Michael Pawlowski was named a partner with Capitol Counsel, a lobbying firm in Washington, D.C. He was the chief of staff to Sen. Lisa Murkowski, before returning to Alaska to work as a partner with lobbyist and former Sen. Jerry Mackie in Juneau, playing a major role in the reelection of Murkowski to the Senate in 2022. He will remain partners with Mackie.
Capitol Counsel’s Partner, Shannon Finley, said Pawlowski “brings decades of political, policy, and process expertise at both the state and federal levels. He will be a tremendous asset to our already strong senate, health care, appropriations, and energy teams. In this closely divided congress, his relationships will help guide our clients to successful outcomes in an increasingly complicated regulatory and legislative landscape.”
During his tenure as Sen. Murkowski’s chief of staff and primary advisor and strategist, “Fish,” as he is known, played a crucial role in various efforts to reform the Affordable Care Act, Comprehensive Tax Reform, the opening of the 1002 area of ANWR, and he worked to develop policies to support the development of the Keystone Pipeline, three Supreme Court nominations, and the federal response to the global pandemic.
He has previously worked for the Alaska Natural Gas Development Authority, was a legislative aide in the Alaska State Legislature and was Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Revenue under Gov. Sean Parnell, when he had a major role in writing and promoting Senate Bill 21, an overhaul of the state’s oil tax regime that was known previously as ACES.
On a mostly party-line vote, the U.S. House narrowly passed a $886 billion defense spending bill on Friday.
Alaska’s Rep. Mary Peltola voted no on the final votes and the amendments preceding it, although she missed most of the amendments preceding the final vote. The measure passed 219-210.
Democrats opposed the National Defense Authorization Act because the Republican majority had inserted amendments that cut funding for unneeded transgender surgery for troops and removed funding from the Pentagon’s abortion travel policy, which pays for women in the military to travel to another state for an abortion if they are stationed in a state that has abortion limits.
Peltola was in the Capitol on Wednesday and played at the congressional women’s softball game against journalists that evening. She also voted no on the moving of the National Defense Authorization Act on Thursday, before disappearing for final votes on amendments and then voting against the final passage Friday morning.
This story has been updated to reflect her final vote.
A man from Indiana who is accused of being behind the killing of an Anchorage developmentally disabled teenager in 2019 pleaded guilty Thursday to one federal child pornography charge that was related to the slaying. Three other child pornography charges were dismissed by federal prosecutors as a part of the plea deal.
Darin Schilmiller is still charged with persuading then-18-year-old Denali Brehmer to sexually abuse two underage victims following the murder of Cynthia Hoffman at Thunderbird Falls near Eklutna. Schilmiller still faces three counts of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder.
The FBI affidavit cemented the federal pornography charges against Schilmiller, who is now 25.
Schimiller is accused of posing as a millionaire when he initiated an online chat with Brehmer, in which he promised to pay her $9 million to carry out a rape and murder.
Brehmer pleaded guilty earlier this year to the murder. There were four other alleged accomplices to the gruesome act, in which “friend” took Cynthia Hoffman on a hike, to Thunderbird Falls, bound her with duct tape, and shot her in the back of the head, dumping her bodkin to the Eklutna River.
Brehmer then sent videos and photos of the murder to Schilmiller via the Snapchat phone app.
It was during the investigation into Hoffman’s death that the child pornography was found on Bremer’s and Schilmiller’s phones. The FBI says Schilmiller instructed Brehmer to sexually assault two minors aged between 8 and 15. Explicit videos of one of these acts were sent by Brehmer to Schilmiller.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation filed a federal lawsuit in the United States District Court of North Dakota claiming North Dakota’s laws that accept and count ballots up to 13 days after Election Day violate federal law. Alaska has a similar law that allows ballots to arrive 13 days later, so long as they were postmarked by midnight on Election Day.
Federal law requires a single national Election Day to be held on “the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of every even-numbered year.” In fact, every mention of Election Day in federal law is singular, not plural, the legal group says.
North Dakota and Alaska are not alone in accepting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day.
In total, 18 states and the District of Columbia accept ballots that arrive after Election Day. Besides North Dakota and Alaska, they include California, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia.
“Election Day has ceased to be a day,” said PILF President, J. Christian Adams. “Instead, we have election month because states accept ballots that arrive days and even weeks after Election Day. Not only does this lead to distrust and chaos in the system, but it also violates federal law. PILF is fighting to end this lawlessness and restore the day in Election Day.”
Read PILF’s complaint in Mark Splonskowski v. Erika Whitehere.
The residents in a Seattle neighborhood are scandalized that a street encampment in the Highlands area now has a blow-up swimming pool that some of the tent dwellers brought in.
But Anchorage has seen the blow-up pool, and has raised it one.
At the 3rd Ave. and Ingra Street tent-and-tarp encampment in downtown Anchorage, at the site of the old Alaska Native Hospital, someone has hauled in a skiff, complete with its trailer.
“Someone installed a swimming pool at the encampment that has been growing for months between SR 509 and Myers Way in the Highland Park neighborhood,” KOMO reported, saying that neighbors consider it a safety hazard but also a slap in the face.
In Anchorage, the mayor has tried to clear the encampment but with little success.
A recent ruling by the Ninth Circuit says that municipalities have limitations as to how aggressively they can clear vagrant camps.
President Joe Biden, rattling his sword at Russia and reassuring US allies in Europe, authorized the mobilization of up to 3,000 military reservists for duty in Europe. The move comes as a response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to senior military officials.
The exact timing of when the reservists may be sent to Europe is up to the Pentagon, but the announcement shows further U.S. determination to take a greater role in the war between Ukraine and Russia. Pentagon officials said that the 80,000 U.S. troops in the European region would not necessarily increase, but the composition of the force may change, as the Pentagon is given more flexibility to incorporate the reservists.
The Selected Reserve are members of a a military unit that are enrolled in the Ready Reserve program and the reserve unit that they are attached to. Selected Reserve members and units are considered to be in an active status. The Ready Reserve is a pool of service members that may be recalled to active duty.
President Biden’s statement on the matter explained his rationale for augmenting the active Armed Forces for Operation Atlantic Resolve in and around the U.S. European Command’s area of responsibility.
The total number of mobilized reservists is not to exceed 3,000 at any given time, with a maximum of 450 members from the Individual Ready Reserve, according to Thursday’s order.
The announcement comes just days after Biden authorized sending cluster bombs to Ukraine, on top of the more than $40 billion already sent to Ukraine since it started defending itself against Russia’s invasion.
The last time the reservists were called up was by President Donald Trump in 2020, when he authorized the Pentagon to call-up units of the National Guard, reservists, and individuals from the Individual Ready Reserve, to assist with the response in the early days of the Covid pandemic.
It was stuck about 16 miles into a route that runs by Knik Glacier, sunk into the silt and meltwater with no other way out.
I spoke with the Black Hawk charter company that assisted with the job for my initial report, which explained that the chopper alone cost $8,250 to deploy.
Now, we have more info from the tow company that executed it all, as well as Alaska’s Department of Natural Resources.
Since the creation of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the mid-1970s, America has never been backed into such an energy corner as we’re in now, thanks to the Biden Administration selling off much of our oil reserve to countries like China.
It’s an invisible trap about which most Americans are oblivious, but it has everything to do with inflation, recession, and national security. Americans may soon feel the pain of rising prices, supply shortages, and a faltering economy, if OPEC, Russia, and China succeed in taking advantage of our suddenly depleted energy stockpile.
Under President Joe Biden, this drawdown of our reserve oil masks political problems he blames on Russia. But that dog won’t hunt. Let me explain:
Recall that it took just one year after Biden became president for Russia President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine. Putin had also seized parts of Crimea during the years when Barack Obama was president.
Putin held his Ukraine ambitions in abeyance during the four years of President Donald Trump. Love him or hate him, Trump was the president with whom Putin did not want to mess. For four years, the United States was strong enough to stall the expansion plans of the Russian strongman until that fateful day when American voters evidently elected a man who would hardly leave his basement to campaign for president.
For Biden, the price of oil doubling under his administration was a serious problem starting in 2022; the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was his solution to keep Americans calm after the price of gas had doubled quickly last year.
Thus, oil poured forth from the strategic reserve month after month, invisibly suppressing the supply problem Biden was creating with his other anti-oil policies. Much of that oil sold by the Biden Administration went to companies that were middlemen for China.
How much oil? Last year, the Department of Energy sold off over 180 million reserve barrels. This was about 21 gallons of crude oil for every man, woman, and child in America.
In one year alone, the Biden Administration drained nearly a third of what was in the emergency reserve and he has more sell-offs on the schedule. The Administration says its efforts have lowered gasoline prices by 17-42 cents over what they would be without this action.
The reserve, which can hold 714 million barrels of oil, was meant as a deterrent to adverse actions by OPEC, and is supposed to help give the country a leg up in foreign policy.
But now, with just 346 million barrels left, OPEC and its sidecar Russia can read the charts: The United States has not only run through its emergency supply, it doesn’t allow enough domestic oil to be developed to meet its own needs.
Military power is one toggle on the global geopolitical chessboard and the U.S. still has that — we hope. Oil production is another big player, and in a way is the Queen with more moves.
The opposing players have announced their next moves: Saudi Arabia cut oil production by one million barrels a day, effective July 1.
Russia, still under oil sanctions by major Western countries, has moved its oil across the oceans in spite of sanctions. Before the G7 changed the export rules on Russia to western world countries in 2022, Russia exported 33,000 barrels of refined product to the African continent per day. By March of 2023, it had built that to 420,000 barrels per day to Africa.
Russia’s oil continues to trade above the $60 price cap set by the participating embargo countries back in December. In July, Russian Urals crude oil futures breached the $60 limit and is now trading over $63, about where it stood at the time Russia invaded Ukraine and before the G7 sanctions were announced.
To drive prices higher still, Russia will now reduce oil exports by 500,000 barrels per day starting in August, the same time Saudi Arabia is scaling back.
Thus, price caps on Russia had only had a temporary effect.
As the chess piecesmove around the board, President Biden will be forced to purchase oil to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at higher prices than the price at which he sold reserve oil to China last year. Or, he simply may not replenish the supply and hope for the best.
Hope is a bad strategy. The storage caverns are half empty. With America using 20 million barrels a day, we’re down to a 17-day supply of emergency oil.
The Biden Administration has backed us into a corner, and Americans should hope and pray for a warm winter, because the price of heating our homes may be more than we can afford in January.
U.S. Senate Republicans launched a video claiming that President Joe Biden has “created the largest child trafficking ring in U.S. history.”
The video quotes Republican senators at hearings expressing concern about the extraordinary number of unaccompanied minors being trafficked to and through the U.S. southern border.
In one clip, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, says “Biden does not care about the 300,000 plus unaccompanied children that have been placed with sponsors since he became president.”
Over 85,000.
That’s how many children are missing under Joe Biden.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, says, “the Biden administration has utterly failed to secure the border and has encouraged parents to send their minor alien children on dangerous trips to the United States unaccompanied. It’s failed to protect these children after they’ve been let into the United States.”
The video points to reports that reveal at least 85,000 children have gone missing because the federal agencies tasked with caring for them can’t account for where they are. After the children were smuggled into the U.S., the Biden administration released them to sponsors under the oversight of the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Refugee Resettlement.
The Biden administration says the children are coming to live with family members. But reports show many weren’t placed with family members or anyone else they knew.
Initial reports indicated more than 45,000 children, in just a few months evaluated in an Axios investigation, were missing by early 2022. Since then, that number has more than doubled. Unaccompanied minors using falsified papers have been working in meat processing plants, prompting federal investigations over alleged child labor law violations. They’ve also been involved in encouraging others to participate in organized crime at a public school by soliciting funds to pay their human smuggler, or coyote, who helped them illegally enter the U.S.
Last year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called for an investigation and asked the Florida Supreme Court to empanel a grand jury to investigate trafficking of children into Florida. It did, and the grand jury found the federal government’s management of unaccompanied children’s release and transport resulted in “facilitating the forced migration, sale, and abuse of foreign children.”
The process “exposes children to horrifying health conditions, constant criminal threat, labor and sex trafficking, robbery, rape and other experiences not done justice by mere words,” Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody said when announcing the findings in April. She also called on Congress to investigate and take action.
Since then, Congress has held several hearings, and clips from those hearings are highlighted in the Senate GOP video. The video also highlights information from New York Times investigations into child trafficking of children from the border.
In January, The New York Times reported that unaccompanied minors were placed with human traffickers by the Biden administration. In February, it reported “exploited” migrant children were working in “brutal jobs across the US” in violation of child labor laws. In August, it reported “the White House and federal agencies were repeatedly warned of risks” to children and the “warnings were either ignored or missed.”
Moody and many others have called on Congress to impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, claiming he’s violated federal law, lied multiple times under oath before Congress, and is endangering American and unaccompanied children’s lives.
Border Patrol Union Vice President Art Del Cueto has also said that the majority of Border Patrol officers want Mayorkas impeached.
U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, says he’s written to the FBI asking it “to find out where the 80,000-plus children are that this administration has lost. They don’t know.
“The kids are in danger. The kids are in slavery. They are being exploited. And it should not happen in the United States of America.”
The Biden administration has maintained that the border is closed and that after the children are placed in homes with sponsors, HHS is no longer responsible for them.
While saying the border is closed, the administration created another parole program inviting millions more people from four countries to come to the U.S. to “unify families.” It did so after on May 31, it ended DNA testing to determine if family units were really family units arriving at the border. Border Patrol agents have told The Center Square the policy is incentivizing crime.
Prior to apprehensions declining last month between ports of entry and increasing at ports of entry, the Border Patrol union warned, “[Mexican] cartels are still running the border. That hasn’t changed. They control the flow of illegal aliens coming in. Period.”
Since Biden’s been in office, more than 8 million people have illegally entered the U.S. – totaling more than the individual populations of 38 states.
