Alaska Native veterans who served in the Vietnam War are facing yet another setback in their efforts to secure land allotments. While their fellow Alaska Natives had been able to claim land under a long-standing federal agreement, those who served in Vietnam were excluded.
The announcement was made on a Good Friday, when Alaska’s delegation was traveling home for the Easter weekend.
“Secretary Haaland has once again betrayed our Alaska Native Vietnam-era veterans, further delaying another public land order and limiting the lands available to these American heroes for their congressionally-mandated land allotments. Sadly, many of these veterans may not live long enough to receive their allotments, thanks to the Secretary’s action today and a long line of other needless delays,” said Sen. Dan Sullivan. “This latest betrayal, which constitutes the 49th executive action from the Biden administration targeting our state, should settle any doubts about whether the Biden administration will ever prioritize the voices and interests of indigenous Alaskans over their Lower 48 eco-colonialist allies.”
Despite years of work by the Alaska delegation to address this injustice, and despite significant progress under President Donald Trump, progress ground to a halt under the Biden administration. Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland has announced that a significant amount of land in the Kobuk-Seward Planning Area will be excluded from the selection process while an environmental impact study is conducted.
This situation has its roots in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, which extinguished the 160-acre land allotment rights granted to Alaska Natives in 1906. While there were last-minute allotments made, Alaska Natives serving overseas during the Vietnam War were unable to claim their land.
The Alaska Native Veterans Act of 1988 aimed to address this issue, but fewer than 500 Alaska Native Vietnam-era veterans applied due to restrictions in the law. Around 2,800 veterans still await their allotments.
In 2019, a bill sponsored by Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Congressman Don Young gave Alaska Native veterans who served during the Vietnam era the opportunity to apply for their promised land allotments. That bill, S. 47, the John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act, was signed into law by President Trump.
However, in April 2021, the Biden administration imposed a two-year moratorium on several new Public Land Orders in Alaska, including the allotment program.
Secretary Haaland has now ordered a full environmental impact statement, delaying the program even further and taking out 27 million acres of land from consideration. This means that most of the land originally available for selection has been excluded.
A 47-year-old artist accused of posting seemingly “terroristic” notes around Juneau that indicated he might shoot children has been shunned by the progressives of the capital city who used to call him a friend.
Mitchell Watley, illustrator of children’s books that have been sold all over the capital city and on Amazon, is no longer featured at any of the stores that used to display his work, which is a collaboration with his wife, writer Sarah Asper-Smith. Books such as “I Would Tuck You In” and “You Are Home With Me” have been removed from stores such as Kindred Post, Alaska Robotics, Rainy Retreat, and Hearthside Books.
The owner of Kindred Post wrote a long Facebook post condemning Watley, who has not yet been convicted.
The book illustrator’s relationship with his publisher, Sasquatch Books, an imprint of Penguin Books, has been terminated.
Watley has been released on bail from Lemon Creek Correctional Institution and is on supervised release with conditions, as he awaits trial for the charges of having made terroristic threats. He is required to stay away from children, schools, and parks and to turn in all guns that he may own to police.
Watley, whose only other encounter with the court system was an expired tag on a vehicle back in 2011, will have a preliminary hearing on April 11 for one Class C felony charge of making terroristic threats.
Although the media has all but convicted him, it’s unclear if Watley intended to make a threat or was improvising off of a popular social media trend known as the “Feeling Cute Challenge.” The challenge is to take a photo of yourself and label it “Feeling Cute. Might (fill in the blank) later. idk [I don’t know].”
Watley is accused of terroristic threats for designing small cards with imagery of a transgender flag, an automatic weapon, and the words “Feeling Cute, Might Shoot Some Children.”
The cards were left at Foodland, the State Office Building, and Costco on the weekend of April 2, which was had been declared by transgender activists as “Transgender Day of Vengeance,” which had not been labeled a terroristic threat by law enforcement.
Some residents of Juneau were frightened and alarmed by Watley’s notes because earlier that week, a 28-year-old who identified as transgender shot three children, all age nine, and three adults at a Christian school in Nashville, Tenn., killing them all.
That was the backdrop that made Watley’s alleged crime so concerning. Police traced the license plate that was seen on a Costco surveillance camera to Watley and he was arrested on April 3 at a home two blocks from where he and Asper-Smith live in downtown Juneau.
It’s unclear if Watley was making a threat or an editorial comment in the notes, but Juneau, the Alaska media, and national media reports have decided it was indeed a threat against exclusively trans children. Whatever Watley was trying to communicate — humor, irony, or thinking outside the box — he clearly sent a scary signal to an insular community that has turned on him with an over-the-top reaction.
Whether Watley will be able to get a fair trial in the capital city is also not clear, since the entire town appears to have turned against him. His court records still do not list an attorney.
Approximately 41,020 votes have now been counted by the Anchorage Election Office following Tuesday’s municipal election. The numbers as of 6:20 pm Thursday have changed slightly from the first count on election night, but the winners have not changed. With 41,020 of 235,546 (17.4% of electorate) ballots counted so far, the results are:
Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson accepted the resignation of Solid Waste Services Director Dan Zipay.
Evalu Filitaula, was named Acting Director of SWS by Mayor Bronson effective immediately. Mr. Filitaula has been with SWS since 2005, and most recently worked as the General Foreman for the utility.
The search for a permanent director will begin immediately, Bronson said.
On Tuesday, Bronson’s chief of staff resigned suddenly and Mario Bird was named acting chief of staff.
The mayor has lost several of his senior members of his team in the past year and a half.
On Wednesday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Democrat and a member of the Kennedy political dynasty, filed his statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission, declaring his intention to run for president. His committee is called Team Kennedy, which launched his website at this link. His formal announcement will be made April 19 in Boston, Mass.
Kennedy, the son of former Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy, is the nephew of President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Ted Kennedy, both deceased. However, his own family members and the media have distanced themselves from him due to what they consider controversial views on vaccines and their link to autism. He became a spokesperson against Covid-19 vaccines during the pandemic and opposed mask and vaccine mandates.
Kennedy Jr. has had a career as an environmental lawyer and has worked for many years with the Natural Resources Defense Council. He is the founder of the Waterkeeper Alliance and has served as an adjunct professor of environmental law at Pace University School of Law.
Kennedy Jr. was nine years old when JFK was assassinated while serving as president, and 14 when his own father was shot dead during his presidential campaign in 1968.
Marianne Williamson, a New Age self-help guru, has already declared her challenge to President Biden, who has not yet declared his reelection candidacy. On the Republican side, several candidates have announced their candidacy, including former President Donald Trump, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson. Several politicians are weighing jumping in, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Tim Scott, former Ambassador John Bolton, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
“Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has spent his life fighting for American democracy and the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution. He has battled against corporate greed and government corruption to protect our children, our health, our livelihoods, our environment, and above all, our freedom,” his website says. “With integrity, courage, and self-sacrifice, he has led Americans in an ennobling fight to restore our country as an exemplary nation, and to end the toxic polarization that divides us and enriches the elites.
“His character and unique history fighting crooked bureaucracies make RFK, Jr. the only person who can bridge the divide and fix our country,” according to his campaign.
A former city treasurer was arrested this week after a federal grand jury returned an indictment charging him with wire fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion.
The indictment charges that from 2015 to 2022, Jess George Adams of Willow embezzled more than $1.16 million from the City of Houston in Alaska and from a Wasilla-based equipment company, the U.S. Department of Justice says.
The indictment alleges that from 2015 through 2018, Adams was the Treasurer for the City of Houston, entrusted with bookkeeping responsibilities and administrative access to the City’s accounting records and software. Adams allegedly used this access to direct electronic transfers of funds from the City’s bank account to his personal account, maintained by Adams to hide the embezzled funds.
The Justice Department says Adams used fictitious entries in the City’s accounting software to make it appear as though these payments were made for legitimate business expenses.
In October 2018, the City of Houston allegedly placed Adams on administrative leave, and he resigned his position in November 2018. A year later, Adams allegedly was employed as a bookkeeper by an equipment company, where he exercised control over the company’s accounting records and software.
The indictment charges that, using this access, Adams directed electronic transfers of funds from the company’s bank account to his other personal accounts at multiple banks, maintained by Adams to hide the embezzled funds. To conceal his activity, Adams allegedly used fictitious entries in the company’s accounting software to make it appear as though these funds were transferred for the payment of legitimate business expenses.
Adams allegedly laundered the embezzled money he obtained from the equipment company by making several wire transfers from his personal bank account to other accounts, each at a value greater than $10,000.
The indictment further charges that in another attempt to conceal his embezzlement and evade the assessment of income taxes, Adams filed false individual income tax returns for tax years 2016 through 2021, which did not disclose the additional income he diverted to himself. According to the indictment, Adams was a former seasonal tax return preparer for a national tax advisory company.
Adams made his initial court appearance Wednesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Kyle F. Reardon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for each wire fraud count, 10 years in prison for each money laundering count, 5 years in prison for each tax evasion count. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
U.S. Attorney S. Lane Tucker for the District of Alaska and Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department’s Tax Division made the announcement.
IRS-Criminal Investigation is investigating the case with substantial assistance from the Alaska State Troopers.
President Joe Biden is proposing a new interpretation of Title IX that would prohibit schools from “categorically” denying the ability of transgender athletes to compete against biological girls.
The new rule says that there has to be a weighing of fairness in competition and schools need to ensure that children are safe, but they cannot outright deny a male who is under the impression that he is a female from competing in female competition in K-12 and colleges across the country.
The Alaska State Board of Education has called for school districts to keep male and female competition separate in the traditional categories, since males have physical advantages over females in most athletic competitions. Already in Alaska, boys have begun to compete and win against girls in track in high school.
A related case has made its way to the Supreme Court to decide if males can compete in the female categories. That case moved on Thursday at the same time the Biden Administration made its Title IX announcement. The court said a transgender runner in West Virginia could continue to compete while his case was being heard by the court.
Title IX was signed into law in 1972, after well-documented support by Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens. It has advanced educational opportunities for girls and women since then by prohibiting schools that receive federal funding from favoring the funding of male athletics programs at the expense of female athletics.
Today, the U.S. Department of Education said its new interpretation will dictate how coaches must treat transgenders.
The new rule will be published in the Federal Register and go through a 30-day public comment period before it is final.
“Participation in school athletics is an important component of education and provides valuable physical, social, academic, and mental health benefits to students. The proposed rule affirms that students benefit from the chance to join a school sports team to learn about teamwork, leadership, and physical fitness. The proposed rule would establish that policies violate Title IX when they categorically ban transgender students from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity just because of who they are. The proposed rule also recognizes that in some instances, particularly in competitive high school and college athletic environments, some schools may adopt policies that limit transgender students’ participation. The proposed rule would provide schools with a framework for developing eligibility criteria that protects students from being denied equal athletic opportunity, while giving schools the flexibility to develop their own participation policies,” the U.S. Department of Education wrote in its explanation.
“Every student should be able to have the full experience of attending school in America, including participating in athletics, free from discrimination. Being on a sports team is an important part of the school experience for students of all ages,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. “Beyond all the benefits to physical and mental health, playing on a team teaches students how to work hard, get along with others, believe in themselves, and build healthy habits that last a lifetime. Today’s proposed rule is designed to support Title IX’s protection for equal athletics opportunity. We welcome and encourage public comment on the proposed regulation and will continue working to ensure Title IX’s effective protection for all students.”
“Under the proposed regulation, schools would not be permitted to adopt or apply a one-size-fits-all policy that categorically bans transgender students from participating on teams consistent with their gender identity,” the Biden Administration said. The decisions about which team a boy would play on must consider fairness and preventing injury, a description that is almost sure to bring a multitude of lawsuits against school districts.
“Instead, the Department’s approach would allow schools flexibility to develop team eligibility criteria that serve important educational objectives, such as ensuring fairness in competition or preventing sports-related injury. These criteria would have to account for the sport, level of competition, and grade or education level to which they apply. These criteria could not be premised on disapproval of transgender students or a desire to harm a particular student. “The criteria also would have to minimize harms to students whose opportunity to participate on a male or female team consistent with their gender identity would be limited or denied.”
The new rule goes on to say, “One-size-fits-all policies that categorically ban transgender students from participating in athletics consistent with their gender identity across all sports, age groups, and levels of competition would not satisfy the proposed regulation. Such bans fail to account for differences among students across grade and education levels. They also fail to account for different levels of competition—including no-cut teams that let all students participate—and different types of sports.”
Taking those considerations into account, the Department said that, under its proposed regulation, elementary school students would generally be able to participate on school sports teams consistent with their gender identity and that it would be particularly difficult for a school to justify excluding students immediately following elementary school from participating consistent with their gender identity.
For older students, especially at the high school and college level, the Department expects that sex-related criteria that limit participation of some transgender students may be permitted, in some cases, when they enable the school to achieve an important educational objective, such as fairness in competition, and meet the proposed regulation’s other requirements.
Schools would have to take into account the following considerations when developing a policy for participation:
“Students in different grades and education levels have different levels of athletic skill, and schools offer sports teams for different reasons depending on students’ grade or education level. For example, teams for younger students often focus on building teamwork, fitness, and basic skills for students who are just learning about the sport, while a collegiate team may be primarily focused on competitive success. That’s one reason why the Department expects that, under its proposed regulation, elementary school students would generally be able to participate on school sports teams consistent with their gender identity where considerations may be different for competitive high school and college teams,” the department wrote.
Especially for students in earlier grades, including for example those in elementary school, school athletic teams “focus on introducing students to new activities and prioritize team sports as an opportunity for students to learn basic skills in physical fitness, leadership, and teamwork,” the government said.
“School teams vary widely across the United States, with some that are very competitive, especially for high school and college students with advanced skills, and others, such as “no cut” teams, that allow all students to join and participate. Some schools also offer teams at lower levels of competition, such as intramural or junior varsity teams, that allow all or most interested students to participate. Sex-related eligibility criteria that restrict students from participating consistent with their gender identity would have to reflect these differences in competition,” the Biden Administration said.
The proposed regulation would be in the Title IX regulations at section 106.41(b)(2):
If a recipient adopts or applies sex-related criteria that would limit or deny a student’s eligibility to participate on a male or female team consistent with their gender identity, such criteria must, for each sport, level of competition, and grade or education level: (i) be substantially related to the achievement of an important educational objective, and (ii) minimize harms to students whose opportunity to participate on a male or female team consistent with their gender identity would be limited or denied.
From the American working-class person’s vantage point, the list of near-worthless college degrees from publicly funded universities is too long.
The bookends for these questionable degrees may be the gender-transgender-queer-sexuality studies degree offered by the University of Arizona and the master’s degree in “foresight” that can be earned in a year at the University of Houston.
As the ventriloquist’s dummy Mortimer Snerdliked to say, “Who’d have thunk it?”
On the shelf with these fanciful fields are volumes of grievance-studies degrees — black studies, women’s studies, critical race and ethnic studies, or this one: An interdisciplinary studies degree with a minor in intersectionality studies from Utah State University.
These are dilettante diplomas for those planning careers in government and nonprofits, many of which are, if we’re honest, surrogate government agencies that masquerade as independent from their funding troughs.
Private sector employers look at such credentials on resumes and groan. These degree holders are not prepared to work in the real world or add value to companies. They are not producers or innovators.
Our colleges are failing us by churning out entitled and surprisingly often illiterate graduates who want to be paid for showing up to work in their “Nevertheless, She Voted” t-shirts, their pumps primed to sue their employers at the slightest workplace inconvenience or for not being able to work from home.
Increasingly, Americans understand the universities that parents send their children to these days have become indoctrination camps. Teens go out the door and arrive at academia as normal, young people, entering the halls of knowledge in relatively good shape. What the higher education industry launches from its halls is often an illogical, anxious, confused graduate with a degree in equity, diversity, and inclusion, and a student loan debt the size of a house down payment.
Into this public recognition of questionable return on investment comes President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive the student loan debts of millions of recent college graduates.
Biden’s plan is evidence that a college diploma doesn’t confer any degree of common sense. Millions of Americans who did not go to college can figure out quickly they should not have to pay back the college loans for which someone else signed responsibility. After all, that’s what GoFundMe is for.
It insults the intelligence of these Americans that we’re even having this national conversation.
The U.S. Supreme Court sent a strong signal last month that Biden’s scheme to forgive $10,000 to $20,000 per federal student loan borrower is unconstitutional. The justices are expected to make a decision by the end of June.
To be clear, this is a separate matter from the predatory student loan case that the Ninth Circuit weighed in on last week, permitting the case against certain colleges to move forward, and allowing student loan borrowers to have their debts canceled. That case involves about 200,000 borrowers and a $6 billion debt relief to students who say schools misled them about the quality of academic programs or other related promises, such as job guarantees.
Conservatives in Congress are not waiting for the black robes to decide on the “get out of school free” question. Lawmakers are using the Congressional Review Act process to contest the ability of Biden to simply buy his re-election, one loan payment at a time. This will be the fourth time that the CRA has been used to tell the president he is flunking American Public Policy 101.
This coming week, the U.S. House will likely pass the CRA and send it to the Senate, where it appears to have bipartisan support. Biden may veto the CRA, but he still risks being schooled by the Supreme Court.
What would the CRA do? It puts an end to the president’s pause on student loan payments, which has been extended six times and costs Americans $5 billion a month. This current deferral of payments will cost $195 billion by the time the current Biden extension expires in August.
Only an elitist mind thinks it’s a good idea that the people who went to college should have their debts covered by those who didn’t, through a $400 billion transfer of responsibility.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal poll, only 56% of Americans think a four-year college degree is worth the price of admission. A Cato Institutepoll showed that up to 76% of Americans oppose transferring student debt to taxpayers if it drives up the price of college, and two-thirds oppose it if taxes would be increased.
In a perfect world, American universities would be held in high regard, and be producing graduates ready to move the country forward and solve real-world problems.
That’s not the world we’re living in. Our higher education institutions are broken, and we have a federal government trying to force us to pay for their misdeeds.
Congress should pass the CRA quickly and send Biden a message: The working people of America are busy wrapping our minds around the $32 trillion in debt that we are yoked with. Americans are not in the mood to pay down a college graduate’s debt so that young person can buy a brand new, federally subsidized e-car, while working-class Americans face living out of their old Ford Broncos.
Alaska Department of Public Safety Commissioner James Cockrell extended the deadline to remove studded tires from vehicles operating on Alaska roadways, due to extended winter weather conditions across much of the state.
Alaskans living below the 60 North Latitude line, including Southeast, the Aleutian chain, Southwest Alaska, Southern Kenai Peninsula, and Kodiak, may use studded tires on Alaska roadways until May 1.
Alaskans living above the 60 North Latitude line, including all portions of the Sterling Highway, may use studded tires on Alaska roadways until May 15.
Latitude 60 crosses Alaska from east to west, just south of Prince William Sound, Seward, and Chefornak.
Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson also extended the deadline within the city limits to match the state.
“Much of Alaska is experiencing prolonged winter weather after a heavy snow winter that has extended the ice season well into April,”said Commissioner Jim Cockrell. “This 15-day extension for the studded tire removal deadline will provide additional time to switch to regular tires without compromising safety.”
