Rep. Jennie Armstrong was off on a romantic adventure when she came to Alaska in May of 2019. Little did she know she’d fall madly in love with an Anchorage guy, and end up moving here. But after a whirlwind 10-day trip, she was head over heels in love or something like love, and she went back to Louisiana, packed up, and moved to Alaska.
She’ll be sworn in as a member of the Alaska House of Representatives on Tuesday, even though she had just received her first Permanent Fund dividend when she filed for office.
She is qualified enough, decided two of the three-justice panel, in mid-afternoon on Friday. While Justice Susan Carney said she would not have found Armstrong a qualified candidate, Chief Justice Daniel Winfree and Justice Jennifer Henderson bought the romance story — hook, line, and sinker.
When exactly did Armstrong become an Alaska resident? By her attorney Scott Kendall’s determination, it’s practically the minute she fell in love that year. By the arguments of opposing counsel, Stacey Stone, it wasn’t until Armstrong came back to Alaska that she actually showed objective intent to move here, by evidence of her one-way ticket. Everything else is entirely he-said, she-said subjective.
That one way ticket brought her back to Alaska in June of 2019, not a month earlier, when she came up for a frisky fling.
A lower court judge had ruled on Monday that he was taking Armstrong’s word for it that when she arrived in Alaska, she and her crush had long talks into the night and at some point she decided to move.
Essentially, the adventuress from Louisiana has barely scraped by the deadline for residency in order to qualify for running for office in 2022. She has won her case twice in Alaska court and will now serve as a Democrat for House District 16, West Anchorage.
With the ruling upheld, there is no reason single women arriving Alaska can’t be given condoms and their Permanent Fund dividend applications by an Alaska Airlines flight attendant just before landing. After a wild fling, they can hook themselves a husband (goods are odd but odds are good) and in no time at all can be serving in the Alaska Legislature.
It’s such things that Alaska-based reality shows are made of.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted 221-211 this week to establish a Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. It’s a temporary subcommittee of Committee on the Judiciary, and will be made up of eight Republicans and five Democrats.
Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola voted against the bill, as did all Democrats in the House.
HR 12, drafted by Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, establishes a subcommittee to investigate matters related to the collection, analysis, dissemination, and use of information on U.S. citizens by executive branch agencies and private agencies, including whether such efforts are illegal, unconstitutional, or otherwise unethical.
The investigation may encompass social media companies and their biased moderation of user content and collaboration with spy agencies to suppress certain political speech.
The subcommittee must make a final report of its findings by Jan. 2, 2025, and terminates 30 days after filing that report.
“With great power comes great responsibility,” said Republican Rep. Dan Bishop of North Carolina on the House floor. “We entrust our Department of Justice, FBI, and intelligence community with great power to keep us safe. Yet as long as thees agencies have existed, they’ve violated Americans’ civil rights. Everyday Americans. The security state believes itself to be above the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress.”
The agencies spied on Frank Sinatra Jr., John Lennon, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Muhammed Ali, Bishop reminded Americans, because they were identified as “national security threats.”
The intelligence community also abused its power by spying on presidential candidates, sitting presidents, a members of Congress and their staffs, he said.
“The FBI continuously coordinated with social media companies to moderate social content — the public square. So contemptuous are they and out of touch, when confronted with this just weeks ago, they said ‘we were merely engaging with our community partners.’ Leading up to the 2020 election, the FBI worked hand-in-hand with Twitter and Facebook to silence the Hunter Biden laptop story. Concealment from everyday Americans,” he continued.
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied to Congress about the National Security Agency collecting data on millions of Americans, spying on groups, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and others, Bishop said. The intelligence community also spied on journalists and political figures.
Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas talked about parents who have dared to stand up to school boards and then were labeled as terrorists by the federal government.
“Everyday Americans should shudder at the power of the government, the federal government, target at parents for daring to stand up and defend a daughter who is abused in a bathroom in the Loudoun County Public Schools. By the way, the superintendent in Loudoun has been indicted. This is the truth. Yet this Administration wanted to make Scott Smith the bad guy, not the rapist.”
Peltola this week also voted against preserving the life of babies born alive during or after abortion procedures, and voted against condemning violence and vandalism against crisis pregnancy clinics and churches. She voted against Rep. Kevin McCarthy for House Speaker, and voted against the bill that reversed the appropriation of more than $80 billion to the IRS.
Alaska is not immune to the underlying agenda being pushed nationwide to separate parents from their children. To protest will label you as anti-LBGTQ. But it’s worse: Some schools are keeping important records about students from their parents.
It’s not just the federal government touting this agenda—it’s also the military, school districts, and very liberal parents who wish to be considered enlightened and thus virtue signal at the expense of their children’s innocence.
The nation’s first transgender Assistant Secretary for Health, Admiral Rachel Levine, has stated that the “highest levels” of the U.S. government support gender-reassignment treatment for minor children.
In other words, the Biden Administration supports puberty blockers and sex change surgeries for children.
Dr. Levine is encouraging doctors at the state medical boards to help censor “medical misinformation” on social media. Shades of Covid-19 censorship by Facebook, Twitter, etc. is emerging as parents are figuring out what the government is doing and how to protect their children.
Those doctors who oppose the gender-affirming care, to include removal of reproductive organs for adolescent children, may face action by their state medical boards. This has happened before with the Covid “misinformation” complaint filed against Alaska doctors.
Dr. Levine has replaced Dr. Anthony Fauci as “Mr. Science” by stating, “The positive value of gender-affirming care for youth and adults is not in scientific or medical dispute.”
The federal government’s Office of Population Affairs has a page dedicated to “Gender-Affirming Care and Young People” which includes gender-affirming surgery for adolescents. This so-called gender-affirming care includes surgical removal of sexual organs.
Parents are legally responsible for their children’s actions until they turn 18. But children can now state they want to be a different gender at any age and be welcomed into the community.
Even the US military has put barriers between parents and their minor children.
Recently, a friend took her 11-year-old son to a local Air Force Base hospital for a well checkup. The pediatrician asked the mother to leave so she could ask the 11-year-old some questions. The mother left the room thinking the doctor would ask questions regarding child abuse.
She was wrong thinking that.
Her son said the doctor asked, “What sex did he identify with, boy, girl or other”. The doctor also asked, “What sex are you attracted to, boy, girl or other?” Finally, the doctor asked the 11-year-old boy if he had sex yet.
Shocked after her son relayed the questions to her, the parent met with the pediatrician to discuss those questions and why they were inappropriate for an 11-year-old. She also wanted to know why she was asked to leave the room during that questioning.
The mother also wanted to know the source of those questions.
The doctor said that the questions were part of the protocol recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, and that the protocol template would not be provided to the mother.
The American Academy of Pediatrics also supports gender fluidity and the non-disclosure of a minor’s medical records to parents.
The final straw was when the doctor told her that once her child was 12 the parents would not even have access to her son’s medical records.
The parent said that the doctor had planted gender fluid and transgender ideas in her son’s head and that he would Google those subjects. The doctor responded, “Then I have done my job.”
After further research, I have discovered that the Air Force has an actual policy that after a certain age (12-14) it will not disclose a minor’s health records to the parents.
So, the Air Force medical personnel have access to your child’s medical records but you, the parent, do not.
What if your child is on birth control, uses drugs, has an abortion? Are you, the parent not privy to this information? Of course, most parents would know this about their child. But what about the parent who has little communication with the child?
This begs the question, “Whose children are they?” Clearly in the realm of sexual identity and sexual activity they belong to the government.
As noted in an earlier article, the Anchorage School District, Juneau School District, and the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District clearly leave parents in the dark when it comes to a student’s gender transition. The principal and the district have replaced the parents.
A student needs a permission slip from a parent for a field trip.
A student needs a permission slip from a parent for an aspirin.
Parents are responsible for their minor child’s behavior. So, why are parents being left out of the transgender decision-making process?
Many schools across America are following the lead of the NEA, ACLU, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the Gender Spectrum, and the Human Rights Campaign. These organizations have replaced parents in determining the future of our children.
The teacher unions have provided guidance on gender transitioning to include the use of puberty blockers. Parents are left out of the discussion when it comes to their child wanting to gender transition even if that child is too immature to make this life-changing decision.
The public school administrators, the teacher unions, the federal government, and the military have more power when it comes to your child’s gender identity.
But schools that do not allow parents access to a student’s educational records may be violating the Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act (FERPA).
Under FERPA, parents have the right to inspect and review a student’s education records maintained by the school.
And if a school has a different name or gender on a student’s records, hiding that secret name from parents would violate FERPA. But that is exactly what the transgender supporters want schools to do — hide gender identity confusion from parents.
Parents need to decide that their children are theirs, not the government’s.
David Boyle is the education writer for Must Read Alaska.
In fact, as a member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, he is calling for hearings on the Chinese company’s social media app, which has quite possibly scraped private data from millions of American users.
In a letter to the Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantrell and to Sen. Ted Cruz, Sullivan said there is a serious national security risk that should be investigated.
“Since the last hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee featuring TikTok on October 26, 2021, many of the concerns raised by members on both sides of the aisle have been validated. In fact, TikTok was recently forced to acknowledge that China-based employees of the parent company, ByteDance, have had access to U.S. user data,” Sullivan said.
In 2020, former President Donald Trump tried to ban the application in the U.S. TikTok sued, saying that it was Trump’s effort to boost his reelection bid by enacting protectionist trade policies. He was unelected from office before he could get his ban through court.
“Now, there is a growing bipartisan recognition of the problem and momentum for further congressional scrutiny. FBI Director Chris Wray confirmed during a recent House Homeland Security Committee hearing that the bureau has ongoing “national security concerns” about the U.S. operations of TikTok. He specifically outlined concerns that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could use TikTok to obtain data on millions of users, manipulate algorithms to influence our children, and potentially even compromise specific personal devices,” Sullivan wrote.
“Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mark Warner recently agreed that former President Trump was right about the need to ban the application in the U.S. citing the troubling influence that China could exert over American children. CIA Director Bill Burns has also recently voiced concerns, and so too has FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr. Most recently, Congress took an important step in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 to ban the application from all federal government devices. Numerous states, including Alaska, have also banned the application on state government devices. However, more needs to be done,” he wrote.
Earlier this month, Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued a state ban on TikTok apps on State-owned devices.
No more field work in college? A letter from the practicum department of the University of California’s Suzanne-Dworak-Peck School of Social Work tells students and faculty that the term “field” must be scrubbed from the curriculum descriptions and replaced with the word “practicum.”
“As we enter 2023, we would like to share a change we are making at the Suzanne-Dworak-Peck School of Social Work to ensure our use of inclusive language and practice. Specifically, we have decided to remove the term ‘field’ from our curriculum and practice and replace it with ‘practicum.’ This change supports anti-racist social work practice by replacing language that could be considered anti-Black or anti-immigrant in favor of inclusive language. Language can be powerful, and phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign.
“This change aligns with the Council on Social Work Education Advancing Antiracism in Social Work Education through Educational Accreditation Policies and Standards, the 2021 National Association of Social Work’s commitment to undoing racism through social work, and the Eliminate Racism Grand Challenge for Social Work.
“In solidarity with universities across the nation, our goal is not just to change language but to honor and acknowledge inclusion and reject white supremacy, anti-immigrant and anti-blackness ideologies. Words are powerful, but even more so is action. We are committing to further align our actions, behaviors, and practices with anti-racism and anti-oppression, which requires taking a close and critical look at our profession – our history, our biases, and our complicity in past and current injustices. It also means continuing to work together to train social work students today who understand and embody social and racial justice. This is the bedrock of our values and principles and we all need to hold each other accountable to do better in this regard. We know that changing terminology can be challenging, and a complete transition will take some time, but we thank you in advance for joining us in this effort and for your patience as we transition.”
Who knows how classified documents ended up in Joe Biden’s home garage next to his beloved Corvette convertible? If he knows, he’s not saying.
President Biden may be being privately pressured by the Democratic Party or other interests to wind down his presidency, just as he has been busy ramping up for his campaign for reelection.
There are now two separate investigators assigned in the Department of Justice, tapped with inquiring into how Biden came to have classified documents in two locations — in his garage in Wilmington, Del. and at his office at his think tank in Washington.
U.S. Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland, who earlier appointed investigator Jack Smith to determine how the think tank managed to get classified documents from the Obama White House, has now appointed Robert Hur, a department prosecutor, to look into how Biden ended up with a trove of classified documents in his garage. The Garage Gate documents were discovered on Dec. 20, but the news was just revealed this week.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Thursday that the search for classified documents in Biden’s personal possession is over and that they were simply “inadvertently misplaced.”
“We take this very seriously. The president takes this very seriously. He was not aware that the records were there. He does not know what is in the documents. Again, classified information, classified documents he takes very seriously,” she told the Washington press corps.
What might not be over is the question about whether someone such as Hunter Biden had access to those documents. The president’s son declared the Wilmington address as his home address in 2018, when those documents may very well have been at that address.
The mainstream media appears ready for the kill. Biden was asked by reporters on Thursday about the classified materials.
“By the way, my Corvette’s in a locked garage. So it’s not like they were sitting out in the street,” he replied.
“This is a ground-moving moment for the Biden presidency, and a significant setback as well. With the 2024 election cycle approaching, Biden now faces a major investigation, as well as a bevy of Republican congressional inquiries now that the GOP has taken over the US House of Representatives,” CNN speculated.
Elections have consequences. Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola joined the Democratic Women’s Caucus in the U.S. House this week, showing her support for abortion by wearing white, along with the other members of the caucus, in symbolism of her pro-abortion stance.
The Democratic Women’s Caucus had a group photo with her, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Maxine Waters, and members of the Squad, the caucus of extreme radical women in the House of Representatives.
Peltola proceeded to vote against saving the lives of infants who survive abortion and against a resolution condemning violence against crisis pregnancy centers and churches.
Earlier this month, she voted against the defunding of 87,000 new IRS agents. And she voted against creating a subcommittee to investigate the weaponization of government against citizens.
Peltola, when she ran for office under the slogan, “Fish, Family, Freedom,” said she would continue the legacy of Congressman Don Young, who had an A rating from the Susan B. Anthony Foundation, a pro-life group.
Anchorage Assembly leaders Chair Suzanne LaFrance and Vice Chair Christopher Constant issued a statement regarding the letter the Anchorage Assembly received from the legal representatives of former Municipal Manager Amy Demboski, who has made a wrongful termination allegation against Mayor Dave Bronson. It’s unclear why Demboski’s attorney, Scott Kendall, sent the grievance letter against the mayor to the entire Assembly, but it appears he intends to inflict maximum damage on the Republican mayor of Anchorage.
Last year, the Assembly leaders did get involved and ended up in court with the mayor when the mayor fired the former mayor’s chief equity officer — a move they said was illegal. But this year, they indicate they may have limited abilities, although they apparently plan to get involved in some way in further controlling the executive branch. The letter reads:
“Yesterday afternoon, we received a letter from Cashion Gilmore & Lindemuth, the attorneys representing former Municipal Manager Amy Demboski in her wrongful termination claim against Mayor Bronson.
“The allegations in the letter are extremely shocking and outline a level of mismanagement of municipal resources that we have not seen in our tenure on the Assembly. Because the allegations are so extreme, we are still processing all that we have read and determining what action the Assembly can take to safeguard the municipality’s employees, finances and reputation.
“While many of the allegations fall outside of the Assembly’s jurisdiction, we do have the power and responsibility to steward municipal finances. As a result of the allegations that surfaced on this issue last month, the Assembly has added new controls on our process for approving the administration’s contracts and we are also reviewing additional measures to strengthen and expand the municipal audit process. We will do everything that is within the Assembly’s powers to safeguard the municipality’s finances and protect the interests of residents.
“However, the Assembly can only do so much regarding matters of workplace violations and executive misconduct, and so we hope that the proper employment and financial regulatory agencies conduct their own thorough investigations so that the people of Anchorage are able to understand what is happening within the leadership of their city.
“The people of Anchorage have a right to know if their city is being run legally and responsibly. Therefore, we call on Mayor Bronson to respond to these allegations right away.
“Additionally, while personnel matters are outside of the Assembly’s jurisdiction, we want to remind all Municipal employees of the resources that are in place if any municipal employee is aware of further improprieties that warrant investigation. Employees can reach out to the Municipal Ombudsman’s Office (907-343-4461 or [email protected]) to learn about their options, including filing with the Municipality of Anchorage Labor Relations, the Municipality of Anchorage Office of Equal Opportunity, the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission, the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights, and the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.”
Gov. Mike Dunleavy selected Jen Winkelman to be commissioner for the Alaska Department of Corrections. Winkelman was named acting commissioner last year when Nancy Dahlstrom left the department to run for lieutenant governor.
“Commissioner Winkelman has demonstrated sound judgment and leadership these past few months,” Dunleavy said. “She brings both experience and knowledge to the commissioner’s office and Alaskans can be assured the department is in good hands.”
Winkelman started with the Department of Corrections in 2001. She served as a probation and parole officer in various capacities with the Division of Pretrial, Probation and Parole and the Division of Institutions, in Fairbanks, Palmer and Juneau, most recently as the director of the division. Born and raised in Fairbanks, she has a degree in justice from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and served on both the Fairbanks and Juneau reentry coalitions and the Interstate Commission for Adult Offender Supervision. She serves on the Governor’s Council for Homelessness and the Alaska Police Standards Council.
“I am deeply humbled by the confidence placed in me by Governor Dunleavy and am honored to have the opportunity to serve Alaskans as the Commissioner of the Department of Corrections,” Winkleman said. “Having dedicated over 20 years of state service to DOC, I feel strongly that Corrections is such an important part in the safety and security of all Alaskans. Our over 2,000 employees are the backbone of the work we do, and I am thankful for their dedication to serving the people of Alaska. I look forward to building upon the efforts our staff make, day in and day out, to prepare those in our care and custody for success after release. Fostering positive relationships with other Departments and community leadership, as well as with leadership across different branches of government is a priority of mine as I know this is critical to making a difference in the lives of those in our charge. It is a privilege to be trusted with this responsibility for Alaskans.”
Winkelman’s name will be forwarded to the Alaska Legislature for confirmation.
