The Russian River Campground, one of the most popular recreation areas in Alaska, will close at midnight on Thursday, Aug. 15, and not reopen until, perhaps, December. The closure includes all roads, trails, parking lots and other facilities. Aspen Flats and Upper Russian Lakes Cabins will be open for reservations, accessible by the trailhead at Snug Harbor Road.
The Russian River is the most popular sockeye salmon stream in Alaska and is a favorite spot for rainbow trout and Dolly Varden fishermen. Each year, the area is visited by over 100,000 people who use the campground, ferry, boat launch, Russian Lakes Trail and associated sites. The campground consists of 83 campsites and 130 day-use parking spaces and is usually open with full service from May through September.
The U.S. Forest Service has a major construction underway, and the campground has been closed several times since 2022 to complete reconstruction of the campground road, retaining walls along the road, and other safety features.
Nearby access trails will also close, including, Russian Lakes Trail will be closed from Russian River Campground Road to the intersection of the Russian Lakes Trail Lower and Upper Parking Lot Trails. Angler’s Trail will only be accessible by boat or the Russian River Ferry.
Last summer, when marchers in a gay pride parade in New York City shouted, “We’re here. We’re queer. We’re coming for your children,” they were not kidding.
NYC Drag March 2024 kicks off at Tompkins Sq Park in NYC
A new short documentary out by MSNBC follows children as they experience drag queen story hour at a local library. The film crew put heart monitors on the children to gauge their responses to having stories read aloud to them by men dressed garishly as women.
The film, “It’s Okay,” is part of a wider movement to normalize up-close interactions of men who portray grotesque and garish women with children.
Director David France’s 2017 film, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, was a Netflix original documentary about a transgender that won the Outfest “Freedom Award.” Outfest is an LGBTQIA+ promotion company and France’s films are all about the LGBTQ experience.
“We really wanted to know the kids’ experience, really absent everything else,” France said to NBC News, the parent company for the documentary on children and drag queens. “We didn’t want to interview them. We didn’t want to get their analysis of what happened. We wanted to be embedded with them intimately enough that we could experience their journey through the reading in the way that they were experiencing it.”
The “microphone vest” was mounted on one of the children, so the film crew could monitor breathing.
“We wanted to hear and feel his discomfort if he had it, his joy if he had it, his curiosity,” France said to NBC. “We really invested deeply in his experience, and I think he showed us all of that, and he did it in a real, genuine way.”
Such knowledge will be important to the Drag Queen Story Hour performers in the future, as they learn how to reach further into the psyches of innocent children by studying how the children breathe.
The small band of Republicans who are organized and active in the Democratic stronghold of downtown Anchorage have voted to endorse Nick Begich for Congress.
The District 17 endorsement of the new generation of Republican leadership brought the total to nine of the 36 organized districts in Alaska now endorsing Begich, who doesn’t take after his well-known Democrat uncles, Tom and Mark.
Nick Begich is the political renegade in the family and he has crisscrossed the state with a free-market, free people message, which is now resulting in a tidal wave of endorsements. Raised by conservative grandparents on his mother’s side, he has been a Republican since high school and is the former finance chair for the Alaska Republican Party.
In 2022’s general election, Rep. Mary Peltola won 4,418 votes in District 17, fully 70% of the vote. But the Republicans who live in downtown Anchorage are a tightly knit-together group. When they met this week, they threw their support to the candidate who got the most Republican votes there in 2022 — a businessman who isn’t a government swamp dweller.
District 17’s endorsement of Begich tips the balance even more. Now, 25% of the districts have gone with Nick Begich, rather than taking orders from D.C. elites who pushed Nancy Dahlstrom into the race last November, even after Begich had been campaigning for six months. Dahlstrom and the D.C. elites are now spending 100,000 a day bombarding Alaskans with messages on their phones, televisions, radios, and computers.
Districts that have announced their endorsement for Begich now include 6, 8, 17, 23, 25, 26, 29, 34, and 36.
Not a single Republican district in Alaska has endorsed Dahlstrom.
Begich has received endorsements from six of the seven Republican women’s clubs and both of the Alaska Young Republicans chapters. No club has endorsed Dahlstrom.
He is also the only congressional candidate who has signed the petition to repeal ranked choice voting and the only candidate who has said he will drop from the race if he is not the leading Republican candidate after the primary. Mary Peltola supports ranked-choice voting and Dahlstrom won’t take a stand because she says since it’s on the ballot, she should not comment.
Voting is already underway in the primary with early voting and absentee early voting, with Election Day on Aug 20, when the polls close at 8 p.m.
The Food and Drug Administrationwill not approve MDMA, the street drug known as Molly or Ecstasy, as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a Friday announcement from the maker of the drug, Lykos Therapeutics.
Some lawmakers — even in far-flung Alaska — have used their positions to push the drug, even though recently the studies showed there is not enough evidence to show the drug is effective. Indeed, some study participants said the drug led to suicidal ideation and said their concerns were dismissed by the study managers.
The clinical trial was a hot mess in other ways: There were allegations of sexual misconduct in the middle of the study and there are possible serious side effects like heart problems and drug abuse. FDA scientists also said the study itself was not clean because patients and therapists could easily guess who got the drug and who got the placebo.
Alaska Sen. Forrest Dunbar and Rep. Jennie Armstrong were two of the proponents of MDMA, introducing legislation to set up a task force in Alaska to create a regulatory framework in anticipation of the drug’s approval, which Dunbar falsely said on the record was imminent.
The overeager lawmakers put the cart in front of the horse. Although their legislation passed, it’s not clear the governor will sign it, since MDMA is evidently far from guaranteed approval.
Lykos Therapeutics said it will challenge the FDA decision and says the data is adequate to prove the drug is effective.
Olympic women’s boxing now belongs to the men. Algerian Imane Khelif, who has XY chromosomes that make him a male, won welterweight division gold medal Friday against China’s Yang Liu.
The mainstream media reports that Imane is a woman because he has a passport that says so.
The International Boxing Association says it has blood tests showing that Imane and another boxer fighting in the women’s division, featherweight Lin Yu-Ting of Taipei, are indeed men. They are disqualified from boxing in the IBA women’s divisions.
Controversy has centered on the women’s boxing events at the Olympics in Paris, as the two men, who are reportedly equipped with both male and female sexual characteristics, have dominated women opponents.
If mad scientists went to a secret lab to create a climate clone of Kamala Harris on energy policy, they’d be thrilled if the new handiwork ended up looking – and acting – like Tim Walz.
Check the record: The Minnesota governor wants to decarbonize his state the same way extremists like California Gov. Gavin Newsom do. He signeda 100 percent carbon-free electrical standard by 2040, and tied his state’s emission standards to California’s. He did so despite the fact that nearly 70 percent of Minnesota’s current energy mix comes from traditional energy sources.
Now, Tim Walz wants to be your next vice president, and bring those ideals to America at large.
To no one’s surprise, the Minnesota governor’s ideology is aligned with climate zealots running the Democratic party. Their proposed platform for their upcoming convention will most assuredly focus its energy sections on decarbonization, ending fossil fuel use, and the false narratives surrounding a “climate crisis.”
Tim Walz’s ideologies fit right in with those hardliners, and has since his days in Congress, where he supported job-killing ideas like a cap-and-trade bill and even voiced support for a carbon tax, in spite of how those actions may have harmed the manufacturing and agricultural sectors in his home state.
With Walz on the ticket, it is worth noting how his views and actions regarding energy have increased regulatory burdens, made Minnesota more federal government-dependent, and hamstrung The Land of 10,000 Lakes from developing its natural resource base. All these actions have weakened American and Minnesotan opportunity, while empowering Communist China and other enemies of our nation.
Walz is an outspoken cheerleader of Biden and Harris’ actions on climate, praising the administration for its goals of decarbonizing America, pushing the country toward ‘green’ energy solutions and away from traditional ones. He’s championed social and environmental justice programs in Minnesota, taking hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants and subsidies to enact those programs.
His work to ensure Minnesota is seen as a leader in the race to decarbonize includes a 69-page climate plan that includes “a goal of increasing the share of electric cars on Minnesota roads to 20% by 2030 from the current 1%, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030, and achieving a zero net carbon emissions goal by 2050.” He has joined the 24-state coalition of the U.S. Climate Alliance, which seems more concerned with ‘just transitions and equity’ than it is with the impacts to jobs and economies of member states with their mandates-over-markets approach to accelerating net-zero policies.
In short, Tim Walz is a fan of the green agenda. But at what cost to Minnesotans?
By raking in federal monies designed to solve the ‘climate crisis’, he’s made Minnesota more dependent on government largesse moving forward. Walz has no plan for when the federal green gravy train runs dry. More importantly, if he really wants to move Minnesota toward a decarbonized goal, why did Walz praise the Biden-Harris administration when they killed a world-class mine that could have established a domestic supply chain of critical – and short-supplied – components of the ‘green’ agenda?
Rich mineral deposits lie in the vast wilderness of northeast Minnesota, where copper, nickel, cobalt and platinum have been found in abundance. Each of those are currently in short supply in America, with China firmly in control of the global supply chain.
The result is that Tim Walz wants his energy from unreliable sources and his precious metals from anywhere but the United States.
Twin Metals – a Minnesota-based company – wants to develop a swath of the state to change that. Mining copper would help Minnesota develop wind power, while nickel and cobalt would fill needs for components in battery systems and the electric vehicles Walz champions. More than 750 full-time jobs in the rural areas of the state would be created, with another 1500 support jobs created throughout the state.
Yet, in one of the Biden-Harris administration’s more nefarious acts, it denied Twin Metals the permits it needs to move forward with the project in January, 2022.
One would think Tim Walz would stand with Twin Metals and demanded the chance for his state to lead in domestic supplies of ‘green’ energy components. After all, on the line is thousands of jobs, and the chance to jump-start rural Minnesota’s economy. Instead, Walz praised the actionsas being good for his state and nation. Proving that Tim Walz is a reliable rubber stamp for whatever Harris and Biden needed, no matter the cost.
With his capitulation, Tim Walz failed Minnesota on Twin Metals. He stood with the green lobby against sound economic opportunities. He showed that China is more important than his home state.
If he will abandon his own state for the green agenda, imagine who Tim Walz will leave behind if he becomes Vice President.
Rick Whitbeck is the Alaska State Director for Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs. Contact him at [email protected] and follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @PTFAlaska. This column first ran in Townhall.com.
On Aug. 20, Alaska’s primary election day, two officials from Pilot Station will be in Bethel Superior Court to answer to charges of felony interference with elections in their tiny community at the edge of Alaska.
Acting Mayor Arthur Heckman Sr. and City Clerk Ruthie Borromeo are facing eight felony counts each for violations of election laws in October 2022 and 2023.
They are charged with offenses such as using force, threats, intimidation, and bribes to induce an election official to fail in his duties. They’re charged with delaying the mailing of required election materials and intentionally failing to perform their duties. They are charged with tampering with the election results.
Pilot Station, located on the Yukon River in Western Alaska, was incorporated in 1969 and is home to about 600 people. It’s a second-class city that has six city employees and is part of the Lower Yukon School District. It holds its regular elections the first Tuesday in October.
Pilot Station is a 95% Yup’ik village dependent upon a fishing and subsistence lifestyle. Former Mayor Nicky Myers died after falling through the ice on the Yukon River in on April 29, 2022, while on his snowmachine. Heckman Sr. became acting mayor and the first instance when these felonies occurred were in October of that year.
Pilot Station is represented in the Alaska Legislature by Sen. Donny Olson and Rep. Neal Foster.
Update: As of late Friday, the Division of Elections has made this announcement: PLEASE NOTE: Absentee Voting in-person materials have arrived at all locations.
Registered voters can vote in-person at designated Absentee/Early Voting locations. If your location states ‘date and time to be determined’ your location did not opt to have Absentee-in-person voting available. Please contact the division at 907-270-2700 if your AVO is not open.
Additional Absentee voting options are still available – Saturday, August 10 is the deadline to apply for an absentee by mail ballot for a ballot to be mailed to you. You can also apply for an electronic transmission delivery ballot (online or fax) which can be faxed or mailed back to the division. The deadline to apply for an absentee by electronic transmission is Monday, August 19 at 5pm. Contact the division at 907-270-2700 if you have questions about voting Absentee.
Original story:
Absentee and early voting began Monday in Alaska for the primary election, which ends Aug. 20.
But as of Friday, Aug. 9, the Division of Elections still has a vague notice posted on its websitesaying that some absentee voting locations have had voting supplies delayed by the U.S. mail and are not yet able to assist voters in casting their ballots.
“For additional options please contact the Absentee & Petition office at 907-270-2700. The Division will update the public once we have more information,” the division says on its website.
Neither the division nor the lieutenant governor has released any helpful information to the public, even five days after voting began.
Candidates and campaigns who have contacted the division can’t get answers about which villages are lacking ballots. That puts the campaigns at a disadvantage if they wanted to do outreach to those communities to alert them to the alternatives for early absentee voting. People who usually hear back from the Division of Elections tell Must Read Alaska they are getting no response.
The problem seems to have impacted communities that typically vote heavily for Democrats.
For example, Akiak (population 451), Aleknagik (pop. 204), and Brevig Mission City (pool 417) are among those communities listed in the “to be determined” category on the division’s website.
Other communities impacted may include Kokhanok, Nikolski, Akutan, Pedro Bay, Atka, Sand Point, St. George, Stony River, Napaskiak, Deering, Kivalina, Shaktoolik, Koyuk, and St. Michael.
The question now becomes: Will Democrats or their lawyer friends sue the Division of Elections and the U.S. Postal Service for not providing ballots on time in these remote corners of the state, where mail is notoriously slow? This would make it especially awkward for the lieutenant governor, who is on the ballot this year as she runs for U.S. House.
In 2012, then-Gov. Mead Treadwell signed an order expanding the sites for absentee voting locations, more than doubling the number of voting centers by 123 new locations. It was a way to calm down Native activists who were suing over language translations of the ballots and who wanted more voting centers in the most rural areas of the state, even though they are not used enough to justify the expense.
Hardly any voters in Native villages use the early voting options, but by mailing ballots out to the villages, many of which are ruled by tribal councils, it introduces another element of possible election fraud, something the State can do little about. One case of felony-level election fraud is now going to court involving officials in Pilot Station, pop. 600, but others in past years have been scant legal attention.
The Aug. 20 primary is the final day when people can vote in Alaska to decide the finalists for the November ballot.
Republicans are not interested in giving out participation trophies this year to Republican candidates who don’t come out on top in the congressional primary.
Republican District 26’s committee, the Wasilla area of the Mat-Su Valley, voted for a resolution on Thursday requesting that any Republican candidate who does not finish first in the Aug. 20 primary voluntarily drop out.
That would allow party activists around the state to not split their energies, funds, and votes between more than one Republican candidate for Congress.
The measure is similar to that passed by Republicans in District 13, which had also made the same request of Republican candidates in the state races, as well as the congressional race.
District 26 also made several endorsements on Thursday. They are: Jubilee Underwood for House Seat 27-Wasilla; Jared Goecker for Senate Seat L-Eagle River; Rob Yundt for Senate Seat N-Wasilla.
District 26 is one of the eight districts that have already endorsed Nick Begich for Congress. And Begich is the only Republican candidate who has vowed that he will drop if he doesn’t come in first among the four Republicans running for Alaska’s only congressional seat, now held by Democrat Mary Peltola. Nancy Dahlstrom has so-far refused.
This resolution was a step further. It’s really a challenge to the other three Republicans who are in the hunt.
With Alaska’s open primary, it’s almost certain that Begich, Dahlstrom, and Heikes will be the top three vote-getters who would be placed on the November general election ballot along with Peltola.
The District 26 Committee resolution says:
WHEREAS having Republicans represent Alaska in the U.S. Congress is critical to the future of Alaska and the United States: and WHEREAS the race for U.S. Congress has more than one Republican candidate; and WHEREAS under the current ranked choice eiection process. the top four candidates in each of these races wiil be included on the ballot for the general election; and WHEREAS many Alaskans refuse to rank additional candidates under the ranked choice process; and WHEREAS having more than one Republican candidate on the ballot in the November general election for Congress has the potential to dilute the vote and forfeit the election to a candidate other than a Republican; and WHEREAS the primary election on August 20, 2024 will serve as a clear indicator of a candidate’s potential for success; and WHEREAS at least one Republican candidate has publicly declared his willingness to withdraw from the race it he is not the Republican who garners to most votes. NOW THEREFORE. BE IT RESOLVED: DISTRICT 26 OF THE ALASKA REPUBLICAN PARTY RECOMMENDS THAT THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE WHO GARNERS THE MOST VOTES IN THE 2024 CONGRESSIONAL RACE MOVES FORWARD TO THE NOVEMBER GENERAL ELECTION AND ALL OTHER REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES IN THE CONGRESSIONAL RACE PUBLICLY DECLARE THEIR WILLINGNESS TO WITHDRAW FROM THE GENERAL ELECTION BEFORE THE DEADLINE OF SEPTEMBER 2, 2024.
The district also passed a resolution on ranked-choice voting, recommending that people vote “Yes” on the ballot measure that will appear on the November ballot to repeal the open-primary, ranked-choice voting system that Alaskans approved in 2020.
A poll conducted by Must Read Alaska this week shows that the majority of Alaska conservatives don’t want to rank candidates, but prefer to pick the one they think has the best chance of representing their values.
