Montana
Former Montana US Rep Pat Williams, who won a liberal- conservative showdown, dies at 87 – WTOP News
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Pat Williams, a New Deal-style Democrat who won Montana’s great liberal-conservative showdown of 1992 to become…
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Pat Williams, a New Deal-style Democrat who won Montana’s great liberal-conservative showdown of 1992 to become the state’s lone voice in the U.S. House of Representatives, died Wednesday. He was 87.
Williams died in Missoula of natural causes, family spokesperson Matt McKenna said Thursday.
John Patrick Williams represented the western half Montana from 1979 to 1997. When the 1990 census eliminated one of two House seats the state held since 1912, Williams captured the new statewide district in a bruising race against the longtime eastern-district representative, Republican Ron Marlenee.
The 51% majority was the slimmest of Williams’ congressional career — and the first election defeat in Marlenee’s 16-year career.
The matchup was billed as a classic liberal-conservative confrontation and a microcosm of political battles being waged throughout the West over control of the land and its resources.
It was a bitter, hard-fought contest — each man spent more than $1 million — and Williams said quickly after his victory that he would work to bring the state together.
Williams first tried for the congressional seat in 1974, but he lost to fellow Democrat Max Baucus. Williams was elected to the post in 1978 when Baucus moved to the U.S. Senate. By the time of the face-off with Marlenee, Williams was a deputy whip in the House.
He was an unabashed liberal, a staunch advocate for organized labor and a believer in the potential of government to help people.
That won him the enmity of conservative groups such as Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition.
Williams defended the National Endowment for the Arts against pornography charges and opposed proposed constitutional amendments to outlaw abortion and flag desecration and to require a balanced budget. He opposed U.S. military intervention in the 1991 Gulf War and wanted post-Cold War defense savings to be used for public works projects.
Williams tried to take a middle road in one of Montana’s most divisive issues, wilderness, and environmental groups generally gave him strong support. He said the argument of jobs versus the environment presented a false choice because the state could not have one without the other.
“A clean environment … has been and will be an absolute cash register for this state,” he said in 1992.
His family said in a statement that Williams spent his life protecting wild lands and defending the working poor, arts, Native people and children with disabilities.
“He believed government could be a force for good, and that culture, wilderness, and education were not luxuries — but rights,” the statement said.
After he left the House in 1997, Williams started teaching at the University of Montana, including courses in environmental studies, history and political science.
Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte recalled Williams as a “dedicated public servant.”
“As Montana’s longest-serving congressman, Pat championed Montana’s interests, working to find common ground for nearly 20 years in Washington,” Gianforte said.
Williams’ wife, Carol, was the first woman to become minority leader in the state Senate. They have a son Griff, and two daughters, Erin and Whitney.
Williams’ cousin was daredevil Evel Knievel.
Williams received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Denver and a teaching degree from Western Montana College.
Born Oct. 30, 1937, in Helena, Williams grew up in the mining city of Butte, and its traditionally Democratic unionized workforce was a major element of his power base. He taught in the Butte public schools for seven years, and the combination earned him a spot on the House Education and Labor Committee.
Williams served in the Montana House in the 1967 and 1969 sessions. In 1968 he headed the Montana presidential campaign for Hubert Humphrey. He did the same in 1976 for Jimmy Carter.
Williams got a firsthand look at Washington, D.C., from 1969 to 1971 when he worked as executive assistant to Montana Democratic U.S. Rep. John Melcher.
Williams returned to Montana in 1971 and spent seven years as state head of the federally funded Montana Family Education Program, a career program for disadvantaged people.
Williams will lie in state at the Montana State Capitol in Helena on Wednesday and Thursday.
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Montana
Montana Lottery Mega Millions, Big Sky Bonus results for June 23, 2026
The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.
Here’s a look at June 23, 2026, results for each game:
Winning Mega Millions numbers from June 23 drawing
48-51-60-63-66, Mega Ball: 20
Check Mega Millions payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from June 23 drawing
06-21-22-31, Bonus: 13
Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
When are the Montana Lottery drawings held?
- Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 9 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
- Lucky For Life: 8:38 p.m. MT daily.
- Lotto America: 9 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Big Sky Bonus: 7:30 p.m. MT daily.
- Powerball Double Play: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Montana Cash: 8 p.m. MT on Wednesday and Saturday.
- Millionaire for Life: 9:15 p.m. MT daily.
Missed a draw? Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Great Falls Tribune editor. You can send feedback using this form.
Montana
Man Driving Giant Banana Gets Pulled Over in Montana
We cover lots of hard news here at The Drive. Y’know, the stuff that keeps you updated on the automotive industry and enthusiast scene. Other times, we don’t. Other times, we write silly car-related stuff because it’s fun. This is one of those times. A giant banana recently got pulled over in Montana, and as the Cowboy State Daily put it, it wasn’t its first time.
According to the Montana State Police, the giant banana car and its driver, Steve Braithwaite, were pulled over near Billings because part of the license plate was blocked. He did not receive a ticket. Also, the plate reads “SPLIT.”
“We’ve stopped speeders, distracted drivers, and even a few unusual vehicles… but this one definitely stands out.
The Big Banana Car was stopped cruising near Billings today. While it may be apPEALing, traffic laws still apply to fruit. 😎 🍌
Safe travels, Montana,” said the Montana State Police’s Facebook page.
According to the report, Braithwaite has been pulled over hundreds of times over the decade he’s been driving his banana car across the country. In fact, he believes that during the first few years he had the thing, he was one of the most frequently pulled-over men in America.
“Driving around in a banana and having all these people, all these smiles and waves, affects me. It actually does something fantastic,” he told the outlet.
He even claims to have been pulled over once for “peeling out,” which was, of course, a joke.
Another report claims that Braithwaite began working on the fiberglass banana in 2008 and finished it in 2011. It’s based on a 1993 Ford F-150 and is a bout 23 feet from tip to tip.
Keep on keepin’ on, Steve.
Got a tip? Email us at tips@thedrive.com
Montana
The Latest ‘Sustained Yield’ Scam Will Devastate Montana’s National Forests
Log landing, western Montana. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
Way back in 1995 Bob Brown, the Republican president of the Montana Senate, called me into his office.
He had co-sponsored a bill with a pro-logging Missoula Democrat to establish a “sustained yield” level of logging on Montana’s state trust lands – and he was worried it wasn’t working out the way he hoped.
Bob was right to be worried then and Montanans are right to be worried now because Trump’s Forest Service Chief and former timber industry lobbyist Tom Schultz, has just unleashed the “sustained yield” scam on Montana’s National Forests.
To appreciate Brown’s concerns, it’s important to understand that the 1995 Montana legislature had two-thirds Republican majorities in the House and Senate and Republican Marc Racicot in the Governor’s Office.
Those majorities put Montana’s environment in the cross-hairs with a raft of industry-friendly deregulatory bills. That included the timber industry, which was losing the “timber wars” in large part because Plum Creek Timber, one of the largest private forest landowners in the West, had decided to “liquidate” its “timber assets” – also known as “forests.”
That decision resulted in massive clearcuts since there were virtually no regulations on logging private land. Plum Creek scalped the forests of northwest Montana, including the lands around Bob’s home in Whitefish, leaving barren, knapweed infested stumpfields that remain to this day. His goal was to protect the lands around the trout streams he’d fished growing up and hoped the bill would do that.
It was the closing weeks of the session and Bob wanted to know if it was possible to reduce the environmental impacts of his bill since it had been heavily amended to favor extraction, not “sustained yield.” My advice was to let the bill die because he didn’t have the votes to remove the amendments the timber industry lobbyists stuck on the bill. But he didn’t take that advice, the bill passed, and the logging level for Montana’s state forests was set at 52 to 55 million board feet per year.
Two years later, Tom Schultz went to work for Montana’s Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, heading the trust lands timber division and earning the sobriquet “Chainsaw Tom” for his pro-logging zeal. Like the stumpfields, his dedication to the timber industry remains to this day – only now he’s in charge of the United States Forest Service and bringing chainsaws to millions of acres of our remaining intact forests.
If you believe that “sustained yield” is supposed to be a carefully calculated determination of how many millions of board feet of timber can be logged every year on a sustainable basis that means limiting logging to the pace at which the forests can regrow – regardless of the demands of the rapacious timber industry.
In the “old days” loggers liked to refer to forests as “100 year gardens.” But of course forests aren’t gardens, they’re complex ecosystems – and the timber industry doesn’t wait a century for forests to regrow.
It’s unlikely that quaint misnomer is even applicable in today’s climate with hotter, longer summers, minimal snowpack, and extreme drought. Yet, Montana’s “sustained yield” is now nearly 10 million board feet a year higher than when Brown’s bill passed, defying logic and science and justifying his concerns from 30 years ago.
“Chainsaw Tom” Schultz has now reappeared and demands that 350-500 million board feet of Montana’s national forests be logged over 10 years. Schultz’s timber industry lobbyist background offers a clue as to where that “sustainable yield” number came from — and the reason we will likely be left with nothing but stumpfields and knapweed from his “landscape scale” logging of our remaining intact forests.
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