Charter Communications, in the middle of purchasing the parent company of GCI, has decided that GCI will not be part of the deal.
GCI, a homegrown Alaska company, was purchased by Liberty in 2020. But Charter wants it to be spun off as a stand-alone public company before the deal closes in 2027. Liberty Broadband will distribute the GCI business among its shareholders.
Charter didn’t want to operate in Alaska, which is not seen as a growing market, and which has other issues, such as weather and few customers.
GCI was Alaska’s first technology startup, beginning in 1979 out of an apartment in Anchorage by company founders Ron Duncan and Bob Walp, who launched it by rebranding phone cards and ultimately created create a long-distance phone service provider that gave Alaskans more affordable options to communicate across the country.
At that time GCI started, long-distance phone calls cost Alaskans $1 per minute. But after GCI pioneered DAMA satellite communication to deliver in-state long distance, and introduced competitive facilities-based local phone service, costs came down dramatically.
Multiple state attorneys general, including Alaska’s Attorney General Treg Taylor, have requested the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm a federal court dismissal of an indictment brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith against President-elect Donald Trump.
Florida led a multi-state brief; Texas filed its own.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022 appointed Smith to serve as “special counsel” for the U.S. Department of Justice. Garland also gave him “the full power and independent authority to exercise [the] functions of any United States Attorney” to investigate and prosecute Trump, the AGs note.
In one case, Smith charged Trump with mishandling classified documents in Florida, which a federal district judge dismissed. Smith appealed the case, which is before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The attorneys general argue Garland’s and Smith’s actions were illegal.
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody led a multistate coalition urging the 11th Circuit to affirm the dismissal of Smith’s indictment, arguing his actions “are invalid due to regulations that violate Article II of the U.S. Constitution.”
Smith used his authority “to take the unprecedented step of indicting a former President and the principal political rival of the current ruling regime,” their brief states. “But unlike a U.S. Attorney, Smith faces next-to-zero presidential accountability. He was not appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Nor is he subject to the plenary supervision of an official who was.” The coalition points out that “Congress has neither authorized nor funded the Attorney General’s unilateral consolidation of such power in a single unaccountable official.”
Moody said the coalition’s action was necessary even after the case was dismissed because of “the Biden-Harris machine’s persistent attempts to prosecute their political rival” and to ensure “that those responsible remain democratically accountable to the states’ citizens and in checking unprecedented abuses of executive power.”
The court should dismiss the indictment, they argue, because “Smith acted under regulations that authorize the exercise of core executive power unguided by the plenary control of the President or any principal officer accountable to him. Because those regulations violate Article II of the Constitution, Smith’s actions under them are invalid.”
They also took aim at Garland saying he appointed Smith in order “to remove responsibility – and thus political accountability – for the investigations and prosecutions under his purview from the current Administration. The Attorney General appointed Special Counsel Smith after President Trump announced his candidacy for the 2024 election because the Attorney General considered it ‘in the public interest’ for someone ‘independent’ of the Administration to head these criminal proceedings.
“The result: A single executive officer now unilaterally resolves massively consequential, politically fraught issues like whether to indict a former president and current presidential candidate and what position the United States will take as to whether and to what extent a President enjoys immunity from criminal prosecution. Article II does not give the Attorney General the authority to vest the executive power in Jack Smith … The district court’s dismissal of the indictment should be affirmed.”
Joining Moody are the attorneys general representing Iowa, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a separate amicus brief also arguing Smith “was illegally appointed” by Garland.
The brief argues the case directly implicates “states’ fundamental interest in preventing unlawful federal action because the U.S. Department of Justice claims that the U.S. Attorney General – acting without any statutory guidance from Congress – may empower a private individual to spend tens of millions of dollars to enforce federal criminal laws. This is a question that directly impacts the States and every citizen in them.”
Proponents of breaching the four lower Snake River dams that provide hydropower in the Columbia Basin concede that plan is likely on hold for at least the next four years under a second term for President-elect Donald Trump. A little more than a year ago, the Biden administration announced its support for preparing to breach.
“I don’t want to say I know for sure what a new administration is going to do,” said Amanda Goodin with Earthjustice, which describes itself as the nation’s leading environmental law organization. EarthJustice represents several environmental interests seeking to get rid of the dams.
On the one hand, I feel like there is such a win-win opportunity for the region to rebuild our salmon runs and protect the needs of other users in the basin,” Goodin continued during a Thursday interview with The Center Square. “Being real, this is the second time we’ve seen a Trump administration, and under the first Trump administration, we saw that was not a path they were interested in.”
As previously reported by The Center Square, the fight over the Snake River dams has been ongoing for more than 20 years, largely over salmon and steelhead restoration and other environmental concerns.
The four dams are located in the southeastern corner of Washington, near the Oregon border, and they provide as much annual energy – 1,000 average megawatts – as a large nuclear power plant. According to utility Modern Electric Water, the lower Snake River dams can produce up to three times that amount during periods of high demand. As many as 750,000 homes rely on the carbon-free power generated by the dams.
Opponents of removing the dams, including U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., who just won reelection, introduced efforts to kill what they described as a backroom deal last year between the Biden administration and a handful of stakeholders. That deal resulted in a formal memorandum of understanding, with an expected goal to remove the dams.
“These dams are vital to our economy, our efforts to reduce carbon emissions, and the ability to send our commodities overseas,” wrote Newhouse in a Sept. 2023 news release. “The Columbia River Basin is one of our most valuable natural resources in the Pacific Northwest and I will continue to fight each and every day against this Administration’s efforts to breach these vital dams.”
When the cold weather arrives and the days get shorter, soup season has officially begun.
On chilly days, there is nothing more pleasing than wrapping your hands around a warm bowl of soup. The aroma of the broth and the taste of tender pieces of meat bring a savory delight to the senses. Each mouthful helps relieve the cold, spreading a soothing warmth throughout the body.
Making soup is also an excellent way to use ingredients that are available in our freezers and cellars.
Hinterland Steak, Wild Mushroom, and Onion Soup is a regional take on the classic French onion soup. Using ingredients and seasonings commonly kept on hand, the recipe transforms traditional onion soup by adding succulent game meat and the earthy flavor of wild mushrooms gathered from Alaskan forests. This recipe allows for easy substitutions in the supporting cast of proteins and fungus, as the caramelized onions are the star of the dish, creating a sweet, delectable depth that perfectly complements other ingredients.
One of the essential ingredients in this soup, as well as most soups, is broth. Any type of stock or broth will work, but bone broth from moose, deer, or caribou provides a distinctly regional flavor.
Salvaging bones from game, including the neck, marrow, and knuckle bones, is an excellent source of flavor and nutrients for soups and stews. You can freeze the bones during meat processing to use them for broth later. When making the bone broth, start by roasting the meaty bones in an oven to develop the flavor.
Traditional methods for making bone broth involve simmering bones with scraps of celery, carrots, and onions in a stockpot for 12 to 24 hours. However, a modern way to expedite the process is to use an instant pot, which only requires 2 to 4 hours of cooking.
To make the bone broth shelf-stable, you can pressure-can it in jars or freeze it for later use. Having a ready supply of bone broth on hand makes soup preparation effortless.
Although the recipe below calls for game meat, foraged mushrooms, and bone broth, you can also enjoy this hearty dish by substituting store-bought ingredients. Don’t let the lengthy cooking time intimidate you. Most of it involves passively waiting for the onions to caramelize to perfection in the oven, and it is well worth the wait.
Ingredients for Hinterland Steak, Wild Mushroom, and Onion Soup
Hinterland Steak, Wild Mushroom, and Onion Soup
Ingredients:
1 to 1 ½ pounds of moose meat (substitute deer, caribou, or beef)
1 ¼ ounces of dried King Bolete mushrooms (substitute 6 ounces of fresh mushrooms)
1 ½ ounces of red wine (substitute white wine or brandy or omit altogether)
3 large yellow onions
6 cups of bone broth (substitute stock, or bouillon of your choice)
7 tablespoons of butter (4 tablespoons and 3 tablespoons as listed below)
2 tablespoons avocado oil
1 teaspoon of salt (more or less to taste, as listed below)
1 teaspoon of pepper (more or less to taste, as listed below)
½ teaspoon garlic powder (more or less to taste)
For garnish if desired:
Thin slices of sourdough bread (substitute bread of your choice)
Makes about 3 quarts (approximately twelve 1-cup servings)
Prep time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 3 hours
Preparation:
Preheat oven to 400°F.
If using dehydrated mushrooms, rehydrate in a bowl with hot water. Allow the mushrooms to soak while the onions are in the oven, stirring from time to time.
Remove the skin from the onions and cut them in half. Cut the half-cut onions down the middle, then cut it into slices.
Melt 4 tablespoons of butter into an oven-safe pan and add the onions.
Add ¼ teaspoon of salt to the onions and stir until the butter has coated them and the salt has been mixed evenly.
Place the onions in the oven for 1 hour in a covered oven-safe dish that is 3 ½ quarts or larger.
After an hour in the oven, the onions will start to sweat. Remove the onions from the oven and stir well, being sure to scrape the bottom and the sides.
Place the cover on the onions and return to the oven for an additional hour.
Remove the onions from the oven after the second hour and stir well, making sure to scrape the sides and bottom of the pan to incorporate the fond (brown food particles adhered to the pan) from the caramelization back into the onions.
Replace the cover on the onions and put into the oven for an additional 30 minutes.
Prepare the meat, taking care to remove the gristle and sinew. Cut the meat into bite-sized ½ to ¾ inch pieces.
Season the meat with ½ teaspoon each of salt, pepper, and garlic powder.
Heat a sauté pan on high heat and add approximately 2 tablespoons of avocado oil, just enough to cover the bottom of the pan. When the oil is hot, sear the meat over high heat until it browns. Then turn off the heat and set aside.
Drain the mushrooms and pat dry. Then cut into large, bite-sized pieces.
Melt 3 tablespoons of butter on medium high-heat in a sauté pan. Add the mushrooms and a pinch of salt. Sauté stirring frequently until the mushrooms caramelize to a golden-brown color.
Add the wine to the mushrooms and stir until the alcohol evaporates. Then remove from the heat.
Add wine to mushrooms, stir, and cook down the liquid.
Remove the onions after the last 30 timed in the oven. Stir the onions, scraping the sides and bottom of the pan and mixing the caramelized fond back into the onions.
Place the onions on the stovetop burner over medium-high heat. Stir the onions continuously until they are a rich brown color. This will take around ten minutes, maybe less. If the onions begin browning too quickly, lower the heat to medium and add ¼ cup of water to deglaze the pan. Do not let the onions burn.
Add 2 cups of broth to the pan after the onions have caramelized to a deep brown color, stirring the sides and bottom to mix the fond into the onions and broth.
Add the steak and mushrooms to the onions.
Add the remaining 4 cups of broth and bring the soup to a boil, then turn it down to a simmer.
Cover and simmer for 10 to 20 minutes.
After simmering, taste the soup and adjust seasonings by adding additional salt, pepper, or garlic powder as desired. If too much moisture evaporates during the simmering process, add some water, being careful not to over-dilute the soup.
Simmer for a few more minutes to fully incorporate the seasonings.
The soup is filling enough to serve as a stand-alone meal. If you want to make your soup more of a dining experience, consider garnishing it like a classic French onion soup, but with an Alaskan twist.
For garnish:
Use a thin slice of sourdough bread cut into a round to fit inside an oven-safe bowl. Toast the bread lightly in a toaster or the oven, being sure to turn it over to toast on both sides.
Place the soup in the oven-safe bowl. Place the toast round on top of the soup, then cover with shredded cheese.
Place the bowl under a broiler for one to three minutes until the cheese melts and starts to brown on top. Alternatively, you can place the bowl in the oven at 400°F to receive the same results in several minutes.
Be careful when serving to avoid burns.
Enjoy!
Brenda Josephson is a Haines resident. She is an accounting and tax professional, real estate agent, professionally trained chef, and advocate for good governance. She spends her time fishing, foraging, and savoring Alaska’s abundance of natural and wild foods with her family.
The Division of Elections has counted another tranche of ballots from the Nov. 5 election and the most watched item of the weekend is Ballot Measure 2, which asks voters if they want to repeal ranked-choice voting.
The No votes are picking up more than 50% of the 6,772 votes that were added to the total.
The repeal votes are 155,592 and the no votes are 154,697, a difference of 895 votes.
Today’s counted votes included votes from HD 37, 38, 39 and 40, totaling 1,386, and from HD 1, 2, 5, and 6, totaling 5,386 for a combined total of 6,772.
Approximately 9,000 votes currently remain to be counted, in addition to the military overseas ballots that will dribble in until Nov. 20, the cutoff date.
President-elect Donald Trump has named Chris Wright as his secretary of the Department of Energy, and the second-named member of the newly formed Council of National Energy, which is being led by North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who will serve as Interior secretary for the Trump Administration..
Wright is a leading technologist and entrepreneur in energy, having worked in nuclear, solar, geothermal, and oil and gas. He pioneered the shale revolution that fueled American energy independence, and helped transform global energy markets and geopolitics, Trump said.
Wright has known and worked for years with Burgum.
“This team will drive U.S. Energy Dominance, which will drive down Inflation, win the A.I. arms race with China (and others), and expand American Diplomatic Power to end Wars all across the World,” Trump said.
Trump is empowering Wright to drive innovation and cut red tape.
Chris Wright Biography:
Self-described tech nerd turned entrepreneur, Wright is the founder, chief executive officer, and chairman of the Board of Liberty Energy (NYSE: LBRT).
Wright completed an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering at MIT and graduate work in Electrical Engineering at UC Berkeley and MIT. He founded Pinnacle Technologies and served as CEO from 1992 to 2006. Pinnacle created the hydraulic fracture mapping industry, and its innovations helped launch commercial shale gas production in the late 1990s.
He was chairman of Stroud Energy, an early shale gas producer, before selling to Range Resources in 2006. He founded and served as executive chairman of Liberty Resources and Liberty Midstream Solutions until its sale in 2024.
In addition to his role at Liberty, he sits on the Board of Directors for Urban Solutions Group, Oklo Inc. (NYSE: Oklo), and EMX Royalty Corp. (NYSE: EMX). He also serves on the board of numerous nonprofit organizations, including ACE Scholarships, and as a founding board member of the Bettering Human Lives Foundation.
Wright grew up and currently lives in Colorado with his wife, Liz.
While Democrats blast Republicans for electing a president who is under investigation for various alleged crimes, in Alaska, many Democrats voted for a felon who sits in a federal prison out of state as their second choice for Congress.
According to election tabulation work byCINYC9, who runs a data-rich account on X/Twitter, about 65% of Alaska voters who cast a vote in the congressional race only picked one candidate — they “bullet voted.”
The voters who picked Republican Nick Begich as their first choice on the ranked-choice ballot were most likely to bullet vote: 77% of them bullet voted, and just 10% ranked all four candidates in the race.
As CINYC9 explains, 15% voters who chose Begich first ended up choosing John Wayne Howe, of the Alaskan Independence Party, second.
In contrast, slightly more than half of Peltola votes bullet voted.
26% of Peltola supporters voted for Eric Hafner second. Hafner is the man who is sitting in a New York federal penitentiary for making violent threats against elected officials and judges.
Those who voted for Howe first and then ranked other candidates after that, voted for Begich over Peltola by a margin of about 2.5 to 1.
CINYC9 is using a computer script of his making that can analyze the raw data being posted by the Division of Elections. The files he analyzes are not understandable to the average viewer, as they are complex codes. But CINYC9 was accurate in 2022 with his script application and feels confident he is close on the numbers this time as well.
The final results won’t be known until Nov. 20, when the Division of Elections runs its own script and determines where the second-, third-, and fourth-place votes go. But so far, others who have run programs that analyze the raw data are in agreement with CINYC9.
Even FairVote.org, which is part of the dark-money network that pushed ranked-choice voting on Alaskans, ran an analysis and agrees that Begich is heavily favored to win.
Earlier this week, Must Read Alaska called the Alaska congressional race for Nick Begich. Now, a national elections analytics organization agrees: There are not enough remaining ballots to be counted to pull Rep. Mary Peltola ahead.
Begich has 152,545 votes and Peltola follows with 143,370. The other two candidates share about 15,400 votes
The Division of Elections has more votes to count in the race that ended on Nov. 5.
“This victory belongs to the people of Alaska,” Begich said. “Our state has immense potential, and now is the time to responsibly unlock the resources that make Alaska a cornerstone of America’s path to prosperity.”
Peltola sent out a fundraising letter saying that she still has a path to victory and asking for people to send her money.
“Democrat Mary Peltola is closing the gap over her Republican challenger, Nick Begich III, with every new batch of votes counted,” her fundraising letter said. “With more than 20,000 votes still left to be counted, Mary has a narrow path to close the gap and win! But in a race this close, every single vote counts! Final results likely won’t be known until November 20th, when the ranked-choice results are tabulated and released.”
Peltola wrote, “Our voter protection team is on the ground fighting to ensure that every Alaskan’s vote is counted and their voice is heard. Can we count on you to rush a donation today to ensure we have what it takes to fight for every last vote and help Mary close the gap?“
Span Alaska announced that due to a tariff increase approved by the Anchorage Assembly for freight coming through the Port of Alaska, freight charges will increase by 7.5% starting in December. The company said that last year it absorbed the rate increase.
Span Alaska provides over-the-water freight via container ship from the Port of Tacoma in Washington state to the Port of Alaska in Anchorage, as well as provides barge service to Southeast Alaska.
“On July 25, 2023, the Anchorage Assembly passed Ordinance 2023-34, establishing the Port of Alaska Modernization Program (PAMP) Surcharge. It applies to all commodities shipped through the port of Alaska, including southbound shipments, and intra-state shipments to Kodiak and dutch Harbor. The per-ton fee became effective on January 1, 2024, and was collected as part of the Municipality’s financing plan for the construction of new cargo terminals. Ocean carriers pay this fee to the Port, and pass on the cost to shippers, including Span Alaska. Throughout the 2024 shipping season, Span Alaska absorbed this fee, without assessing our customers,” the company said. But now, it’s going to have to pass along the costs, because the Assembly just jacked the tariffs even more, and this will increase the cost of living to Alaskans who get their goods through the Port of Alaska.
“On November 6, 2024, the Anchorage Assembly approved an increase in tariffs to help pay for the Program. Effect January 1, 2025, the fee will increase from $.059 to $4.80/ton and from $9.50 per Container to $75.50 per Container on Full Loads. The Port of Alaska Commission will conduct ongoing reviews and adjustments to the fee, extending beyond 2025. This tariff increase will have a notable effect on shipments through the Port of Alaska, and as a result, Span Alaska will introduce a PAMP surcharge executive January 1, 2025.”
The general rate increase will be 7.5% more for all cargo, effective Dec. 15 and will include Central Alaska, Kodiak, Dutch Harbor, Southeast Alaska, and intrastate freight.
The higher cost of goods will be compounded by the fact that Ballot Measure 1 passed, which will increase all union wages across Alaska, a cost that will also be passed on to consumers.
