In the video above, Paul Sanchez reports on the new academic year kicking off at the Montana School for the Deaf & the Blind in Great Falls. The school is at 3911 Central Avenue. Click here to visit the website.
Montana
Montana School for the Deaf & the Blind kicks off new academic year
![Montana School for the Deaf & the Blind kicks off new academic year Montana School for the Deaf & the Blind kicks off new academic year](https://ewscripps.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/b4611dc/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1920x1008+0+36/resize/1200x630!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fewscripps-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fb7%2F5b%2Ff79c7e4d4c1d8e5d0d95328dbe06%2Fkrtv00011.png)
New school year begins at MSDB
![](https://x-default-stgec.uplynk.com/ausw/slices/be2/08eb16cf8af2400d815b1b31a3092ff6/be29815c4b474d3ca5c1e52e827c7b54/poster_4dcfaac5af3f4470bb8b529a131f10b9.jpg)
Posted
and last updated
Copyright 2024 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
![](https://newspub.live/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/np-logo.png)
Montana
Tester advocated for Montana tech executives who donated to campaign – Washington Examiner
![Tester advocated for Montana tech executives who donated to campaign – Washington Examiner Tester advocated for Montana tech executives who donated to campaign – Washington Examiner](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/jon-tester-holds-out-endorsing-kamala-harris.webp)
Executives at two technology companies met privately with Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) and donated to his reelection campaign as he helped secure federal funding for their tech hub in Montana.
The leadership team of defense-focused artificial intelligence company Reveal Technologies and venture capital firm Next Frontier Capital, part of a consortium focused on defense technology, gave nearly $30,000 in personal donations to the Tester campaign and an affiliated joint fundraising committee, according to federal fundraising records reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
The donations, given in small increments across a two-year time frame, coincided with a series of meetings Tester held with the executives and their lobbyists as he helped Headwaters Hub, a Montana business tech consortium, receive federal accreditation and ultimately $41 million in grant money approved through the federal CHIPS and Science Act last month.
Tester has long made clear his support for the consortium. In February 2023, he held a roundtable to encourage the Biden administration to designate Headwaters as a regional tech hub and, once that designation was granted, urged officials including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to award it next-phase funding.
But the donations have raised ethics concerns as Tester, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, runs for a fourth term in the Senate.
Richard Painter, a chief ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush and former Democratic House candidate, said Tester was no “different than the rest of them,” referring to other politicians who accept campaign donations from companies that stand to benefit from their advocacy.
But he called the contributions “indicative of what’s wrong with our campaign finance system.”
“I think we need to really tighten up, to say they shouldn’t be meeting with people who can make contributions at all,” Painter said. “This is the type of thing that doesn’t promote public confidence in the government.”
Tester joined other members of the Montana congressional delegation advocating the tech hub, hailing the grant as a chance to bring cutting-edge jobs to a rural state. Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), his Republican counterpart in the Senate, also voted for the CHIPS and Science Act, lobbied for Headwaters to get funding, and claimed credit for its grant.
But Daines did not receive campaign donations from Reveal or Next Frontier; neither did any other member of the Montana delegation besides Tester, outside of a one-time $50 contribution Reveal made to Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) in 2022.
“Sen. Tester worked with Republicans and Democrats to pass bipartisan legislation that will help America outcompete China and allow a rural state like Montana to lead the nation in critical technological innovation,” a Tester spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “He is proud to have worked with Republicans like Sen. Steve Daines on this bipartisan bill to bring good-paying jobs back to the United States, secure our domestic supply chains, and develop next-generation technology right at home in the Treasure State.”
Tester’s office did not address questions about whether he was aware of the donations from Reveal Technologies and Next Frontier Capital. The spokesperson noted he “played no direct role” in which companies were chosen for the Headwaters Hub, while his campaign declined to comment and directed the Washington Examiner to his Senate office.
Tester’s relationship with Reveal extends back to at least March 2022, when Tester held a call with Reveal CEO Garrett Smith. Smith began donating to Tester a month later with a $1,000 contribution to his campaign.
Over the next year, from July 2022 to July 2023, Smith made periodic donations to Tester’s campaign totaling $3,550. On at least two occasions around the same period, in March and August 2023, Tester issued public press releases urging the Biden administration to select Montana to create the tech hub consortium that would become Headwaters.
In October 2023, the tech hub was ultimately awarded $500,000 in funds to establish itself.
Most of the meetings, listed on Tester’s public schedule, occurred after the creation of Headwaters, while the majority of the donations from executives began this year.
In January, Tester met with Smith, Reveal Director of Business Development Dave Caudle, and registered Reveal lobbyist Dan Sennott. Later that same month, Next Frontier founder and General Partner Will Price became his company’s first executive to donate to Tester’s reelection with a $500 contribution.
Headwaters submitted its grant application for $75 million in February. That same day, Tester publicly called for the administration to select them.
From March until the $41 million was granted to Headwaters on July 2, Smith, Caudle, and other Reveal executives, including Chief Operating Officer Andrew Dixon and Chief Product Officer John Laxson, contributed another combined $11,650 to Tester or his affiliated joint fundraising committee.
Over the same period, Next Frontier leadership gave $13,200 by way of three contributions from Richard Harjes, another founder and general partner.
All of the men extended donations in the days and weeks leading up to a June 24 meeting between Reveal, Next Frontier, and Tester that included representatives from the Air Force and Space Force. One of the donations occurred on the same day as the meeting.
The donations, in aggregate, are small compared to the tens of millions of dollars raised by the Tester campaign. But Painter said the donations present a possible conflict of interest and could be construed as an attempt to gain access to the senator.
“They want someone in Washington, and they give money, and then they get meetings, and then whatever happens, happens,” he said.
It’s unclear if or how much Reveal and Next Frontier stand to gain from the grant, or how the funds will be divided among the 27 companies, associations, or public higher-education schools that comprise Headwaters. A breakdown was neither provided in the group’s funding application nor in its award.
Headwaters did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
Not all of the companies stand to receive the funding, according to other company members of Headwaters. Nonetheless, Reveal was referenced in Headwaters’s grant bid, touting the company’s “innovations in Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) remote sensing technology, as reflected by Reveal Technologies’ rapid growth.”
Smith, its CEO, also thanked elected officials for helping secure the award in a press release on the day of the grant’s announcement.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Reveal declined to comment about its donations and meetings with Tester, in addition to how much of the grant it expects to receive. Next Frontier did not respond to requests for comment.
Headwaters was one of 12 consortiums selected to receive additional funding out of the 31 regional hubs established across the country.
Montana
Body of missing Glacier National Park mountaineer found
![Body of missing Glacier National Park mountaineer found Body of missing Glacier National Park mountaineer found](https://ewscripps.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/4aa87f1/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1920x1008+0+0/resize/1200x630!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fewscripps.brightspotcdn.com%2F3b%2F67%2F2012020541408ea84fc5e8517992%2Fglacier-national-park-new.jpg)
WEST GLACIER — The body of a missing man from Whitefish has been found in Glacier National Park.
Grant Marcuccio, 32, was located by Two Bear Air at approximately 2 p.m. on Sunday. The cause of Marcuccio’s death remains under investigation, but traumatic injuries and the location of the body “are indicative of a fall,” a news release states.
Marcuccio’s body was found one-third of a mile east of McPartland Peak below the ridgeline between Heavens Peak and McPartland Peak. He was last seen by his hiking party on the afternoon of Aug. 18.
Marcuccio left his party to summit McPartland Peak alone and planned to rendezvous at a designated location. Rangers were alerted by the hiking party on the evening of Aug.18 that Marcuccio never made it to the rendezvous spot.
A ground and air search involving several agencies began on Aug. 19 for Marcuccio.
“Glacier National Park staff would like to express their sincere condolences to the family and ask that the public respect their privacy,” the release states.
Search underway for missing hiker in Glacier National Park
Montana
We cannot compromise when it comes to preserving wilderness • Daily Montanan
![We cannot compromise when it comes to preserving wilderness • Daily Montanan We cannot compromise when it comes to preserving wilderness • Daily Montanan](https://dailymontanan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/51355145058_7a38ca791e_k-1.jpg)
In the 1930s, Bob Marshall (for whom the Montana wilderness is named) started the Wilderness Society.
Marshall declared at the organization’s founding: “We do not want those whose first impulse is to compromise. We want no straddlers, for, in the past, they have surrendered too much good wilderness and primeval areas which should never have been lost.”
Marshall realized long ago that wilderness designation is the gold standard for conservation. If you want to protect an area’s ecological function, wildlife and wildness, there is no better way than formal wilderness designation.
Tragically, most of the so-conservation groups in Montana, including the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, The Wilderness Society, and Wild Montana (formerly Montana Wilderness Association), have forgotten Marshall’s admonishment.
Today, these organizations support the Gallatin Forest Partnership, a proposal to reduce wilderness protection acreage in the Gallatin Range south of Bozeman.
Congress gave the Gallatin Range interim wilderness status in 1977 as part of Senate Bill 393. The legislation designated the 155,000-acre Hyalite-Buffalohorn-Porcupine Wilderness Study Area.
The Act requires that “the wilderness study areas designated by this Act shall, until Congress determines otherwise, be administered by the Secretary of Agriculture so as to maintain their presently existing wilderness character and potential for inclusion in the National Wilderness Preservation System.”
The word “shall” means the Forest Service has no choice but to protect the wilderness quality of the WSA. Unfortunately, the Forest Service has neglected its obligation to maintain wilderness character with the express support of the above organizations.
Approximately 155,000 acres of the Gallatin Range are within S. 393, while the Gallatin Partnership proposal only proposes 104,000 acres for wilderness designation.
Worst for wildlife and wildlands, the Partnership proposes changing WSA status for two of the Gallatin Range’s most important wildlife areas—the Buffalo Horn and Porcupine drainages to permit mechanical access by dirt bikes and mountain bikes permanently,
The Gallatin Range deserves full wilderness protection for the 155,000 acres of the S. 393 WSA and up to 100,000 acres of additional roadless lands for a 255,000-acre wilderness.
We cannot create wilderness. We can only lose it. We must acknowledge Marshall’s admonishment and keep the (fence) straddlers from compromising away one of the best wildlands in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
George Wuerthner has published three books on Yellowstone and the surrounding area. He formerly was on the board of the Montana Wilderness Association (Wild Montana) and worked for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and was a frequent contributor to Wilderness Magazine once published by the Wilderness Society.
-
Minnesota1 week ago
Readers and writers: Plenty of thrills and danger in these Minnesota author’s mysteries
-
Technology5 days ago
Breakthrough robo-glove gives you superhuman grip
-
News1 week ago
Video: Biden Delivers Keynote on First Night of D.N.C.
-
World1 week ago
Nigeria police working to secure release of 20 kidnapped medical students
-
Politics1 week ago
Former teacher reveals which students suffered 'the most' under Walz's pandemic-era guidelines
-
News1 week ago
Video: Protesters Clash With Police Near the Democratic National Convention
-
Politics1 week ago
As DNC approaches, party remains at impasse with with anti-Israel 'uncommitted' movement
-
Politics1 week ago
Dem strategists say Harris needs to ensure she's 'striking the right balance' at DNC, seize on 'momentum'