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Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, along with 20 other states, initiated a lawsuit on Thursday against the Federal Highway Administration and the U.S. Department of Transportation, challenging a recently finalized emissions rule. The rule mandates that states and major metropolitan areas establish decreasing emissions targets for vehicles on the road. However, the lawsuit, filed in Kentucky, argues that the federal government lacks the authority to impose such a rule.

The lawsuit contends, “Regulatory action cannot be used in this manner. Just because the president believes that reducing on-road CO2 emissions is key to addressing climate change… does not mean the agencies can compel the states to administer a federal administrative regulatory program absent statutory authority

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(The Center Square) – Montana officials are warning people about the dangers of human trafficking and how to identify and report suspected cases.

Attorney General Austin Knudsen, whose office put out the public service announcement, says ending human trafficking is a top priority.

“At the Montana Department of Justice, we are increasing our investigations and committed to holding human traffickers accountable,” Knudsen said in a press release.

The attorney general’s office says possible signs of human trafficking include young people who are hesitant to engage in conversation or make eye contact, people with difficulty responding to questions about their name or location, people wearing clothing that don’t match the climate, and people accompanied by “a dominating person or someone they seem fearful of” at the time.

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Montana Attorney General, Austin Knudsen has opened an investigation into potential violations of Montana’s ‘Unfair Trade Practices And Consumer Protections Act’.

This is in connection with Go-Fund-Me’s re-direction of funds from the Canadian truckers’ Freedom Convoy.

After $10 million were raised to support the movement, only $1 million was distributed to protestors.

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Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen continues to lead the fight against the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for Montana’s health care workers.

In a new filing Friday, Knudsen along with 15 other attorneys general, asked a federal judge to block a federal government vaccine mandate for health care workers.

The following was sent out by the Office of Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen:

Attorney General Austin Knudsen continues to lead the fight to protect Montana healthcare workers and their patients and employers from the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate. In a new filing today, Attorney General Knudsen and 15 other attorneys general ask a federal judge to once again block the federal government from enforcing the mandate in their respective states.

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Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen is joined by seven other Republican attorneys general in a lawsuit against the Biden administration over an immigration policy that allows children from select Central American counties to come to the United States to join their families who are lawfully in the country or have pending asylum claims.

The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas last week claiming the Central American Minors (CAM) Program is unconstitutional and costly to American states. The other states joining Montana in the lawsuit are Arkansas, Alaska, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.

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Republican legislators and Attorney General Austin Knudsen are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in their running dispute with the Montana Supreme Court, saying the state justices should have excused themselves from ruling on legislative attempts to acquire internal court documents.

The Montana court ruled unanimously in August that Republican lawmakers’ subpoenas to obtain the documents were illegal and exceeded their authority.

Knudsen on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that the Montana justices violated the constitutional guarantees of due process of law in the case, because they did not recuse themselves from deciding a case involving their own interests.

“This court should grant the petition and reaffirm that due process forbids even the justices of the Montana Supreme Court to be the judges in their own case,” he wrote.

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Montana and 11 other states are suing to stop the Biden administration’s rule requiring most hospitals and other health-care facilities to have their employees vaccinated against Covid-19 by January, calling it an illegal overreach of federal power.

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, who said he’s leading the effort, said the Nov. 5 rule is not only unconstitutional, but also will exacerbate the shortage of health-care workers, by leading many of them to quit or be fired because they won’t get vaccinated.

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Montana has joined 31 other states in suing the U.S. Treasury Department over a provision that bars states from using federal stimulus dollars to offset tax cuts.

Montana is set to see roughly $3 billion in federal stimulus funds through the American Rescue Plan Act with the stipulation that the money can’t be used to offset revenue reductions caused by tax cuts.

Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen signed onto a lawsuit that calls this rule “one of the most egregious power grabs by the federal government in the nation’s history.”

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