I’m concerned about undue influence from Citizens for Haines, a political action committee that is required by law to register with the state because they have a political agenda.
Their voter guide instructs us to “vote for candidates who will bring us together,” and then endorses someone who served one Assembly term and lost her re-election bid three times (in 2016, 2017, and 2020), passing over a candidate with obvious voter approval, who was elected to…
DODGER STADIUM (Los Angeles) – Before they took the field on Opening Day, Dodgers players had a gift waiting in their lockers, courtesy of their best player. Next to a brand-new Seiko watch was a note. “From Shohei Ohtani. Let’s three-peat.” The goal has existed on the periphery all season, usually unspoken yet omnipresent as the Dodgers attempt to accomplish what no team has done since the 1998-2000 New York Yankees. No National League team has ever won three consecutive World Series championships. The Dodgers understand the opportunity ahead, even if it’s not something their manager chooses to bring up often. When they clinched the division for a fifth straight year on Sept. 17, manager Dave Roberts instead focused on his team’s toughness and hunger and the sacrifices it would take, including time away from family, to make sure this October would be another to remember. “You never know who is going to be the guy, who that moment is going to fall to,” Roberts told his team. “Many people have lived it in this clubhouse. My ask is, be ready to be that guy.” He did not mention the phrase “three-peat.” He didn’t need to. Ohtani’s veteran team knows what’s at stake, especially as the club’s aging core gets a year older and labor strife invites uncertainty about the future. What the Dodgers have built, and the chance in front of them, is not guaranteed forever. “We’re all aware we have a chance to do something that’s never been done in the National League and what it would mean for this franchise, this fanbase,” Roberts said. “But it just makes life more difficult when you don’t focus on the job, that’s winning this next series. I think our guys are pretty focused on that.” They’re also equipped for it. In 2024, the Dodgers’ talented bullpen arms made up for a patchwork rotation on their triumphant postseason run. Last year, their surplus of starters gave them extra relief options to manage an unstable bullpen. In Game 7 of the World Series, all six pitchers who entered the game for the Dodgers began the year as starters. This year, the Dodgers anticipate a more reliable mix of arms. Everything is set up smoothly for them to make history. They are the least-flawed group in the playoff field — Do the Brewers have enough power to win? Do the Braves or Padres have enough reliable starting pitching? Will any American League team have a chance against the National League winner? — with a rotation that could go down as one of the best October units ever assembled. Tarik Skubal, the reigning American League back-to-back Cy Young Award winner, will take the mound for Game 1 against the Braves in the National League Division Series. Roberts delivered the news to Skubal right after their star deadline acquisition exited his final start of the season in San Francisco, where he needed just 75 pitches to strike out 10 batters in seven innings. “I thought in the moment I was going to be able to finish the game,” Skubal recalled. “And he’s like, ‘Get ready for Game 1.’ That’s how I was told, and obviously excited and fired up and ready to go.” The Dodgers have another two-time Cy Young Award winner, Blake Snell, and the reigning World Series MVP, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, ready to follow in some order for the ensuing games. Tyler Glasnow, who struck out 21 batters over his final two starts of the season, would be the top arm on some playoff teams. He is the Dodgers’ fourth starter. “In my opinion,” Freeman said, “we’ve got four No. 1s rolling out there.” Contrast that with their National League Division Series foes. While Tyler Mahle has stepped up in a significant way to give Atlanta more pitching depth, Chris Sale is the lone ace of the group. The Braves used Sale twice in their wild-card series, once to start Game 1 and again two days later to secure the final five outs of the series — a decision that now yields significant consequences. The Braves will likely use a bullpen game against Skubal on Saturday in Los Angeles, and Sale’s status for Sunday’s Game 2 is up in the air. The Braves should have the bullpen advantage, but there are reasons for October optimism — certainly more than a year ago — once the Dodgers’ full stable of arms gets narrowed down to those in Roberts’ trust tree. In August and September, Dodgers relievers combined for a 3.20 ERA, which ranked fourth in MLB. In September, Alex Vesia was 2-0 with a 0.87 ERA while Evan Phillips had a 2.16 ERA with 12 strikeouts and one walk in nine appearances. Most notably, after a miserable season for Edwin Díaz, the Dodgers’ $69 million offseason signing started to resemble the player they expected to get. After returning from the injured list, Díaz made five scoreless appearances in which he struck out nine batters and allowed just two baserunners to finish the year. Lefty Tanner Scott has enjoyed a bounce-back season in the second year of a four-year, $72 million deal and is the likeliest option to pitch the ninth to begin the postseason, though that role is not set in stone. If Díaz continues to look more like the player the Dodgers expected, he gives the club another closing option. They also have starter Roki Sasaki ready to make his annual postseason pilgrimage to the Dodgers’ bullpen, only now with a much more consistent season under his belt. Roberts said he feels comfortable with any of Scott, Phillips, Díaz or Sasaki closing games. Meanwhile, the Dodgers’ struggling hitters have finally caught fire. Entering September, Mookie Betts, Kyle Tucker and Teoscar Hernández were the only hitters on the team who had received at least 300 plate appearances and produced below league-average results. Then, in the season’s final month, Betts had a 1.112 OPS, Hernández hit .341 and Tucker homered six times. In addition, catcher Will Smith returned from a nearly three-month hiatus with a neck issue to slash .290/.400/.548 with four home runs over his last 21 games. All-Star center fielder Andy Pages, meanwhile, returned from a fractured hand for the final six games of the regular season and proceeded to go 6-for-18 with two home runs. That doesn’t mean that the Dodgers enter October are without any concerns. Snell left his start early on Sept. 16 with a groin issue, though he returned to deliver four innings of work on Sept. 26. A sore right knee sapped much of Freddie Freeman’s power in the second half. Meanwhile, the team’s biggest October question mark centers on the player who delivered that Opening Day gift. Lingering left knee and right biceps issues impacted Ohtani’s production in the season’s second half and forced him to the injured list in September. Neither Freeman nor Ohtani are expected to be 100% on this postseason run. That’s why the first-round bye the Dodgers secured was so vital, giving the club’s ailing veterans adequate time to rest. Snell, Freeman and Ohtani are all expected to be ready to go. Freeman, in particular, has already shown that he can take his game up a notch in October even when he’s not feeling right physically. “A couple Octobers ago was probably 100 times worse, ailment-wise,” Freeman said. “I truly feel good right now physically, so it’s on me now to figure out the mechanics of the swing.” Thursday provided a promising sign when Freeman laced a double in an intrasquad scrimmage. “I feel very confident that once we get to Saturday, we’re going to see the best version of Freddie,” Roberts said. Earlier this week, Ohtani took batting practice on the field, a rare occurrence for him. Dodgers hitting coach Aaron Bates said he launched a couple of baseballs off the scoreboard. “It was as good as we’ve seen it this year, as far as the way the ball was coming off and the way he was getting his move off,” Bates said. In live at-bats Friday against Emmet Sheehan — another pitching depth option for the Dodgers this postseason — Ohtani struck out once and then lined a hard hit to right field. Roberts is hopeful that the bright lights of October will bring the best out of his superstar designated hitter, even in a compromised form. “I expect good things,” Roberts said. “I really do. We just haven’t seen it enough for me to forecast it.” Since 2024, after getting knocked out of the playoffs in the first round in back-to-back seasons, the Dodgers have used the downtime between the end of the regular season and the start of the postseason to spend more time together as a team, including hosting playoff watch parties and participating in intrasquad games, to stay close and avoid rust. It worked the last two years for more-flawed clubs than this one, yielding back-to-back World Series titles. Given the way everything seems to be coming together, there’s no reason it won’t again. “This team knows when to turn the switch and go,” Dodgers infielder Miguel Rojas told me. “We all understand the task that’s ahead of us, and we’ve got the motivation that’s winning three in a row.”Latest Sports News from FOX Sports
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TEMPE, Arizona — For any international soccer squad (or really a team in any sport at all), hitting the road for games in inhospitable environments is a fact of life. Home-field advantage is real. The flip side of that fact is that it also holds true for opponents. Being the away team is almost always harder. It sure has been for the U.S. men’s national team against Mexico, its fiercest rival. While the USA has gotten the better of El Tri more often than not over the last quarter-century — including a 2-0 win that sent the Americans to the quarterfinals of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, it still has never won a competitive match south of the border since the neighbors first met in one there almost 80 years ago. Saturday’s exhibition between the U.S. and Mexico just outside of Phoenix is technically a home game for the Stars and Stripes. As a practical matter, it isn’t. The overwhelming majority of the 60,000-plus fans expected at State Farm Stadium in nearby Glendale are sure to be rooting for the visiting team. “It’s going to be an adverse crowd, tough conditions to play in,” veteran American defender Antonee Robinson said on Thursday. “But that’s something we embrace.” They should. It’s been almost two years since Mauricio Pochettino’s side last played outside the United States. Because the USA qualified automatically as co-hosts of the 2026 World Cup, it didn’t have to earn its way there by collecting points in hostile regional outposts such as Port-of-Spain or San Pedro Sula or Mexico City. That won’t be the case ahead of the 2030 World Cup. Concacaf’s marathon two-year-long qualifying tournament begins late next year. Saturday’s contest will help prepare the U.S. for what’s coming. “It’s a good opportunity for us to live that experience, of course,” Pochettino said during his pre-game press conference, adding that if the composition of the crowd resembles the 2025 Gold Cup final that the U.S. narrowly lost to Mexico in front of an ocean of green jerseys in Houston, it will be like starting the game “down 1-nil.” “To play in a difficult atmosphere, I think that for sure is going to help for the future.” The U.S. kicked off this new World Cup cycle with impressive multi-goal wins over South American foes Peru and Chile. Pochettino started a number of young players against both. The initial feeling was that he’d opt for more experienced lineups for the final two tests of this extended four-match window. But the youngsters did well enough — the Americans got goals from teenagers Mathis Albert and Justin Ellis and two from Julian Hall — to suggest that they won’t be at all overawed if they’re called on against Mexico and/or Canada. After facing El Tri, the U.S. will wrap things up in St. Paul, Minnesota, with another rivalry game against their neighbors in the north. “Tomorrow is going to be similar to Peru or Chile,” Pochettino said Friday. “We are going to always try to find a good balance, a mix between experienced players and non-experienced players at the international level.” Still, the intensity of the game against El Tri figures to be unlike anything any of the newcomers have seen before. “Dislike, hate. I mean, it’s a rivalry,” said Tyler Adams, who Pochettino announced will inherit the captain’s armband from the now-retired Tim Ream. “Whenever we play Mexico — whether it’s a qualifier, a friendly, Gold Cup, Nations League — it’s always seen as a must-win game,” Robinson said. “It feels like a cup final, and we get a lot of boys who’ve never experienced that at this level who’ll get to see it for the first time.” Given what we’ve seen from the new generation so far, they’ll likley be up for the challenge. “There’s a lot of games where we’ve played and it’s been mostly Mexico fans. Some teams could fold under that pressure,” Robibnsion continued. “But I think we like the kind of adversity that comes with that. We love when we score and we’re getting beers thrown at us and things like that. “It’s a great feeling.”Latest Sports News from FOX Sports
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Visitors on the deck of the USS Ted Stevens brave blustery weather in Whittier to learn about the new Navy warship’s features during a media tour on Thursday. The ship is named for the late U.S. senator, who was decorated World War II aviator before he came to Alaska. The USS Ted Stevens is set to be commissioned in Whittier on Saturday. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
Before he was known to Alaskans as “Uncle Ted,” Ted Stevens was a decorated war hero, making dangerous missions behind enemy lines as part of the Flying Tigers, a group of American pilots who fought the Japanese in the China-Burma-India theater of World War II.
Stevens represented Alaska as one of the longest-serving U.S. senators in history, and is now being honored by the U.S. Navy with a namesake warship.
The USS Ted Stevens is a brand-new, state-of-the-art guided-missile destroyer, a missile-equipped ship that can conduct warfare at levels ranging from the air to the depths of the sea.
The ship is set to be commissioned in Whittier on Saturday, an event that is expected to draw 3,000 people to the tiny and quirky Prince William Sound town that is home to about 250 people.
The event is filled to capacity, according to the host committee. Those with tickets will travel by train or bus; regular traffic in the single-lane tunnel that connects Whittier to the road system will be halted for the duration of the ceremony. Those without tickets can watch events on a livestream link.
Even though modern Whittier is a military legacy, established to support the World War II effort and defense of Alaska, the USS Ted Stevens is the first Navy warship to visit the town in 80 years, according to military officials.
But it is an appropriate spot for Saturday’s ceremony, said Captain Mary Katey Hays, the ship’s commanding officer.
Doing the commissioning in Alaska was considered a must, Hayes said at a media briefing on Thursday. And Whittier, a deepwater port and transportation hub, was chosen for its proximity to Anchorage and its abundant support facilities, she said.
Before the ship arrived in Whittier on Sept. 27, she and the other senior officials had to prepare the Norfolk, Virginia-based crew of 380 for Alaska conditions, which on Thursday featured a blustery rain-snow mix.
“We had a lot of talks with the crew about bringing all of their gloves, their hats, their winter clothing,” she said.
Despite the weather, the reception in Whittier has been warm, Hayes said.
“Everyone’s so friendly, everyone’s so kind and welcoming, the community has been wonderful,” she said.
During the tour, officers proudly described the attributes of the ship, which measures over 500 feet in length. Those attributes include its 100,000-horsepower engine system, its efficient equipment for hooking up to shoreside electrical power, its accommodations for air crews, its systems for receiving supplies and fuel at sea and its battery gun that can fire off 20 rounds in a minute.
There was plenty of evidence of the ship’s Alaska connection on board.
Alaska flags were draped or displayed at strategic spots. The two small shipboard boats on the USS Ted Stevens are named Denali and Kodiak.
And, most prominently, Stevens’ widow Catherine and two daughters, Susan Stevens Covich and Lily Stevens Becker, are “sponsors” of the ship. That means “they’re kind of like the godmothers of the ship,” Hayes said. “They help bring the ship to life.”
Commander Stephen Roman, the ship’s executive officer, lauded the Steven women’s work.
“The Stevens family has been just phenomenal sponsors,” Roman said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better set of sponsors for the ship. The love and care they’ve shown the crew has been amazing.”
The younger daughter, Lily Stevens Becker, who leads a foundation named after her father, came aboard the ship when it was stopping in San Diego on the way to Alaska, he said.
Stevens, who died in a 2010 plane crash, left a big legacy in Alaska.
He played key roles in the statehood battle, approval of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System, passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and other milestones. He was known for securing federal funds for important infrastructure projects and programs, such as the University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute, the Denali Commission and transportation facilities throughout the state — a record that earned him the affectionate “Uncle Ted” nickname. The main federal law governing fisheries, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, bears his name, as does the international airport in Anchorage.
He was also instrumental in major legislation with significance beyond Alaska, such as the Title IX antidiscrimination law, the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Roman, as he concluded the tour, admitted that he did not know much about Stevens before being assigned to the ship. Now he is reading about and hearing about the legacy, he said.
“It has been an absolute pleasure and honor to learn more about the man and the things that he did,” said Roman, who grew up in Colorado and found Alaska to be a bit “like home for me.”
Following the Whittier ceremony, the USS Ted Stevens will sail to Juneau for a stop in the capital city, then return through the Panama Canal to its homeport of Norfolk.
The journey after that is yet to be determined.
“We’re just like every other ship in the Navy. We’re able to be deployed globally,” Hayes told reporters. And that will depend on world events, she said.
“Wherever the mission takes us, we’ll be there. Whether it’s here in the snowy part of Alaska or way down south. We can go anywhere and get the job done,” she said.
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Cars travel at midday on 7th Avenue in downtown Anchorage on June 17, 2026. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
Alaska has roughly the population it had in 2013. What little growth the state has seen in the past three years came from residents over 65, while the working-age population shrank. A state that is not growing should not have a housing shortage.
It has one anyway.
Rental vacancy in March was 4.9% in Anchorage, 3.5% in Mat-Su and 4.1% in Juneau, according to the Department of Labor’s spring survey. Affordable housing from the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation had a statewide median rent that reached $1,450 a month, up about 30% over the past 7 years, and a two-bedroom in Anchorage, utilities included, now runs $1,720. It took 1.37 average Alaska wage earners to afford a median-value home last year, close to the record high. If population is not driving the squeeze, something else is, and at a Commonwealth North forum on August 27, six practitioners spent an afternoon exploring the causes.
Four explanations came through clearly.
The first is interest rates. Anyone who bought or refinanced in 2020 or 2021 locked in a mortgage near 3%. Moving today means trading that for 6.25%, last year’s median, or closer to 6.7%, where national rates stood in July. So the retiree who might downsize and the family that might trade up stay put. The house exists. It just never comes to market. The state’s figures show the freeze: a typical new mortgage payment in Alaska is $2,044 a month, 84% higher than in 2019, and new mortgages have fallen 21% statewide and 25% in Anchorage. Daniel Delfino, Director of Planning and Program Development at the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, called it an open question whether the thin inventory is a real estate problem or a rate-lock problem.
The second is what it costs to build. Utility economist Mark Foster put construction at roughly $300 to $450 per square foot in urban Alaska and as high as $2,500 in rural multi-unit projects. A 2×4 costs about $13 by the time it reaches a village. The ground itself charges a premium: Anchorage water lines sit ten feet down to stay below frost, which means digging twelve.
The third is how we live. Thirty-nine percent of Alaska renters now live alone, up from about 34% in the 2010s. The same number of people needs more doors. Nobody at the forum raised this one. The Department of Labor did, in its September report.
The fourth is newer, and Delfino was careful to present it as arithmetic rather than accusation. Short-term rentals in the surveyed markets swing from about 1,500 occupied units in slow months to more than 5,000 at peak tourism, earning anywhere from $1,200 to $5,100 a month. Against a $1,450 long-term rent, a unit can earn three times as much housing a tourist in July as it earns housing a neighbor all year. The revenue is volatile and dips below a lease in winter. But for some owners the spreadsheet decides, and thousands of units now sit on that fence. “The numbers are pointing them in certain directions,” Delfino observed.
Add the costs no one in Alaska sets. Congress has not reauthorized the federal law governing tribal housing since 2008, and the Indian Housing Block Grant has lost more than 30% of its purchasing power since 2000. Rate-regulated utilities cannot bank reserves to extend water and sewer, and Alaska never inherited the infrastructure older states got for free. Heating oil costs more than 30% more than it did a year ago, and Tyler Robinson of Cook Inlet Housing Authority, which sponsored the forum and also sat on the panel, told the room he is not sure his affordable portfolio can absorb the natural gas prices ahead: “I don’t know that we’re going to be in this business.”
That is the inherited column. It is long. What follows is more encouraging than most Alaskans probably expect.
There are things outside our control, but in Anchorage we’ve seen how municipal code and utility tariffs can spur an increase to housing. Bob Doehl, who runs Anchorage’s Office of Community and Economic Development, brought a ledger. Anchorage’s land use, development and zoning laws, known collectively as Title 21, are shrinking for the first time. A multifamily tax incentive, expanded in 2025 to run longer and reach more of the city, lets projects pencil out that otherwise would not. A design mandate that applied to apartments but not hotels is paused, with a possible return in 2028. Builder Shaun Debenham of Debenham LLC estimates it added about 15% to construction cost. A rebuilt Title 23 allows single-stair buildings up to six stories.
The list runs past city hall. Enstar now credits new customers half the cost of a typical service line, and the Interior Gas Utility credits 90%. Rural housing authorities went after logistics instead: a 2024 military training airlift moved 39 tons of building material to the North Slope and saved roughly a million dollars.
Permitted dwellings in Anchorage grew 33% from 2024 to 2025, and 2026 passed last year’s total by August. The state’s count agrees. Anchorage permitted 234 multifamily units last year, the most in eight years, and Alaska as a whole recorded 2,261 new homes, the most since 2016. Doehl credits the multifamily incentive with 386 units in two years. Robinson said two Cook Inlet Housing Association developments are underway a year early because of the design-mandate pause. Block 96 became the first market-rate apartment building downtown in more than 15 years.
One detail worth pausing on. A city official, a nonprofit and a private builder each independently named tax abatement as the tool that made their projects feasible. Abatement was the one response all three said is working.
Two caveats. Mat-Su built 949 homes last year to Anchorage’s 404, and it is Mat-Su and the Kenai Peninsula, the two boroughs still gaining people, where rents jumped 13% and 11% this spring while Anchorage rose 2%. Statewide the picture is flat. The pressure is moving to wherever Alaskans are moving. And inventory has not caught up anywhere. Spokane, a regional hub Anchorage used to outpace in listings, now has 1,375 more homes on the market than we do. The pipeline improved. The shortage has not yet.
Debenham asked for a setback analysis of Title 21 and a fire code review benchmarked against cities that do not require 38- and 44-foot fire lanes. On his 58-unit South Anchorage project, the fire lane alone consumed 7,520 square feet of asphalt. By his count, that is 15 homes.
Foster proposed extending a pricing rule Alaska already allows for industrial customers to houses: credit a new home, up front, for the fixed costs it will pay the utility over its first seven years. His preliminary math puts the combined water, sewer, electric and gas credit near $13,800 per home, roughly the effect of cutting a mortgage rate by three points. None of it needs the Legislature. Enstar did it with a tariff filing to the Regulatory Commission of Alaska in 2025; water, sewer and electric could follow the same route.
Debenham, whose last permit took nine months, wants the review outsourced to local professionals. Doehl’s answer is a new municipal permit system arriving in the first quarter of next year, plus a proposal to let the planning director resolve trivial variances without a hearing.
Each carries a tradeoff. Narrower fire lanes are a fire safety question. Hookup credits shift initial costs to existing ratepayers or the utility. The forum resolved none of them, and Commonwealth North does not endorse a specific policy.
What it established is a map. Rates, freight, frost and Congress will stay where they are. Local code and utility tariffs are ours, and the last two years show that rewriting them produces buildings.
Debenham, who has built in Anchorage for twenty years, told the room what changed for him. For most of that time, when a project hit a wall at the municipality, there was no one to call. Now there is. He called it revolutionary, which is a big word for a returned phone call, and a fair measure of where the bar had been.
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