Coast Guard National Security ship docks in Juneau before Bering Sea fisheries mission

JUNEAU, Alaska (KTUU) - With cruise ships months away from docking into Juneau’s now-rainy harbor, the port welcomed a new visitor Wednesday: the USCGC Waesche, a national security cutter stopping in Alaska’s capital before heading into the Bering Sea.

“It’s basically a small town,” Capt. Michele Schallip, the Coast Guard’s Arctic Chief of Staff said onboard the ship. The Waesche’s crew was grabbing lunch while she spoke to reporters.

At 481 feet long, the Waesche was the largest visitor in Juneau’s rainy harbor Wednesday afternoon as the vessel and her crew geared up for the next leg of their trip into the Bering Sea.

“What we’re trying to do, by doing fisheries law enforcement, is keep the fishing community in compliance with our laws,” Cmdr. Charlie England, the Waesche’s Executive Officer, said on the ship’s bridge. “That’s going to keep a sustainable and thriving fishery to maintain that vital part of our commerce.

“There’s a $16 billion fishing industry in Alaska that is vital, not just to Alaska, but to all of America.”

Steep stairs guide your way to the bridge, with Coast Guard members in many of the doorways. While they may not all have been onboard about an hour after docking, she carried a crew of 150.

The bridge is a room clearly well versed by the Waesche’s crew. The signs were visible from the dry-erase writing on the windows, the complex instrumentation filling its space and a wooden placard hanging above the window facing the bow.

“KNOCK,” the placard reads. “SAILORS ARE A SUPERSTITIOUS GROUP”

The superstition may be valuable. England said the crew is typically on the ship for about 180 days of the year, and it can be an action-packed half of the year.

(READ MORE - ktuu.com)

Iditarod prep in motion: inside the straw drop

Volunteers gathered at Air Land Transport in Anchorage are hard at work for the annual Iditarod straw drop, a key behind-the-scenes operation that helps prepare the trail for race day. The straw ensures sled dogs have fresh, dry bedding waiting at every checkpoint along the nearly 1,000-mile journey from Anchorage to Nome.

“The straw, of course, is used for bedding for the dogs when they arrive at the checkpoint or if the musher takes it out along the trail,” said Jennifer Ambrose, volunteer coordinator.

Nearly 900 bales of straw — each weighing about 42 pounds — are being packed, labeled and prepared for shipment along the Iditarod Trail. Volunteers place every bale into a plastic bag, secure it with a zip tie, and attach the required shipping labels before the bundles are flown out to checkpoints across Alaska.

“We are just getting every single bale put into a plastic bag, which we tie up with a zip tie, put the necessary postage or shipping requirements on it, and then it gets flown out to all those checkpoints,” Ambrose explained.

For many volunteers, the straw drop is more than just manual labor — it’s a chance to be part of an iconic Alaska tradition.

First-time volunteers, including missionary students with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said they were excited to lend a hand.

“It was my first time being able to help out with being able to experience it,” said Colby Wilcox from Idaho. “I’m just here serving as a missionary, and it’s been wonderful. It’s so much fun working for the Iditarod, so I’m honored.”

(READ MORE - youralaskalink.com)

At forum, Alaska’s Republican governor candidates split with Trump on Greenland

image from: alaskabeacon.com

A fast-moving forum in Juneau on Wednesday hosted 10 of Alaska’s 12 Republican candidates for governor, but the size of the field in the hourlong event meant there was more flavor than meat in the soup du jour.

All but two of the candidates effusively praised incumbent President Donald Trump, but despite that support, most said they disagree with his attempt to acquire Greenland and make it part of the United States.

As of Wednesday, 16 people have signed up to run for governor in this year’s election: 12 Republicans, 3 Democrats and an independent.

The top four candidates in the August primary election will advance to the November general election, where voters will sort their choices using ranked choice voting.

Incumbent Gov. Mike Dunleavy is term-limited and unable to run for a third term, leaving the seat open.

Current Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom and author Hank Kroll were the only Republicans to not participate in Wednesday’s event, which was hosted by the Capital City Republicans on the night of their annual Lincoln Day dinner. Dahlstrom had a prior commitment and was unable to attend, organizers said. Kroll was not mentioned.

Asked to name their favorite Republican president other than Reagan and Lincoln, most of the 10 candidates said Trump, and some said they put him above Reagan and Lincoln.

“He’s the best president Alaska’s ever had,” said former attorney general Treg Taylor.

(READ MORE - alaskabeacon.com)

Alaska House re-passes bill to guarantee education rights for deaf children

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Alaska children who are deaf and hard-of-hearing would be guaranteed a local education under a proposal passed unanimously by the Alaska House of Representatives on Monday.

The House passed a different version of House Bill 39, by Rep. Jamie Allard, R-Eagle River, during the 33rd Alaska State Legislature, but that bill never received a Senate vote and died at the end of that Legislature.

Allard reintroduced the measure last year, at the start of the 34th Alaska State Legislature. Speaking on Monday, she called for its adoption, noting that other states have acted on this topic.

“When I first started this bill, we had 17 states that had passed the Children’s Deaf and Hard of Hearing Bill of Rights. Today we have 20. I’d like to make us the 21st,” she said.

If enacted, HB 39 would require local school districts to provide “comprehensive, neutral, and unbiased information” and resources for the parents of deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Those students would not be required to attend a centralized, statewide boarding school for the deaf, though some residential services may still be required.

(READ MORE - alaskabeacon.com)

Anchorage lineman becomes latest Alaskan to make it to the Super Bowl

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - With Sunday’s 31-27 win over the Los Angeles Rams, the Seattle Seahawks clinched a trip to Super Bowl LX, and — for the first time in over a decade — gave a chance for an Alaskan to play in the biggest sporting event of the year.

Seattle defensive lineman Brandon Pili, who starred for Dimond High School and signed with the Seahawks before the season, will become what is believed to be the fifth player born in Alaska to make it to a Super Bowl, ending the longest ever drought between Alaskan appearances since the first in 1992. The previous four that had made it appeared in a combined six, going 4-2 overall.

The last Alaskan to play in the big game was fellow Dimond graduate Chris Kuper, a backup offensive lineman on the Denver Broncos that, coincidentally, were the victim of Seattle’s lone Super Bowl win in February 2014.

(READ MORE - ktuu.com)

Mom Moves Her Family to Rural Alaska for a 'Slow' Lifestyle. Now She Travels 9 Hours for Costco Hauls

Olivia Jones and her family moved to Eagle, Alaska — a town just beyond the very end of State Highway 5, home to barely 100 residents — to "slow down life."

"The mile markers end and our house, you have to just keep going to get to us," she tells PEOPLE, of her family's home.

That distinct fact about her house's location is also the unique inspiration for her social media account's handles. On TikTok, under the handle @beyondthemilemarkers, Jones posts for her 117,900 followers about her life bordering the Canadian Yukon.

The Joneses came from a decidedly warmer place — St. Louis, Mo. — to start their new life out in "The Last Frontier," after Jones' husband's job in IT went remote as a result of COVID.

The decision to pick up their family and move out into the almost-wilderness, though unique, didn't just happen on a whim.

Jones' family originally forged their first connection with the state when her grandfather went up there in the 1970s to pursue gold mining, so Jones grew up visiting the surrounding areas. Her grandfather has been there since, and later, her parents fell in love with the landscape and also moved to Alaska, where they've been for about 13 years.

For a while, Olivia and her husband were in the in-between stages of considering the move.

"We sat on it for quite a while, going back and forth, and trying to figure out: 'What does it look like if we do this?'"

For the Joneses, their primary concern was how the move would impact their four children, with Jones admitting that it did impact them "tremendously."

(READ MORE - people.com)

Lawsuit claims Alaska isn’t providing enough money for food, necessities for older foster youth

A lawsuit filed in state court by advocates for foster youth is challenging Alaska’s foster care system, highlighting a gap in state care for older foster youth who are not living with foster families. Those foster youth live in other housing, like shelters and dorms, and struggle to access state funds to cover basic living expenses, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit filed by the non-profit advocacy organization, Facing Foster Care in Alaska, says the state should provide the same monthly living stipends to older foster youth for basic necessities, as they do to foster families with youth in their home.

“For youth in these alternate settings, there’s no foster care payment going anywhere,” said Amanda Metivier, executive director of Facing Foster Care. The organization is arguing that without these living stipends, the state is failing its duty of care for older foster youth in state custody, and are asking the court to require the state to distribute living stipends directly to all older foster youth.

The Office of Children’s Services, housed within the Alaska Department of Family and Community Services, runs the state’s foster care system. It provides a “cost of care” stipend to foster families for each foster youth in their home to pay for essential items like food, clothing, toiletries and school supplies.

But there’s no stipend for foster youth living independently, in shelters, college dorms or other housing. Instead, the department provides vouchers and small grants for living expenses, but advocates say it’s not enough — and call it a failure of the state to uphold its constitutional duty in the lawsuit.

(READ MORE - alaskabeacon.com)

Kodiak man faces felony charge for harassing store employees while claiming to be ICE agent

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - A Kodiak man has been arrested and charged with a felony for allegedly impersonating an Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officer and harassing employees at the local Walmart and Safeway for “their papers,” according to James Brooks with the Alaska Beacon.

The incident comes amid a deployment of masked, un-uniformed federal agents nationwide as part of President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation campaign. That campaign has resulted in thousands of people being detained. People protesting the federal government’s actions have been killed and injured.

The Kodiak Daily Mirror first reported the charge facing Maximillian I. Kaplan, who was arrested Wednesday after a Walmart employee reported that a white man in his 30s, wearing black, “came into the store yelling at cashiers and customers for their papers, saying he was from ICE and that he almost got into a fight with someone outside,” according to an affidavit submitted to Kodiak District Court by Detective Jeffrey Valerio of the Kodiak Police Department.

Before police responded, they received another call from a manager at the nearby Safeway store, who said a similar looking man “came into the store and was very disruptive to customers.”

When police found Kaplan, he said that God told him to ask the employees for their papers.

Kaplan confirmed that he told the employees that he was with ICE and that he had asked them for their papers, Valerio wrote. When he asked Kaplan why he said he was with ICE, Kaplan replied, “because I am.”

Online court records show Kaplan is facing a charge of “impersonating a public servant,” a Class C felony, the lowest-level felony. In Alaska, that’s punishable by up to five years in prison and a $50,000 fine. First-time offenders, particularly for nonviolent crimes, may receive probation and no jail time.

(READ MORE - alaskanewssource.com)

Bethel’s Pete Kaiser makes K300 history with 10th first-place finish

image from: kyuk.org

Bethel’s own Pete Kaiser has become the winningest musher in Kuskokwim 300 Sled Dog Race (K300) history. The scene on the Bethel riverfront on the morning of Sunday, Jan. 25 was electric as family, friends, and fans cheered the hometown hero across the finish line at 10:40 a.m.

“Just reminiscing about the last 20 years and how we got here,” Kaiser told KYUK at the finish line.

Kaiser now has 10 first-place finishes in the race, breaking the nine-win record held for years by mushing legend Jeff King.

In this year’s race from Bethel to Aniak and back, Kaiser said that victory never felt assured.

“I thought, wow … there [were] six or seven different teams that could maybe pull this off if they kept having the run they were having. So no, I wasn't super confident,” Kaiser said.

(READ MORE - kyuk.org)

Documenting an Alaska Village, Before and After the Storm That Destroyed It

image from: propublica.org

Joann Carl’s dog Rocky, a long-eared, short-legged mix the color of graham crackers, has become Alaska famous since I first met Carl in April. Over the past few months, she’s seen his photo all over Facebook, she said, rescued after Typhoon Halong wiped away more than half the homes in her coastal Alaska Native village of Kipnuk, population 700.

At the Anchorage Daily News, we’re based in Alaska’s largest city but travel as often as we can to small communities like Kipnuk in an attempt to cover a state that’s twice the size of Texas. We try to report more than one story at a time to justify the expense of plane tickets. Flights to a remote village in a small plane cost the same as a trip to New York. But rarely do we have the chance to document a community just before the breaking news arrives.

Maybe you didn’t hear much about the typhoon. It began as a tropical storm, dumping record rainfall in parts of Japan before swirling toward Alaska. By the time it reached our shores, the remnants of the storm still carried enough force to flood two villages, sweeping away homes and leaving as many as three people dead.

I’m writing to you about the storm because photojournalist Marc Lester and I happened to visit Kipnuk shortly before the typhoon. Marc returned to cover the evacuation, providing a look at an Alaska village on the front lines of climate change just before and after the devastation.

The story of destruction in Carl’s hometown, along with the nearby village of Kwigillingok, adds an exclamation point to long-simmering fears about the future of Alaska coastal villages. Which town will be wiped away next? Where will climate refugees live? Should their former homes be rebuilt? If not, what does it mean for the future of these communities?

(READ MORE - propublica.org)

Meet the Alaska Student Arrested for Eating an AI Art Exhibit

image from: thenation.com

As the use of artificial intelligence in art is hotly debated, one student at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks took matters into his own mouth. On January 13, Graham Granger, a film and performing arts major, was arrested for criminal mischief when he ripped the art, made with the help of AI, from the wall of a university gallery and ate it “in a reported protest,” according to the police report.

Additional reporting was contributed by Lizzy Hahn.

“He was tearing them up and just shoving them in as fast as he could,” said Ali Martinez, a witness to the event. “Like when you see people in a hot-dog eating contest.” According to the police estimate, around 57 of the 160 images on the wall were destroyed.

In the exhibit, artist Nick Dwyer expressed his struggle with “AI psychosis,” during which he says he fell in love with a chatbot that was acting as his therapist. A series of Polaroid pictures depicts the chatbot, himself, and other versions of them combined. He said the bot represented his “Jungian shadow,” which is the repressed, often negative, yet creative part of one’s personality.

(READ MORE - thenation.com)

Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop, 2 Anchorage chefs named James Beard Award semifinalists

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Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop, Anchorage chefs Nathan Bentley of Altura Bistro and Mike Dodge of Whisky & Ramen, and the Tutka Bay Lodge near Kachemak Bay have been named semifinalists for prestigious James Beard Awards.

The James Beard Foundation, which announced its 2026 Restaurant and Chef Award semifinalists Wednesday, is among the biggest names in the culinary and hospitality industry. The awards were established in 1990 to recognize outstanding talent and achievement in the food world, from culinary arts and hospitality to media.

Fire Island was honored in the Outstanding Bakery category alongside establishments across America from New York City to New Orleans.

General manager Harrison Scheib wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to reveal the nomination but couldn’t help himself when he arrived at the bakery’s Airport Heights location Wednesday morning.

(READ MORE - adn.com)

Alaska’s oil renaissance has arrived at the doorstep of an Iñupiaq village

image from: alaskabeacon.com

The Iñupiaq village of Nuiqsut has contended for decades with the westward expansion of oil development on Alaska’s North Slope.

Oil rigs have cropped up along the horizon, and industry roads now cut across the tundra just beyond the village.

The industry’s growth has been lucrative for Nuiqsut’s Indigenous-owned village corporation, Kuukpik, which owns land that’s coveted by multinational oil companies. But it also has provoked tensions among local leaders and some subsistence hunters and fishermen, who have objected to encroaching development.

Now, a proposal from one of the North Slope’s most prolific oil producers is driving a new conflict.

ConocoPhillips wants to drill wells and pump oil just two miles from the village, within clear view and potentially earshot of Nuiqsut’s center. The nearest existing drill site sits about five miles away.

Local leaders — even some who have historically supported and profited from oil production — say ConocoPhillips’ proposal is raising fundamental questions about the village’s relationship with the industry.

(READ MORE - alaskabeacon.com)

Mat-Su, feds reach $5.8 million repayment deal for failed Knik Arm ferry project

image from: alaskapublic.org

PALMER — The Matanuska-Susitna Borough will repay nearly $5.8 million in federal grants through installments between now and September 2029, a step that should finally put to rest the financial consequences of the defunct Knik Arm ferry project.

The payments refund a portion of the $12.3 million in grants the borough received between 2002 and 2008 to create infrastructure for the M/V Susitna, including a ferry terminal at Port MacKenzie now used as borough office space. Federal transit officials in August renewed their effort to recoup the funds after nearly a decade of silence on the matter.

The borough will repay $1.5 million by mid-March, then about $1.07 million by Sept. 30 each year until the debt is fully settled in 2029, according to a payment plan approved by federal officials Jan. 14. The payments will not be subject to interest or penalties, and the borough can repay early if officials choose to do so, according to the plan.

The $5.76 million in repayments should fully close the book on repercussions to the borough and its taxpayers for the failed commuter-ferry project.

(READ MORE - alaskapublic.org)

AFN rallies against Safari Club International federal subsistence management proposals

image from: knba.org

As the deadline for public comment approaches, the Alaska Federation of Natives is pulling out all the stops to block a national sport hunting and fishing group’s push to reform the federal subsistence board.

This comes after Safari Club International successfully petitioned the U.S. Interior and Agriculture Departments to review federal subsistence management policies.

Last month, the Interior Department announced a 60-day scoping period, or review, on federal subsistence management.

AFN will hold a webinar Tuesday afternoon to give Native hunters and fishers an update on the status of subsistence management in Alaska and explain why it believes the Safari Club proposals pose a serious threat to the Native subsistence way of life.

Attorney Jaelene Kookesh, a longtime legal counsel for the Sealaska native corporation, is one of the presenters. She currently is senior legal counsel at the Van Ness Feldman firm. Kookesh says many Alaska Natives were elated last week, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to take up the State of Alaska’s challenge of federal subsistence protections under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, or ANILCA. But Kookesh says, the battle goes on.

(READ MORE - knba.org)

Alaska’s public lands are a political battleground

image from: hcn.org

Over the past year, a wave of high-profile development proposals — from oil fields and mining roads to timber projects — has reshaped a fast-moving debate, propelling Alaska into the center of the national conversation over how to balance energy production with conservation. These projects have revived long-running tensions over what the state’s public lands are for, and who they ultimately benefit.

The federal government has long viewed Alaska as resource-rich, a posture that’s intensified under the Trump administration. After meeting Trump in 2018, Gov. Mike Dunleavy called Alaska “America’s natural resource warehouse.”

But the last time Alaska figured this prominently in national energy and conservation debates was in the late 1970s, during negotiations over the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, said Philip Wight, an Arctic energy historian at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

(READ MORE - hcn.org)

Alaska kicks off billion-dollar effort to ‘transform’ rural health care

image from: ktoo.org

Hundreds of health care workers and government officials descended on Anchorage this week for the kickoff of a five-year, $1.3 billion program aimed at reimagining medical care across Alaska.

The money comes from the Rural Health Transformation Program created by President Trump’s signature tax- and spending-cut legislation passed last summer — the same legislation that pares back Medicaid.

The problem the funding seeks to solve is no secret, the state’s former chief medical officer, Dr. Anne Zink, said on a call with reporters and state officials. Zink is working with the state Department of Health on the program, she said.

(READ MORE - ktoo.org)

Trump administration declares war on Alaska 8(a) contracts

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Sen. Dan Sullivan is racing on his “Team Dan” campaign website to post as many endorsements as he can from Alaska Native corporate leaders before they have a chance to reconsider.

Speed is of the essence for Team Dan because the Trump administration has just declared war on the 8(a) contracting program that has been an economic lifeline for the majority of the most profitable Alaska Native corporations.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth opened the attack on 8(a) contracts, saying he is “taking a sledgehammer to the oldest DEI program in the federal government, a program few people outside of Washington have ever heard of, that I hadn’t heard of.”

No one inside an Alaska Native corporation is as uninformed as Hegseth, the former TV talker.

(READ MORE - dermotcole.com)

Army puts 1,500 Alaska soldiers on standby for possible Minnesota deployment, AP sources say

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon has ordered about 1,500 active-duty soldiers to be ready in case of a possible deployment to Minnesota, where federal authorities have been conducting a massive immigration enforcement operation, two defense officials said Sunday.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military plans, said two infantry battalions of the Army’s 11th Airborne Division have been given prepare-to-deploy orders. The unit is based in Alaska and specializes in operating in arctic conditions.

One defense official said the troops are standing by to deploy to Minnesota should President Donald Trump invoke the Insurrection Act, a rarely-used 19th century law that would allow him to employ active duty troops as law enforcement.

The move comes just days after Trump threatened to do just that to quell protests against his administration’s immigration crackdown.

(READ MORE - ktuu.com)

Simple handwashing stations improved health indicators in parts of rural Alaska

image from: alaskapublic.org

A key step to preventing the spread of diseases like COVID-19 or influenza is simple: washing hands. But lack of piped water in parts of rural Alaska has made that simple practice not so easy to carry out.

Now a technological innovation has boosted rural Alaskans’ ability to do that important disease-fighting task.

The Miniature Portable Alternative Sanitation System, or Mini-PASS, a portable water station that does not require connection to any piped water system, proved effective at helping people wash their hands properly, and there are signs that its use is fending off contagious diseases among children, according to a recently published study.

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