In April, Audrey Cromwell, the top cop in Gallatin County, a rugged and fast-growing part of Montana made famous by Paramount’s hit Yellowstone TV series, received a surprising phone call. It was a local reporter wondering what Cromwell thought about a press release from Austin Knudsen, the state’s hard-line Republican attorney general, accusing Cromwell of “stealthily” enacting a sanctuary city policy and demanding she rescind the policy within five days.
But Cromwell, a Democrat who ousted a 26-year Republican incumbent in a razor-thin race for county attorney in 2022, had never established such a policy. Nor had she received any direct communication from Knudsen.
The ostensible subject of the press release was a mundane question of bureaucratic procedure. In October, the Enforcement and Removal Operations division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement had requested confidential criminal justice information, or CCJI, on a Gallatin County resident. Because the request pertained to a deportation proceeding, which is a civil rather than criminal matter under federal law, the records department asked Cromwell’s office for guidance on whether to comply with the request. In response, a civil legal assistant in Cromwell’s office advised that a court order would be required to release the information.
Cromwell said her office heard nothing more until April 2, when the press release turned a routine exchange between federal and local government employees into a political powder keg—just a few months before the state’s June primaries. On April 30, after refusing multiple invitations from Cromwell to assume legal responsibility for future CCJI requests, Knudsen placed Cromwell’s office under “supervisory control,” a rarely used authority with undefined limits that allows the attorney general to oversee and overrule the actions of an elected county attorney.
As the nation speeds toward midterm elections in November, this red-state dustup over immigration enforcement offers a reminder that the most disruptive domestic policy change of Donald Trump’s second term isn’t confined to blue cities. The administration’s intolerance for disagreement and its provocative, publicity-heavy attacks on rivals are also roiling communities and shaping politics in conservative and rural states, where Trump allies are taking extraordinary measures to bring local government officials to heel.
During her first week on the job, in January 2023, Cromwell said she discovered three cardboard boxes of unprosecuted criminal cases in an office closet. Eventually, hundreds of other cases were discovered on shelves and in filing cabinets. Cromwell then expanded the number of attorneys in the chronically understaffed office from six to 46 and cleared over 600 backlogged cases—including 113 sexual assaults, 52 of which involved children—within a single year. When I visited her office in June, further evidence of a culture shift was on display. Cromwell had recently remodeled the office space, which now consisted of open doors, airy cubicles, and plenty of young attorneys.
She eagerly introduced me to each one (and several of their dogs) but turned serious as she discussed Knudsen’s decision to assume supervisory control over the office. “I was worried enough to take all my personal stuff home with me,” she said, gesturing from her desk toward the bare walls and windowsill.
Knudsen, a former county attorney and speaker of the Montana House (2015–2019), is known for his heavy hand. Elected as attorney general in 2020, he dispatched at least one Highway Patrol officer to St. Peter’s Health Hospital in Helena after a request from the family members of a Covid patient to prescribe ivermectin had been denied, among other complaints, and Cromwell wondered whether he would use similar tactics to intimidate her. (Knudsen did not respond to multiple requests for comment through the Montana Department of Justice website and to his communications director.)
Though her office’s routines have not been similarly disturbed, Cromwell petitioned the Montana Supreme Court for a declaratory judgment on the dispute over CCJI requests in May. Additionally, she requested relief from Knudsen’s supervisory control, which required her to relinquish control of CCJI requests, submit regular reports to Knudsen, and could have allowed him to impose more invasive regulations at any time.
Such confrontations between Knudsen and other elected officials, including judges, over where his power ends and others’ begins have become commonplace during his tenure. In December 2025, he was cleared of a 41-count charge by the state Office of Disciplinary Counsel that resulted from a series of disparaging statements he made about the judicial branch.
In February, he accused Helena, the capital city, of violating the state’s legislative ban on sanctuary cities when it passed a resolution that clarified existing standards for coordination with ICE and made a commitment not to sign a 287(g) agreement with the agency. A 287(g) is an optional agreement that allows ICE to deputize local law enforcement officers and utilize local facilities for detention and other purposes. Knudsen’s accusation was announced via press conference, with Governor Greg Gianforte standing by his side.
“There will be penalties,” Gianforte said. “In Montana, we don’t tolerate defiance, and we support our local law enforcement.”
The imperious tone was notable, and so was the heft of threatened penalties. Under Montana law, a local government can be fined $10,000 for every five days it remains out of compliance and can lose access to state funds for public infrastructure and other needs if it does not comply within 14 days after legal action is taken.
The Helena City Commission hired outside legal counsel to help the city attorney navigate the conflict and spent at least $17,000 on initial legal costs. Then, during a heated public meeting in March, commissioners voted to rescind the resolution, despite public affirmations of its legality by the city attorney and outside counsel.
“In a time like now, when so many people feel like their federal government is seeking influence over even the most household-level issues, it’s important for people to feel as if they have at least some control at the local level through resolutions like this,” said Melinda Reed, the only commissioner who voted both for the original resolution and against its rescission.
“To me, the risk of not standing up so far outweighs the risk of standing up,” she added. “I mean, today, it’s an immigration issue that some people may not feel is important to them. But what if next time it’s our water rights?”
Yet, the severe penalties in the anti-sanctuary cities law and Knudsen’s aggressively political brand of law enforcement both seem designed to preempt local governments from exercising the sort of self-determination that both Reed and Cromwell believe is necessary. Indeed, the goal of these penalties, which now exist in many states, may be political superiority rather than policy resolution.
“There is this culture shift within the Republican Party. This kind of aggressiveness is now equated with strength,” Rob Saldin, professor of political science and director of the Mansfield Ethics and Public Affairs Program at the University of Montana, told me. “There is almost a cruelty to it, and it’s off-putting, which is maybe the point.”
Montana isn’t the only red state where local officials have endured unprecedented threats, investigations, and lawsuits by state prosecutors to enforce Trump’s agenda.
Montana isn’t the only red state where local officials have endured unprecedented threats, investigations, and lawsuits by state prosecutors to enforce Trump’s agenda and discourage judicial review. “Republican A.G.s are using state laws and public pressure campaigns to force local jurisdictions into cooperation with ICE,” said Cassandra Charles, senior staff attorney at the National Immigration Law Center. “They’re not waiting for the federal government to act—they’re making their threats loud enough that most jurisdictions cave before even getting into court.”
As evidence of this trend, she pointed to Texas, where Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is now a candidate for U.S. Senate, recently sent a letter demanding that Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown enter into a 287(g) agreement with ICE. When Brown did not comply, citing her department’s existing collaborative relationship with the agency, Paxton immediately launched a formal investigation, compelling Brown’s office to spend time and money responding to questions and accusations that may have no legal standing in a court of law.
“Sometimes, A.G.s don’t have to do too much heavy lifting,” Charles added. “State legislatures are also handing them new enforcement tools to use.” In Georgia, a new law empowers private-property owners to sue local governments over perceived failures to remove immigrants and unsheltered people from public spaces, essentially deputizing individual citizens to do what the attorney general can’t always do directly.
While these unusual attempts to enforce Trump’s agenda are sometimes contested by public officials from across the partisan divide, it remains to be seen whether public concern over such policies transcends that divide, particularly in red states.
“There isn’t a clean narrative here,” Charles said. “The polls seem to indicate that red-state voters continue to support the enforcement agenda, but they’d also like to see specific aggressive tactics—like raids at schools or targeting people without criminal records—toned down. The data shows some fissures, but no explicit shift.”
That analysis accurately describes Montana, a 60–40 Republican state where 59 percent of residents want local law enforcement to work with ICE, but also where the sheriff of one politically conservative town recently rallied community members to support the family of a beloved mechanic after he was detained by ICE for over 100 days.
When Knudsen first threatened supervisory control over her office, Cromwell told me, she had taken the weekend to consider the hazards of an extended fight. “I had to do an ethical analysis,” she recalled. “The attorney general has prosecutorial powers, and he could charge me with the crime of official misconduct. So, was that a risk that I was willing to take?”
As of late July, the Montana Supreme Court has yet to rule on Knudsen’s use of supervisory control, which means Cromwell is still waiting for clarity as to how her office should respond to future requests—or, for that matter, just how far the attorney general’s authority extends. The legal battle has taken a toll. The conflict and ensuing court case have required more than 80 hours of her professional time and cost taxpayers thousands of dollars.
Of course, there are political ramifications as well. In November, Gallatin County voters will decide whether to reelect Cromwell for a second four-year term or install her challenger, a Republican prosecutor who’s been endorsed by the Republican county sheriff. It was possible Knudsen had staged this act of political theater so that he could make immigration enforcement a more visible issue on Election Day. “It’s a show, in my opinion,” Cromwell told me, ahead of the primary on June 2.
“If the attorney general is willing to come after me in this way,” she added, “and I’m an elected official, an attorney, a privileged Montanan, then what is he willing to do to people who don’t have power?”
That question carries extra weight when one considers the coincidence of presidential and gubernatorial elections in 2028. Many have speculated that Knudsen will run for governor in two years, and in a state where Trump won the last three presidential elections by an average of 18.7 points, Knudsen’s path to victory likely ends with the primary rather than the general election.
If he does run for governor and wins, then he’ll almost certainly be working with a fellow partisan in the attorney general’s office, and together they might continue testing the limits of their legal authority, especially if the state’s nonpartisan Supreme Court tips further to the right between now and then. In that scenario, the possibility of the attorney general using supervisory control to make an elected county attorney do something they think is illegal would no longer represent a distant political or legal frontier.
“Both the attorney general and [county attorneys] are elected by voters,” Constance Van Kley, a constitutional law professor at the University of Montana, told me, “and what do you do when one elected official is allowed to use their powers to supersede the powers that are entrusted to a local elected official by the voters of that jurisdiction?”
Presently, that question lies at the center of constitutional conflicts in Montana and many other states across the country, and its resolution will ultimately determine whether federal and state elected officials can exercise new legal powers without judicial review or public consent.
This trend also informed Cromwell’s decision to stand her ground. In the end, however, the tipping point was a matter of principle rather than politics. “I always stand up to bullies, and I always have,” she told me. “In this position, I’m a voice for people who don’t have a voice, and I take that responsibility really seriously, and if that means putting myself on the line, then that’s OK.”
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