How Jette can independently support such aspirations as an adult is something Sather and her son have been discussing for years, alongside a team of educators from his public high school in Anaconda, Montana. Jette experienced significant speech and motor delays early in life, Sather said, and he has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. He’s among of public school students nationwide who depend on special education services through the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act — services that include programs to chart the transition from school to adulthood.

“Once Tucker learns how to do a job or learns a process, he’s very successful at doing that. It’s the initial learning phase for him and the expectations that are difficult,” said Sather, a former school-based physical therapist who spent 16 years working with students supported under IDEA. “Without that initial support, he probably would not be successful.”

In August, a federal judge in Montana between the state’s education agency and disability rights advocates that will enable eligible Montana students to continue receiving special education services through age 22. Despite existing legal precedent and recent attempts at a legislative fix, Montana remained one of the last states where local school districts could disenroll students with special needs after age 18. Now students are guaranteed an additional four years of public school eligibility and, by extension, access to school-based services that have helped recent graduates like Jette move toward independence.

, executive director of the federally funded Montana Empowerment Center, said it’s critical to do as much as possible for students with special needs before they leave the public school system.

“Early childhood, there are a lot of resources,” Gibson said. “But once transition hits, they fall off a cliff for services. Anything we can do to make that path a little bit easier, we’re going to have better outcomes for more successful adults.”

Demand for employment assistance services for people with disabilities has grown threefold since 2020, according to the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services. Approximately 4,000 people in the state are enrolled in the federally backed , which helps students with disabilities transition from school to the workforce and provides job coaching and training for people of any age with disabilities. An additional 3,000 public school students are , Pre-Employment Transition Services, that serves as an on-ramp to vocational rehabilitation.

In July, a month before the court ruling that ensured services for young adults up to 22, the department began placing vocational rehabilitation applicants on a waitlist, while prioritizing services for those with the most severe disabilities. As of early September, nearly 260 people were on the list.

Now, parents, school administrators, and disability rights advocates worry the booming demand for services is on a crash course with grant and workforce cuts by the U.S. Education Department, which provides funding to states for such transition services. And they are attempting to rally the public to protect those programs.

In March, President Donald Trump directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “facilitate the closure” of her department. Since then, the Education Department has laid off roughly half of its staff, for K-12 schools through much of the summer, and canceled grants designed to aid schools in hiring mental health workers.

, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, a national civil and legal defense organization for children with disabilities, said those cuts have introduced chaos and uncertainty into special education programming. But, she said, the current landscape does not diminish the legal rights of students with disabilities and their families.

“The laws remain strong, they remain in place, and we are urging everyone to contact their senators, their congressmen and women, their local officials, whoever, to hold that strong so we do not see — nor will we accept — a retreat from those rights,” Marshall said.

Montana’s state education agency, the Office of Public Instruction, has seen “minimal impacts, if any,” from federal spending and workforce cuts on transition supports for students with special needs, according to spokesperson McKenna Gregg. Agency officials announced in May that federal IDEA allocations for Montana this year were on par with 2024, when the state received roughly $46 million in IDEA funding.

Chad Berg, special education director for one of the state’s larger public school districts, in Bozeman, said federal IDEA funding levels appear to be stable for now, but he said the gradual dismantling of the Education Department presents longer-term questions.

“It raises concerns that the expertise that’s been involved at the federal level that provides support to states in implementing this may no longer be there,” Berg said. “We’ve not seen anything directly at this point. It’s more about the uncertainty of what could come.”

When the Montana Legislature met earlier this year, advocates for individuals with disabilities rallied inside the Capitol in Helena, urging lawmakers to help safeguard the basic services many citizens rely on for their independence.

is director of advocacy at Disability Rights Montana, the nonprofit that sued the state seeking the continuation of special education services until age 22. He said federal budget talks have included proposals to cut funding for independent living centers and university-based assistance programs, threatening to erode a system critical to the lives of 7.5 million American children.

“What IDEA did is create the one place in the life of a person with a disability where all of these services are mandated to come together under one roof,” Goldin said. “That doesn’t happen anywhere in the adult system.”

Sather is thankful that, for the time being, her son’s access to transition services hasn’t been interrupted. Even so, she said, the uncertainty around federal support for students with disabilities is “exceptionally scary.” She’s not alone in her concern.

In the small central Montana town of Simms, Laurie Frank has struggled to find adequate services for her seven adopted children, including her 19-year-old daughter, Angel, who has Down syndrome and autism. Angel is caring, social, and “loves to help people,” Frank said, and her high school provides her with some specialized support.

But Frank is also aware of how limited those services often are — a reality she’s lived not just as a parent but as a former special education teacher and family support specialist. Any potential for further destabilization, Frank added, “scares the heck out of me.”

“I just really hope and pray that people on the state and federal level will really stop and think about what’s in the best interest of these kids and how we can help them be successful,” Frank said. “Sometimes I feel like some of them fall through the cracks, and people don’t think about the fact that they have needs and wants and they want to have success, too.”

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It’s no surprise, then, that protections for people who have chronic health problems like diabetes and cancer have become a focal point for candidates nationwide — among them, Matt Rosendale, the Republican contender for Montana’s only U.S. House seat.

On Sept. 22, Rosendale’s campaign hit airwaves and online streaming services with , whose son was diagnosed with a life-threatening disease. Sandee told the story of how Rosendale came to her family’s aid, concluding that “Matt fights for everyone with a preexisting condition.”

As is often the case with health care policy, however, the truth is far from simple. Rosendale and many other Republican congressional candidates face the challenge of convincing voters they support these safeguards even as they oppose the Affordable Care Act, which codifies those safeguards.

Polls show for keeping the ACA’s preexisting condition protections.

We decided to investigate.

Rosendale is up against Democrat Kathleen Williams for the congressional seat now occupied by Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte, who has entered the state’s gubernatorial race. The open seat has been controlled by the GOP for the past 12 terms, but this year’s race is expected to be close. Williams, who also ran for the seat in 2018, has made health care her top campaign issue.

We contacted the Rosendale campaign to find out the basis for his ad’s claim. Campaign spokesperson Shelby DeMars listed a range of that would help people with preexisting conditions directly or indirectly by holding down health care costs. She specifically pointed to Rosendale’s work on the state’s reinsurance program as Montana’s state auditor and insurance commissioner, a post he was elected to in 2016.

“Matt Rosendale is a champion for those with pre-existing conditions and he has the record to prove it,” DeMars said via email. “It is because of the Reinsurance program he implemented that Montanans with pre-existing conditions can access the affordable healthcare coverage they need.”

Examining Reinsurance

In a nutshell, is designed to help insurers cover costly medical claims with a mix of federal pass-through dollars and funding generated by a premium tax on all major medical policies in the state. Gov. Steve Bullock announced the formation of in fall 2018, and the state’s legislature approved the plan in 2019, allowing Rosendale to under the Affordable Care Act.

indicated the idea worked. In-state insurers credited the program with lowering premiums by 8% to 14% for 2020. As shortly after the 2019 legislative session, “It allows the insurance companies to have rate stabilization for those really big claims, the ones that are the earthquakes in health insurance.” He went on to say that this stability “brings the cost down for the consumer.” More to the point, that reinsurance not only serves to subsidize high-cost patients but “protects patients with pre-existing conditions.”

But there’s a rub.

The reinsurance program that Rosendale touts wouldn’t exist without a state innovation waiver created by the ACA, which . That effort will doubtless continue to fuel pitched battles in Congress, and how the U.S. Supreme Court may rule on a pending ACA challenge . One thing is clear, though: If the entire ACA is thrown out, , along with Montana’s Medicaid expansion and the ban on insurers excluding people with health problems from affordable coverage.

When asked about the resulting elimination of the reinsurance program, DeMars emphasized that Rosendale’s work as auditor has created a system that will ensure protections for preexisting conditions “regardless of what happens to the ACA.” She did not elaborate or explain what protections would remain if the ACA were repealed.

The Short-Term Plan Component

In defending his stance on preexisting conditions, Rosendale continues to be haunted by another health care policy specter from his political past. During his unsuccessful challenge against Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester in 2018, Rosendale for promoting short-term, limited-duration health insurance plans. Unlike plans offered on the individual marketplace, these short-term plans are exempt from the ACA’s ban on excluding people with preexisting conditions. And, under a 2018 regulatory change pushed by the Trump administration, from three months to 12, with the potential to renew for up to three years.

As state auditor, Rosendale included those plans in . They often exclude coverage for a variety of higher-cost benefits. In Montana, for example, found that of four short-term plans available in Billings in 2018, none offered coverage for maternity care, mental health, substance abuse or prescription drug services. (KHN is an editorially independent program of Â鶹ŮÓÅ.)

Historically, short-term plans were designed to help individuals fill gaps in health coverage. According to Dania Palanker, an assistant research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms, the role short-term plans play on today’s health insurance landscape is to attract younger, healthier individuals seeking low-cost options to cover catastrophic events. That splits insurers into two pools — those who are less likely to incur medical expenses, and those who are more likely to incur them. Costs on the individual market go up as a result, leaving people with preexisting conditions no other option than to pay higher premiums. Short-term plans are, Palanker said, “actively hurting people with preexisting conditions.”

“Promoting short-term plans and stumping on supporting protections for preexisting conditions are mutually exclusive,” she continued.

Asked whether the cost-lowering effect of a reinsurance program would be enough to offset the effects of short-term plans, Palanker said the only way such an offset would be enough is if the program encompassed short-term plans. She hasn’t seen that happen anywhere.

Our Ruling

A campaign ad says Rosendale “fights for everyone with a preexisting condition.” While it is true that health insurance premiums have dropped during Rosendale’s tenure as state auditor, the choice to establish Montana’s reinsurance program ultimately fell to decision-makers in the state’s legislature and the governor’s office. Since his ad’s claim simply states that he “fights” for people with preexisting conditions, his testimony in support of that program and role in securing the state waiver do seem to fit the bill.

In the long-term, however, Rosendale’s positions begin to run counter to the claim. His support for short-term, limited-duration plans poses a considerable threat to keeping health insurance affordable for all, and absent a solid plan from Congress to ensure that state reinsurance programs survive, his stated goal of repealing the ACA would actually serve to unravel the very protection he’s built his case on.

We rate this statement as Mostly False.

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Martz, 44, said he suffered through symptoms that included achy joints, a sore throat, fever and an unbearable headache. Jail officials largely avoided interacting with the COVID patients other than by handing out over-the-counter painkillers and cough syrup, he said. Inmates sanitized their hands with a spray bottle containing a blue liquid that Martz suspected was also used to mop the floors. A shivering inmate was denied a request for an extra blanket, so Martz gave him his own.

“None of us expected to be treated like we were in a hospital, like we’re a paying customer. That’s just not how it’s going to be,” said Martz, who has since been released on bail while his case is pending in court. “But we also thought we should have been treated with respect.”

The overcrowded Cascade County Detention Center in Great Falls, where Martz was held, is one of three Montana jails experiencing COVID outbreaks. In the Great Falls jail alone, 140 cases have been confirmed among inmates and guards since spring, with 60 active cases as of mid-September.

By contrast, the Montana state prison system has the second-lowest infection rate in the nation, . No confirmed coronavirus cases have been reported at the men’s prison out of 595 inmates tested. The women’s prison had just one confirmed case out of 305 inmates tested,

One reason for the high COVID count in jails and the low count in prisons is that Montana for months halted “county intakes,” or the transfer of people from county jails to the state prison system after conviction. Sheriffs in charge of the county jails blame their outbreaks on overcrowding partly caused by that state policy.

Restricting transfers into state prisons is a practice that’s also been instituted elsewhere in the U.S. as a measure to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Colorado, California, Texas and New Jersey are among the states that suspended inmate intakes from county jails in the spring.

But it’s also shifted the problem. Space was already a rare commodity in these local jails, and some sheriffs see the halting of transfers as giving the prisons room to improve the health and safety of their inmates at the expense of those in jail, who often haven’t been convicted.

The Cascade County jail was built to hold a maximum of 372 inmates, but the population has regularly exceeded that since the pandemic began, including dozens of Montana Department of Corrections inmates awaiting transfer.

“I’m getting criticized from various judges and citizens saying, ‘Why aren’t you quarantining everybody appropriately and why aren’t you social-distancing them?’” Cascade County Sheriff Jesse Slaughter said. “The truth is, if I didn’t have 40 DOC inmates in my facility I could better do that.”

Unlike convicted offenders in state prisons, most jail inmates are only accused of a crime. They include a disproportionately high number of poor people who cannot afford to post bail to secure their release before trial or the resolution of their cases. If they do post bail or are released after spending time in a jail with a COVID outbreak, they risk bringing the disease home with them.

Andrew Harris, a professor of criminology and justice studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, said he finds it troubling that more attention is not paid to the conditions that lead to COVID outbreaks in jails.

“Jails are part of our communities,” Harris said. “We have people who work in these jails who go back to their families every night, we have people who go in and out of these jails on very short notice, and we have to think about jail populations as community members first and foremost.”

Some states have tried other ways to ensure county inmates don’t bring COVID-19 into prisons. In Colorado, for example, officials lifted their suspension on county intakes and are transferring inmates first to a single prison in Canon City, Department of Corrections spokesperson Annie Skinner said. There, inmates are tested and quarantined in single cells for 14 days before being relocated to other state facilities.

Outbreaks are also occurring in county jails in states that never stopped transferring inmates to state prison. Several jails in Missouri have experienced significant outbreaks, with Greene County reporting in mid-August that 83 inmates and 29 staffers had tested positive. Missouri Department of Corrections spokesperson Karen Pojmann said the state never opted to stop transfers from county jails, likely because of a robust screening and quarantine procedure implemented early in the pandemic.

At least 1,590 inmates and 440 staff members have tested positive for COVID-19 in Missouri’s 22 prison facilities since March, The COVID Prison Project ranks Missouri’s case rate 25th among the states — better than some states that halted inmate transfers, including Colorado, Texas and California.

The halting of transfers was a critical part of the response by officials in California, whose prisons have been among the hardest hit by COVID-19. An outbreak at San Quentin State Prison this summer helped spur Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom to order the early release of 10,000 inmates from prisons statewide.

Stefano Bertozzi, dean emeritus at the University of California-Berkeley School of Public Health, visited San Quentin before the outbreak, and afterward helped pen an urgent memo outlining immediate actions needed to avert disaster. He recommended halting all intakes at the prison and slashing its population of 3,547 inmates in half. At that point, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation was already more than two months into an intake freeze.

Overcrowding has long been an issue for criminal justice reform advocates. But for Bertozzi, the term “overcrowding” needs to be redefined in the context of COVID-19, with an emphasis on exposure risk. Three inmates sharing a cell designed for two is a bad way to live, he said, “especially for the guy who’s on the floor.” But if those cells are enclosed, they offer far better protection from COVID-19 than 20 inmates sharing a congregate dorm designed for 20.

“It’s how many people are breathing the same air,” Bertozzi said.

Some California county jails struggled. In July, inmates in Tulare County’s facility, where 22 cases had been reported, filed a class action suit against Sheriff Mike Boudreaux alleging he’d failed to provide face masks and other safeguards. U.S. District Court Judge Dale Drozd ruled in favor of the inmates in early September, directing Boudreaux to implement official policies requiring face coverings and social distancing.

California resumed county intakes on Aug. 24 following the development of guidelines designed to control transmission risk and prioritize counties with the greatest need for space. But a huge backlog remains: 6,552 state inmates were still being held in county jails as of mid-September, according to corrections officials.

In Montana, the number of inmates at county jails awaiting transfer to prisons and other state corrections facilities was 238 at the beginning of September, according to state data obtained through a public records request.

Montana and county officials butted heads over delays in inmate transfers before the coronavirus, but the pandemic has increased the stakes.

“Once we had the issue with the pandemic and we had to maintain space for quarantining and isolating inmates, then it became even more critical because the space wasn’t really available,” Yellowstone County Sheriff Mike Linder said.

Montana Department of Corrections Director Reginald Michael acknowledged to state lawmakers in August that halting county intakes places a strain on counties but said it was “the right thing to do.”

“This is one of the reasons why I think our prisons are not inundated with the virus spread,” he told the Law and Justice Interim Committee.

Committee Chairman Rep. , a Republican, gave Michael his endorsement: “Sounds like you guys are doing a good job keeping it controlled and out of our prison systems, and everybody in Montana appreciates that.”

Since then, Montana officials have transferred up to 25 inmates a week, but they continue to block transfers from the three counties with outbreaks: Cascade, Yellowstone and Big Horn.

Martz dreaded the thought of COVID-19 following him out of jail. So much so that, after his release in early September, he walked to an RV park, where his wife met him with a tent.

Despite having tested negative for the virus prior to his release, he self-quarantined for a week before going home. The hardest part, he said, was not being able to immediately hug his 5-year-old stepdaughter. It “sucked,” but it’s what he felt he had to do.

“If somebody’s grandpa or grandmother had gotten it because I was careless and they ended up dying because of it, I’d feel horrible,” said Martz, who has returned home. “That’d be a horrible thing to do.”

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When it finally did, life for the Livingston resident and father of two changed dramatically. His daughters, 8 and 4 years old, were suddenly home from school. The restaurant group where Sumners works maintenance shut down, thrusting him onto unemployment alongside legions of workers nationwide.

Despite his life being upended, Sumners backed Gov. Steve Bullock’s decision to lock down the state, and Montana saw relatively few cases through the spring.

That response, echoed by others across the state who approved of how Bullock had handled the pandemic, was good news for the governor’s nascent campaign to unseat Republican Sen. Steve Daines in a key race for control of the U.S. Senate.

Republicans, who hold a slim three-seat majority in the Senate, considered Montana a safe seat until Bullock’s last-minute entry in March. The term-limited governor had repeatedly rejected the idea of challenging Daines, a first-term incumbent seeking reelection in a state that President Donald Trump won by 20 percentage points in 2016. Bullock reconsidered after dropping his long-shot presidential bid and being wooed by top Democrats, including former President Barack Obama and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

The pandemic has shaped the race beyond simply focusing the public’s attention on health directives and congressional stimulus packages. Health care in general has rocketed to the forefront of both candidates’ campaigns. Television ads have touted and attacked Bullock’s push to expand Medicaid, Daines’ opposition to the Affordable Care Act and Daines’ plan for lowering prescription drug prices.

That dynamic has national implications, said Jessica Taylor, the Senate and governors editor for The Cook Political Report. A decade ago, health care — and a campaign to repeal and replace the ACA — helped Republicans wrest control of the House and then four years later the Senate. In 2018, health issues aided Democrats in taking back the House. Now the pandemic could play into a power flip in the Senate, sweeping many of the GOP’s strongest knocks against Bullock, such as his support for a ban on assault weapons, off the table in favor of a policy debate that Republicans have lost ground on.

But matters have grown more complicated for Bullock as the pandemic continues. When coronavirus cases began to rise in Montana in June, hundreds of people from across the state wrote to Bullock’s office. According to emails, released by the governor’s office under a public records request, many criticized the governor for not issuing a statewide mask mandate early enough and questioned his motives in other pandemic-related decisions.

Sumners wrote Bullock twice. He strongly disagreed when the governor in June lifted the 14-day quarantine rule for out-of-state visitors. Later, he felt Bullock was taking too long to issue the mask order, which didn’t come until July 15.

Sumners, who said he still supports Bullock, began to suspect that the governor’s political ambitions were coloring his response to the crisis. He wrote to the governor’s office and urged him to “put your politics aside” and issue the mask order.

“I think he’s been trying to play the political game a little too much, to his own benefit,” Sumners said in a recent interview.

That the early sheen of public praise lavished on governors in their battles against COVID-19 would gradually scuff and wear was a foregone conclusion. The pandemic continues to bring fresh challenges around the country, from rising case counts and testing delays to quandaries over what to mandate and what to reopen.

Rob Saldin, a political scientist at the University of Montana, said Bullock’s very presence on the ballot means his actions on the outbreak will be seen through a political lens.

That worked in his favor early on when constant media coverage of all things COVID put Bullock in a spotlight that would not otherwise have existed for a lame-duck governor. Even with the recent criticism over the timing of the face mask order, Saldin speculated that Bullock’s supporters will still back him. Whether voters continue to see Bullock as an effective and reliable leader into the fall is the real question hanging over Election Day.

“It is really kind of a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ situation he finds himself in,” Saldin said. “This is such a highly charged issue that’s impacting everybody’s lives that it just does raise the salience of this thing.”

Bullock refuses to give the notion of a campaign calculus in his pandemic response much note, saying, “None of that is politics. That’s just trying to do the job that I’m fortunate that I’ve gotten to do for eight years.”

If it took time to issue a face mask mandate, Bullock said in a phone interview, it’s because lining up support from Montana business leaders and stoking public acceptance were critical to ensuring the order would have the intended effect.

Daines appears equally reluctant to marry the pandemic to the campaign. According to the Associated Press, one unnamed Daines campaign staffer accused Bullock in early July of staging photo-ops at COVID testing sites, a charge Bullock’s team countered was baseless. So far, however, that salvo has been a one-off. Daines declined to be interviewed, but spokesperson Julia Doyle said in an email that his response to the pandemic is not political.

“It’s about ensuring Montanans have the resources to protect their health, help our small businesses, and [getting] Montanans safely back to work,” she said.

For now, Daines and Bullock as candidates are largely keeping their talk about the coronavirus confined to their own roles. Daines’ tele-town halls and in-state visits have centered on his work securing federal relief funding for Montana workers and businesses.

Bullock, meanwhile, has his attention trained on health directives and economic aid programs. He said criticism of his coronavirus policies is not affecting his plans.

“My responses and my efforts can’t be defined by the individuals that were upset that we didn’t do a masking order earlier, or can’t be defined by the individuals that were protesting around the Capitol or the [governor’s] residence,” Bullock said. “You just have to do the best you can with everything you know.”

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