This week, Alaskan swimmer Lydia Jacoby of Seward returns to the U.S. Olympic Team Trials, to continue the journey to defend her Tokyo gold medal at the Paris Games.
She and the other female swimmers at the trials won’t have to compete against Lia Thomas, the male swimmer who earned his notoriety by swimming on the women’s team or the University of Pennsylvania and taking an NCAA trophy as a woman in 2022, robbing the other competitors of their rightful standings.
Thomas, who towers over most female competitors, swam into the wall of the Summer Olympics’ Court of Arbitration this week, as it said Thomas lacks standing to compete at the games in Paris next month.
“The panel concludes that she lacks standing to challenge the policy and the operational requirements in the framework of the present proceeding,” the court said Wednesday in its ruling.
Thomas became well known in 2022. After swimming in the men’s division, he started taking hormones to feminize himself and joined the women’s swim team at the University of Pennyslvania. Last year, he won the NCAA championship in the 500-meter freestyle — as a woman.
While University of Pennsylvania and the NCAA allowed Thomas to switch divisions, that’s where his swimming career appears to end.
The 25-year-old male-to-female transgender is banned from swimming as a female by the sport’s governing body in the United States.
Thus, the Olympic court, in a 24-page decision, said Thomas is “simply not entitled to engage with eligibility to compete in WA [World Athletics] competitions” because he isn’t a member of USA Swimming.”
In 2022, World Aquatics, the international governing body, also banned transgenders who have been through male puberty from competing in women’s competitions. Instead, it created an “open” category for transgender athletes.
To be clear, the Olympic Court of Arbitration is disqualifying Thomas because he is disqualified by his own nation’s swimming governing body. He is not being disqualified because he is a man.
With the ruling announced Wednesday, Thomas cannot participate in Olympics qualifying trials in Indianapolis, Indiana, June 15-23.
Riley Gaines, a former University of Kentucky collegiate swimming champion who has become an advocate for women and girl athletes, said the decision was “a victory for women and girls everywhere.”
Gaines, who visited Alaska earlier last year to promote the protection of women’s sports, took an elbow from NBC News, which criticized her by saying she had “misgendered” Thomas in her comments.
“Actually, @NBCNews, it would be you who misgendered Thomas. When a naked man exposes his p*nis to me & a room full of naked, vulnerable girls non-consensually, a gun to my head wouldn’t make me call him a ‘she’ now. Thomas is a man, therefore his correct pronouns are he/him,” Gaines wrote in response.
“The CAS decision is deeply disappointing,” said Thomas in a statement provided by his legal team. “Blanket bans preventing trans women from competing are discriminatory and deprive us of valuable athletic opportunities that are central to our identities. The CAS decision should be seen as a call to action to all trans women athletes to continue to fight for our dignity and human rights.”
Sergey Nefedov, 40, of Anchorage, and Mark Shumovich, 35, of Bellevue, Wash., were indicted this week for scheming to illegally export nearly $500,000 worth of snow machines and associated parts from the United States to Russia, without required licenses and approvals. The scheme was a violation of U.S. export laws and federally established sanctions on Russia. Nefedov and Shumovich were arrested in Alaska and Washington, respectively.
The two men, both Russia-born but naturalized citizens, are accused of coordinating with individuals doing business in Russia and Hong Kong to evade the U.S. export restrictions that were imposed on certain goods to Russia, in accordance with Executive Order 14068, which followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
A Russian national who owned a company selling snow machines in Russia conspired to purchase snowmachines and other motorsport vehicles from Nefedov’s company, Absolut Auto Sales LLC. Nefedov is also the owner of Alaska Sled Tours LLC.
According to the indictment, Nefedov and Shumovich got quotes from U.S.-based snowmachine distributors and freight forwarders to purchase and ship snowmachines to a company in Hong Kong, which wired funds to Nefedov’s company. Nefedov used those funds to purchase snow machines that they knew were destined for a Russian buyer in Vladivostok. The indictment says that Nefedov falsely identified the ultimate buyer as a company in South Korea and the purchaser as a company in Hong Kong, when in truth and fact, he knew the snow machines were destined for Russia and end users in Russia.
The two are said to have set up an email account and cloud-based file sharing to conceal their activities.
Nefedov and Shumovich are charged the following offenses, which carry associated maximum penalties as follows: conspiracy to unlawfully export goods from the United States and defraud the United States (five years in prison); false electronic export information activities (five years in prison); smuggling (10 years in prison); unlawful export without a license in violation of the Export Control Reform Act (20 years in prison); and conspiracy to commit international money laundering (20 years in prison).
Nefedov is also charged with money laundering and making a false statement in violation of the Export Control Reform Act, which both carry maximum penalties of 20 years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
The FBI, HSI and Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security Office of Export Enforcement are still investigating other aspects of this case, which was coordinated through the Justice Department’s Task Force KleptoCapture, an interagency law enforcement task force dedicated to enforcing the sanctions, export controls and economic countermeasures that the United States has imposed in response to Russia’s unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine.
The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously threw out a lawsuit that sought to block access to mifepristone, one of two drugs in a chemical cocktail used for abortions.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the drug in 2016, and expanded the use of the drug in 2021. The challengers didn’t make the case that they would be harmed by the FDA’s relaxed regulations on the drug’s use, and were just objecting to abortions in general. The correct place to make the objections, wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh, is with Congress or regulatory reform.
Mifepristone is used in over 60% of abortions. The challenge came through the federal appeals court in Texas from doctors and medical groups who oppose to abortion on religious or moral grounds and said the process used to approve the drug was flawed.
The Alaska Division of Oil & Gas held its annual lease sales for Cook Inlet and Alaska Peninsula regions in late May and early June, for a total of 7.9 million acres of state-owned land. On Wednesday, the division announced Hilcorp was the only bidder for the 725 leases available in Cook Inlet. As anticipated, there were no bidders for the 1,004 leases in the Alaska Peninsula region.
This was the second time the division offered terms that included no royalty payments to the State of Alaska, with the State instead generating revenue through a profit-sharing method. This allows the successful bidder to recover costs more quickly and it is intended to make marginal projects more economically viable.
Hilcorp, which started working in Alaska in 2011, as larger oil and gas producers were exiting Cook Inlet, is one of the largest privately owned oil and natural gas producers in the United States. It operates in Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wyoming.
It took over for BP on the North Slope in 2020 and has operated in Cook Inlet for nearly 15 years, investing over $1 billion in the Cook Inlet Basin and producing over 700 Bcf of gas since entering Alaska. In 2024, Hilcorp made its largest ever budget commitment to future activities within Alaska. It partners with more than 700 small businesses in the state and has donated more than $1.9 million to Alaska charities and nonprofits since 2020.
Jared Goecker, a candidate for the State Senate Seat L to represent Chugiak and Eagle River, has formed a finance committee comprised of some of the top names in conservative politics in Alaska.
Co-chairs of his finance team are former Lt. Gov. Craig Campbell, Anchorage Assemblyman Scott Myers, and former Alaska Republican Party Chairman Tuckerman Babcock.
Others on the team are Kelly Tshibaka, who is the Alaska chair of the Trump campaign; Sterling Gallagher, former Revenue commissioner and “architect of the Permanent Fund dividend;” and John Espindola, a former aide to Gov. Mike Dunleavy and a prominent Eagle River citizen.
Goecker is one of the candidates challenging Sen. Kelly Merrick, who has empowered the Democrats to take control of the Senate.
“This is a critical race for retaking the State Senate and it’s more important than ever to get behind the conservative who can win,” said Campbell. “Jared is that guy.”
The finance committee is set to enhance the campaign’s fundraising capabilities. The campaign will need the help, since there are two other Republicans also in the race: Sharon Jackson and Ken McCarty. Also, Merrick can’t be underestimated because she comes with the power and purse of the big unions in Alaska, including the AFL-CIO, and Laborers 341, where Merrick’s husband Joey Merrick is business manager/secretary-treasurer.
There is also one Democrat in the race — Lee Hammermeister.
“Jared’s mission is to get his message in front of as many voters as possible. Our mission as a committee is to make sure he is armed with the resources to do that,” Babcock said.
The Department of Justice’s Special Counsel Robert Hur revealed several months ago that Joe Biden is an “elderly man with a poor memory” who “did not remember when he was vice president.” Therefore, he would make a poor witness if prosecuted for his willful retention of classified materials throughout his 36 years in the Senate and eight years as vice president.
Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials,” that he kept in cardboard boxes in his garage in Wilmington, Del., in piles of things that contained “household detritus.” He also stored classified documents in other locations, according to the 388-page report to the Justice Department, finalized late last year.
Among the junk in Biden’s garage were documents that “remains classified up to the Top Secret level and includes Sensitive Compartmented Information, including from compartments used to protect information concerning human intelligence sources,” the report says.
“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” the Hur report said. “Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
In the U.S. House on Wednesday, Rep. Mary Peltola voted to protect the tapes of the interview that Hur had with Biden, tapes that Attorney General Merrick Garland refuses to provide Congress. Today’s vote, 216-207, held Garland in contempt of Congress, with Peltola sticking with the Democrats to protect the public from learning just how senile Biden really is.
On Meet the Press in late December, Peltola defended Biden as mentally sharp and that “as a native person, I think age is a good thing. Wisdom and experience are a good thing.”
Peltola continued, “I think that Joe Biden’s mental acuity is very, very on. He’s one of the smartest, sharpest people I’ve met in D.C.”
That was not the Special Counsel’s assessment. Hur said Biden did not remember the dates he was vice president when his son Beau died, “even within several years.” Her says Biden “appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him.”
Hur said Biden’s legal council would “emphasize these limitations in his recall” if the case went to trial.
On Wednesday evening, Garland issued a rebuke to House Republicans as he continued to refuse turning over the tapes that could show that the president is compromised by dementia: “It is deeply disappointing that this House of Representatives has turned a serious congressional authority into a partisan weapon. Today’s vote disregards the constitutional separation of powers, the Justice Department’s need to protect its investigations, and the substantial amount of information we have provided to the Committees.”
Since Garland oversees the Department of Justice, it is nearly impossible to imagine a scenario in which the department would investigate the contempt charge. The president has exerted executive privilege over the recordings.
It’s a bit of a moonshot for the environmental litigation industry, but they’re giving it their all: Several environmental groups filed a petition Wednesday with the Department of Interior, demanding an analysis of the harm that the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System does to the climate, and calling for the department to not grant a right-of-way extension in 2034 and begin phasing out TAPS.
TAPS transports about 480,000 barrels of crude oil every day from Alaska’s North Slope to Valdez, where it is shipped to refineries. It has the capacity for 2 million barrels per day, but has not seen levels exceeding 1.8 million since the heyday of Alaska’s oil boom. Alaska, once a major oil producer, has dropped to fifth place and now produces less than 4% of the nation’s oil.
Because Alaska is now a minor oil producing province, it’s an easier target for environmental lawsuits than, say, Texas or New Mexico.
The Center for Biological Diversity, Pacific Environment, Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition, and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility submitted the petition, saying that the international scientific consensus is that there must be a rapid transition away from fossil fuels.
The environmentalists also claim the pipeline harms “caribou, polar bears and other vulnerable wildlife and subsistence resources in Alaska.”
“We can’t wait 10 more years for federal officials to wake up to the daily climate devastation Alaska’s oil pipeline enables,” said Cooper Freeman, Alaska director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Not only are they ignoring current threats, but fossil fuel extraction is actually expected to grow on the North Slope in the coming years. To ward off climate devastation here in Alaska and globally, we have to move quickly to plan for the end of this pipeline. The sooner we confront reality and put all our energy toward a rapid and just transition away from oil, the better.”
The group claims that massive new drilling projects on federal and state lands on Alaska’s North Slope, including the Willow and Pikka projects, could dramatically increase the oil transiting the pipeline in the coming years, although even the Willow and Pike projects are only projected to stem the decline of what is being squeezed out of other aging fields.
Rick Whitbeck, Alaska director for Power the Future, responded, “The absurdity of this petition is unbelievable. Just where do the groups think the thousands of items they touch weekly come from? Petroleum, in all of its processed forms. Would they rather wear their Patagonia and Salmon Sister boots made from Chinese or Russian oil, or from the U.S.? How do they plan to announce their next Church of Climate Change revival without phones, computers, Internet service and message boards only made possible because of the labors of hundreds of thousands of American oil and gas workers.”
Whitbeck continued, “To demand an end to TAPS is to gut Alaska’s economic engine, and it ignores a simple truth: the North Slope is seeing a renaissance because the world needs more oil, not less. There is no climate crisis, nor is there a reason to turn our daily lives upside down because the doom-and-gloom wailing of a lunatic fringe says so.”
The Bureau of Land Management projects that Willow will deliver up to $17 billion in new revenue for the federal government, State of Alaska, and Alaska Native communities. When completed, Willow is estimated to produce approximately 600 million barrels across the 30-year lifetime of the project, which will lower American dependence on foreign energy supplies. The project is supported by the majority of Alaskans and is designed to support and coexist with subsistence activities on Alaska’s North Slope. The Willow Project survived five years of regulatory, environmental, and environmental litigation. It will create 2,500 construction jobs and about 300 long-term jobs.
“Enhancements in oil recovery techniques that are unlocking huge ‘heavy’ oil deposits in existing fields could also contribute to even more oil in the pipeline,” the group breathlessly claims.
“To build a healthy economy that doesn’t further warm the planet, Alaska must transition beyond fossil fuels,” said Kay Brown, Arctic policy director at Pacific Environment and former executive director of the Alaska Democratic Party, where she is a member of the party’s “Climate Caucus.”
Brown warned, “Alaska is warming faster than any other state and nearly four times faster than the global average. As the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System approaches the end of its life, climate change is impacting Alaska and the Arctic region significantly. It’s time for the Department of the Interior to review this nearly 50-year-old aging infrastructure and put a plan in place to decommission it. Alaska can have a thriving economy based on its abundant renewable energy as the world transitions away from fossil fuels.”
The nearly 50-year-old pipeline is also increasingly threatened by climate change-driven environmental shifts and events, such as thawing permafrost and major floods. The pipeline was originally projected to have a life expectancy of 30 years, and the risk of oil spills grows annually, the groups warn.
Pamela Miller of the Alaska Community Action on Toxics says to allow the pipeline to remain operational is “foolhardy” and “sadly ironic” that the pipeline is in “peril” because of climate change.
“It’s foolhardy for the Department of the Interior to ignore the hazards associated with further dependence on fossil fuels and aging infrastructure of the TAPS given the climate crisis that we are facing,” said Miller. “It is sadly ironic that the pipeline is in peril largely because of climate warming and lack of planning for this consequence. We call on Interior for a visionary approach to stopping harmful oil development and to make it possible for a quick transition to clean, renewable energy. BLM must implement a plan to safely decommission the pipeline.”
The coalition points out that the right of way granted by the Bureau of Land Management in 1974 was renewed in 2004 and is set to expire in 2034. They are gearing up now to ensure that it doesn’t get renewed in 10 years.
“Alaskans are on the frontlines of climate tipping points,” said Tara Starlight, communications manager at Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition. “We must act urgently to ensure that Alaskans do not also bear the brunt of inevitable and enormous costs for Dismantlement, Removal, and Restoration (DR&R) of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline when the time comes due. If we seize the opportunity to plan ahead and include impacted communities early, we can build a future that ensures the health of people and our ecosystems.”
Today’s petition argues that “an abundance of new information, including new science about the climate crisis, the risk of oil spills, and harms to people and wildlife from fossil fuel development shows that the existing analysis is woefully outdated.”
What it ignores is that dismantling Alaska’s pipeline would destroy the state’s economy and turn it into another Appalachia, with a few pockets of isolated residents who would languish in poverty, while the environmental nonprofit groups thrive in their cities of the Lower 48.
The petition asks Interior to “immediately initiate and complete a supplemental environmental impact statement, include meaningful alternatives and mitigation measures, and draft a plan for the decommissioning, removal and restoration of the pipeline.”
The Alaska Division of Elections has returned the second voting location to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. It was removed during the Covid pandemic policies that drove many consequential decisions leading up to the 2022 election.
“Thirty-seven precinct polling locations in District 14, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21 and 22, as well as the other three District 18 precinct polling locations are geographically closer to the JBER Elmendorf side voters than their current Precinct 18-555 polling location at Ursa Minor Elementary School. No other Anchorage voters north of Tudor Road are required to travel two miles to cast their ballot. The 14.5 mile JBER’s Elmendorf side to Ursa Minor Elementary round-trip drive time for on-duty military personnel exceeds 30 minutes,” said election expert and former Alaska Republican Party Chairman Randy Ruedrich, earlier this year.
“I want to thank the Division of Elections for giving our military members equal opportunity to vote. They have difficult work schedules and to allow them to vote before, during, or after work — they deserve that opportunity. If they have to go all the way to Muldoon, they are not going to have time. It’s the least we can do for these men and women — and their families — who have volunteered to serve our nation,” said Rep. Jamie Allard. “Eagle River House District 23 has the highest military-per-capita in the state.”
The division also adopted regulation changes in Title 6 of the Alaska Administrative Code, including clarification on the required forms of identification provided by voters, spoiled ballots, clean-up language, and new precinct boundaries.
The regulations concern changes to state elections requirements, including updates to the Guide for Poll Watchers and Registrar Handbook; clarifications on matters of voter registration, declarations of candidacy, identification on voter registration forms, and recount costs; and process updates concerning removal of a candidate from a special election ballot, how a candidate may change a designation or affiliation information, withdrawal of a write-in candidate, and the replacement of a candidate for governor or lieutenant governor if a candidacy becomes vacant before a primary election.
Other changes update the standards concerning complaints and investigations of candidate eligibility, numerical ordering of candidates on a ballot, registration for absentee by mail voting; statements supporting or rejecting a proposition or constitutional convention question; regional educational attendance area (REAA) elections; and Division of Elections office locations for purposes of REAA elections. New sections of code have been added dealing with special needs ballots and aligning spoiled ballot requirements with statute.
Notably, Precinct 18-555 JBER has been returned into two precincts – 18-555 JBER #1and 18-556 JBER #2 – to allow for in-person polling places on both the Fort Richardson and Elmendorf sides of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. This change will be in effect for the upcoming election cycle and will provide our military members residing on JBER with better access to in-person voting, the Division said in a memo.
The division will notify registered voters in the new precincts of the change and provide updated voter cards.
The regulations take effect on July 11, 2024. A copy of the regulation filing and associated documents can be found at this link.
The U.S. inflation rate, which hit a 40-year high after the Covid policies kicked in, has eased off, in part due to the increase in interest rates set by the Federal Reserve.
The year-over-year inflation rate sits at 3.3% as of May. That is 30% higher than the 2% target.
Around the country, the rate of inflation impacts people differently. WalletHub compared 23 major metropolitan statistical areas across two key metrics retailed to the Consumer Price Index, which measures inflation.
Anchorage came in sixth out of the top 23 cities with high inflation, meaning that inflation is higher in Anchorage than most other metropolitan areas the economic website evaluated. Last month, it was in the No. 8 spot, which means it’s just gotten more expensive in Anchorage.
This news comes at a time when the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation is making a move to establish a sales tax of 3% in Alaska’s largest city.
View the WalletHub comparison of city inflation rates here;
Anchorage’s inflation is increasing more rapidly than most metropolitan areas, according to the analysis by WalletHub, coming in at No. 2, right after Detroit.
