President Trump’s rally in Montana is yet another sign that this administration truly cares about our state, a stark contrast to what we experienced under four years with Joe Biden.
I started practicing law in Montana in 1985 and later represented Gallatin County voters in the Legislature. In all that time, one thing hasn’t changed: every federal dollar and every drug price lands on the budget of a rural Montana hospital.
Western Montana’s next congressman will decide which way those numbers move.
This year brought real help. Montana landed $233.5 million in first-year Rural Health Transformation funds, the fourth-largest award in the nation.
The program runs through 2030 and is designed for places like Montana, improving critical access to healthcare: expanding telehealth, the workforce, and keeping the lights on in small facilities.
Drug prices are moving too. Twenty-six drugmakers covering 89% of the branded market have signed most-favored-nation deals, and the newest ones open those prices to every state Medicaid program. Amgen’s cholesterol drug Repatha dropped from $573 to $239 on TrumpRx, and dozens more are following.
Montanans noticed the tax cuts. The average Montana filer gets a $3,575 tax cut in 2026, thanks to the new tips, overtime, and Social Security deductions. That’s real money in working people’s pockets that Democrats are desperate to claw back to fund their far-left wokery.
Energy jobs are coming back, too. I spent years as legal counsel for Montana Power Company, and I know what reliable power means in a state this big and this cold.
Montana holds 74 billion tons of recoverable coal, about a third of the nation’s total, and the Biden moratorium on new Powder River Basin leasing is gone. Colstrip got two years of relief from an EPA rule that threatened to close it, and Interior opened up to 13.1 million acres of federal coal. That’s lower energy costs when we need it most.
As a fellow veteran, Aaron Flint knows what service means. He led an infantry platoon in Ramadi, deployed again to Afghanistan, and still serves as a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve. He’s spent years on Montana radio listening to people across the state, and he has President Trump’s endorsement.
As a young man, I fought fires for the Forest Service, Park Service and the BLM, so I respect if Sam Forstag was a smokejumper. But his campaign whitewashes his liberal lobbyist past, and runs on Bernie Sanders’ endorsement and an AOC rally. His health plan is a government takeover of healthcare for everyone, where a Washington bureaucrat decides what doctor and medicine you get and when. Absolutely not.
When President Trump comes to Montana, we’ll get a front-row seat to the contrast; an administration that listens to Montanans or a reversal back to anti-Montana policies under Democrats. We can’t afford to go back, we can’t afford Democrats like Forstag’s far-left policies, and we can’t afford to give Hakeem Jeffries control of the House.
Art Wittich is the chairman of the Montana Republican Party.