Across the state Montana Democrats elected 42 Representatives to our caucus. They are already hard at work preparing bill drafts to get Montana back on track! Our caucus will be putting freedom, fairness, and affordability first as we enter the session. We want to see fair property taxes that make housing affordable for home owners and renters alike. We will continue fighting to make sure our communities have the funding necessary to keep our schools strong. With Medicaid expansion set to sunset we will work to reauthorize Montana's existing Medicaid program and strengthen community care across the state. But our legislators need your support and participation!

‍With over 4,000 bill drafts requested, we can not do this alone!

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It has been a confusing several days for federal workers: First came a federal hiring freeze, the announcement of an end to remote work and an executive order reclassifying thousands of civil servant positions. Then came Tuesday's government-wide email giving nearly all federal employees until Feb. 6 to decide whether to opt into a "deferred resignation program."

About 2.4 million workers are employed by the federal government, excluding uniformed military personnel and U.S. Postal Service employees, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By contrast, Walmart, the largest private-sector employer in the U.S., has 1.6 million workers.
Where do most federal employees work? If you guessed Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia, you'd be wrong — and not by a little. Although a sizable concentration of the federal workforce does work in the District of Columbia and the surrounding states (about 459,000 as of March 2024, according to the Office of Personnel Management), 80% of federal civilian employees can be found at military bases and in government offices outside the region: about 181,000 in California, 168,500 in Texas, 115,000 in Florida and 88,000 in Georgia.

Reining in illegal immigration ranks as a top priority for Montana’s now entirely Republican federal delegation as they head to Washington, D.C., for the next Congress. The immigration drumbeat by Republicans in elections since 2016 is that Montana, to borrow a phrase from U.S. Sen Steve Daines, is a “northern border state with a southern border problem.” That concern is, however, complicated by Montana’s increasing reliance on foreign labor.

The year just ended with a flurry of national attention paid to visas for professional workers, or H-1B work permits, as Elon Musk argued with anti-immigration Republicans on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter about the need for H-1Bs to compensate for a dearth of skilled tech workers. The number of foreign workers sought by employers in Montana has nearly doubled since 2016. In 2024, employers applied for about 3,000 visa positions. Of the approximately 11 million immigrants living in the country without legal permission, about 42% are people who have overstayed visas instead of crossing one of the nation’s borders illegally, according to the Congressional Research Service.