It's time to ask about the cuts affecting Montana
Troy Downing, our U.S. representative for Eastern Montana, is encouraging participation in a call-in town-hall meeting Monday beginning at 5:30 p.m. our time from his Capitol office.
I plan to join it at: https://downing.house.gov/live.
I have a list of questions for him but the one I plan to ask is about recent layoffs at the national Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, an internationally known research center working to eliminate deadly infectious diseases. It is another in a series of mystifying directives concocted by who-knows-who from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its 'Workforce Optimization Initiative,' sanctified by President Donald Trump's executive order creating it.
Unfortunately, there's a virtual information blackout on the Trump Administration's downsizing process. Government officers and employees are fearful of retribution if they talk, and the congressional majority doesn't want to risk retribution or being 'primaried'– or either they simply don't want to know the details or are operating on blind faith.
We can recall 'Hogan's Heroes' and the denials of Sgt. Schultz: 'I know nothing! I see nothing! I hear nothing!'
The loss of two dozen jobs at the Ravalli County laboratory is part of 1,200 personnel reductions in the National Institutes of Health, and part of a reduction of 20,000 at the Department of Health and Human Services led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The justification for the cuts is the same verbal pablum being given across the Administration federal service.
The reduction announcement said 28 HSS divisions will reduce to 15, 10 regional offices to 5, and widely unrelated skilled offices for human resources, information technology, procurement, public affairs and policy will be merged into a central office.
In its propaganda effort – yes, propaganda! – for popular support, the administration uses its all-purpose 'glittering generalities' language with little meaning but big on obfuscation:
The reductions are intended to 'reduce bureaucratic sprawl' – determined by whom?
'We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic.' May we ask what these priorities are beyond the glittering generality of 'Make America Healthy Again'?
Wouldn't starting with fast-food restaurants and the myriad of snacks at gasoline stations be better places to start to make America healthier? Get Trump off MacDonald's and Diet Coke? Who defines 'healthy?'
Downing, who has perhaps the best public relations staff and 'X.com' presence of our four-person delegation, joins the other three in clicking his heels, saluting and praising without exception the amorphous Trump agenda.
What does Downing really think? Kudos to him for traveling the Eastern District and posting skads of photos chronicling his visits but what has he gained from the conversations he says he has learned from?
There is an election coming up and it is not unlikely the campaign will begin in early 2026 – although Downing already is fully engaged in it.
It is time we voters know more about what Downing is doing for Montana. Let's ask him.
Peter Fox is a retired journalist and journalism teacher who lives in Big Timber.
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