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.
A federal court on Tuesday handed Texas its first win in a lawsuit filed against the Biden administration over a mandate issued by two federal agencies before the administration amended Title IX to redefine biological sex to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”
Title IX, which is part of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
The law was enacted at a time when women and girls had limited athletic opportunities. “Before Title IX, few opportunities existed for female athletes,” according to History.com. After Title IX, participation in female sports increased exponentially, the girl’s high school dropout rate decreased and the number of women pursuing higher education and who completed college degrees increased, it says.
Under the Obama and Biden administrations, regulatory efforts sought to redefine sex to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” by providing an unfair advantage to biological boys and men wanting to compete in women’s sports, a coalition of attorneys general have argued. In 2022, they opposed a Biden administration plan to reimpose Obama-era changes to Title IX that the Trump administration ended.
Despite widespread opposition, including from women’s groups, the Biden administration began amending Title IX through several methods, arguing doing so would “advance educational equity and opportunity for women and girls across the country.”
It proposed a rule change to change the law and issued mandates through the U.S. Department of Education and Department of Justice, agencies responsible for administering and enforcing Title IX.
In response to the proposed rule changes, a coalition of 18 AGs pushed back, arguing the changes “demolished” women’s and girls’ rights, “making a mockery of Title IX’s fundamental organization principle – basic biology.”
In response to the agency mandates, in June 2023, Texas sued, arguing agency guidance was “arbitrary and capricious” and “unlawfully extended Title IX to include ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ as protected classes.”
Earlier this year, after the Biden administration formalized its rule change to Title IX, multiple states sued. Texas filed its own lawsuit. Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and Idaho filed a separate lawsuit. Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina filed a third lawsuit, The Center Square reported.
On Tuesday, the first court ruling handed Texas a win, setting a precedent for rulings to come.
Judge Reed O’Connor, presiding over the U.S. District Court Northern District of Texas Fort Worth Division, said the issue he was asked to rule on was “whether the federal government may lawfully impose conditions on a state’s educational institutions by purporting to interpret Title IX of the 1972 Educational Amendments as prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”
“The court concludes that Defendants cannot regulate state educational institutions in this way without violating federal law,” he wrote in his 112-page ruling. He also said the DOE and DOJ “engaged in unlawful agency action taken in excess of their authority, all while failing to adhere to the appropriate notice and comments requirements when doing so.”
O’Connor chastised the agencies, saying they “failed to follow the proper procedures. Rather than promote the equal opportunity, dignity, and respect that Title IX demands for both biological sexes, [the DOE’s] Guidance Documents do the opposite in an effort to advance an agenda wholly divorced from the text, structure, and contemporary context of Title IX.”
He said to allow the administration’s “unlawful action to stand would be to functionally rewrite Title IX in a way that shockingly transforms American education and usurps a major question from Congress. That is not how our democratic system functions.”
Although Mayor-elect Suzanne LaFrance has not taken office yet, the rollout of a new proposed sales tax for Anchorage was already ready to go, and the website is up and running.
The Anchorage Economic Development Corporationhas launched Project Anchorage, to get a 3% sales tax in place — because city government doesn’t have enough to work with.
The idea is to start taxing sales of goods at 3%, but that could and likely will increase over time.
The promise being made by the group is that the new tax will reduce property taxes, which are higher than they would be because of the large number of property tax exemptions that have been given out by the city, shifting the tax burden to homeowners.
“Led by the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation (AEDC), we have met since the summer of 2023 to develop a proposal that would implement a temporary 3% sales tax to reduce property taxes, and invest in quality of life enhancing capital projects,” the Project Anchorage group says.
It also says it is copying Oklahoma City. That’s a city where former Democrat Mayor Ethan Berkowitz paid a visit during his term in office to get ideas about good governance.
“Our proposal takes inspiration from Oklahoma City, which used a similar initiative to successfully reverse years of economic decline, beginning in the 1990s. After implementing a 1% sales tax to fund dozens of projects such as a new canal and waterfront entertainment district, sports stadium, downtown library, and convention center – not only did voters reauthorize the sales tax multiple times since the program began, but Oklahoma City has seen incredible population and economic growth as a result of this public investment,” AEDC says.
But while the Oklahoma City sales tax started at 1%, it’s now at 4.13%, and combined with the state sales tax, it’s over 8.6%. This is something Project Anchorage doesn’t reveal in its literature.
The group plans to get the question on the April 2025 ballot. It has many supporters on the Assembly and with the incoming mayor.
Unlike Oklahoma City’s starter sales tax of 1%, the Anchorage proposal would start with a 3% sales tax, set to sunset after 5 years. In reality, the municipality would return to voters for reauthorization of the tax and make it hard to say no.
As currently proposed by the group, this new tax will reduce property taxes and use some of the money to make Anchorage “a more attractive place to live and visit.”
“Projects would be sourced from an extensive public input process, and selected before the initiative is taken to voters for a final decision,” the group promises. In addition, of course, voters would be asked to pass more bonds.
Food, childcare, medical expenses, gasoline, and banking services would be exempt from the tax, which would also apply to just the first $1,000 of any eligible purchase.
The Anchorage Economic Development Corporation is often criticized by conservatives for having produced nothing of value in the past few years, under the direction of recently resigned Bill Popp. Popp brought in no business to speak of but held an annual luncheon to describe the poor economy to the business leaders of the city. Now, with its new leader, Jenna Wright, the mission is no longer just providing reports on the economy, but taxing the public.
It’s a far cry from the early days of AEDC, when it helped bring in a cargo hub economy for the airport and made it possible for the Alyeska Resort to become a destination, by helping to facilitate a major hotel project. But that was decades ago.
“Remember, that the AEDC organization was run by Bill Popp who claims to be ‘non-partisan,'” explained Bob Baer on the NextDoor website. Popp unsuccessfully ran for mayor, peeling off business votes from incumbent Mayor Dave Bronson. “Keep an eye on him. I suspect that behind the scene, this 3% tax has been proposed by Mr. Popp, in conjunction with Project Anchorage, and the new director of the AEDC. They indicate that a portion of the sales tax, and future increases in the sales tax revenues, will be applied to a reduction to real estate property taxes, and the balance would be used to build or improve ‘public amenities.’ If the sales tax were to be included in the tax cap, that might be a good thing, as long as real estate taxes were reduced accordingly.”
During his tenure at AEDC, Popp pushed hard for tax exemptions on certain commercial and residential properties, both downtown and in other areas of Anchorage. When large property tax exemptions are allowed, the amount of the exempt taxes are indirectly paid by the remaining taxpayers, says Baer, who is a real estate broker. Thus, after exempting so many properties in town from the property tax, the city now wants to make up for that by enacting a sales tax.
“If the sales tax is approved at 3%, it will surely go higher,” Baer points out.
While the Project Anchorage group has major support from business players like the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce, Visit Anchorage, the Calista Corp., and Anchorage Downtown Partnership, there is no similar group that has been established to oppose the tax increase.
