Do y’all remember when folks with kooky ideas were mostly just fun? Sure, they thought aliens built the pyramids. And maybe they were convinced that the Illuminati were secretly controlling the world. But those ideas were easy to dismiss because we collectively understood that information that couldn’t be verified was essentially fiction. Unfortunately, this kind of fun kooky persona has evolved into something far more sinister. Now, we face real world danger based on wild and unsubstantiated lies. What’s more, we’ve learned that simply being an elected official does not indicate a person is sane, stable, or even capable of good judgment.
Enter Jeremy Trebas, former House Rep and current candidate for Senate District 13. Trebas is facing off against Democrat Casey Schreiner. To be clear, I didn’t support Schreiner in his previous bid for Governor, and I don’t consider Schreiner to be a progressive. I don’t live in District 13 so I have no personal stake in this matter. I just think Trebas is really, really stupid, and the folks in his district deserve to know that.
Trebas’ concerns and areas of focus have become increasingly odd, to say the least. Most recently, Trebas spoke out in support of the Montana woman who killed and skinned a husky. An odd position to take, because loving dogs is perhaps the only truly a-political position Montanans all share. We’re dog people, even those of us who don’t hunt. Hunters too, shared a state-wide shiver seeing the innocent animal skinned and paraded as if this woman hadn’t just murdered a household pet.
In a surprising show of tenacity, Schreiner recently shared a number of Trebas’ more concerning posts. Among them, Trebas criticized Malmstrom’s Pride Month celebrations equating the events to “parad[ing] mental illness and degeneracy.” Perhaps Trebas is unaware that the military community includes service members that are also LGBTQ+? Does he view these service members as degenerates as well?
In conjunction with Trebas’ well-documented bigotry, he has vocally joined forces with another vile and destructive propagator of human pain, much like himself. That’s right, Candidate Trebas is here to tell us that we should all be kinder to- Polio. No, really. A resurfaced post of Trebas states, “There was no need for the polio vaccine.” Personally, I respect Trebas’ bodily autonomy (even if he doesn’t respect mine). Therefore I am totally okay with Trebas needlessly catching polio. But to argue that we didn’t need a vaccine for a disease that was killing and paralyzing kids? That’s heartless. Even for an anti-choice, anti-puppy, homophobic Republican.
So to close: Trebas is PRO shooting huskies and ANTI polio vaccine. Let’s hope he includes this info on his next mailer.
Greg Gianforte has been busy. And by busy, I mean attempting to overhaul and turn professional licensing requirements on their head in Montana. His office recently released the first draft of their Red Tape Reduction Initiative, which has been described as Gianforte’s cornerstone achievement for this upcoming legislative session. The bill is meant to remove some regulation involving state boards and state licensed professionals, but to my surprise in the first draft was the elimination of the license requirement for my profession: architecture.
Most of the general public might think of architects and luxurious design as synonymous. However, at the very minimum, our job is to provide safe and healthy building design solutions that fit within building, energy, ADA and fire code standards. State licenses are important, because the factors of building design in every state are different, especially those involving weather and geography, and we must ensure that anyone coming from another state meets the necessary requirements to design in Montana. If we lose our licenses or our state board, it opens the flood gates for the lowest bidder to come from across the country to design in Montana….no license needed. This will cost taxpayers more for design errors in publicly funded buildings, it will cost building owners and developers, and allow any architect around the country to immediately design Montana buildings creating unlimited, unregulated business competition for those of us already here.
Architects from warm, flat regions pose the biggest threat. Outside of the obvious heavy snow loads and frigid temperatures we endure for many months of the year, we live within a special wind zone because of our Chinook winds. Dealing with our unique topography, high winds, cold weather, and drifting snow in building design is not something that most architects outside of our region are familiar with. I grew up in the southeastern US so I know firsthand; there are many ways they design buildings in the south that would be impractical at best to construct here.
We first heard rumblings in July that professional license and state licensing board changes were coming and could be aggressive. As an architect working within Great Falls, I can confirm that most of my colleagues were blind-sided to find out that not only was our state architecture board in peril, but that our licensure process was at risk of being removed. The new bill will go to the next legislative session in January, potentially derailing our entire profession in the matter of seven months.
Building design is rigorous work, often requiring many days of long hours to see a project through to completion. We continuously give back to our communities by fostering development, volunteering for groups, organizations, and committees who need a local architect on board, and help local businesses succeed with bringing state-of-the-art design to our cities, towns, and rural areas. I know architects who are good, hard-working people that voted for Gianforte, because he had a business-first identity. Why would this administration turn on its own supporters, especially those who are heavily intertwined in the positive development of Montana communities?
Gianforte’s state website includes this excerpt on the Red Tape Reduction Act: “Revising, rolling back, and repealing unnecessary, burdensome regulations will help open Montana for business, grow our economy, increase access to greater opportunities, and create more good-paying Montana jobs.” One could easily conclude that he considers licensed architects as unnecessary and burdensome. This will open Montana to irresponsible development that will cost our taxpayers, close small businesses like the one I work for, and destroy the local fabric of our Montana communities. We need our cities and towns to be designed by people who live within them, not by out-of-state architects who ignore our best interests.
Representative Ed Hill of Havre strikes again with a tone deaf, ignorant, and embarrassing slew of statements on all sorts of issues at the most recent Hill County Pachyderms meeting. Instead of focusing on local issues that the people of House District 28 really care about (access to healthcare, inflation, infrastructure, funding public education, public lands) the Hill County GOP spent their meeting spouting off Tucker Carlson’s latest conspiracy theories about Public Education. Which is pretty ballsy considering word on the street is some folks voted for Hill for the Legislature in 2020 solely to REMOVE him from the school board.
The question-and-answer session focused on wildly unfounded beliefs about public schools and even calls to eliminate multiple subjects. The idea that public school curriculum needs to be reduced to only the essentials was echoed by Havre City Council President Andrew Brekke. “Reading, writing and arithmetic, forget all the other crap, teach a skill that, as an employer, I can hire, that’s what I want,” Brekke said. The Hill County GOP are clearly interested in children as future laborers rather than children as whole and well-rounded individuals. GOP supporters further expressed belief in a conspiracy theory that public school is part of a plan to destroy religion and the family.
“Not to talk about conspiracy theories, but people have been planning this for many, many years,” Brekke said. “Part of it is the destruction of families, the destruction of God, all of these things.” As it so often does, comments about religion soon turned to outright lies and bigotry. The discussion quickly moved to the blatantly false and homophobic idea that children in public schools are being “sexually groomed” a common homophobic and transphobic sterotype about the presence of LGBTQ+ educators and learning material featuring the presence of LGBTQ+ people.
Hill did not push back on any of these ideas. Rather, he tacitly endorsed the discriminatory lies, stating that efforts to groom children in education are wrong and anyone who doesn’t like it can leave the state.”
Instead of calling out these blatant lies, HILL DID NOT PUSH BACK ON ANY OF THESE IDEAS. Read it twice. The worst part of this whole meeting was the fact that these people said these comments OUT LOUD knowing the press was recording their every word. As a person in leadership I know what it’s like to get misquoted by the media, but I also know that they use tape recorders for nearly every meeting they report at…..so, no excuse.
Does the Hill County GOP really think they represent the majority and there would be no pushback? Social Media is currently engulfed by Ed Hill’s current dumpster fire of public comments. Let’s hope voter turnout for Paul Tuss is enough to extinguish it come November 8th.
For the complete bat shit story, check out the link below from Havre Daily News.
By Lindsey Ratliff Lindsey is a lifelong Montanan born and raised in the Malt Barley Capital of the World (Fairfield, MT). A Dirt Road Democrat and political junkie, she interned in Sen. Baucus office in 2012 and has been active with local Democratic races since. She currently lives in Havre where she teaches kids how to draw, paint, and discern between facts and bullshit. She is currently serving her 2nd term on the Havre City Council.
