Downing toes Republican talking points during talk of Iran, SAVE America Act and ICE protests

A lot has happened since Montana Congressman Troy Downing held his last telephone town hall.

Half of the state’s all-Republican delegation announced it would not seek re-election, leaving Downing as the only incumbent standing for possible re-election in November. And while the landscape across Montana and the country has changed — the U.S has initiated military actions in both Venezuela and Iran — what remains similar is that Downing clings closely to the Trump administration’s positions.

During the hour-long question-and-answer discussion on Thursday, Downing covered a multitude of issues ranging from Daylight Saving Time to the war in Iran. The Congressman said that he supports the Trump administration’s efforts in Iran, believes the Epstein files release hasn’t done enough to protect victims and blamed social media for interfering with immigration officers who have been dispatched across America.

Downing defended America’s involvement in Iran, saying that it was necessary to stop any effort by Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. However, during the several times the topic was broached, Downing didn’t address 2025 claims from Trump himself that indicated airstrikes “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Downing told constituents leaving Iran is a matter of taking care of other business in the country.

“The second thing is to eliminate their ballistic capabilities and their nuclear capabilities,” Downing said. “Then the administration is ready to end this.”

Calling the Iran situation a “ticking time bomb,” Downing said that Iran has been in a declared war with the United States for more than 40 years, and reiterated a still unproven fact that Iran was approaching a nuclear bomb making capability.

“The Ayatollah has been saying ‘Death to America’ for 40 something years, and we see their nuclear capabilities and their nuclear aspirations growing to the point where they have material that can be used to cause wide-scale damage,” Downing said. “The Ayatollah would kill any American that he saw given the opportunity. And they’ve been at war with us for decades now, but the imminence was on how close they were to being able to create a nuclear weapon.”

Several residents said they were concerned about the SAVE America Act, a piece of legislation championed by Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration. Previously, President Donald Trump told Congressional leaders that he wouldn’t sign any other legislation until the SAVE Act was passed, although the chances of that remain slim to non-existent with a 60-vote threshold needed in the U.S. Senate.

Several callers questioned the logistics of the SAVE Act, and whether all voters would have to re-register again.

Downing confirmed that all American voters would likely have to re-register to vote, including proving U.S. citizenship. When women expressed concern that their birth certificates may not match because of marriages or other name changes, Downing downplayed that, saying that a simple “attestation form” would suffice.

“(The SAVE Act) requires that you prove that you’re an American citizen. And a lot of folks have had concerns on how hard that would be to prove that or if it would disenfranchise voters. And there’s been a lot of thought that has been put into this,” Downing said. “I know that there’s been a lot of people advocating against the SAVE America Act and saying it would be difficult for women who have been married because their names may be different than they are on their birth certificates, but there are ways of doing that, including a self-attestation that’s fairly simple to do to get to the point of registering to vote.”

One of the callers who identified herself as a 69-year-old constituent pushed back, saying she had been voting for 50 years and didn’t want to have to re-register.

“It’s not as onerous as some folks have said,” Downing said. “There is nothing onerous that is going to disenfranchise anybody. And you know, I’m pretty confident that folks in Montana who are voting, whether they are women or rural residents or whatever, are going to have the tools and the ability to get registered.”

Downing also touched on the Congressional stalemate of funding the Department of Homeland Security, which includes TSA agents. Downing’s son is part of the TSA. But talk also turned to one of the key sticking points, whether ICE agents or other federal law enforcement officers should be held to the same standards as local officers, which includes having them unmasked.

The Congressman shifted the blame to social media, saying he supported the agents’ identities being cloaked.

“If I had a group of people come up to my house, my car, my windows with their masks, unidentified, I would be terrified. I just think they should operate like other law enforcement agencies. I don’t understand why they don’t,” said a woman who identified herself as Lois from Helena.

“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,” Downing said. “But here’s the real reason they go out there and they try to identify them so that they can put their images, their address and their name online. I guess, really what I would ask is that anyone who is trying to navigate this: If you would put your family, your kids at risk for doing your job in law enforcement? Would you still do that?

“I would have second thoughts if there was a risk that somebody was going to identify me and then start sending people to my house and putting my kids at risk…. I’m not exactly sure how we navigate this because I think it’s important that everybody’s held accountable and can be identified. But I’m not sure that having them easily identified and doxxed is in the public interest or in the interest of public safety.”

Another area of concern was that those who preyed on underaged victims as part of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking have not been brought to justice. Downing was asked about that, and as he has in other town hall meetings, sidestepped the issue, instead saying he was focused on the victims.

“My concern has always been that we don’t harm the innocent,” Downing said. “I am still concerned about the hundreds of victims who have moved on and never talked about this and what happened? Because some of this was pretty sloppy in the way this information was released. And as much as we’d like to see the bad guys held accountable, what happened in the very sloppy release of this information was all of a sudden … victims are victimized again. And as much as we all want to see instant gratification and see the bad guys going to jail, we don’t want to cause further harm to the victims.”

Downing was also asked about what Congress is doing to regulate artificial intelligence, data centers and the massive amount of power needed to run the centers. One of the higher profile cases in Montana is a data center in Yellowstone County near Broadview that could consume as much power as the entire state does.

Downing said that power generation and data centers are a concern, and one of the largest considerations is that states have not built out their power grids enough to handle the massive amount of power that will be needed.

“Artificial intelligence is really a modern day arms race and there’s going to be winners and losers in this,” Downing said. “Right now, it’s the United States versus China, and we need to make sure that we can be competitive and generating the power to do it.

Downing told the audience that more Congress members are hearing proposals to co-locate the power supplies next to or even on the same campus, keeping the power supply to the centers and to the public different.

“That’s something that is incredibly important that we keep keep our finger on so that they’re not simply taking demand or taking power when there’s demand for consumer power,” Downing said. “The power demands are huge. We don’t really have the ability to generate the amount of power needed for what we’re going to need tomorrow. And I’m talking nationally, not just Montana.”