The approximately 360 Montana-based federal Forest Service workers laid off in a blanket federal workforce reduction initiative may soon return to their positions.

The federal Merit Systems Protection Board on Wednesday directed the U.S. Department of Agriculture to temporarily reinstate the thousands of workers across the country who lost their USDA jobs last month after receiving generic emails stating that “based on [their] performance,” their continued employment “would not be in the public interest.” The board considers employment-related claims brought by federal workers to assess the legality of the government’s actions. 

The USDA is the largest federal employer in Montana and oversees the U.S. Forest Service, which manages more land in Montana than any other federal agency. Hundreds of Montanans lost their positions with the USFS in a sweeping round of layoffs implemented at the behest of a Department of Government Efficiency federal workforce reduction effort led by tech billionaire Elon Musk.

While many of the Forest Service workers laid off have multiple years of experience with the agency, they were considered “probationary employees” because they were just a year or two into their current position. Among other duties, the laid-off employees were charged with clearing trails, servicing campgrounds and rental cabins, responding to wildfires, controlling noxious weeds, supporting timber sales, restoring fisheries and studying archaeological sites.

Cathy Harris, chair of the Merit Systems Protection Board, issued the order in response to a claim filed on behalf of “John Doe,” a forestry technician who argued that he was terminated despite receiving a “fully successful” performance evaluation as recently as Jan. 15 and being given “only positive feedback” about his job performance.

The Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency that is itself in the Trump administration’s crosshairs, argued that the generic email Doe received was “identical to the mass termination letters” received by thousands of other probationary employees working for the USDA and other agencies. Between 5,700 and 6,000 employees received these emails, according to the OSC.

The USDA should contact laid-off federal workers within five days about a resumption of their employment, according to the Alden Law Group, a Washington, D.C.-based law firm representing the federal workers. The reinstatement restores the workers’ positions through April 18. During that period, Harris will consider whether the agency acted illegally by conducting the terminations without properly considering employees’ performance or going through “reductions in force” protocols for shrinking the federal government’s payroll.

Robert Arnold, a business representative with the National Federation of Federal Employees, a union representing Forest Service workers and other federal employees, cheered the order.

“All those people were fired unjustly, and it’s good that that’s apparent to some in positions of power,” he said. “We hope it sticks.”

Arnold added that he expected additional detail about the Forest Service’s plan to comply with the order in the coming days.

Harris’ order is nonprecedential, meaning MSPB and administrative judges are not required to consider it when weighing future claims.

In a statement about the order, OSC Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger thanked the board for issuing a stay on the firings. 

“Agencies are best positioned to determine the employees impacted by these mass terminations,” Dellinger said in the statement. “Voluntarily rescinding these hasty and apparently unlawful personnel actions is the right thing to do and avoids the unnecessary wasting of taxpayer dollars.”

USDA could not be immediately reached for comment on the order.

Nationwide, the workforce reduction is estimated to have resulted in approximately 10% of Forest Service employees losing their jobs, but some national forests were hit harder than others. Mary Erickson, who recently retired from her longtime post as supervisor of the Custer Gallatin National Forest, said approximately one-quarter of the forest’s non-wildfire staff lost their jobs in the “Valentine’s Day massacre.” Erickson criticized the focus on some of the agency’s most vulnerable employees, describing it as an attempt to “demonize and demoralize public servants.” 

“It makes me so frustrated when people act as if the Forest Service has never gone through budget cuts or changes. I think, ‘What do people think the Custer Gallatin combination was all about?’ That’s a 3 million acre national forest spread from West Yellowstone to Camp Crook, South Dakota,” Erickson said at a Feb. 25 event in Bozeman she organized to elevate workers’ stories and connect them with community support. “But this time is beyond anything I have ever seen or experienced.”

While wildland firefighters and other public safety personnel were officially exempted from the firing, an untold number of laid-off employees whose primary responsibilities lay in other arenas also served as “fire militia” to support local wildfire operations.

Allison Borges, a noxious weed specialist who was nine months into a permanent position on the Custer Gallatin National Forest when she was laid off, told MTFP Thursday afternoon that she has not yet received any outreach about being reinstated to her position. Borges said she’s reached out to her supervisor and was told that she, too, is awaiting guidance about complying with the order.

Borges said she’s uncertain if she should return to a job she loves and excels at or seek out employment that will offer more of the professional stability she’s long sought. Borges said she appreciates the outpouring of support from sympathetic community members but remains unsure how far that will take her and her colleagues.

“I know people are going to make their voices heard, they’re going to be present. But I’m also watching my agency crumble a little bit,” she said. “Things are happening so fast that by the time our collective voices are elevated to the sort of [administrators] that will help us make change, I don’t know if the agency will still be standing.”

The Montana Department of Labor and Industry on Feb. 28 announced that it has scheduled a “rapid response event” slated for March 12 to help terminated federal employees find new jobs and access workforce development resources. DLI Commissioner Sarah Swanson is encouraging those employees to apply for unemployment benefits and told MTFP that the department would evaluate claimants’ eligibility on a “case-by-case basis.”

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” width=”224″ height=”168″ align=”right” hspace=”10″ alt=”A packed Capitol rotunda in Helena, Montana, for the February 19 Rally for Public Lands” title=”A packed Capitol rotunda in Helena, Montana, for the February 19 Rally for Public Lands” />The U.S. Constitution gives citizens the right to “petition the government for a redress of grievances.” As a blizzard of public lands change sweeps out of Washington, D.C., activists around Greater Yellowstone ponder tactics to help them keep what they hold dear.

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” width=”224″ height=”168″ align=”right” hspace=”10″ alt=”The federal government employs as many as 10,000 wildland firefighters each year. With hiring freezes in place nationwide, fire season is in limbo” title=”The federal government employs as many as 10,000 wildland firefighters each year. With hiring freezes in place nationwide, fire season is in limbo” />Executive orders coming from the White House could transform a range of core issues affecting Greater Yellowstone. From Forest Service and BLM priorities to national park staffing cuts, public lands advocates must brace for a long season of conflict.

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” width=”224″ height=”168″ align=”right” hspace=”10″ alt=”Axolotl Lakes southwest of Ennis, Montana, in the foothills of the Gravelly Range” title=”Axolotl Lakes southwest of Ennis, Montana, in the foothills of the Gravelly Range” />As organizers prepare for the biennial Rally for Public Lands, the conservation world faces down a changing climate, an administration determined to dismantle environmental protections, and its own internal contradictions.

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In response to news this week that Montana’s largest land manager is laying off 360 Montana-based federal employees, a spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service said Friday the agency is “confident that talented individuals” impacted by the staffing reduction will have “many opportunities to contribute to our economy and society in countless ways outside of government.”

The spokesperson, who asked to not be identified, went on to say that Brooke Rollins, who heads up the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, “fully supports President Trump’s directive to optimize government operations, eliminate inefficiencies, and strengthen USDA’s ability to better serve American farmers, ranchers, loggers and the agriculture community.”

“We have a solemn responsibility to be good stewards of Americans’ hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to ensure that every dollar is being spent as effectively as possible to serve the people, not the bureaucracy,” the statement continued.

Montana Conservation Voters Executive Director Whitney Tawney wrote in an email Friday to Montana Free Press that the cuts threaten Montana’s economy, recreational opportunities and communities. 

“Indiscriminately cutting jobs for hardworking Montanans who manage our public lands is the opposite of common sense. These cuts will make our public lands less healthy, more likely to burn and less accessible,” she wrote. “Montana’s Congressional delegation must call President Trump now and tell him this is unacceptable. These decisions should be made locally, not by D.C. political hacks who know nothing of Montana’s public lands.”

The Forest Service spokesperson did not respond to Montana Free Press’ follow-up questions regarding severance pay for the affected employees or changes national forest users can anticipate in response to the workforce reduction.

According to a Thursday evening story by POLITICO, the Forest Service anticipated firing about 3,400 federal employees across “every level of the agency” as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the federal workforce. Wildland firefighters, law enforcement officers and other employees with a public safety nexus were exempted from the firing initiative. 

The workers that have been impacted are still within their probationary period, meaning they’ve been employed by the agency for less than two years, and perform a variety of roles ranging from road and trail maintenance to timber production and watershed restoration.

Hilary Eisen, a Bozeman-based policy director with the Winter Wildlands Alliance, said the layoffs will be felt by “everybody who visits or works on these public lands.”

The Forest Service administers tens of millions of acres of land across Montana. In addition to reviewing and authorizing timber sales and livestock grazing leases, the Forest Service plays an important role in the state’s multi-billion dollar outdoor recreation economy and conducts research on a variety of subjects ranging from how wildfires spread to the impact of “hot drought” on forests and promising forestry-oriented approaches to increase water yields.

“The people who lost their jobs maintain trails, discover and extinguish abandoned campfires before they become wildfires, clean outhouses, control weeds, process permits, and much, much more,” Eisen wrote in an email to MTFP. “Arbitrary cuts to the federal workforce is not a path towards efficiency or meaningful budget reductions, but it will harm communities all across Montana and the nation.”

The National Federation of Federal Employees, a union that represents Forest Service workers, has joined a coalition of unions in a lawsuit to halt the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the federal workforce. In the lawsuit, the unions argue Trump’s efforts are undermining the role of Congress to establish funding for federal agencies. This, they say, is a violation of the separation of powers. 

In response to what it described as the “illegal gutting of the federal workforce,” the union on Thursday issued a press release urging the judicial branch’s intervention. 

“Federal workers are your friends and neighbors who have dedicated their careers to serving our country. We cannot let the President disrupt their lives and dismantle critical services relied upon by the American people,” NFFE National President Randy Erwin wrote. “If this Administration and Elon Musk truly wanted to make our government more efficient, they would have taken the time to understand that these actions will only lead to chaos and poor service for the American people.”

The layoff notices arrived via email the day after the deadline for the “Fork in the Road” offer for federal employees to resign and continue receiving paychecks through September, according to POLITICO.

MTFP requests for comment from the NFFE were not returned by press time Friday. On its website, the Forest Service-specific arm of the union is advising employees who received termination letters to contact a union representative and consider an appeal of the termination. 

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” width=”224″ height=”168″ align=”right” hspace=”10″ alt=”Montana-made whiskey isn’t the only commodity affected by trade with Canada” title=”Montana-made whiskey isn’t the only commodity affected by trade with Canada” />Fast-moving announcements of U.S. trade wars against Canada, Mexico and China leave state stakeholders bracing for market turmoil.

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By the time the 2025 session of the Montana Legislature concludes in late April or early May, the state’s 150 lawmakers will have cast thousands of votes on proposals affecting everything from property taxes to pet insurance to human health care, ultimately forwarding hundreds of bills to the desk of Gov. Greg Gianforte.

The often-turbulent legislative firehose is a lot to keep track of even if you’re a seasoned journalist or lobbyist working in the Capitol — much less if you’re an everyday Montanan trying to follow what your representatives are doing from elsewhere in the state. The sheer volume of bills, votes and debate that flows through the Capitol halls can quite easily sweep a casual observer off their feet.

Launching for the 2025 session today, our digital Capitol Tracker guide is intended to offer a lifeline in that storm, helping Montanans ranging from Capitol insiders to bewildered citizens make sense of the quantifiable aspects of legislative proceedings. (For insight on the unquantifiable ones, subscribe to Tom Lutey’s Capitolized newsletter.)

The digital guide mirrors information presented on the Legislature’s newly revamped official website, but is intended to load faster and be easier to use, especially on mobile phones. We’re also able to supplement the sometimes-terse official data with additional information such as links to stories MTFP reporters have written about particular bills or analyses of specific lawmakers’ voting records.

You can find the guide here:

This year’s version of the tracker will be largely familiar to readers who used the 2023 edition. However, we’ve had to rework much of the logic that moves information around behind the scenes (sometimes repeatedly) to accommodate the new legislative website’s various birthing pains. As part of that work, we’ve also removed a few features we had on the prior edition while we think through how we can reconceptualize them.

As of today, the 2025 tracker includes the following functionality:

A page with information for each introduced bill (all 664 of them as of this writing), including the sponsor and the bill’s progression through the various legislative hurdles that stand between a bill and its enactment as law. Bill pages also include links to the full bill text and proposed amendments, as well as fiscal and legal notes for bills that have them.

A page for each of the Legislature’s 100 representatives and 50 senators, including their public contact information, their committee assignments, a list of bills they’ve sponsored and the results of their most recent election. Those pages also include an analysis of how often lawmakers are voting with their Republican and Democratic colleagues.

Lookup tools that let you search bills by title and number and lawmakers by name. You can also look up your district’s lawmakers by entering your address.

A couple of other notes: Due to the sheer volume of information included in the Capitol Tracker and our ongoing efforts to work with the new legislative website, we expect we’ll have a few bugs to sort out in the coming weeks. We’d greatly appreciate your help (and patience) on that front.

Additionally, while we already have some plans for features we’re hoping to add in the coming weeks, we’d love to hear suggestions about ways we could make this tool more useful to you.

You can reach our data team, Data Reporter Jacob Olness and Deputy Editor Eric Dietrich, at jolness@montanafreepress.org and edietrich@montanafreepress.org.

TAKE A LOOK: MTFP’s 2025 Capitol Tracker.

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” width=”224″ height=”168″ align=”right” hspace=”10″ alt=”Buckle up. As airlines add direct flights to and from Bozeman and elsewhere in Montana, the GYE expects a busy season of visitors” title=”Buckle up. As airlines add direct flights to and from Bozeman and elsewhere in Montana, the GYE expects a busy season of visitors” />Surging direct-flight jet service portends another busy tourist summer in Greater Yellowstone and beyond.

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Almost every Saturday and Sunday morning for the last year, Beth McBride, Carli Seymour or another self-described “Bar Fairy” roam the Flathead Valley looking for abandoned cars in front of bars. When they find one parked from the night before, they’ll slip a $5 gift card to a local coffee stand on the windshield as a token of appreciation for the person not driving home under the influence. 

Seymour came up with the idea after her brother and McBride’s son, Robert “Bobby” Dewbre, was struck and killed by a suspected drunk driver as he walked across a street outside of a Columbia Falls bar on March 11, 2023. Dewbre was out celebrating his 21st birthday.

The man behind the wheel that night, John Lee Wilson, later pleaded no contest to three misdemeanor charges stemming from the incident and is presently serving 18 months in the county jail. Flathead County Attorney Travis Ahner declined to charge Wilson with felonies because he did not think he could win a conviction. Although Wilson was intoxicated, he was not speeding or swerving, and Dewbre had been jaywalking. Instead, Wilson was charged with operating a vehicle without liability insurance, careless driving involving death or serious bodily injury and aggravated driving under the influence.

McBridge said it was evidence of why the state needs to enact tougher laws related to drunk driving — something her group, Montana Bar Fairies, is now pushing for in the Montana Legislature. That push comes amid a recent spike in fatal drunk-driving incidents in northwest Montana, including four fatal accidents that are being investigated as DUIs between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, according to the nonprofit.

“We have an extreme drinking culture in Montana,” McBride said. 

According to the Montana Department of Transportation, between 2019 and 2022, 335 people were killed in crashes involving an alcohol-impaired driver with a blood-alcohol concentration of .08% (the legal limit) or higher; 72% of those fatal accidents involved a driver with a BAC of .15% (twice the legal limit). In 2020, 66% of all highway fatalities were the result of impaired driving, up from 58% the previous year. As a result, Montana has one of the highest fatal drunk-driving rates in the country. 

In January 2024, Seymour was driving to her mother’s house early one morning when she saw cars parked in front of a Kalispell bar. It was then that she had the idea to start putting coffee cards on windshields to thank those people for not driving and encourage others to do the same. 

The first weekend, Seymour and McBride handed out 21 cards in the Columbia Falls area. The next weekend they distributed 10 cards in Kalispell and then 29 and 49 cards the following two weekends in Whitefish. In the year since, Montana Bar Fairies has handed out 894 gift cards worth more than $4,400. Many of the cards have been donated by Copper Mountain Coffee, Florence Coffee Company and others, or covered by financial donations made to the nonprofit. Along with the gift cards left on windshields, volunteers include a small card featuring the story of someone killed by a drunk driver. 

“It’s felt like we have been able to turn our grief into something positive,” Seymour said. “We want to reward good behavior rather than shame people.”

McBride said the reaction to the cards has been overwhelmingly positive. The group is now turning that goodwill into action by supporting LC 1340, a bill requested by Rep. Braxton Mitchell (R-Columbia Falls), for consideration this legislative session. The bill, which is tentatively supported by the Montana County Attorneys Association, is still being crafted but would revise state law to include a minimum of three years in prison for anyone convicted of aggravated vehicular homicide while under the influence. McBride said it would also allow prosecutors to consider only a driver’s blood-alcohol content when making charging decisions.  

McBride said the changes would mean harsher punishments for people like the man who struck and killed her son. 

“It’s just wrong that the guy who killed Bobby just got 18 months,” she said. “This is a common-sense law.” 

LC 1340 is scheduled for a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on Jan. 27. McBride is encouraging people to attend the hearing in Helena to support it. 

For more information, visit montanabarfairies.org. 

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CHOTEAU — A fire damaged part of the Choteau Acantha’s building between 2 and 4 a.m. Tuesday. No one was injured. The blaze nearly destroyed one of the building’s three rooms and severely damaged items in adjacent rooms.

Officials have not yet determined the cause of the fire at the newspaper’s office. The Teton County Sheriff’s Office and Teton County Fire & Rescue  declined to comment Tuesday on the ongoing investigation.

The Choteau Acantha is a weekly publication that serves Choteau and the surrounding communities. Owners Melody and Jeff Martinsen purchased the paper in 1990. In their roughly 35-year tenure, they have not missed publishing an edition.

The Martinsens said they will still deliver the weekly newspaper Wednesday morning. The Choteau Acantha staff sent this week’s edition to be printed in Bozeman on Monday night. On Tuesday, a representative of the newspaper picked the print editions up from Conrad. The Martinsens spent Tuesday morning picking ceiling tiling off their label maker, labeling the newspapers with delivery addresses and then dropping off the copies at the post office for distribution.

“We have no intention of letting this stop the 131st year of continuous publication of the Choteau Acantha,” Melody Martinsen said in an interview Tuesday. “We pick up the pieces and we keep going on.”

The blaze was first reported by Caine Gray, a bartender working roughly a block away from the Acantha building at the Choteau American Legion.  Gray noticed thick smoke in the street when he left work around 2:20 a.m.

“The way this was concentrated, I knew something wasn’t right,” Gray said. “So I hit the alleys.”

Gray called the Teton County Sheriff’s Department before driving around Choteau in search of the fire. In 2021, Gray rescued his two children from his blazing home in the middle of the night. Within minutes, he spotted smoke billowing from the window’s of the Acantha building. Teton County Fire & Rescue, Fairfield Volunteer Fire Department and Choteau Volunteer Fire Department sent  25 firemen and five engines to put out the blaze.

We have no intention of letting this stop the 131st year of continuous publication of the Choteau Acantha. We pick up the pieces and we keep going on.

Melody Martinsen, Choteau Acantha Editor

Melody and Jeff Martinsen salvaged six computers in addition to several other pieces of equipment and assorted documents. Though the rescued items sustained some damage from smoke, soot and water, “they’re all in working condition, which is an amazing testament to how fast our firefighters locked it down,” Melody Martinsen said.

“The whole staff, they’re great people,” Gray said. “We would do anything and everything for them.”

Community members have offered the Martinsens and Choteau Acantha staff workspaces, office supplies and food.

“They say it takes a village,” Gray said. “ And I think Choteau’s about the best village you can get.”

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