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Tag: Montana News

  • Higher Fees for Foreigners Visiting US National Parks Stokes Tourism Concerns

    BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A $100-per-person charge for foreigners entering Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and other popular national parks is stoking apprehension among some tourist-oriented businesses that it could discourage travelers, but supporters say the change will generate money for cash-strapped parks.

    The new fee was announced Tuesday by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and takes effects Jan. 1. Foreign tourists also will see a sharp price increase for an annual parks pass, to $250 per vehicle. U.S. residents will continue to be charged $80 for an annual pass.

    The change in policy puts the U.S. in line with other countries that charge foreigners more to see popular attractions.

    At the Whistling Swan Motel just outside Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana, owner Mark Howser estimates that about 15% of his customers are foreigners. They come from Canada, China, India, Spain, France, Germany and elsewhere, said Howser, who also runs a bakery and general store.

    Those visitors already pay up to $35 per vehicle to enter the park. Adding the $100-per-person charge for foreigners, Howser said, “is a sure-fire way of discouraging people from visiting Glacier.”

    “It’s going to hurt local businesses that cater to foreign travelers, like myself,” he said. “You’re discouraging them from seeing something in the country by attaching a fee to that experience.”

    A Yellowstone tour operator, Bryan Batchelder with Let’s Go Adventure Tours and Transportation, said the charge represents “a pretty big hike” for the roughly 30% of his clientele that are foreigners. That percentage has been going up in recent years after Batchelder switched to a new booking service.

    Next summer, he said, will reveal how the new charge plays out among foreign visitors. “They’ll probably still come to the country, but will they visit national parks?” Batchelder asked.

    The charge also will apply at Acadia, Bryce Canyon, Everglades, Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain, Sequoia & Kings Canyon, Yosemite and Zion national parks.

    Interior officials described the new fee structure as “America-first pricing” that will ensure international visitors contribute to maintaining parks.

    For Yellowstone park alone, the $100 charge could generate $55 million annually to help fix deteriorating trails and aging bridges, said Brian Yablonski with the Property and Environment Research Center, a free market research group based in Bozeman, Montana.

    If the charges for foreigners were extended to park sites nationwide, Yablonski said it could generate more than $1 billion from an estimated 14 million international visitors annually.

    “Americans are already paying more than international visitors because they are paying taxes,” Yablonski said. “For international visitors, this is kind of a no-brainer, common sense approach.”

    Many other countries charge international visitors an extra fee to visit public sites, said Melissa Weddell, director of the University of Montana’s Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research. Foreign visitors to Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands, for example, pay $200 per adult, while Ecuadorian nationals pay only $30, according to tourist websites for the islands.

    A coalition of current and former employees park service denounced the new charge.

    “In a year where national park staff have already been cut by nearly 25%, we worry this will be yet another burden for already overworked employees,″ said Emily Thompson, executive director of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks.

    “National parks should be available and accessible to all, or America’s best idea will become America’s greatest shakedown,″ she said.

    Gerry Seavo James, deputy campaign director for Sierra Club’s Outdoors for All campaign, said Trump and his administration have worked for nearly a year to undermine the park service, slashing its budget and firing thousands of staff.

    “Gouging foreign tourists at the entrance gate won’t provide the financial support these crown jewels of our public lands need,” he said. “Without that support, we run the risk of our true common grounds becoming nothing more than playgrounds for the super-rich.”

    Interior Department spokesperson Elizabeth Peace said the agency previously did not collect data on international visitors but will start doing so in January.

    Republican lawmakers in July introduced a bill in Congress that would codify the surcharge for foreign visitors to national parks. It’s sponsored by West Virginia Rep. Riley Moore and Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, who served as interior secretary during Trump’s firs term.

    “President Trump and Secretary Burgum are putting Americans first by asking foreign visitors to pay their fair share while holding entrance fees steady for the American people,” Zinke and Moore said in a statement Wednesday.

    Daly reported from Washington, D.C.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Divided Oklahoma Board Recommends Clemency for Man Scheduled for Lethal Injection

    The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-2 on Wednesday to recommend the governor spare the life of a man scheduled to be executed next week for the 2001 stabbing death of a man during a botched robbery.

    Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt must now consider whether to commute the death sentence of Tremane Wood, 46, to life in prison. Stitt has granted clemency only once during his nearly seven years in office, to death row inmate Julius Jones in 2021. He has rejected clemency recommendations in four other cases. A total of 16 men have been executed during Stitt’s time in office. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the board’s decision.

    Wood is scheduled to receive a lethal injection next week for his role in the killing of Ronnie Wipf, a 19-year-old migrant farmworker from Montana, during an attempted robbery at a north Oklahoma City hotel on New Year’s Eve in 2001.

    Wood’s attorneys don’t deny that he participated in the robbery but maintain that his brother, Zjaiton Wood, was the one who actually stabbed Wipf. Zjaiton Wood, who received a no-parole life sentence for Wipf’s death and died in prison in 2019, admitted to several people that he killed Wipf, said Tremane Wood’s attorney, Amanda Bass Castro Alves.

    Castro Alves said Tremane Wood had an ineffective trial attorney who was drinking heavily at the time and who did little work on the case. She also said trial prosecutors concealed from jurors benefits that witnesses received in exchange for their testimony.

    “Tremane’s death sentence is the product of a fundamentally broken system,” Castro Alves said.

    Prosecutors painted Wood as a dangerous criminal who has continued to participate in gang activity and commit crimes while in prison, including buying and selling drugs, using contraband cellphones and ordering attacks on other inmates.

    “Even within the confines of maximum security prison, Tremane Wood has continued to manipulate, exploit and harm others,” Attorney General Gentner Drummond said.

    Wood, who testified to the panel via video link from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, accepted responsibility for his prison misconduct and his participation on the robbery, but denied being the one who killed Wipf.

    “I’m not a monster. I’m not a killer. I never was and I never have been,” Wood said.

    “Not a day goes by in my life that I do not think about Ronnie and how much his mom and dad are suffering because they don’t have their son any more.”

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Nurses, Doctor Sue Montana Recovery Program in Class-Action Lawsuit

    A group of Montana doctors and nurses is suing the national company that runs a rigorous, often mandatory monitoring program for health care providers grappling with addiction. The case is the latest instance of public criticism about how the state-mandated program for more than 60,000 medical licensees operates.

    The class-action lawsuit was filed on Tuesday in the Missoula division of Montana’s federal district court on behalf of one doctor and 10 nurses around the state. Those plaintiffs, the filing said, were “subjected to punitive, expensive, and clinically unwarranted monitoring practices” by the Virginia-based contractor Maximus, Inc. The lawsuit said it seeks to represent all “similarly situated” individuals, including all current and past participants of Maximus’ program.

    In their initial complaint, attorneys for the plaintiffs accused Maximus of creating arbitrary sanctions for participants, failing to follow clinical recommendations, shielding documents and records from review, and “keeping participants in the program for indefinite periods without clinically-justified extensions of monitoring.”

    In the same filing, attorneys for the plaintiffs also said that the drug tests and peer support groups required by Maximus are “exorbitantly expensive” for participants, alleging that the contractor is prioritizing profits over clinical best practices for supporting addiction recovery.

    “Maximus runs the program as punitive, invasive, and punishingly expensive, all to the detriment of its participants,” the lawsuit said.

    A spokesperson for Maximus, Inc., declined to comment on the lawsuit Wednesday. The company has not filed any legal responses to the initial complaint, according to the federal case records.

    Maximus was hired by the Department of Labor and Industry to run the Montana Recovery Program beginning in 2023, after a tumultuous transition between vendors. The Montana Professional Assistance Program, the prior nonprofit that ran the professional support and monitoring program for decades, dissolved after losing the state contract in 2021.

    State law directs licensing boards to establish monitoring and assistance programs as part of their oversight of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, dentists and, more recently, chiropractors and veterinarians. Though not treatment providers, professional assistance programs around the country are often tasked with establishing drug testing, peer support and workplace guidelines for medical providers with a history of addiction or mental health issues.

    An August audit conducted by nonpartisan legislative staff members found that dozens of Montana participants polled by auditors reported much lower satisfaction with Maximus compared to previous program operators. Several participants contacted auditors directly, the report said, describing Maximus’ program as “punitive rather than supportive.”

    The federal lawsuit filed on Tuesday reiterated many of those complaints. In one section of the initial complaint, attorneys said the program arbitrarily marked participants as noncompliant, leading to a loss of participant trust, sanctions and “prolonged monitoring and indefinite retention in the program.”

    Another part of the lawsuit alleged that plaintiffs regularly had to pay $300 for one drug test, followed by additional tests in the same week, a practice attorneys said was “not clinically indicated and unnecessary.” The complaint said the frequency and cost of the testing established by Maximus could be “potentially for financial gain.”

    Gregory Pinski, the attorney representing the plaintiffs, did not make the nurses or doctor named in the lawsuit available for an interview Wednesday afternoon.

    The complaint comes as officials within Gov. Greg Gianforte’s labor department work to review existing state laws about professional assistance programs for medical providers and reconsider the scope of the contract Maximus was hired to execute.

    An advisory council tasked with carrying out that assessment met for the first time in early October. The group came away with a recommendation to extend Maximus’ contract for a year while the labor department solicits public comment about the program, researches other models and searches for a suitable vendor to meet the state’s needs. Maximus’ current contract is slated to end in December.

    As of Wednesday, the advisory group has not released a public notice about another meeting.

    This story was originally published by the Montana Free Press and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • ‘No Kings’ Protests Return as Trump Ramps up Authoritarian Practices, Organizers Say

    Big crowds of protesters are expected Saturday in thousands of places around the U.S. in opposition to what some are characterizing as increasingly authoritarian practices by President Donald Trump.

    Some conservative politicians have condemned the protests as “Hate America” rallies, while others say that it represents a “patriotic” fight for First Amendment rights.

    Here is what to expect on Saturday.


    Organizers aim to boost political engagement

    Ezra Levin, a leading organizer of Saturday’s protests, said the demonstrations are a response to what he called Trump’s “crackdown on First Amendment rights.”

    He said those steps cumulatively represented a direct threat to constitutionally protected rights.

    Protests are planned for more than 2,500 locations nationwide — from the country’s largest city, New York, to small unincorporated, rural communities like East Glacier Ridge, Montana, with roughly 300 residents.

    Organizers will consider the day a success, Levin said, if people are galvanized to become more politically involved on an ongoing basis.


    Mostly peaceful protest in June

    The last “No Kings” protest took place on June 14 in thousands of cities and towns across the country, in large part to protest a military parade in Washington that marked the Army’s 250th anniversary and coincided with Trump’s birthday. “No Kings” organizers at the time called the parade “coronation” that was symbolic of what they characterized as Trump’s growing authoritarian overreach.

    Confrontations were isolated and the protests were largely peaceful.

    Police in Los Angeles, where protests over federal immigration enforcement raids erupted the week prior and sparked demonstrations across the country, used tear gas and crowd-control munitions to clear out protesters after the formal event ended. Officers in Portland also fired tear gas and projectiles to disperse a crowd that protested in front of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building well into the evening.


    Utah organizers focus on healing

    Four months later, no one has been charged. Experts have said state gun laws may shield both the shooter and the man who brandished a rifle but didn’t fire shots.

    Jamie Carter, an organizer of Saturday’s rally, said Utah activists considered not participating in this round of “No Kings” demonstrations, but “we also felt that we really had to get back out there.”

    Organizers are not affiliated with the groups who put on the June demonstration that turned deadly. Safety volunteers will be present but unarmed, and all have received de-escalation training, said Carter, of Salt Lake Indivisible. Attendees have been asked not to bring weapons.

    “We really want this to be a very uplifting, happy event of people coming together in a community to kind of try to erase and replace some of the bad memories,” she said.

    Trump’s crackdown against protests, especially in Democratic cities, has intensified since the June marches. He has since sent National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., and Memphis, Tenn. His efforts to deploy troops to Chicago and Portland, Oregon, have stalled in federal court.

    Organizers in Chicago are expecting tens of thousands of demonstrators at a popular Lake Michigan park, followed by a downtown march.

    Federal immigration agents have arrested more than 1,000 people in Chicago, the nation’s third largest city, with increasingly aggressive tactics since September. Protests have been frequent and well attended in recent weeks, and have boiled over in intense clashes outside a suburban federal immigration processing center.

    “People are angrier. It feels so much more immediate,” said Denise Poloyac with Indivisible Chicago. “They’re very concerned about what’s happening in Chicago and around the country.”

    The “No Kings” organizers have led numerous virtual safety trainings leading up to the protests with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is listed as an official partner on the “No Kings” website.

    The trainings informed viewers about their rights during protests — such as whether you are required to carry ID or if wearing a mask is allowed (both vary according to each state) — and emphasized de-escalation techniques for encounters with law enforcement.

    Each official protest has a safety plan, which includes designated medics and emergency meeting spots.


    Mixed response from elected officials

    The protests have already drawn swift condemnation from some of the country’s top politicians, with House Speaker Mike Johnson dubbing the event the “Hate America rally” at a news conference on Wednesday.

    Some state leaders, like Texas‘ Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, have decided to activate the National Guard ahead of the protests.

    “Texas will deter criminal mischief and work with local law enforcement to arrest anyone engaging in acts of violence or damaging property,” Abbott said in a statement.

    Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom struck a more optimistic tone, saying he hopes Californians turn out in large numbers and remain peaceful. He said Trump “hopes there is disruption, there’s some violence” that he can exploit.

    Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City; Christopher Weber in Los Angeles; Juan A. Lozano in Houston, Texas; Terry Chea in San Francisco; and Sophia Tareen in Chicago.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • US Rejects Bid to Lease Coal From Public Lands in Utah as Sales in Western States Fall Flat

    BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Federal officials rejected a mining company’s bid for 1.3 million tons of coal beneath a national forest in Utah, marking the third proposed coal sale from public lands in the West to fall through this month.

    The failed sales mark a setback in President Donald Trump’s push to revive a coal mining industry that’s been in decline for almost two decades.

    The Interior Department rejected the sole bid it received for coal on a proposed 120-acre (49-hectare) lease on the Manti-La Sal National Forest near central Utah’s Skyline Mine because it did not meet the requirements of the Mineral Leasing Act, agency spokesperson Alyse Sharpe said Thursday.

    The leasing act requires companies to pay fair market value for coal mined on public lands. Sharpe declined to say how much was bid. The sale was requested by a subsidiary of Utah mining company Wolverine Fuels LLC, which operates the Skyline Mine and other coal mines in central Utah.

    Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said two weeks ago that the government will open 13 million acres of federal lands for coal mining. But it’s unclear who would want that fuel as utilities turn to cheaper natural gas and renewables such as wind and solar to generate electricity.

    Emissions from burning coal are a leading driver of climate change that’s raising sea levels and making weather more extreme.

    On Oct. 6, a coal sale from public lands in Montana that would have been the largest by the government in more than a decade drew a single bid of $186,000, or about one-tenth of a penny per ton of coal, and was later rejected. That lease held 167 million tons of coal in southeastern Montana near the Navajo Transition Energy Co.’s Spring Creek mine.

    Two days later the Interior Department postponed an even bigger sale — 440 million tons next to the Navajo Nation-owned company’s Antelope Mine in Wyoming.

    Sharpe repeated the Republican Trump administration’s assertion that the policies of former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama were to blame for the failed sales, saying the Democrats tried “to dismantle domestic production and shake investor confidence in the industry.”

    Both Democrats attempted to curb sales of coal from public lands, only to have those policies reversed by Trump.

    Three other coal lease sales from public lands under Trump were successful. The largest, in Alabama, involved 54 million tons of coal used in steelmaking that sold last month for $46 million, or about 87 cents per ton. Two recent sales in North Dakota of leases containing a combined 30 million tons of coal brought in $186,000 total, or less than a penny per ton.

    “As demand for reliable, dispatchable power grows, coal remains a critical component of ensuring affordable and dependable energy for the American people,” Sharpe said in a statement.

    But industry analysts and economists say the biggest driver of coal’s retreat has been market forces that make other fuels more economical. Many power plants served by large mines on public lands in the West are nearing retirement.

    Environmentalists have fought for years against the expansion of Utah’s Skyline Mine. Emma Yip with the Center for Biological Diversity described the bid rejection as “yet another face-plant for the Trump administration” as it tries to prop up a dying industry.

    “Coal is among the dirtiest energy sources on Earth and burning it continues to sicken and kill Americans. There’s no defensible reason to keep it on life support when absolutely nobody wants it,” Yip said.

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  • Trump Is Reviving Large Sales of Coal From Public Lands. Will Anyone Want It?

    BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — U.S. officials in the coming days are set to hold the government’s biggest coal sales in more than a decade, offering 600 million tons from publicly owned reserves next to strip mines in Montana and Wyoming.

    The sales are a signature piece of President Donald Trump’s ambitions for companies to dig more coal from federal lands and burn it for electricity. Yet most power plants served by those mines plan to quit burning coal altogether within 10 years, an Associated Press data analysis shows.

    Three other mines poised for expansions or new leases under Trump also face declining demand as power plants use less of their coal and in some cases shut down, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the nonprofit Global Energy Monitor.

    Those market realities raise a fundamental question about the Republican administration’s push to revive a heavily polluting industry that long has been in decline: Who’s going to buy all that coal?

    The question looms over the administration’s enthusiastic embrace of coal, a leading contributor to climate change. It also shows the uncertainty inherent in inserting those policies into markets where energy-producing customers make long-term decisions with massive implications, not just for their own viability but for the future of the planet, in an ever-shifting political landscape.


    Rushing to approve projects

    The upcoming lease sales in Montana and Wyoming are in the Powder River Basin, home to the most productive U.S. coal fields.

    Officials say they will go forward beginning Monday despite the government shutdown. The administration exempted from furlough those workers who process fossil fuel permits and leases.

    Democratic President Joe Biden last year acted to block future coal leases in the region, citing their potential to make climate change worse. Burning the coal from the two leases being sold in coming days would generate more than 1 billion tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide, according to a Department of Energy formula.

    Trump rejected climate change as a “con job” during a Sept. 23 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, an assessment that puts him at odds with scientists. He praised coal as “beautiful” and boasted about the abundance of U.S. supplies while deriding solar and wind power. Administration officials said Wednesday that they were canceling $8 billion in grants for clean energy projects in 16 states won by Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

    In response to an order from Trump on his first day in office in January, coal lease sales that had been shelved or stalled were revived and rushed to approval, with considerations of greenhouse gas emissions dismissed. Administration officials have advanced coal mine expansions and lease sales in Utah, North Dakota, Tennessee and Alabama, in addition to Montana and Wyoming.

    Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Monday that the administration is opening more than 20,000 square miles (52,000 square kilometers) of federal lands to mining. That is an area bigger than New Hampshire and Vermont combined.

    The administration also sharply reduced royalty rates for coal from federal lands, ordered a coal-fired power plant in Michigan to stay open past planned retirement dates and pledged $625 million to recommission or modernize coal plants amid growing electricity demand from artificial intelligence and data centers.

    “We’re putting American miners back to work,” Burgum said, flanked by coal miners and Republican politicians. “We’ve got a demand curve coming at us in terms of the demand for electricity that is literally going through the roof.”

    The AP’s finding that power plants served by mines on public lands are burning less coal reflects an industrywide decline that began in 2007.

    Energy experts and economists were not surprised. They expressed doubt that coal would ever reclaim dominance in the power sector. Interior Department officials did not respond to questions about future demand for coal from public lands.

    But it will take time for more electricity from planned natural gas and solar projects to come online. That means Trump’s actions could give a short-term bump to coal, said Umed Paliwal, an expert in electricity markets at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

    “Eventually coal will get pushed out of the market,” Paliwal said. “The economics will just eat the coal generation over time.”

    The coal sales in Montana and Wyoming were requested by Navajo Nation-owned company. The Navajo Transitional Energy Co. (NTEC) has been one of the largest industry players since buying several major mines in the Powder River Basin during a 2019 bankruptcy auction. Those mines supply 34 power plants in 19 states.

    Twenty-one of the plants are scheduled to stop burning coal in the next decade. They include all five plants using coal from NTEC’s Spring Creek mine in Montana.

    In filings with federal officials, the company said the fair market value of 167 million tons of federal coal next to the Spring Creek mine was just over $126,000.

    That is less than one-tenth of a penny per ton, a fraction of what coal brought in its heyday. By comparison, the last large-scale lease sale in the Powder River Basin, also for 167 million tons of coal, drew a bid of $35 million in 2013. Federal officials rejected that as too low.

    NTEC said the low value was supported by prior government reviews predicting fewer buyers for coal. The company said taxpayers would benefit in future years from royalties on any coal mined.

    “The market for coal will decline significantly over the next two decades. There are fewer coal mines expanding their reserves, there are fewer buyers of thermal coal and there are more regulatory constraints,” the company said.

    In central Wyoming on Wednesday, the government will sell 440 million tons of coal next to NTEC’s Antelope Mine. Just over half of the 29 power plants served by the mine are scheduled to stop burning coal by 2035.

    Among them is the Rawhide plant in northern Colorado. It is due to quit coal in 2029 but will keep making electricity with natural gas and 30 megawatts of solar panels.


    Aging plants and optimism

    The largest U.S. coal company has offered a more optimistic take on coal’s future. Because new nuclear and gas plants are years away, Peabody Energy suggested in September that demand for coal in the U.S. could increase 250 million tons annually — up almost 50% from current volumes.

    Peabody’s projection was based on the premise that existing power plants can burn more coal. That amount, known as plant capacity, dropped by about half in recent years.

    “U.S. coal is clearly in comeback mode,” Peabody’s president, James Grech, said in a recent conference call with analysts. “The U.S. has more energy in its coal reserves than any nation has in any one energy source.”

    No large coal power plants have come online in the U.S. since 2013. Most existing plants are 40 years old or older. Money pledged by the administration to refurbish older plants will not go very far given that a single boiler component at a plant can cost $25 million to replace, said Nikhil Kumar with GridLab, an energy consulting group.

    That leads back to the question of who will buy the coal.

    “I don’t see where you get all this coal consumed at remaining facilities,” Kumar said.

    Gruver reported from Wellington, Colorado. Associated Press writer Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed to this report.

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