This has got to be one of the best, underrecognized moves in Montana politics. And I think a lot of Montanans didn't even notice it, nor how significant it was.

This past week, it came out that former US Attorney and State Rep. Bill Mercer (R-Billings) was nominated by President Trump to fill a federal judge seat in Montana.

This is huge. The liberal federal judges are what have been killing Montana for working class folks. They constantly side with the radical environmentalist elites, shutting down jobs and shutting down access to public lands.

Apparently some of the initial news reports led folks to believe that Mercer would be filling the seat of US District Judge Susan Watters, a Democrat appointee who recently announced that she was retiring. Here's the great news: the Watters seat is an additional federal judge seat in Montana that will be filled by President Trump and a GOP controlled Senate.

And that brings us back to what I consider to be one of the best, underrecognized moves in Montana politics. The seat that Mercer is nominated to fill is that of US District Judge Dana Christensen in Missoula- another Democrat appointee on the bench. Christensen announced he was stepping down to "senior status" last year.

Like the left wing operative that he is, he made the move last year in hopes that former President Biden and former left wing Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) would pack the court with another liberal federal judge to sit on the bench for potentially decades to come.

Montana's US Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) courageously BLOCKED that court packing scheme by Biden and Tester, and then Navy SEAL veteran Tim Sheehy (R-MT) defeated Tester in the senate race, helping to give the Republicans the majority in the US Senate. (Federal judge nominees have to get confirmed by the US Senate)

So what that means is that, thanks to Senator Daines' efforts, President Trump will also get to fill the seat held by Judge Watters in Billings. This is huge for the State of Montana, which has gotten bombarded by radical left wing federal judges and their disastrous decisions for nearly 3 decades now.

Here's what I wrote back in May of 2025:

Liberal Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) is afraid that he will lose the election to Navy SEAL veteran Tim Sheehy this November and that Trump will be elected president again, so he is trying to stack the federal courts with as many Left wing judges as he can before the election. Thankfully, Montana Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) is standing up to it, with much gnashing of teeth from the liberal media.

Here's my story and my tweet from back in May of 2024 on this very topic.