Caleb Brennan

As a part of President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s austerity regime, more than $1 billion in funds used by the Department of Agriculture towards schools and local food banks have been cut.

On Thursday, two transgender Montana legislators in Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D- Central Missoula) and Rep. SJ Howell (D-Downtown Missoula) delivered potent speeches rejecting two anti-LGBTQ+ bills, inspiring an unlikely bipartisan take-down of the legislation.

Minnesota State Sen. Jim Abeler (R-Anoka), has been praised for speaking out against proposed Medicaid cuts despite voting against Medicaid expansion multiple times and calling the program “absolutely sick” in 2010.

Minnesota House Republicans, led by Rep. Natalie Zeleznikar (R-Hermantown), are pushing a bill that would funnel money away from reproductive health providers like Planned Parenthood and into so-called “crisis pregnancy centers.”

On Monday, the North Dakota House Judiciary Committee began debating House Concurrent Resolution 3013, a Republican-written resolution urging the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states in 2015. 

South Dakota state Rep. Phil Jensen (R-Rapid City) was forced out of his House Education Committee vice chairmanship after introducing a bill that would defund a school hundreds of miles away from Jensen’s district. 

An analysis by the Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank, has found that President Donald Trump’s 10% tariff increase on Chinese goods will harm industrial sectors that employ large swaths of the president’s rural base. 

At the start of the new legislative session, a group of North Dakota legislators put forward a potentially unconstitutional resolution that would have the state “acknowledge the Kingship of Jesus Christ.” 

A bill introduced by Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers (R-Elgin) that could permit employees in the state to be paid with cryptocurrency reached the committee process on Tuesday.

In St. Paul, chaos erupted in the Minnesota Legislature after Republicans attempted to start the new session — despite a boycott by the Democratic Farmer-Labor members (DFL) denying quorum.