NEWS

HELENA — Jan. 11 is the National Day of Human Trafficking Awareness, and Montana leaders marked the day by proposing a major overhaul of the state’s trafficking laws.

“It’s time to tell those offenders ‘Not in our state,’” said Rep. Jodee Etchart, R-Billings.

Etchart is sponsoring House Bill 112, at the request of the Montana Department of Justice and Attorney General Austin Knudsen. The bill, which had its first hearing Wednesday in the House Judiciary Committee, comes as Montana reports rapid growth in the number of trafficking cases under investigation.

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Attorney General Austin Knudsen and local law enforcement officials hosted a conference Wednesday to discuss the need for an increased investment in public safety amidst Montana’s drug and crime crisis.

In the conference, law enforcement officials spoke about the dangers of fentanyl abuse, a growing public safety concern for many Montana communities.

Bryan Lockerby, the Department of Criminal Investigation Administrator, said that the access to fentanyl and fentanyl-related deaths have increased twice as much in just the first quarter of 2022 compared to the past four years combined.

He further said that putting more resources to help with drug investigations would help the Attorney General to achieve the goal of supporting public safety.

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Eighteen attorneys general led by Montana’s Austin Knudsen filed an amicus brief with an appeals court in support of parental rights in school in a case filed by Parents Defending Education against Linn-Mar School District in Iowa.

Represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, PDE sued in August in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Iowa, Cedar Rapids Division, arguing Linn Mar’s policy to withhold information about children from their parents is unconstitutional. PDE asked the court to issue a preliminary injunction to halt the policy while the case progressed. District Judge C.J. Williams denied their request in September.

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A United Nations-backed group of banks and money managers — including those hired by our own State Investment Board — are working to eliminate carbon emissions in the name of climate change

The group is called the Net-Zero Banking Alliance and it’s a part of a campaign to effectively phase-out fossil fuels.

“We need traditional energy like this. And the United Nations has absolutely no business horning into banking and investment like this. And that’s why you’re seeing states like Montana push back,” said Knutsen.

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Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen on Aug. 26, 2022, asked a federal board to overturn the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) decision to grant a permit change allowing bison grazing in Phillips County. The permit is a part of the American Prairie Reserve’s broader effort to expand bison grazing on the plains across northern and eastern Montana.

Attorney General Knudsen’s appeal asks the U.S. Department of the Interior Office of Hearings and Appeals to overturn the decision and issue a stay until the appeal is resolved to prevent irreparable harm to the grazing allotments and surrounding communities, said a Knudsen news release.

“The BLM’s decision ignores the real concerns of rural communities and ranchers who rely on the land in favor of elitist attitudes of those seeking to transform Northeast Montana into a wildlife viewing shed for tourists. Agriculture is not an easy way of life, but Montana ranch families – including my own – are proud of their history and heritage that is still a part of our state today,” Attorney General Knudsen said. “As American Prairie Reserve occupies more and more land here, it pushes out ranching communities, threatens our livestock industry, and will ultimately add to the instability of the world’s food supply.”

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A coalition of 16 Republican-led states led by Montana filed a brief Tuesday in an ongoing federal case involving a major underground coal mine located in central Montana.

The states asked the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear the case after the panel struck down a federal permit green-lighting Bull Mountain mine’s planned expansion, according to the brief obtained by Fox News Digital. In April, the panel ruled in a 2-1 decision that the permit issued under the Trump administration had failed to adequately explain its evaluation of the proposed expansion’s impact on global greenhouse gas emissions.

The Department of Interior (DOI) concluded in 2018 that the roughly 7,000-acre expansion of the Musselshell County, Mont., mine would lead to a minor 0.04% uptick in total U.S. emissions over the course of more than a decade. The agency’s assessment came years after Signal Peak Energy, the mine’s operator, first requested a permit for the expansion, a portion of which would be on land managed by the federal government.

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Montana’s Attorney General is doubling down on his argument that the state high court should strike down a legal precedent that protects access to abortion in Montana.

Attorney General Austin Knudsen argues Montana’s abortion access is “inextricably linked” to the now overturned Roe v. Wade precedent. He first asked the Montana Supreme Court to overturn the state’s 1999 Armstrong precedent earlier this year. That’s part of his defense against a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood of Montana challenging new restrictive abortion laws.

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Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen is leaving the National Association of Attorneys General. He calls the group “intolerable.”

Last week, Knudsen posted a letter on his Facebook, announcing he’s leaving the group.

He wrote, “Montanans rightly expect their elected officials to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars and transparency from funds that are supposed to be managed in our best interests. Continued membership in the National Association of Attorneys General does not meet those expectations, so today I am officially ending it.”

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, leading a coalition of 15 Republican attorneys general, has called on the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) to cancel its plan to revise Title IX.

The DOE’s plan to do so, they argue, appears to be an attempt by the federal government to infringe on parental rights in education, erode the rights of women’s and girls’ sports, and reverse existing guarantees for victims of sexual harassment and assault.

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Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen has led 21 other attorneys general from across the country, filing a brief in support of a lawsuit challenging a federal rule banning bump stocks.

Plaintiffs, including the Gun Owners of America, have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, went against federal law and proper procedure when it made a rule that required gun owners to give up or destroy their bump stocks.

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Knudsen worked to get resources out to assist law enforcement including additional narcotics agents from the Montana Division of Criminal Investigation and drug-detecting K9s. He has also called for legislation to make it harder to get the ingredients from China and border policies that make it harder to smuggle the drug into the United States from Mexico.

It’s an illicit industry that’s adding another element of danger to those trying to fight back.

“I think every law enforcement officer in Montana is aware we’re dealing with a huge spike in drug problems and we’re dealing with the huge spike in the violence that comes with it. And they’re concerned, they’re definitely concerned,” Kundsen concluded.

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