On X/Twitter, the Alaska Democratic Party doubled down in its support of Rep. Mary Peltola, even though Peltola has committed a possible crime by offering “FREE BEER!” to people as a way to lure them into her campaign headquarters in Fairbanks.
“This guy doesn’t like free beer!!!” the Democrats commented, responding to Republican candidate Nick Begich’s criticism of Peltola about offering pints to voters instead of good policy positions.
Alaska Democratic Party offers support for using free beer as a campaign marketing tactic.
The advertising of free alcohol as a marketing tactic is a violation of Alaska law. But the Alaska Democratic Party thinks it’s a joke.
Nearly all of Peltola’s home region of Western Alaska is dry, by choice. Native village leaders in Alaska have long understood how serious alcoholism has been in their communities. According to research, up to 15% of Alaska Natives are dependent on alcohol.
Western Alaska villages that are dry are shown in red.
Under federal law, Alaska Native villages have the right to banish chronic inebriates from their communities. The fathers, uncles, and grandfathers of rural Alaska too often up on the streets of Anchorage, making it Alaska’s largest Native village.
Peltola established herself as “fish, family, freedom,” role model for Native Alaskans. She regularly tips a glass at her fundraisers in the city and has a war chest that allows her to buy free booze for anyone who comes in the campaign door, while Native grandparents raising their grandchildren because of the damage done to the Native community are left to wonder about her authenticity.
Iliamna Natives Limited and the Alaska Peninsula Corporation filed a lawsuitagainst the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday, alleging the EPA overstepped its authority with its final decision to axe the Pebble Mine project.
Both the State of Alaska and the parent company of Pebble have similar lawsuits filed over the January 2023 final decision, with its preemptive determination under Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act to prohibit and restrict areas areas in the watershed of Bristol Bay as disposal sites for discharges of dredged or fill material associated with developing the Pebble Deposit or any other similar project on State-owned lands in the area. The logic of the EPA would mean that no mining could take place in the 40,000-square-mile area that is part of the Bristol Bay watershed
“The EPA’s pre-emptive veto was only thought of as legal if you’re bought-and-paid-for by the radical environmentalists and commercial fishing activists who have opposed Pebble for nearly 20 years,” said Rick Whitbeck, Alaska state director for Power the Future. “With lawsuits now filed by the State, the Pebble Limited Partnership and the Alaska Natives who live closest to the proposed mine site, we can hope the courts find in favor of rational thought, sound science and Alaska’s future, and against the fear-over-facts narrative of the anti-Pebble, pro-China and Russia crowd.”
The lawsuit is filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative public interest law practice that has fought for private property rights since it began in 1973.
“The EPA doesn’t get to veto any development project it doesn’t like,” said Damien Schiff, attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation who is representing the two organizations that are the plaintiffs. “When Congress wants to give an agency power, it must also give it specific instructions on how and when that power can be used. EPA claims unlimited discretion: that is unconstitutional.”
Both Iliamna and Alaska Peninsula had contracted with Pebble’s parent company Northern Dynasty to provide services to the mining company.
“Those contracts created real opportunities for full employment to villages that had previously been suffering diasporas due to chronic lack of economic opportunities and enabled the village corporations to grow — providing a desperately needed financial lifeline to their communities. The promise of the mine made Iliamna the largest employer in the area and allowed Alaska Peninsula to pay benefits to its shareholders for the first time in years,” Pacific Legal Foundation wrote.
“But then the EPA vetoed the mine project because it claimed that it would have an unacceptable adverse effect on salmon fisheries — a conclusion contradicted by the Army Corps of Engineers’ findings. The EPA claims that Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act gives it the power to decide what counts as ‘adverse’ or ‘unacceptable’ effects without clearly defining these terms,” essentially giving it a blank check to stop projects that environmentalists don’t like, for whatever reason, the foundation said.
“The Clean Water Act provides a comprehensive permitting regime for the United States Army Corps of Engineers to authorize projects involving the discharge of dredged and fill material into navigable waters. But after setting out standards to govern such permitting, Congress authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to take an end-run around the permitting review process,” the lawsuit stated.
“In so doing, Congress unconstitutionally delegated to EPA the authority to override the CWA’s permitting process virtually whenever the EPA Administrator deems fit,” the lawsuit said. “EPA has now asserted its ‘veto power’ to kill a mining project in Bristol Bay at the Pebble deposit, which is the largest gold- and copper-ore deposit in the world. If EPA had not exercised its unbounded discretion to veto the project, mine development would have continued.”
John Shively, CEO of the Pebble Partnership, said in a statement, “We have local support for the project, and the Final Environmental Impact Statement for Pebble, as published by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, describes in detail the many benefits from Pebble including employment, reduction in the cost of living, and significant local tax revenues. It further documents how local fishing permits continue to migrate to non-Alaskans and a high percentage of commercial fishing jobs are held by non-residents.
Those who oppose Pebble have not provided any alternative that would improve the economy of this area, he said: These two Native Village Corporations understand that the EPA and our opposition care little about their future.”
Anchorage Police Chief Bianca Cross is not being retained by Mayor-elect Suzanne LaFrance, Must Read Alaska has learned. Chief Cross notified the police force in an email early today.
Chief Cross took office on April 29, having worked in policing since 1997 when she joined APD as a recruit. Cross is the first female chief of the department. During her 26-plus-year career at APD, she worked as a patrol officer, supervisor, burglary detective in the Property Crimes Detective Division, sexual assault detective in the Special Victims Unit, homicide detective and supervisor in the Homicide Unit, and a commander of the Violent Crimes Detective Division.
Chief Cross has a bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice and a master’s degree in Business Administration. She was the recipient of the 2020 Alaska Association of Chiefs of Police Officer of the Year and the 2018 Anchorage Police Department Leadership Award. She replaced Chief Michael Kerle, who retired in April.
Former Deputy Chief Sean Case, who is close with the Leftist Assembly and Mayor-elect LaFrance, will be named to step in as the chief, although the announcement has not been made by the LaFrance team.
Update: The announcement of the change was made at noon on Tuesday.
A group of Republican senators have written to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas regarding reports of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arresting eight Tajikistan men who are suspected to have terror ties to ISIS and who crossed the southern border to enter the U.S. last year and this year.
Reportedly, two of these military-aged men crossed the border in spring 2023, and one of them used the “CBP One” telephone app to enter the U.S.
“We are deeply concerned by reports that a wiretap shows that one of the now-arrested individuals was talking about bombs and that the target of the wiretap was previously released by federal authorities at the southern border with a court date of next year. We are further concerned by reports that federal authorities vetting these individuals upon entry into the U.S. did not detect any ties to ISIS at the time and only discovered these ties ‘[l]ater and in recent weeks,'”the senators wrote.
Border Patrol agents have been releasing inadmissible illegal foreign nationals into the country by giving them orders to appear before an immigration judge, but not for many months or even years.
The senators told Mayorkas that just recently FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress that he sees a “potential for a coordinated attack here in the homeland, akin to the ISIS-K attack we saw at the Russia concert hall a couple weeks ago,” referring to ISIS’ affiliate organization in Afghanistan, ISIS-Khorasan that is blamed for killing at least 133 and wounding more than 100 with a bomb detonated at a concert. Wray also said he is “very concerned’ about “smuggling network” with “overseas facilitators” that “have ISIS ties.”
“Due to the grave nature of these threats to the American public, we request that the Department of Homeland Security brief the undersigned senators or their staff and respond to the following questions by June 25, 2024,” the letter said. The questions that the senators want answers to by Tuesday are:
What are the names and identities of the arrested individuals?
When and where did they enter the U.S. and for what purpose? Did they present themselves at a port of entry or enter between the ports of entry?
Did these arrested individuals claim asylum when they entered the U.S.? If so, how was their asylum claim resolved?
What was the vetting process for these arrested individuals when they entered the U.S.? Did the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have information indicating that these arrested individuals posed a criminal or national security threat when they entered the U.S.? Did DHS accidentally release them into the U.S.?
Are these arrested individuals members of ISIS or another terrorist organization?
Are these arrested individuals part of a broader network inside the U.S.?
Were these arrested individuals planning a terrorist attack or taking actions in preparation for a terrorist attack?
Do these arrested individuals possess weapons, explosives, or other dangerous items, or other items that could be used to plan or conduct a terrorist attack?
Leading the letter was Sen. Ted Budd of North Carolina, and signers included Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, John Hoeven of North Dakota, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Mike Lee of Utah, John Thune of South Dakota, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Rick Scott of Florida, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Todd Young of Indiana, Shelley Capito of West Virginia, John Cornyn of Texas, Steve Daines of Montana, Eric Schmitt of Missouri, JD Vance of Ohio, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, and Tim Scott of South Carolina.
A fourth Alaska Republican women’s club has thrown its endorsement to Nick Begich for Congress. That makes four out of the seven Republican women’s clubs in Alaska that are not endorsing Nancy Dahlstrom.
The latest club is the Republican Women of the Kenai, joining the other peninsula-based Republican club in saying yes to Begich, even though Donald Trump last week caved to the National Republican Congressional Committee, which recruited Dahlstrom to run against Begich.
The Republican clubs endorsing Begich are all voting members of the party’s State Central Committee:
– Kenai Peninsula Republican Women
– Kenai Republican Women
– Valley Republican Women of Alaska
– Fairbanks Republican Women
The August primary election is now an open primary, due to Ballot Measure 2, which broke the long-standing tradition of allowing parties to advance their candidates to the general election. Now, the top four vote-getters in August will be placed on the November ballot unless one of them drops out, in which case the next candidate with the the most votes advances to the November election. The November ballot is a ranked-choice operation, with voters picking first, second, and third choices. It’s a squirrelly system that makes outcomes somewhat unpredictable this far away. In 2022, Begich came in third after Sarah Palin and ultimate winner Democrat Mary Peltola.
Begich, who filed one year ago to try again, is running as an underdog in a race that has incumbent Peltola, with her millions of nationally sourced Democrat dollars at her disposal, and Republican Nancy Dahlstrom, who filed in November and who is Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s pick, as well as the pick of the former president.
But the women Republicans of Alaska are going their own way, and they represent the backbone, hands, and hearts of the Republican Party in Alaska, with their legendary grassroots activism. Begich may be outspent in this race, but it appears he has the growing support of the conservative base.
Alaskans are accustomed to reading about the thinning out of predators like bears and wolves in Alaska to enable the caribou and moose to thrive.
But in Texas, they’re thinning out human predators around the country. Or sometimes just outing them on social media.
Alex Rosen, the founder of Houston-based vigilante organization “Predator Poachers,” conducted a sting operation that has evidently ensnared the LGBTQ+ chairman of the Maryland Democratic Party — a high-profile Democrat leader who has been a regular guest at the White House and at Vice President Kamala Harris’ home.
With a camera rolling, Rosen confronted Michael Knaapen after he had allegedly communicated with Knaapan for over an hour through the fake persona of a 14-year-old boy, which Rosen says Knaapen then proceeded to send sexual messages and videos to, including photos and videos of himself masturbating.
“Rosen walked up to Knaapen while he was in a restaurant and brought him outside to engage him about the messages he allegedly had with the teenager. Rosen asked Knaapen about multiple different explicit messages that he was allegedly sending to a 14-year-old boy. Knaapen seemed to admit to the messages on video,” wrote the Post Millennial website.
The Maryland Democratic Party has since removed all evidence of Knaapen from its website after Rosen made public the receipts from that online encounter on Thursday. Knaapen has erased all of his own social media presence.
In an edgier version of the television show “To Catch a Predator,” Rosen launched Predator Poachers in 2019 to get pedophiles who use the internet for hunting their young prey locked up.
“Predator Poachers is a group of independent journalists and private citizens who travel the country conducting intervention-style sting operations to catch child predators. OUR MISSION is to take pedophiles offline, off the streets, and away from kids, one predator at a time,” his website states.
Head of LGBTQ Dems of Maryland gets graphic and solicits 14-year-old boy…
Rosen’s website claims to have helped with evidence that led to the arrest of at least three men who were trying to meet children as young as 9 on the internet.
In the video of the encounter, Rosen can be be heard repeating to Knaapen what he had supposedly written to Rosen: “Some of this stuff said here … like, you know, ‘I want to rape you,’ … ‘I want to see how much of a fa–ot you are.'”
At that point another member of the Predator Poacher team added, “You said, ‘I hope you try to get away once I start f—ing you. You need a good raping.'”
“I like the fantasy,” said the man who is said to be Knaapan. “And he seemed to enjoy it and I didn’t know this person and I never intended to do it. I thought it was sexy and fun, and I don’t picture the kid.”
Until his profile was removed from the Democrats’ website, it stated, “His profile on the Maryland Democrats page stated, “Michael Knaapen (Mike, he/him) is a native Wisconsinite who has lived in Montgomery County, Maryland, for all but one of the past ten years. There he has helped form and lead the LGBTQ Democrat of Montgomery County, lobbied in Annapolis for LGBTQ measures, and organized Stonewall Riot commemorative events.”
Knaapen will not be prosecuted, Rosen explained, because according to state law of Maryland, the recipient of such sexual overtures must either be a police officer or a child. Otherwise, a citizen-led sting does not qualify as a chargeable offense.
Following Rep Mary’s Peltola’s election in 2022, Alaskans have awaited the 2024 election for the opportunity to remove her from office. Having previously run against Peltola in 2022, Nick Begich has again chosen to take on the challenge of running as a Republican for House in an effort to secure Alaska’s future.
“I’m an America-First candidate.” Begich stated during an interview on STAND, with Kelly and Niki Tshibaka. Peltola, he argued, does not have Alaska’s best interests in mind. “People run for the right reasons…and they start to compromise…and this is the problem we have with our current representative in office.”
Begich spent the interview discussing topics important to Alaskans, including the complications surrounding resource development, the troubles with ranked choice voting, and the intolerable social extremism of the radical left.
“It’s common sense values that are on the ballot this election.” Begich said. “It’s the left, the radical left today, that is trying to deconstruct that constitutional republic. That form of government that we so value.”
Begich also highlighted the many issues he and Alaskans have with Peltola’s representation, especially about her flimsy stance on resource development.
He told the story about how Peltola undermined Alaskans on a bill the House introduced to push back on Biden’s attack on Alaska’s resource development. “Mary Peltola in committee votes for it, says she’s supportive of it. It hits the House floor and she sends a ‘Dear Colleague’ letter to all the Democrats and says, ‘Please, I urge you, vote no on the bill’ that she had just co-sponsored and voted for in committee! And then, when it actually came up for the vote, she didn’t vote yes, she didn’t vote no, she voted ‘present.’ And that is a gutless decision, a gutless move from someone who is supposed to be supposedly her words, carrying on the legacy of our former Congressman Don Young.”
He also expressed Alaskans’ concerns with her high rate of staff turnover. “She has one of the highest staff turnovers in Congress…she’s definitely in the top five,” Begich pointed out.
The interview also covered Peltola’s endorsement of Joe Biden for president, refusal to denounce anti-Semitism, and her massive amount of non-Alaskan campaign funding.
Begich also pointed out that Rep. Peltola votes 90% of the time with Nancy Pelosi and 85% of the time with leftist squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar.
“If there’s anything that I’m certain of when it comes to Alaskan political ideology,” Begich said, “it’s that we would never hire Nancy Pelosi to be our representative. She is a San Francisco Democrat. We have nothing in common with her. She has no interest in seeing Alaska grow or develop. And yet here Mary Peltola is voting in virtually lockstep with her.”
Begich, on the other hand, has vowed to be a conservative, Alaska and America First candidate, should he be elected to office. “America does best when government is small, kept in its lane, and the people are left alone”, he declared.
Begich has been endorsed by America First candidates like Vivek Ramaswamy, Congressman Scott Perry, and Congressman Byron Donalds.
To hear more about Begich’s campaign and his plan for Alaska’s future, catch the newest episode of STAND. You can also view the episode on YouTube, Rumble, and your podcast streaming platform.
Kelly Tshibaka is the host of the podcast, TV, and radio show STAND, and the 2022 Alaska Republican candidate for U.S. Senate. She co-hosts the show with her husband, Niki Tshibaka.
Nearly a month after the land-fast ice went out at Nome in Western Alaska, the ice has left the shore in Barrow, also known as Utqiagvik, population 4,383.
Summer has arrived in America’s northernmost city at coordinates 71° 17′ 33″ N, 156° 47′ 18″, and there is now open water in front of the town that is 3,481 straight-line air miles from Washington, D.C. For most of the year, the ice hugs the shore and extends far out into the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. But now, the sound of water lapping the shore has returned until about December, when it will freeze again.
Watch the ice leave in this video, a collection of still shots taken every five minutes from the camera mounted on the Wells Fargo Bank building:
The camera is approximately 65 feet above sea level and looks over the shoreline, pointed approximately northward. It’s operated by the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
You can watch the continuously updated shore ice and ice floes disappear at the video at this link.
The temperatures in Barrow will be warm this week, with a high of 41 F on Monday but as warm at 62 F on Wednesday, with lows in the mid 30s all week, as the Nalukataq Festival is underway to celebrate the whale hunting traditions of the town.
There are three things that large majorities of Alaskans, and Americans, right, left and center, can agree on. One is the need to stop the reckless deficit spending, and the ballooning national debt, which are causing inflation. Another is the need to impose term limits on members of Congress. The third is reform of a campaign finance system which currently corrupts Congress and gives incumbents an enormous advantage as they seek reelection.
None of these reforms will ever get through Congress. All will require the use of Article V to amend the Constitution. Short of revolution, it’s the only way any of them can happen.
First up will be fiscal reform. The need is urgent, and there may already be enough valid Article V resolutions on this subject to force Congress to call the first Article V Convention of States.
When that Convention takes place, legislative leaders from all 50 states, Republican and Democrat, will be charged with crafting a solution which is satisfactory to a large supermajority of the country. Friendships will naturally form, relationships will be established. When they have finished their business, it will only be natural for them to ask themselves,, “Is there anything else we can agree on?”
Term limits for Congress is a no brainer. Large, bipartisan majorities of voters want it, and opening up Congress to new blood will give some of these state legislators an opportunity to advance their own careers. Delegates to the Convention will be the leaders of their respective state legislatures and can agree among themselves that they will go home and pass the needed Article V resolutions for a 2nd Convention of States, to propose a term limits amendment.
Once that’s done, campaign finance reform should be the next item on the Article V agenda. Among the delegates to the 1787 Convention there was great distrust of the state legislatures, where hostility to a new federal Constitution was rampant. Madison, in particular, didn’t want to give these legislatures control over congressional elections. He feared that they would use that power to somehow hamstring the new Congress. So, in Article I, Sec. 4, he inserted a provision giving Congress the power to regulate the “Times, Places, and Manner” of its own elections.
This may have made sense at the time, but in modern practice it has turned out to be a serious problem. Congress has constructed campaign finance laws so that challengers to incumbent Congressmen are at a huge disadvantage. The easy and practical way to solve this problem is to amend Article I, Section 4 to give each state the authority to control its own campaign finance law. The state legislatures would control congressional campaign finance and can impose a new campaign finance regime which would result in a more level playing field and reduce endemic corruption. Each state will have its own law. Citizen initiatives could be used to institute campaign finance restrictions which legislatures refuse to pass.
Thus, the laws of Alaska will be quite different from the laws of New York, which is fine. It’s called federalism, and it works. Delegates to a 3rd Convention of States, dealing with campaign finance, would be empowering themselves, at the expense of Congress. From their perspective, what’s not to like?
At this point such talk is mere speculation. But what is beyond doubt is that the first use of Article V in almost 240 years will begin a process of reviving federalism, a bedrock constitutional principle which has eroded over time, as the federal government has amassed more and more power, at the expense of the states. It would be a concrete demonstration of the fact that, ultimately, the states, acting collectively, can control the federal government.
When state legislators pass Article V resolutions, they are attempting to return political power to their states, and themselves, at the expense of Congress and the federal government. Returning power to the states, and the people, from a bloated and dysfunctional federal government is good policy, and good politics.
It’s an idea whose time has come. If and when it happens, it would be historic, a watershed.
In 1988 Rep. Fritz Pettyjohn introduced HJR 54, an Article V resolution calling for the limitation of congressional terms. He blogs at ReaganProject.com.
