicare funding and Trump on the Epstein files, Buttrey and his nine “rebels” defied their own leadership and governor to support Medicaid expansion.

None of this spells the end of MAGA, of course. But it shows that when it comes down to the critical issues that affect the citizens of our nation and state, party affiliation is not and should not be the determining factor — especially when it comes to taking care of each other.

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Someone finally put spoiled child Trump in his place

Every kid has heard “No means no!” when they want something their parents don’t think they should have. This week that phrase got a couple high profile uses when Canada’s new Prime Minister, Mark Carney, told Donald Trump right to his face that Canada was not and never would be for sale and Montana’s Congressman Ryan Zinke forcefully said “no” to the sale of public lands in the West.

In this day and age seeing U.S. politicians keep their campaign promises — or honor their oaths of office — is becoming increasingly rare. But on “keeping public lands in public hands,” Rep. Zinke did just that.

The measure in question was part of the “big, beautiful bill” touted by Trump to give yet more tax breaks to the already wealthy. The new twist was to sell hundreds of thousands of acres of federal lands in Nevada and Utah for mining, logging, drilling and development to finance those tax breaks.

Doug Burgum, the Secretary of the Interior, has publicly declared public lands and resources as “natural assets” that can be used to pay down the national debt. Consequently, GOP Reps. Mark Amodei of Nevada and Celeste Maloy of Utah inserted the public land sale as an amendment since it was not contained in the original draft of the bill due to bipartisan opposition.

Montana’s Congressman and former Secretary of the Interior called the move to sell public lands “a red line” and was adamant: “It’s a no now. It will be a no later. It will be a no forever.’’ As Zinke explained his firm opposition: “I prefer the management scheme and I give as an example a hotel. If you don’t like the management of a hotel, don’t sell the hotel; change the management.”

At almost the same time, Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney was using almost the same words in his White House meeting. After listening to Trump’s blather about how Canada should be our 51st state, how much he “loved Canada” and how erasing the “artificial” border line would make one beautiful piece of real estate, Carney used Trump’s own real estate line to fire back: “As you know from real estate, there are some places that are never for sale. We’re sitting in one right now. Having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign the last several months, it’s not for sale, won’t be for sale,” adding: “Canada’s not for sale. It never will be for sale.”

Carney won office largely on his opposition to Trump’s intentions to take over Canada, saying during the election that: “America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. But these are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never ever happen.”

Both Zinke and Carney are dead right. Polls show 74% of Americans oppose the sale of our public lands — and Carney’s election speaks for itself. He won by fighting Trump’s nasty threat to take over our northern neighbor that 77% of Canadians oppose.

For a guy who’s always been told he can have everything he wants, the double-barrel blast should be a wake up call. The world is not one big real estate sale to be marketed solely to make greedy billionaires even more money. Kudos to Zinke and Carney — and hopefully a sign to the rest of Congress and the world that it’s time to tell our spoiled child of a president “No means no!”

Editor’s note: This column has been updated to reflect the proper committee assignments for Rep. Ryan Zinke.

Daily Montanan is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Daily Montanan maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Darrell Ehrlick for questions: info@dailymontanan.com.

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Political Dirty Work

Given the Bush presidency's horrid record of lying about everything from preemptive war to domestic issues such as the environment, health care and education, it should come as no surprise that they're at it again. This time, it's to interfere in Montana's election on medical marijuana, I-148.

Case in point was last week's visit to Montana by Scott Burns, the so-called deputy drug czar for Bush's Office of National Drug Control Policy. First, in a blatant attempt to exclude the public – a common tactic of this benighted administration – no one except "credentialed media" were allowed in the 15-minute "press conferences" Burns gave in Missoula, Helena and Billings. Only one little problem – the Montana Newspaper Association does not issue "press credentials," preferring to let Montanans report wherever and whenever they so choose.

Because Burns conveniently held his "press conferences" in drug treatment facilities, he was successful at shutting out supporters of the initiative who may have challenged him. Burns got right to the point with his first lie: "I'm not here to tell anyone how to vote," he said, looking straight into the TV cameras – and then proceeded to tell Montanans that voting for medical marijuana would be a terrible thing.

According to Burns, I-148, which would allow those with AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis or other terminal or serious illnesses to grow and use marijuana for medical purposes, is not about bringing relief to sick people, but "about telling children that this is a medicine." Burns says it "is common sense" that having cannabis viewed as medicine will lead to increased use of marijuana among young people. But I can't ever recall busting into the medicine cabinet to gulp down some of Grandma's laxatives, can you? Or how about swigging some of that great-tasting Pepto-Bismol? Yet, from time to time those medicines surely helped the oldsters feel better.

Referring to the "snake oil of 100 years ago" (but ignoring the recent recall of Vioxx) Burns said we now "look to experts to tell us what is safe" and claimed: "None of them say smoking this weed is medicine."

Unfortunately, the drug czar must be too busy flying around the country on taxpayer money doing the federal government's political dirty work to take the time to read the conclusions of medical authorities from all over the world who have found just the opposite – that marijuana is indeed efficacious in treating a number of ailments.

Since he was in Montana, Burns should have done his homework and read the Missoula Chronic Clinical Cannabis Use Study, which was approved through the Compassionate Investigational New Drug Program of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The cannabis, which came from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, was used under the supervision of a study physician, with the goal of determining the "overall health status of 4 of 7 surviving patients in the program" who used "a known dosage of a standardized, heat-sterilized, quality-controlled supply of low-grade marijuana for 11 to 27 years."

And what did they find? Quoting from the study: "Results demonstrate clinical effectiveness in these patients in treating glaucoma, chronic musculoskeletal pain, spasm and nausea, and spasticity of multiple sclerosis. All 4 patients are stable with respect to their chronic conditions, and are taking many fewer standard pharmaceuticals than previously." The authors went on to say, in terms even a drug czar could understand: "These results would support the provision of clinical cannabis to a greater number of patients in need. We believe that cannabis can be a safe and effective medicine..."

Rather than get bogged down in messy medical details that disprove his propaganda, Burns simply went on to assure reporters that in every state that had approved the use of medical marijuana, drug use among young people had increased. But an ongoing annual study in California found marijuana use by ninth-graders has dropped 45 percent since 1996, when the state legalized medical marijuana.

Leaving the statistics behind, what about the actual experience of Montanans? Take Teresa Michalski, one of the people who showed up to dispute Burns but who wasn't allowed into the Helena press conference. Michalski says using marijuana was the only thing that helped her son, who died of a rare blood cancer last year.

"My family learned the hard way, when our son was dying of Hodgkins disease, that 'traditional' pain pills don't work for everyone," Michalski said. "Toward the end of his life, my son was taking huge quantities of the same pills Rush Limbaugh was addicted to, but they did nothing for my son's pain and nothing for the nausea that made eating impossible. Marijuana, on the other hand, helped quell my son's agony and made it possible for him to eat. Because of marijuana, he was able to live his last days and die in relative comfort. But he and the rest of his family shouldn't have had to deal with the fear of criminal prosecution during that difficult time in our lives, which were tough enough as it was."

Instead of interfering in Montana's elections, the drug czar should have used his federally funded plane ticket to visit Canada. If his preposterous claims were correct, the streets of our northern neighbor should be clogged with stoner youths, barely able to ambulate because of their access to potent B.C. bud. But as many Montanans know from firsthand experience, Canada's legalization of medical marijuana has produced no such drastic effects.

Fear and lies are the tools of the Bush administration, but Montanans are smart, compassionate people. Come Nov. 2, Montanans should tell the drug czar to take his lies back to the White House, vote for I-148 and bring legal relief to our most seriously ill citizens.

Cracks start to show in the MAGA cult — even in Montana

Someone finally put spoiled child Trump in his place

Political Dirty Work