Troy Downing bought cheap Montana resident hunting licenses for six years while filing his taxes as a non-resident. He pleaded guilty, paid a fine, and lost his hunting privileges. Now he sits on the committee that writes public lands law.
A Wall Street Journal investigation found ICE is paying contractors millions to scan social media around the clock, then using subpoenas to unmask Americans who criticize the agency. Nobody has been charged. That may be the point.
On July 23 the House voted 214-208 to order U.S. forces out of Trump's unauthorized war with Iran. These 182 Republicans we track voted no — the second time Congress has told the president to stop, and the second time they tried to stop Congress from saying it.
We all deserve access to quality healthcare so we can live healthy and productive lives.
Troy Downing disagrees:
He voted to cut more than $1 trillion in federal health care and food assistance as part of the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act"
He voted to let ACA tax credits expire, increasing health costs for millions of Americans, driving many of them to switch to cheaper plans or abandon health insurance coverage altogether. And the less people there are with coverage, the higher the rest of our premiums will be.
He wants to repeal the ACA, reduce Medicare and Medicaid spending, and add work requirements to Medicaid.
Montana stands to lose an estimated $5.4 billion in federal Medicaid funds over the next decade. This will lead to fewer doctors, more strain on rural hospitals, and worse outcomes for families who already struggle to access care.
Wants to Gut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security
Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security aren't handouts. They're earned benefits that we pay into out of every single paycheck, our entire working lives, so that we can see a doctor, take care of our parents, and retire with dignity instead of going bankrupt when we get old or sick.
For years, Troy Downing and his party have been quietly laying the groundwork to gut these programs. Now they've said the quiet part out loud.
They admitted the plan. Speaker Mike Johnson told the "Moon Griffon Show" that "entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and things like Social Security ... have to be adjusted and fixed," and that "We have a plan to do that next year ... desperate times call for desperate measures."
We know what the plan looks like. The Republican Study Committee — a caucus of more than 170 House Republicans that includes Speaker Johnson and his top three deputies in leadership — released a budget calling for raising the Social Security retirement age for future retirees and converting Medicare into a privatized "premium support" model that would hand seniors over to for-profit insurance companies.
They already started. The "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" that Troy Downing supported cut roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid to help pay for tax cuts for the richest 1 percent.
Even Republicans admit what "reform" means. Sen. Josh Hawley, on the push to "address" and "reform" these programs: "That's usually code for 'cut.' I'm not in favor of that."
It's a broken promise. Donald Trump pledged in 2024, "I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare." Troy Downing and his party are now preparing to do exactly that.
These programs are a promise: work hard, pay in your whole life, and your country will be there for you when you need it. Troy Downing wants to break that promise so he can keep cutting taxes for billionaires. We deserve better.
Cut Taxes for the Rich, While Making the Rest of Us Pay For It
We all need to pay our fair share to the government so it can provide the services that benefit all of us.
But billionaires in the U.S. pay a smaller tax rate than most teachers and nurses. That's not fair.
The wealthiest 400 billionaire families in the U.S. paid an average federal individual tax rate of just 8.2 percent. For comparison, the average American taxpayer in the same year paid 13 percent.
23 of the largest and most profitable companies in the US paid no federal corporate income taxes from 2018-2022. And 109 corporations paid zero federal tax in at least one of those years.
The "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" that Troy Downing supported will reduce taxes for the top 1 percent of taxpayers by more than $1 trillion over the next decade, while raising taxes for the poorest Americans.
Troy Downing is on the side of the billionaires and big business. We deserve better.
We all deserve clean air, clean water, and a healthy planet to live on.
Troy Downing has supported the repealing and rolling back of environmental protections and climate change regulations, all so that billionaires and big business can plunder natural resources and destroy our environment in the name of profit.
Here in Montana, 1 in 5 kids faces hunger every day.
In Montana, about 79,800 citizens receive SNAP benefits every month (7% of the population)
In Troy Downing's district, about 17,000 MT-02 households rely on SNAP to put food on the table. According to USDA's own data, 57% of them include someone with a disability, 45% have children, and 40% include someone 60 or older — the very people hurt most by the food-assistance cuts Downing voted for.
Troy Downing doesn't care if we go hungry. We deserve better.
Is Intentionally Wrecking Our Public Schools and Our Kids' Futures
Nine out of ten American children — 49.6 million of them — go to a public school. It's where they learn to read, where they eat breakfast and lunch, where kids with disabilities are guaranteed an education by law, and where a kid from any family, rich or poor, religious or not, gets a fair shot.
Troy Downing and his party are taking that apart on purpose: draining public school money into private and religious schools, pushing one religion into everybody else's classrooms, and shutting down the federal department that is supposed to look out for our kids.
He voted to create the first national private school voucher in American history. It is hidden inside the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act." You give up to $1,700 a year to a charity that hands out private school scholarships, and the government gives you back every penny you gave on your taxes. It costs you nothing — no other tax break in the country works that way. Each person is capped at $1,700, but any number of people can do it, so there is no limit on what it drains from the Treasury. It starts January 1, 2027. Congress's own scorekeepers say $26 billion over ten years; one tax research group says as much as $51 billion every year — more than the government spends on Title I ($18.4 billion) for poor schools and IDEA ($14.6 billion) for kids with disabilities combined. And "low-income" means a family earning three times what a normal family in their area earns still qualifies — in some places, $500,000 a year.
They are giving away our tax dollars to families who are already wealthy and were never in public school to begin with. Every state that has tried it gets the same result — the money goes to people already paying private tuition: 95% of Arkansas voucher users never attended a public school. In Florida's first year of universal vouchers, 69% of new recipients were already in private school and only 13% had ever set foot in a public one. In Iowa, two-thirds were already in private school. We aren't rescuing kids from bad schools — we're cutting checks to families who never needed them, with the money coming out of the schools 90% of our kids actually attend.
And the kids who do switch end up doing worse. Four careful studies found the same thing. In Washington, DC, voucher kids fell behind in math. In Louisiana, a student who started in the middle of the class dropped to the bottom third in math after three years. Indiana and Ohio found the same. Kids with disabilities lost the most.
The money goes to religious schools that can turn our kids away. Ohio now spends nearly $1 billion a year on vouchers, the vast majority going to Catholic and evangelical schools — schools that, unlike public schools, can reject your child over their religion, their disability, or who their parents are, or for ANY REASON AT ALL with almost no accountability for the public money they take. Many have simply raised tuition to capture the vouchers instead of enrolling more students.
Our public schools took generations to build, and they are the one institution that has to take every single child who walks in the door. Troy Downing is helping tear them down and hand the pieces to private interests. Our kids will pay for it for the rest of their lives. We deserve better.
A good job where we can make a living to support our families, own a home, and have a good life. That's the American Dream.
Troy Downing supports policies and an administration that are turning the American Dream into a nightmare.
There were 20.8 million layoffs in the U.S. in 2025
55% of employed Americans say they're concerned about losing their jobs
The unemployment rate is 4.2%
In 2025 the U.S. economy averaged just 15,000 jobs added per month, a dramatic decrease from the monthly average of 125,000 the year before Trump took office.
Overall employment for workers without college degrees fell by 361,000 jobs from January to September 2025.
58,000 net manufacturing jobs have been lost from April, when the administration announced "Liberation Day" tariffs, to September 2025.
Works for Billionaires, Big Business & Special Interests and Not for Us
Our elected officials should work for us, the people.
Troy Downing works for billionaires, big business and special interests — not for us. He sits on the House Financial Services Committee, which writes the rules for banks, insurers, mortgage lenders and the cryptocurrency industry. Then he takes his money from the very industries he is supposed to be regulating.
Look at the biggest example. The cryptocurrency industry's super PAC, Defend American Jobs, spent $509,959 in outside money to put him in office — the single largest source of money behind his election, and 70% of all the outside spending on his behalf. That PAC is funded by the crypto exchanges Coinbase and Ripple and the venture capital firm a16z. They spent that money on a man who now helps write the crypto rules. Insurance PACs, bank PACs, the realtors and the home builders line up behind him too.
Only 17% of Downing's funding came from small grassroots donors like us. 75% came from PACs, super PACs and large donors. He ranks #266 out of 440 House members in grassroots funding. He is not funded by Montanans chipping in — he is funded by the industries he regulates. Look at who some of his top funders are:
Defend American Jobs — the cryptocurrency industry's super PAC (funded by Coinbase, Ripple and a16z), which spent $509,959 in outside money supporting him
Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America (INSURPAC)
The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
American Bankers Association (BANKPAC), the banking industry's lobby
PricewaterhouseCoopers
Yellowstone Bank
Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO), the company that sets your credit score
National Association of Realtors
National Association of Home Builders (BUILDPAC)
Troy Downing is funded by billionaires, big business and special interests. No wonder he's not doing anything to improve OUR lives. We deserve better.
Let Elon Musk and DOGE Cut More Than $116 MILLION from Montana
We all want a government that works for us as efficiently and effectively as possible. Unfortunately our government doesn't always work that way, so reform is badly needed. Given how big and complicated the government is, it's a tough problem that needs well-thought out solutions, so that we don't make things worse.
That's not what we got.
Troy Downing stood idly by while billionaire and ketamine-addled chaos monkey Elon Musk and his DOGE goons chainsawed their way through the U.S. government, promising to save the government at least $2 trillion annually in waste, fraud and abuse. Because they had no idea what they were doing and no one to stop them, in the end our government suffered, people suffered, Montana suffered, government spending actually went UP and Elon Musk became even richer.
Elon Musk and DOGE:
Had access to and exfiltrated (stole) all our sensitive personal information.
Kneecapped the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which had returned over $26 billion to the American people since 2011.
Attempted to cut $4 billion in funding for medical research.
Will cost the federal government an estimated $500 billion in lost tax revenue (that could pay for programs for us), due to cuts at the IRS.
Laid waste to the employees at several government departments, removing their top experts and most skilled practitioners, and making their services less effective for all of us. This badly affected veterans, who make up 30% of the federal workforce.
We'd like to thank you, Troy Downing, for doing absolutely nothing while an unelected South African big tech billionaire took a chainsaw to vital U.S. government functions and completely failed to make the government more efficient. We deserve better.
As a member of Congress, part of Troy Downing's job is to act as a check and balance to the executive branch. He and his fellow members of Congress from Montana have completely abdicated their responsibility. These spineless cowards are rubber stamping everything Donald Trump wants to do, no matter how crazy, dangerous or harmful. And we've seen the results. We deserve better.
Protected Pedophiles by Blocking Release of the Epstein Files
Jeffrey Epstein ran a global sex trafficking network that sexually abused dozens of girls and women for decades. The FBI identified at least 35 minors with similar abuse histories. When finally released in 2026, the files — over 3 million pages, 2,000 videos, and 180,000 images — revealed what UN human rights experts called "disturbing and credible evidence" of a possible global criminal enterprise. Those experts said some of the conduct may meet the threshold for crimes against humanity, including sexual slavery, torture, and enforced disappearance.
For months, House Republican leadership blocked every vote to release these files — and Troy Downing went along.
We deserve to feel safe in our neighborhoods, schools, and places of worship.
In order to do that, we need to take real steps to prevent gun violence. And despite what we've been told, it is possible to support the 2nd Amendment and support common-sense gun safety laws at the same time. But Troy Downing has opposed bipartisan gun safety laws, while offering meaningless thoughts and prayers every time there's a new mass shooting.
A child or adolescent is killed with a gun every 2 hours and 48 minutes in the U.S.
Age-adjusted firearm homicide rates in the U.S. are 33 times greater than in Australia and 77 times greater than in Germany
Every day, 125 Americans are killed with guns, and more than 200 are shot and wounded
Women in the U.S. are 28 times more likely to be killed with a gun than women in other high-income countries.
America is the land of FREEDOM. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to start a business, freedom to choose your own career path, freedom to make your own medical decisions, freedom to raise your children according to your values, and freedom to pursue happiness. Freedom is what makes America great.
Unless you're a woman and you're making the deeply personal decision about whether to have a baby or not. A decision that will dramatically affect the rest of your life. In that case Troy Downing thinks that your freedom doesn't matter and that the government should get to control your body. That's not freedom, that's tyranny.
Troy Downing:
Opposed Roe v. Wade
Supported federal efforts to ban abortion
Attacked Planned Parenthood throughout his career
Arkansas House of Representatives candidate (and pastor) Robb Ryerse stated it well: "Abortion should remain safe and legal. These are personal decisions best made by patients, their doctors, and their faith — not politicians. You don't have to agree with every decision someone makes to believe they should be free to make it. That's what personal liberty means." Almost 2/3 of Americans agree and believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. But Troy Downing thinks he knows better, and doesn't believe that we should have the freedom to make our own decisions. We deserve better.
In America our vote represents our will. It gives us the power to make the change that we want to see in the world.
Unfortunately that's not a sentiment that Troy Downing's billionaire and big business donors can stomach. Because when we have voting power, we use it to make our lives better, and they lose power. Read about all the ways they're trying to take away our voting power on our about page, then come back here.
Troy Downing has opposed legislation to make voting easier while supporting the SAVE Act, which would force every single American citizen to prove their citizenship status in person when registering to vote or updating their voter registration information. For the vast majority of Americans, this would mean presenting a passport or birth certificate at their local election office. This would disenfranchise millions of U.S. citizens: 146 million Americans do not have a passport, and 69 million women who have married do not have a birth certificate that matches their new legal name. Working-class and low-income Americans would also be disproportionately disenfranchised if the bill became law, as the vast majority of these groups do not possess a passport.
Whether white, black, or brown, we should all be able to live in America and exercise our constitutional rights without fear that law enforcement will turn on us.
But the current administration has created a secret police force that is abusing their power against anyone who stands in their way, U.S. citizen or not. They claim to be going after "the worst of the worst", but are taking daycare workers, day laborers, grandmas and kids who are valued members of our communities. And Troy Downing, staunch defender of the Second Amendment to fight back against government tyranny, is doing nothing while the government tyrannizes us.
ProPublica:They describe the legions of masked immigration officers operating in near-total anonymity on the orders of the president as the crossing of a line that had long set the United States apart from the world's most repressive regimes. ICE, in their view, has become an unfettered and unaccountable national police force.
ProPublica:Accosting people outside of their immigration court hearings where they're showing up and trying to do the right thing and then hauling them off to an immigration jail in the middle of the country where they can't access loved ones or speak to counsel. Bands of masked men apprehending people in broad daylight in the streets and hauling them off. Disappearing people to a third country, to a prison where there's a documented record of serious torture and human rights abuse.
New York Times:Masked and heavily armed, ICE agents are sent to cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and Minneapolis to terrorize immigrant communities and brutalize people who challenge their efforts to stop and detain anyone deemed suspicious. To expand its reach, ICE greatly lowered its recruitment standards, effectively enlisting anyone who cares to sign up. To attract new officers, ICE advertises the chance to do violence to people deemed "enemies" of the United States, likening civil immigration enforcement to a war on a dangerous, alien force. The result is an agency whose agents' first recourse appears to be violence or the threat of violence.
They are executing American citizens. On January 7, 2026 an ICE agent in Minneapolis murdered an American citizen, a mother of 3, by shooting her in the face as she tried to drive away. Then the killer walked away, and our government lied and tried to gaslight us about what happened. Decent politicians condemned the murder. What did Troy Downing have to say? Nothing.
They are executing American citizens: Part 2. On January 24, 2026 ICE agents in Minneapolis murdered an American citizen, a 37 year old ICU nurse, who was filming their activity and trying to help others. Then our government lied and tried to gaslight us about what happened.
And the list of the dead keeps growing. ICE agents — on duty and off — keep killing members of our communities, while Troy Downing says nothing:
On December 31, 2025, an off-duty ICE officer in Northridge, Los Angeles shot and killed Keith Porter Jr., a 43-year-old U.S. citizen and father of two who was born and raised in Compton. Federal officials called it self-defense against an "active shooter," but Porter's family says he was peacefully returning home and never posed a threat — and witnesses reported only three shots, matching his autopsy and contradicting claims of an exchange of gunfire.
On July 7, 2026, an ICE officer in Houston shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father of three and small-business owner who had lived in the U.S. for 35 years. Agents had been hunting a different white van. Harris County's medical examiner ruled his death a homicide, and his co-workers disputed ICE's claim that he used his vehicle as a weapon.
On July 13, 2026, an ICE agent in Biddeford, Maine shot and killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian father who was legally authorized to work in the U.S. and supported his wife and 3-year-old daughter by delivering food and cleaning a veterinary clinic. He was not the target of ICE's warrant — agents were looking for someone else — and were not wearing body cameras. Even Maine's Republican Senator Susan Collins urged DHS to halt non-urgent vehicle stops in the state.
It's happening here in Montana. In summer 2026, ICE raids across Gallatin County detained as many as 100 people — agents pulled workers off buses headed to job sites at 5 a.m. Fear now grips the local Latino community, with many afraid to leave their homes.
On January 22, 2026, Downing voted to hand ICE's parent agency $10 billion in new Department of Homeland Security funding, part of a package that passed the House 220 to 207. Days later a federal immigration agent shot and killed a man in Minneapolis — the second resident killed by an officer there in a month — and Downing's response was that he stands with officers who "work tirelessly to keep our communities safe."
At a March 2026 telephone town hall, a constituent named Lois from Helena told Downing that masked, unidentified agents showing up at her house would leave her "terrified" and asked why they don't operate like every other law enforcement agency. Downing said he supports keeping ICE agents' identities cloaked, and blamed social media instead: "We have never had a situation where federal law enforcement has gone out to do their job and then had people go out on Signal or chat or some other online app to their neighbors that federal law enforcement is out there doing their job."
If ICE can murder innocent U.S. citizens without repercussions, what could they do to you? ICE is out of control and a danger to us all - no one is safe. What's Troy Downing going to do about it? Absolutely nothing. We deserve better.
Voted for the Unnecessary and Unpopular War in Iran
War destroys human lives, families and innocent people, causes economic ruin, and triggers immense suffering. War should always be the option of last resort.
In order to distract from the Epstein Files, Donald Trump started an illegal war of choice with Iran, and now:
We are being dog-walked by Israel, who has been trying to convince presidents to attack Iran forever, and finally found one dumb enough to do so
The American people don't want this war with Iran. But Troy Downing supports this madness and voted against the War Powers Resolution that would have stopped it. Does Troy Downing work for Israel or the people of Montana? We deserve better.
Avoids His Constituents and Refuses to Hold In-Person Town Halls
Good leaders meet with their constituents and have town halls where citizens can voice concerns, ask questions, and provide input on policies. Troy Downing doesn't want to hear what we have to say. He only wants to talk to his rich donors or people who agree with him.
Since taking office, Troy Downing has held seven one-hour telephone town halls and zero in-person ones — call-in events at locations of his own choosing, on topics of his own preference. Because he knows we are not happy with his performance.
A May 2026 Montana Free Press–Eagleton poll found just 34% of registered voters in his own district approve of the job he is doing, while 40% disapprove — for a seat he won by more than 30 percentage points in 2024. Only 13% of voters said they did not know him, so this is not a name-recognition problem: people know Troy Downing, and they are not happy.
Troy Downing is avoiding us because he doesn't care what we think. We deserve better.
Montana ranchers' Pacific Rim beef markets in South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam collapsed to cheaper competitors. "Those areas and those markets are gone… We may never get those back," one Judith Gap farmer-rancher warned. Feeder cattle out of Montana often cross into Canada to be fed and finished before returning to a U.S. processor — and the Montana Stockgrowers Association says tariff uncertainty alone has already killed sales.
Troy Downing has failed Montana's farmers and ranchers. We deserve better.
We should hold our leaders to high standards. From 2011 through 2016, Troy Downing bought cheap Montana resident hunting and fishing licenses — while filing his income taxes as a non-resident and calling California "home" on social media. State game wardens who investigated him characterized his time in Montana as "seasonal at best" and charged him with nine misdemeanor violations — including loaning out an elk license and helping his adult son, who held a California driver's license, get a Montana resident license of his own.
We're all going to pay the price for this with increased rates of asthma, cancer, and premature deaths. We deserve better.
