A far-left political organization known for its street-level activism says it has received the green light to move forward with a proposed change to the Anchorage Municipal Charter.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation announced that it has been authorized by the Anchorage Municipal Clerk to begin collecting signatures for a petition titled “New Charter Section 4.08. Inspector General.” The initiative seeks to create an Office of Inspector General within the legislative branch of the municipality.
This is the same group that recently insisted that a municipal golf course be converted into a tent city for vagrants and that short-term rentals be banned in the city. It is the same group that has called for the death of Zionists and Jews, in support of Palestinians.
The petition was officially certified by the clerk’s office on July 7, the group announced. In order for the measure to appear on the ballot next March, the group must now collect at least 7,225 verified signatures from registered Anchorage voters by the Oct. 6 deadline.
If successful, the ballot measure would ask voters to amend the Municipal Charter and establish a new watchdog position — an Inspector General — to presumably provide oversight of municipal government operations.
There already is an Ombudsman’s office in Anchorage that serves a similar purpose.
Big cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC have inspectors general but small cities like Anchorage typically do not. New York City’s Inspector General had a budget of approximately $25.6 million for fiscal year 2024, while Los Angeles had a budget of $5 million.
The PSL, which is spearheading the effort, describes itself as a Marxist-Leninist political party and has been active in Anchorage through organized protests and demonstrations centered on housing, police defunding, and anti-capitalist causes.
It has been a landmark week for Alaska Congressman Nick Begich III, who has seen the first two bills he introduced since taking office passed by both bodies of Congress and signed by President Donald Trump on Monday. Begich is the first member of either the House or Senate to have multiple bills signed by the president. And it’s only been six months.
The two bills that are now law are intended to strengthen the general welfare of Alaska Native communities. They are House Resolution 42: Alaska Native Settlement Trust Eligibility Act, and HR 43: Alaska Native Village Municipal Lands Restoration Act of 2025.
HR 42, which amends the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, ensures that payments or benefits from settlement trusts to aged, blind, or disabled Alaska Natives (or their descendants) will not be counted as income or resources for the purposes of qualifying for need-based federal assistance programs such as Supplemental Security Income, SNAP, or housing aid. This exemption applies for a five-year period following enactment. The bill was passed by the House on Feb. 4 and cleared the Senate on June 24.
HR 43 lifts a longstanding requirement that village corporations must convey certain lands to the State of Alaska to be held in trust for future municipal governments. With the change, those lands may now remain under the control of village corporations, freeing up locally driven development and stewardship. This bill also passed the House on Feb. 4 and cleared the Senate on June 18.
Begich’s early success signals a deliberate focus on Alaska Native priorities that former Rep. Mary Peltola was not able to accomplish. These were bills left over from the Congressman Don Young era; Young died while in office in 2022.
The wins stand out and mark Begich as a hardworking and effective advocate, not only for advocating for America-first policies in the One Big Beautiful Bill, Alaska natural resource development, and the 70-30 royalty split with the federal government, but as a successful advocate for Alaska Native interests in his first six months on Capitol Hill.
A free, all-ages drag show is set to take place at the Yupiit Piciryarait Cultural Center in Bethel on July 12, part of a slate of Pride-themed events organized by a group of activists and supported by local organizations, including the publicly funded University of Alaska Fairbanks Kuskokwim Campus. Pride Month, the celebration of LGBTQ+ self absorption, was in June.
The event, called Bethel Pride, was announced in a social media post promoting “a celebration of unapologetic queer joy” and an “all-Indigenous cast” of drag performers. The flyer for the event features Osha Violation, Ice Watah, Lamia DOOM Monroe, and Herda Nuff, with performers traveling in from Fairbanks, their travel and performance fees are paid for by undisclosed donors. Doors for the drag show open at 7 pm, with the show starting at 7:30 pm. The event is advertised as free and “all-ages.”
It’s all-indigenous, the flyer says, but a case can be made that it’s cultural appropriation of western drag art form.
In addition to the evening performance, the day will include a Pride sign-making workshop at 10 am, followed by a Pride march to Lion’s Club Park at noon.
The flyer thanks several organizations for enabling the event, including Troy Michael of the Mr. Gay World organization, the Kuskokwim Consortium Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks Kuskokwim Campus, the Bethel Actors Guild, Teens Acting Against Violence, and the Tundra Women’s Coalition, which is publicly funded by the Alaska Legislature.
The University of Alaska system, including its Kuskokwim campus, receives significant public funding from state and federal sources. While the flyer stops short of identifying a primary funder, its inclusion of the university among key supporters raises questions among some residents in Western Alaska about whether public dollars are being used to support a drag show marketed to all ages.
The event is being promoted primarily through social media.
A lawsuit that played a central role in derailing the citizen-led effort to repeal ranked-choice voting in Alaska has ended in a $50,000 settlement to the trio who were trying to repeal the unique and confusing voting system in 2024.
Arthur Mathias, Phillip Izon, and Jamie Donley, sponsors of the repeal effort, sought attorney fees and costs from the people who were pawns of the anti-repeal side: Elizabeth Medicine Crow, Amber Lee, and Kevin McGee, the three who challenged the validity of petition signatures.
The Supreme Court had last month ruled in favor of both the way the Division of Elections handled the repeal petitions and the actions of petitioners themselves.
The lawsuit was part of a series of harassing legal filings and appeals targeting the repeal campaign’s petition process. The challenges, and subsequent court proceedings, consumed months of time and energy and imposed heavy legal costs on the repeal sponsors — just as was intended by the money-rich opponents of the repeal effort.
To settle the matter, the challengers agreed to pay the repeal petition sponsors a total of $50,000, funds that went to the repeal group’s lawyer Kevin Clarkson. The two groups settled out of court.
As part of the resolution, both sides agreed to dismiss appeals with prejudice. The sponsors of the petition also agreed not to renew their request for attorney’s fees in appeal S-19182 after the Alaska Supreme Court issues its final ruling. Each party will bear its own remaining legal expenses, and no side admitted wrongdoing or liability as part of the settlement.
The harassing lawsuit, brought by Democrat attorney Scott Kendall, the architect of Ballot Measure 2, which established ranked-choice voting in Alaska, was widely seen as a form of lawfare, strategically aimed at derailing the repeal campaign.
Kendall, an ally of Sen. Lisa Murkowski who was working with the dark-money group Alaskans for Better Elections, sought to preserve the voting system he had helped create to get Murkowski re-elected.
Opponents of ranked-choice voting say the lawsuit was intended not just to question petition signatures, but to distract, exhaust, and financially damage the sponsors in the midst of a critical repeal effort.
Ultimately, Ballot Measure 2 was kept in practice by a narrow margin, a result repeal advocates say was influenced in large part by the aggressive legal assault and public confusion stemming from the Kendall group’s law fare campaign.
Planned Parenthood filed a federal lawsuit on Monday challenging a provision in the newly enacted One Big Beautiful Bill that bars the organization from receiving Medicaid reimbursements. Planned Parenthood alleges the funding cut is an unconstitutional effort to punish it for providing and advocating for abortion access. The funding cut applies to the organization for just one year.
The lawsuit, filed in the liberal US District Court in Washington, DC, claims the law’s defund provision unlawfully strips Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood health centers nationwide, despite the fact that the organization does not use federal funds for abortion services, in compliance with long-standing federal law. The funds from American taxpayers allow Planned Parenthood to operate its centers and use other monies to provide abortion services.
“The prohibition specifically targets Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its member health care providers in order to punish them for lawful activity, namely advocating for and providing legal abortion access wholly outside the Medicaid program and without using any federal funds,” the organization wrote in the complaint.
Meanwhile, a federal judge has stopped Congress from defunding the abortion provider. Judge Indira Talwani of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts granted a temporary restraining order that was requested by Planned Parenthood on Monday.
The DC District lawsuit contends that by excluding Planned Parenthood from the Medicaid program, the federal government is effectively denying low-income patients their choice of health care provider, a right they say is protected under federal Medicaid law. However, between 25-33% of physicians in the United States do not accept new Medicaid patients, thus are refusing Medicaid funds.
For over four decades, federal law known as the Hyde Amendment has prohibited the use of taxpayer funds for abortions, except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.
Planned Parenthood argues that the new provision goes beyond this restriction, weaponizing the federal budget process to silence a specific provider and its political stance on abortion rights.
“The Defund Provision is a naked attempt to leverage the government’s spending power to attack and penalize Planned Parenthood and impermissibly single it out for unfavorable treatment,” the organization said.
The One Big Beautiful Bill, legislation championed by President Donald Trump and passed by Congress earlier this year, contains a range of conservative policy priorities, including immigration enforcement, tax reform, and defunding organizations linked to abortion services. Its Medicaid provision was among the most controversial, drawing sharp criticism from health care advocates and reproductive rights groups. Sen. Lisa Murkowski fought to keep the funding in place for Planned Parenthood, but ultimately voted for the bill even after the funding was stripped.
The Alaska House Democratic Campaign Committee, made up of Democrat House members and politicos from around the state, has picked two candidates to back so far in the 2026 election cycle:
Cliff Groh, who served one term as a House member for North Anchorage District 18 before being bounced by Republican Rep. David Nelson during the 2024 election cycle. But it was a very close race: Nelson won by 23 votes.
Katherine Simpler, who is running to replace Rep. Louise Stutes, who has filed for the Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Gary Stevens. Simpler is not a Democrat but is a nonpartisan — a category often adopted by those who are fearful of the Democrat brand’s negative connotations.
Simpler is a union activist for the National Education Association, where she is listed as as a “representative on the NEA Board of Directors, the top decision making body of our national affiliate which includes at least one director from each state affiliate.”
She began her career teaching in Kodiak in 1996 and now serves as her school district’s migrant education facilitator. She has served as NEA-Alaska Region 2 director. Since 2022, she has represented NEA-Alaska as its director, advocating for the union’s priorities at the national level. The NEA’s political arm will be bringing a lot of cash for her in this race.
At its most recent national meeting, the NEA voted to fight President Donald Trump and his facism (sic) by using the word “facism”:
“NEA pledges to defend democracy against Trump’s embrace of fascism by using the term facism in NEA materials to correctly characterize Donald Trump’s program and actions,” the resolution states.
Kodiak-Seward-Cordova District 5 voted for Trump in 2024 — 54.3% to Kamala Harris’ 41.5%, which nearly mirrors the state’s overall results of 54.5% to 41.4%, but the district also voted for Stutes, who is well known for aligning with Democrats.
Also filed for the Kodiak seat is Republican Sheldon Prout, who has been on staff for Vice President JD Vance, and Republican Aimee Williams, the borough manager.
Both Groh and Simpler have received $5,000 donations to their campaign accounts from the House Democrats.
The Democrats’ donations are not small amounts. Although Groh raised $213,000 for his 2024 election campaign, which he lost by 23 votes, Nelson, who beat him, raised less than $38,000.
Stutes raised less than $20,000 for her last House race in 2024. Sen. Gary Stevens raised $117,000 for his reelection in 2022.
Launch Alaska, a nonprofit known for supporting climate and energy-focused startups, has filed a lawsuit against the US Navy’s Office of Naval Research, claiming the Trump Administration unlawfully terminated a $5 million federal grant.
In a complaint filed in US District Court in Anchorage, the organization’s lawyer John R. Crone alleges that the Office of Naval Research ended the funding without substantive explanation or due process, causing immediate harm to its operations and threatening its future viability.
According to the lawsuit, the abrupt cancellation could lead to widespread layoffs, broken contracts, and the potential shutdown of Launch Alaska’s signature accelerator program, an initiative that connects tech startups with Alaska utilities, infrastructure providers, and government partners to pilot cutting-edge energy solutions. The organization appears to have less than a dozen employees.
Launch Alaska was blindsided by the Navy’s decision, the group says.
Isaac Vanderburg, CEO of Launch Alaska, leads the organization, which has become a player in fostering innovation in renewable energy, climate resilience, and Arctic technologies in the state, and also outside the state. In fact, it appears most of the group’s business is outside the state.
The nonprofit says it helps attract startups from across the country to test and deploy solutions in Alaska’s challenging environment.
The grant was intended to support the expansion of those efforts, which align with Department of Defense priorities in energy security and Arctic readiness. The complaint argues that canceling the funding undermines national interests as well as local economic development.
The case was originally before US District Judge Sharon Gleason, who recused herself. Honorable G. Murray Snow is the new judge.
As a result of my July 2 article on financial literacy, I received a powerful and emotionally charged testimony (if you read the comments, you will find it) that directly underscores why my proposed Alaska Education Reform and Local Control Act (AERLCA) is not just a bureaucratic restructuring, but a moral and cultural imperative, particularly for rural and Alaska Native communities.
The commentator asked and answered: “There is no housing development, and if the regional housing authority builds housing, eligibility is based on poverty level to live in those homes. How is an Alaska Statewide Educational System supposed to teach financial survival to students in communities where financial opportunities, infrastructure, and concepts do not even exist? If the schools want to start instilling financial savvy into the curriculum, start by educating the kids about the value of minerals that their families own as shareholders of Alaska Native Corporations.”
The central question is “How can schools teach financial literacy in villages with no banks, no markets, and no infrastructure?” These and other questions posed are exactly the kind of question that a top-down, one-size-fits-all state education system cannot answer. The current Department of Education and Early Development, through uniform mandates and disconnected curriculum standards, fails to reflect the real economic, cultural, and land-based realities of Alaska’s rural students.
The AERLCA addresses this by returning curriculum design and spending decisions to the local level, enabling communities to teach what matters most in their unique context: land ownership, subsistence rights, resource stewardship, and economic self-determination. These are lessons that no bureaucrat in Juneau can design nor shouldn’t try to.
Under the current system, financial education is often reduced to vague, urban-centered abstractions, credit scores, mortgages, job interviews, while ignoring the fact that many of Alaska’s youth are shareholders in the largest blocks of private indigenous land on Earth. The value of that land, minerals, resources, and sovereignty, is almost never taught. Why? Because centralized curricula don’t see these children as landowners, only as data points in a failing system.
The AERLCA empowers regional and local authorities to teach these truths. Imagine a curriculum designed by and for Alaska Native educators that includes:
Mapping out Native Corporation land holdings;
Understanding shareholder rights and dividend structures;
Teaching negotiation, land lease valuation, and mineral rights;
Challenging dependency narratives with ownership narratives.
This is not just financial literacy. This is generational economic empowerment rooted in sovereignty.
The speaker’s frustration with “outside people making decisions for us” cuts to the heart of the colonial-style governance embedded in Alaska’s education system today. When administrators and DEED bureaucrats operate from afar, with no cultural context and no skin in the game, the result is a system designed to preserve dependency rather than foster independence.
AERLCA reorients power by letting local communities govern their own schools, control their own education dollars, and choose the voices that teach their children. It is the antidote to the very dynamic this testimony decries: the “puffing up” of non-profit executives and consultants who profit off community dysfunction.
One of the most striking insights is the idea that children are being raised with a false cultural lesson that confrontation is wrong, “that they are worth less than the tundra.” The current education system, dominated by ideological conformity and centralized control, does not foster emotional intelligence or assertiveness. It teaches compliance, submission, and silence, especially in Native communities that are viewed through a lens of paternalism.
By breaking up monopolistic school districts and empowering indigenous community-based schools and curriculum, AERLCA can help teach students how to confront respectfully, advocate effectively, and take pride in their heritage, not just as a culture to be preserved, but as a foundation for sovereignty and prosperity.
This testimony is a call to action: “I cannot believe this is all our ancestors hoped and prayed for us to experience.”
Neither can I. The Alaska Education Reform and Local Control Act is the legislative vehicle for restoring what was lost. It is not just education quality, but dignity, agency, and self-governance.
It does not impose values. It returns the tools for communities to define their own.
A major crime suppression effort in Anchorage has resulted in more than 100 arrests, the recovery of stolen vehicles, and the seizure of significant quantities of illegal drugs, following a five-day operation conducted by multiple law enforcement agencies.
Operation Summer Heat, which ended June 30, brought together 160 personnel from local, state, and federal agencies. The initiative focused on targeting a wide range of criminal activity throughout the city, including violent offenses, drug trafficking, outstanding warrants, traffic violations, and retail theft.
Anchorage Police reported that during the operation:
103 individuals were arrested on felony and misdemeanor charges
143 traffic stops were conducted
2 stolen vehicles were recovered
More than 52 items were seized and entered into evidence
Large quantities of illegal narcotics were also confiscated, with the most prevalent being methamphetamine:
0.9 grams of crack cocaine
1,093.77 grams of cocaine
1,388.46 grams of fentanyl, equivalent to 600,000 lethal doses.
110.82 grams of powdered heroin
254.05 grams of methamphetamine, about 1,600 lethal doses
Some units involved in the operation used specialized officers who wore masks as part of their standard tactical gear. Law enforcement officials noted that this practice is used to protect the identities of undercover personnel and to preserve the integrity of ongoing investigations. The use of such equipment is common during high-risk enforcement efforts.
Operation Summer Heat represents one of the largest coordinated crime suppression efforts in Anchorage this year and reflects ongoing collaboration between agencies to address criminal threats and enhance public safety.
