Day: May 28, 2026

Celebration, one of the largest cultural events in Alaska, will return to Juneau next week from June 3 to 6.

The lead dance group will be Lepquinm Gumilgit Gagoadim Tsimshian Dancers (Our Own Dance in Our Hearts), a multigenerational group from Anchorage formed in 2005. The theme of the gathering organized by Sealaska Heritage Institute is “Enduring Strength.”

“This Celebration, we can rejoice in the timeless strength of our people as evidenced over the thousands of years we’ve faced adversity with resilience and fortitude,” said SHI President Rosita Ḵaaháni Worl in a prepared statement.

The Celebration 2026 art was designed by Tlingit artist Bill Pfeifer Jr. (Wéidaaká Yóodóohaa), who won with his piece “Endurance and Strength: The Power of the Clan House,” inspired by the 2026 theme.

The lead dance group is responsible for leading the Grand Entrance and Grand Exit songs, during which every participating group dances across the stage at Centennial Hall to mark the beginning and end of Celebration. More than 1,800 dancers from 34 dance groups — including two new groups from Hawaii and New Zealand — will participate this year.

Grand Entrance will begin at 5 p.m. Wednesday at the Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall along Willoughby Avenue, ending at Centennial Hall by 7:30 p.m.

The dance-and-culture festival began in 1982 as a way for Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian people to gather and celebrate their cultural survival, according to a SHI press release.

What started as hundreds of people gathering in Juneau for the event “sparked a renaissance of Native culture that prompted people largely unfamiliar with their heritage to learn their ancestral songs and dances and to make regalia for future Celebrations.”

Now thousands of people are drawn to Juneau for the cultural event, “the largest gathering of Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian people in the world.” Everyone is welcome to attend.

“We have survived environmental and climate changes, the loss of our lands, public policies that nearly wiped out our cultures and epidemics that diminished our populations,” Worl said. “We have been tested, and almost erased. Yet we are still here.”

Along with traditional song and dance, Celebration has grown to include associated events: a Juried Art Show and Competition, a Juried Youth Art Exhibit, a Toddler Regalia Review, an Indigenous Fashion Show, a Native Artist Market, and food contests.

The 2026 Celebration will also feature several new events, including:

• A blanket toss by Traditional Games participants
• Earring-making classes
• A print lab open house
• A Tlingit Culture, Language and Literacy book launch
• Lectures by cultural leaders and artists Te Ara Kuaka, David Boxley and Delores Churchill
• A “House of Rock” concert
• Additional SHI programming, including an open house in the Indigenous Science Building and a Baby Raven Reads pop-up event
• A regalia photo booth
• A screening of “Tlingit Macbeth”
• A project documenting clan crests

From next Wednesday to Saturday, daily admission tickets and four-day passes will be available at Centennial Hall and Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall. Four-day passes will be sold at the Sealaska Heritage Store downtown on Monday and Tuesday. Volunteers can apply here. Celebration will also be livestreamed on SHI’s YouTube channel and a statewide broadcast on KTOO.

While Celebration officially opens on Wednesday at Centennial Hall, canoe journey landings will unofficially kickstart the event at Auke Recreation Area and downtown on Tuesday.

Canoe landings

At 1 p.m. on Tuesday, the Áak’w Kwáan will welcome canoes ashore at Auke Rec. Parking is limited for elders, volunteers, nearby residents and those with handicap permits. Parking will also be available at the University of Alaska Southeast with shuttle transportation available between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. It’s advised to bring a camp chair, food and water.

Community members are invited to watch the downtown landing and Tʼaaḵu Ḵwáan cultural ceremony at 2 p.m. at the Huna Totem Corp. lot next to the U.S. Coast Guard station at 345 Egan Drive.

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The state of Alaska has the right to make public data from exploration wells drilled by ConocoPhillips in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, an appeals court has ruled.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, issued Wednesday, overturns a 2023 decision by U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason that allowed well data to remain under wraps.

At issue is a collection of wells drilled in the reserve, which is federal territory. ConocoPhillips argued that data confidentiality is explicitly guaranteed in federal law and that federal law supersedes state law, but the appeals justices disagreed.

On the National Petroleum Reserve, “Alaska has its own authority to gather — and disclose — data collected from oil and gas exploration, authority that it exercised even before Congress opened the Reserve to private exploration,” the appeals court ruling said.

The Indiana-sized National Petroleum Reserve is of keen interest to energy companies. It is underlain by a formation called the Nanushuk, the source of oil for ConocoPhillips’ huge Willow project, which is under development, the Santos-operated Pikka project, which recently started production, and other prospects. A lease sale held in the reserve in March, the first since 2019, drew a record $163 million in high bids.

Under state law, data from exploratory oil and gas wells is to be disclosed publicly after those wells are completed. State law provides for a 24-month period of confidentiality, after which the AOGCC is to make the data publicly available, unless the Department of Natural Resources commissioner grants an exemption to keep the information confidential for a longer period.

After ConocoPhillips’ request for a DNR exemption was denied, the company in 2022 sued the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to keep the data confidential.

ConocoPhillips argued that the federal Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act expressly prevents the AOGCC and Gas Conservation Commission from disclosing data from the wells, which were drilled on federal leases.

Gleason’s March 8, 2023, ruling came to a slightly different conclusion that nonetheless backed ConocoPhillips. She found that the federal law implicitly protects data confidentiality, despite state law.

The appeals court judges agreed that the federal law has no explicit restriction on state release of well data, but they drew a different conclusion from that finding than Gleason did.

For the state, the appeals court ruling is a victory that is good for future development, Acting Attorney General Cori Mills said in a statement.

“Alaska relies heavily on our resources and resource development. We are also stewards of those resources for the citizens of Alaska. Alaska’s law both allows resource development now, and encourages further development and exploration in the future. We’re pleased that the Ninth Circuit recognized that federal law has not overridden Alaska’s balanced approach,” Mills said.

ConocoPhillips is still considering its next steps, a company spokesperson said. “ConocoPhillips Alaska, Inc. has received the court’s decision and is evaluating it. ConocoPhillips Alaska, Inc. has not decided on whether to appeal the decision,” company spokesperson Megan Olson said by email.

The well data that is the subject of the case remains confidential, according to court documents. Confidentiality has been maintained all the time that the court case has been active.

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Legislators are being held after school this month and the state is paying for the extra time because the governor did not do his homework.

If that seems backward, you’re right.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy ordered lawmakers to stay late after the regular legislative session ended because he insists that they approve major big-time relief from property taxes for the owners of the proposed, possible, maybe someday Alaska North Slope natural gas pipeline and export project.

The governor believes the multi-multibillion-dollar project will go ahead if the state House and Senate approve a tax relief package during a special legislative session. That’s all it needs, he keeps telling Alaskans. Cut the property taxes and all the parts will fit together and construction can start.

He talks as if building and paying for the most expensive oil or gas project ever in the history of North America is as simple as snapping together an Erector Set, Lincoln Logs or Lego model.

Dunleavy’s instructions booklet includes his salesman’s vision of the finished project, telling Alaska’s population center around Anchorage and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough that residents and businesses will enjoy affordable natural gas for heat and electricity for decades to come.

If it were that easy, the pipeline would have been built a long time ago. There is a lot more to do than just writing off most of the property taxes — such as developing realistic construction cost estimates and schedules, contracting customers to buy the gas and obtaining committed pledges of investment and financing totaling tens of billions of dollars.

It’s hard to see how a couple billion dollars that the governor believes is all the project can afford to pay in lieu of property taxes over 30 years can make or break a venture that could take in $300 billion in gross revenues over that same period.

Getting the gas project would be good for Alaska’s economy, no question about it, but getting there takes homework. And that’s where the governor skipped class.

It’s not like the project came as a surprise to anyone who completed the assigned reading. The state has been looking at what it could do to make the pipeline happen for a long time, most recently during Dunleavy’s six years as a state senator and all eight years of his two terms in the governor’s office.

What changed last year was that a private developer named Glenfarne Group, out of New York City, stepped up to take over management and 75% ownership of the venture from the state agency that had been unsuccessful in its efforts the past decade.

And what changed over the winter was talk of needing to escape the cost of full property taxes on the project.

But what didn’t change was the governor’s laid-back approach to work. He waited until the legislative session was half over before he introduced the tax relief bill he had promised months earlier. And even when he did turn in his work, it was inadequate on facts, numbers, analysis and disclosure.

It was the kind of homework that a teacher would mark “incomplete.” Which is what the Legislature did. 

Now the governor wants lawmakers to work overtime to finish his assignment. And he figures to blame legislators if the gas project does not go ahead.

Dunleavy would have a better chance at passing the class — or passing a bill — if he would just admit he slept through the lecture on gas pipeline economics and accept the blame for a late and incomplete paper.

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This article was first published by Post Alley.

Early this month, a mobile floating gas station of sorts pulled up alongside the towering cruise ship Star Princess at Seattle’s Pier 91 terminal. For the next eight hours, the refueling crew made news by pumping a large volume of super-cooled natural gas into the bowels of the cruise liner.

The newest cruise ship operated by Princess Cruises is the first oceangoing vessel to be refueled in Seattle with liquefied natural gas (LNG). It could be the start of a new way of fueling the Alaska cruise ships that operate out of Seattle and Vancouver all summer.

“I’m just delighted to see there’s no smoke coming out of the cruise ship. We’re plugged in. We’re burning the cleanest gas you can right now,” Port of Seattle Commissioner Fred Felleman said while observing from an adjacent pier. “Right now, this is about as good as it gets in the industry.”

The steadily-growing fleet of mammoth cruise ships that ply the Inside Passage has a sizable carbon footprint – ship fuel being the biggest single component. Cruise line executives acknowledge that they need to do their part to soften the environmental impact. The major cruise lines in the Alaska market, through their trade association, have committed to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions from ship operations by 2050. The challenge until now has been finding an alternative fuel that is cost-competitive and available at scale locally.

Felleman said the Port of Seattle is striving to be the “greenest” cruise homeport. The gleaming floating palace over his shoulder demonstrated a fuel technology that the maritime industry appears to be coalescing around to improve air quality in port communities such as Seattle, Tacoma and Vancouver. But the lengthy transition is accompanied by some sniping and griping.

The super-chilled natural gas arrives on a specialized small-scale tanker ship from British Columbia in a multiday journey that underscores the novelty of the alternative marine fuel. Vancouver-based Seaspan Energy acquired three refueling tankers (commonly called bunkering vessels) from a Chinese shipyard to offer ship-to-ship LNG refueling along the West Coast.

“We’ve been held to a very high standard, not only in the construction of these vessels, not only in the crewing and the credentials of the people operating on these vessels, but in the actual play-by-play operations,” said Seaspan Energy President Harly Penner during an online roundtable hosted by the Port of Seattle. “We’re going to make sure it’s done safely.”

Penner appeared to anticipate LNG’s detractors who portray the fuel as acutely risky if spilled, due to its very low temperature. Critics also worry about the wide, devastating impact if an LNG cargo ignited, which Penner said has never happened during ship-to-ship refueling elsewhere in the world.

The U.S. Coast Guard and Seattle Fire Department reviewed and were satisfied with Seaspan’s LNG bunkering plans. A Star Princess passenger posted the safety instructions applicable to passengers on board. The cruise line handout told people assigned to staterooms overlooking the Seaspan tanker to stay off their balconies during the refueling operation and that smoking in the Star Bar would be forbidden while fueling was underway. A Port of Seattle police boat also kept watch a couple hundred yards off the stern of the cruise ship, which has a 4,300-passenger capacity.

Overall, Port of Seattle officials appear to be giving a tempered welcome to LNG as they celebrate what is anticipated to be the busiest Alaska cruise season in port history. Maritime Division Managing Director Stephanie Jones Stebbins said the port is interested because of the “tremendous” reduction in air pollutants, such as diesel particulates and harmful sulfur and nitrogen oxides. But port staff pointedly avoided claiming a global warming mitigation benefit and also told elected commissioners that there are no plans to invest in local infrastructure to supply LNG from shore.

“We know LNG is ultimately a fossil fuel. We view it as a transition fuel,” Jones Stebbins said. “We are looking beyond that to renewable fuels – options like green methanol, renewable natural gas, ammonia, drop-in synthetic fuels, electrification.”

Shipping line TOTE Maritime converted two large cargo ships on the Tacoma-Anchorage circuit to LNG propulsion in 2022. The ships refuel from an adjacent Puget Sound Energy liquefaction and LNG storage facility that remains controversial in Tacoma and has so far failed to attract other marine users.

On the wrong course?

Climate protection campaigners and some political conservatives take issue with the maritime industry’s fuel transition, but for very different reasons.

The environmental group Seattle Cruise Control urged the Port of Seattle to reject LNG-powered ships. The group labels LNG as a “false promise” because activists calculate the carbon footprint of natural gas from “well to wake” to be as bad or worse for the climate than traditional marine fuels. (The math varies in the industry, and some like Penner claim a positive greenhouse gas benefit.)

“The use of LNG will continue harming the climate, lock in obsolete technology, and delay the necessary transition to zero-emissions fuels,” Seattle Cruise Control co-founder Elizabeth Burton said in an email.

Conservative voices, meanwhile, including at the highest levels of the Trump administration, are pushing back on maritime decarbonization because of the potential pass-through costs to consumers.

“Popular fuel alternatives, such as liquefied natural gas and hydrogen, require double to more than triple the tank size of oil. In an industry that monetizes every square foot of space, it’s a costly gamble for regulation that may not come to pass,” wrote opinion columnist Kate Farmer in the Wall Street Journal last month.

Princess Cruises spokesperson Negin Kamali described LNG as “the best readily available fuel that significantly reduces direct greenhouse gas and other emissions and particulate matter now.” Notably, the cruise line barely mentions the dual-fuel capability of its newest vessel in marketing and advertising. The Love Boat’s other amenities get all the love – such as the restaurants, stage shows and luxury staterooms.

This summer, Star Princess is scheduled to refuel with LNG in Seattle every other weekend. Kamali said that should be sufficient to operate the big ship on LNG throughout the season. When LNG is unavailable, Star Princess’ engines burn traditional marine gas oil.

Star Princess was mistakenly credited by a port and a chamber of commerce in southeast Alaska as the first LNG-powered cruise ship to visit the Last Frontier. That title actually belongs to Silver Nova, which was refueled by Seaspan with LNG in Vancouver before an Alaska sailing last year in May. The dual-fuel luxury liner is being relocated to the Mediterranean for this summer by its operator, Silversea Cruises.

The challenge of decarbonizing

A demonstration last summer in Seattle involving another cruise line, Holland America, showed the multiple challenges and cost barriers involved with decarbonizing large ship operations. For this project, Holland America and the port teamed up to refuel the cruise liner Eurodam with renewable diesel made from vegetable oil.

A port memo described the three refuelings as a bit cumbersome, but ultimately successful from an operational point of view. However, the biofuel netted out to triple the cost of conventional low-sulfur marine fuel. So, the bottom line was that the experiment would not be repeated until biofuel costs come down and availability improves.

Bud Darr, CEO of the trade group Cruise Lines International Association, said it takes “an awful lot of courage” for ship owners to spend as much as $2 billion on new dual-fuel cruise ships designed to burn various kinds of climate-friendly fuel that cannot be procured today.

Darr said there is not much uptake on methanol because the industry is still waiting for bio- or synthetic forms of the fuel to become available at scale. Darr said “the safety case” for carbon-free ammonia is not strong enough to work as cruise ship fuel because of the high toxicity of the gas were it to leak.

That basically leaves LNG as the preferred alternative marine fuel, Darr said during the Port of Seattle’s industry roundtable in April. He said no ship owners had told him that the fossil fuel LNG was their final answer.

“Really, we’re looking to progress from the fossil form of LNG,” Darr said, “on to a renewable version of that.”

Commissioner Felleman is also zeroing in on renewable natural gas as the way to have a thriving cruise industry and protect the climate. Renewable natural gas – aka RNG or bio-LNG – is most commonly derived around here from the breakdown of landfill waste, municipal sewage or feedlot cow manure. Felleman said he is encouraged that the steep price premium for RNG is slowly coming down. Other branches of government are trying to spur greater supply with carbon credits.

“The fastest way to make progress with the existing and growing fleet of vessels is to incentivize the use of alternative fuels,” Fellman said.

Post Alley launched in June 2019 as part of a new, Seattle-based writers’ collective aimed at helping fill gaps in local journalism and exploring new ways of delivering quality reporting and commentary. Learn more about the publication here.

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A federal judge on Thursday declined to block President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting voting by mail, finding that it was too early to challenge the directive.

The decision by D.C. District Court Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, represents a setback for Democratic groups, lawmakers and other groups including the NAACP that have sued to stop the order ahead of the midterm elections in November. The March 31 order faces at least five lawsuits. 

The executive order directs the postmaster general, who leads the Postal Service, to propose a rule that would block states from sending ballots through the mail except to voters on lists provided by the state to the Postal Service. Under the order, the proposed rule is due this week.

The order also instructs the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of voting-age U.S. citizens in each state, with the help of the Social Security Administration. Democrats allege the Trump administration is building an unauthorized national voter list, despite the U.S. Constitution giving states the responsibility of running federal elections.

The Department of Justice had told the judge that the federal government hadn’t yet implemented the directive. The judge’s opinion, released just after midnight in Washington, D.C., makes clear that he could arrive at a different decision if the Trump administration moves forward with enforcing the order. 

“The Court recognizes that the Postal Service may ultimately issue a final rule that directly affects Plaintiffs or their members, or that the Government may develop State Citizenship Lists that omit specific individuals due to particularized flaws,” Nichols wrote in a 26-page opinion. 

“Plaintiffs may, of course, renew their motions if and when those future actions occur,” he wrote. “Until then, however, Plaintiffs cannot show that preliminary injunctive relief is warranted.”

Implications for midterms

Nichols’ decision is the first ruling in what is likely to be a protracted legal battle that could eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Thursday’s opinion dealt only with whether the executive order should be blocked immediately — the underlying lawsuit to decide if the directive is unconstitutional and illegal will continue.

Whether Trump can successfully implement the order holds major consequences for the midterm elections. If the White House is able to block the Postal Service from sending or receiving mail ballots from voters not on state-provided lists, it could upend elections in states where voting by mail is the norm and disrupt procedures in others. 

About 30% of voters cast mail ballots in 2024, according to data gathered by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

Trump has framed the order as a needed measure to combat noncitizen voting, though it’s exceedingly rare. The directive marks the White House’s latest effort to assert authority over elections as the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to show documents proving their citizenship, stalls in the U.S. Senate.

Democrats and voting rights advocates argue the executive order is unconstitutional. Under the U.S. Constitution, states administer elections and Congress has the power to pass regulations on them, but the president has no power to act unilaterally.  

Postal Service targeted

The battle over the executive order also carries ramifications for the future of the Postal Service. While the president used to appoint the postmaster general, since 1970 the Postal Service has operated as an independent corporation — a change intended to shield mail delivery from politics.

Postal law experts say that if Trump is able to enforce an order against the postmaster general, who now is appointed by a Postal Service Board of Governors, it will shatter the agency’s independence. 

“Today’s ruling is a decisive victory for the rule of law and deals a blow against the Democrat strategy of suing first and finding legal arguments later. The Trump Administration will continue fighting for the safety and security of American elections,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement.

The Democratic groups suing over the order, including the Democratic National Committee, in a joint statement expressed confidence they would eventually prevail. They said the decision doesn’t change the principle that the executive branch cannot infringe on Americans’ voting rights.

The Democratic groups suing over the order, including the Democratic National Committee, in a joint statement expressed confidence they would eventually prevail. They said the decision doesn’t change the principle that the executive branch cannot infringe on Americans’ voting rights.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and one of the plaintiffs, in a statement called mail voting safe and secure. He emphasized that presidents don’t get to rewrite election law “by decree.”

“Trump’s strategy is simple: if he can’t win voters, he’ll silence them — and now a MAGA judge is enabling him,” Schumer said.

A group of Republican state attorneys general has also intervened in the case to defend the order. They argue that Trump has authority to gather and organize information within the executive branch. They say Trump can direct the Postal Service to propose rules.

Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, who is leading the Republican legal effort, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Nichols’ decision.

Opponents look to Massachusetts

With Nichols’ decision, a federal judge in Massachusetts offers opponents their next opportunity to quickly halt the directive. 

Massachusetts District Court Judge Indira Talwani, appointed by President Barack Obama, will hold a hearing on Tuesday in a legal challenge brought by Democratic state attorneys general, led by California, along with the League of Women Voters and other civic groups.

Some legal analysts anticipate states may have an easier time challenging the order because its requirements, such as requiring states to submit lists of voters to send ballots through the mail, directly affect them. David Becker, director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, wrote on social media that the states have “much stronger standing claims” heading into the hearing.

After federal agencies begin acting on the order, the challenge in Massachusetts “will be the case to watch,” he wrote.

‘Maximum amount of confusion’

At a mid-May hearing before Nichols, lawyers for the Democratic National Committee, Democratic leaders Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, and other interest groups had argued that, with the midterm elections less than six months away, there was no time to see how the Trump administration executes the order.

The proposal would result in a “maximum amount of confusion” and be a “nightmare for election officials,” Danielle Lang, who argued on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens, told Nichols. “Waiting will only erode public confidence in elections.”

At the time, Nichols warned Justice Department lawyers to notify him of “anything even approaching a material change” on implementing the order.

Justice Department senior trial counsel Stephen Pezzi told Nichols the plaintiffs have a right to “prepare for the darkest fears,” but, he argued, they can’t win a preliminary injunction based on speculation about error-prone citizenship lists and a postal rule not yet created.

Ultimately, Nichols agreed.

“In any event, given that the Executive Order does not command Plaintiffs to do anything, and that no agency has yet acted pursuant to the Order in a way that could harm Plaintiffs,” Nichols wrote, “they have not suffered any harm at present, much less harm that is ‘certain,’ ‘great,’ and imminent.”

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The Trump administration wants the U.S. Supreme Court to empower states to review their voter rolls for noncitizens just days before elections, a change that voting rights advocates say would risk disenfranchising Americans.

The U.S. Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to wade into a legal fight between the Republican National Committee and a host of Democratic and voting rights groups over a series of voting restrictions in Arizona.

If the court takes the case, it could lead to a significant decision granting states greater leeway to purge alleged noncitizen voters close to elections and mandate that voters prove their citizenship — a key aim of the SAVE America Act, President Donald Trump’s signature elections legislation that’s stalled in Congress.

The high court’s decision could arrive prior to the 2028 presidential election.

Voting in Arizona

Arizona requires individuals to provide proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, to vote in state elections. Residents who don’t offer documentation can still use a federal form to register, but can only vote in federal elections. 

Election officials must run the names of federal-only voters through a U.S. Department of Homeland Security computer program that can identify possible noncitizens.

The Justice Department argues that the Supreme Court should affirm the Arizona law and find that it doesn’t violate the National Voter Registration Act, a 1993 federal law that sets rules for how voters are registered and when states can remove them from their rolls. The NVRA imposes strict limits on canceling registrations in the 90 days before a federal election.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals previously ruled that Arizona’s law violates the NVRA.

“But that decision eliminates the flexibility the Act promises to States when enforcing their voter qualifications,” the Justice Department says in its brief.

While the Trump administration wants the Supreme Court to take the case, the underlying petition was filed by the Republican National Committee. Its chairman, Joe Gruters, in a statement said it was “unacceptable” that the RNC was still having to defend the Arizona law.

“Federal law is clear: only U.S. citizens have the right to vote in American elections,” Gruters said.

Appeals court ruling 

Mi Familia Vota, a Latino voting rights group that’s opposing the RNC in court, said in a statement the Justice Department’s brief shows “MAGA Republicans and their friends in the Trump Administration are once again trying to disenfranchise Latino voters in Arizona.”

Opponents of Arizona’s law argue the 9th Circuit decision was correct. The state law, they say, goes well beyond what’s allowed under the NVRA. Election officials may remove individual voters in certain circumstances in the run-up to an election but the law prohibits sweeping purges.

“States cannot circumvent the limits on systematic removals that Congress — exercising its express constitutional authority to regulate federal elections — put in place to ensure that eligible voters have adequate time to correct erroneous removal procedures, thereby protecting Americans’ fundamental right to vote,” the Democratic National Committee and the Arizona Democratic Party argued in a brief filed Tuesday.

Democrats and voting rights groups warn about expanding use of Homeland Security’s SAVE system, short for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, that’s mandated under Arizona law. 

Initially a program used by states to check whether individual noncitizens were eligible for government benefits, the Trump administration has overhauled it into a tool that can verify citizenship by checking information in federal databases. 

SAVE can now check millions of names simultaneously. Many Republican states have begun uploading their voter rolls into SAVE to search for potential noncitizens. 

Critics of the program say SAVE has falsely flagged U.S. citizens, a problem that could be exacerbated if the Supreme Court allows its widespread use in the weeks before an election. Last-minute misidentifications could leave little time for voters to prove their citizenship.

Justin Levitt, who served as senior policy adviser for democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House and is now a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, said in an interview that the 90-day period serves as a “pencils down” time to minimize the possibility of errors just before elections.

“Anytime you’re matching one giant list to another giant list, you’re going to have mistakes,” Levitt said. “If you execute this systemic list maintenance two days before the election, those mistakes are going to keep eligible voters from voting.”

Voter purges

At a U.S. House hearing on the NVRA in December, Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, pointed to several voter purges, including a 2024 effort in Virginia, to highlight the dangers of last-minute removals. 

That August, Virginia’s Republican governor at the time, Glenn Youngkin, ordered election officials to scrub the state’s voter list for noncitizens. More than 1,600 voter registrations were canceled, with citizens swept up in the purge. The Supreme Court in October 2024 declined to overturn the purge.

“There is no dispute that states and localities must keep their voter rolls accurate and up to date,” Lakin wrote in her opening statement. “But the integrity of our elections is not threatened by the phantom menace of widespread noncitizen voting — it is threatened by aggressive purge practices that wrongfully strike legitimate voters from the rolls and by unnecessary barriers to registration that prevent eligible Americans from getting on those rolls in the first place.

Noncitizen voting

The specter of noncitizen voting has been a central focus of Trump’s second term, despite studies showing it’s an extremely rare occurrence. One study of the 2016 election placed the prevalence of noncitizen voting at 0.0001% of votes cast.

Utah recently announced that a review of its 2 million registered voters identified just 27 confirmed noncitizens and an additional 25 “probable” noncitizens — a miniscule percentage of voters.

The Justice Department has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia in a so-far unsuccessful effort to force them to hand over private voter data so the information can be run through the SAVE system to search for noncitizens. In late March, Trump signed an executive order to restrict the transmission of ballots through the mail, though several lawsuits have been filed against it.

Trump also continues to demand that senators pass the SAVE America Act, even though it has stalled in the U.S. Senate. While the legislation would set a national proof of citizenship rule, some states have enacted or are weighing their own requirements. 

Republican attorneys general

Five states — Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, New Hampshire and South Dakota — ask for proof of citizenship when voters register for the first time, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. One state, Wyoming, also requires proof when voters update their registration.

But Arizona was the only state before 2025 to maintain two separate voter rolls to enforce its proof of citizenship rules, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. The distinction helps explain why the Arizona case is now poised for consideration by the Supreme Court.

A host of Republican state attorneys general, led by Kansas’ Kris Kobach, have filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to take the Arizona case. They say the 9th Circuit gutted Arizona’s “common-sense measures” to protect its elections.

“This case presents yet another assault on State efforts to promote election security,” the states’ brief says.

In addition to Kansas, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia signed on to the brief.

The Supreme Court has sent conflicting signals about proof of citizenship laws in the past. In August 2024, the court issued an unsigned order on its “shadow docket” allowing Arizona to enforce its proof of citizenship requirements for the 2024 election. 

But four years earlier, the justices declined to take a case over a Kansas proof of citizenship law. That left in place an appeals court decision blocking the law, which remains unenforceable.

The Arizona case would offer the Supreme Court a way to provide a more definitive opinion. If the justices decide soon to take it, they would likely hold oral arguments in the fall and potentially issue a decision next spring, more than a year before the 2028 presidential election.

The Justice Department’s brief says the case “offers an opportunity to resolve these important election-law issues outside the setting of a contested election.”

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Civics education would be included among graduation requirements for all Alaska high schoolers, under a bill passed by the Alaska Legislature in the final hours of the legislative session last week. 

The new requirement aims to bolster Alaska students’ knowledge and understanding of the U.S. government and civic responsibilities. It comes amid declining public trust in government, the bill’s sponsor, Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, told the Alaska Beacon last month.

Students would have three options to choose from to complete the requirement: complete and pass a semester of civics curriculum, pass a civics exam or complete a civics project-based assessment.

Lawmakers passed Senate Bill 23 by a combined vote of 57 to 3. The bill now goes before Gov. Mike Dunleavy to sign, veto or allow it to pass into law without his signature. 

Under the proposal, school districts would be able to develop civics curriculums based on open-access, no cost resources provided by the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development across 14 areas of government and public affairs:

• the founding history of the United States, including foundational documents and the principles of government of the United States; federalism, including the role and operations of local, state and national governments;                                                                                             
• the institutions of the United States government, including the responsibilities of the executive, legislative and judicial branches;                                            
• the rights and responsibilities of United States citizenship;                                      
• civil liberties and civil rights;                                                                  
• the Constitution of the State of Alaska and the Constitution of the United States;                                                                                                    
• political parties and interest groups;                                                             
• campaigns and elections;                                                                           
• the United States Congress;                                                                        
• domestic policy;                                                                                  
• foreign policy;                                                                                  
• comparative systems of governments used globally and by Alaska Native people;                                                                                                          
• international relations; and                                                                      
• major issues facing local, state and the United States governments.

The initiative comes at a time when the United States is seeing a growing public distrust in government and deepening political polarization. A survey last year by the non-partisan Pew Research Center found public distrust is at one of its lowest points in the nation’s history, with just 17% of respondents saying they trust the federal government to “do what is right.” 

Stevens declined to comment on the bill passing the Legislature when asked at the Capitol on Wednesday. He said he would wait to comment after the governor’s decision on the bill. Lawmakers have passed 114 bills in this two-year legislative term. But Dunleavy has vetoed 12 bills so far and will consider dozens more in the next few weeks. 

Lawmakers are in a high-stakes 30-day special session called by Dunleavy to discuss potential state property tax relief for  the proposed Alaska LNG gas line project. The special session is expected to go to June 21.

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