Category: Alaska News

Marc Ernstoff, a physician who has pioneered immunotherapy research and treatments for cancer patients, said his work as a federal scientist proved untenable under the Trump administration.

Philip Stewart, a Rocky Mountain Laboratories researcher focused on tick-borne diseases, said he retired two years earlier than planned because of hurdles that made it too challenging to do his job well.

Alexa Romberg, an addiction prevention scientist focused on tobacco, said she “lost a great deal” of the research she oversaw when federal grants vanished.

“If one is thinking about the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ agenda and the prevention of chronic disease,” Romberg said, “tobacco use is the No. 1 contributor to early morbidity and mortality that we can prevent.”

The National Institutes of Health is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, with a mission statement to “enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness.”

Over decades, the value of the NIH may be the one thing everyone in Washington has agreed on. Lawmakers have routinely boosted its funding.

“I’m so pleased to be associated with NIH,” former Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican and one of the NIH’s biggest champions in Congress, said in 2022 shortly before he retired.

But in President Donald Trump’s second term, the NIH has seen an exodus of scientists like Ernstoff, Stewart, and Romberg. Federal data shows the NIH lost about 4,400 people — more than 20% of its workforce. Scientists say the departures harm the U.S.’ ability to respond to disease outbreaks, develop treatments for chronic illnesses, and confront the nation’s most pressing public health problems.

“People are going to get hurt,” said Sylvia Chou, a scientist who worked at the National Cancer Institute in Rockville, Maryland, for over 15 years before she left in January. “There’s going to be a lot more health challenges and even deaths, because we need science in order to help people get healthy.”

Why They’re Leaving

KFF Health News interviewed a half dozen scientists who said they quit their jobs years before they’d planned to because of the tumult of 2025.

Only a few years ago, the NIH workforce was steadily growing, from roughly 17,700 employees in fiscal year 2019 to around 21,100 in fiscal 2024, federal data shows. Under Trump, those gains have been slashed.

The Trump administration enacted a campaign to purge government workers perceived as disloyal to the president. People were fired or encouraged to leave. Officials instituted a months-long freeze on hiring.

The NIH workforce has plummeted to about 17,100 people — its lowest level in at least two decades. Most who left weren’t fired. Roughly 4 in 5 either retired, quit, had appointments that expired, or transferred to a different job, according to federal data.

Scientists watched with dread as their colleagues were forced to terminate research funds for topics the Trump administration deemed off-limits. Across NIH labs, routine work stalled. They said they faced major delays in accessing equipment and supplies. Travel authorizations were slowed or denied.

Agency staff were instructed not to communicate with anyone outside the agency. When they could talk again, they were subject to greater constraints on what they could present to the public.

And under the administration’s agenda to eliminate “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” references to minorities or health equity were purged from NIH-funded research. Initiatives to protect Americans’ health were gutted. Among them: support for early-career scientists, ways to prevent harm from HIV or substance use, and efforts to study how different populations’ immune systems respond to disease.

In a January op-ed, Chou and Romberg were among a group of NIH scientists who said they resigned in protest of an administration “that treats science not as a process for building knowledge, but as a means to advance its political agenda.”

A ‘Fundamental Destruction’

Health and Human Services spokesperson Emily Hilliard said in a statement that the agency had shifted to focus on evidence-based research over “ideological agendas.” She said the NIH is still recruiting “the best and brightest” and advancing high-quality science to “deliver breakthroughs for the American people.” The federal health department oversees NIH.

“A major reset was overdue. HHS has taken action to streamline operations, reduce redundancies, and return to pre-pandemic employment levels,” Hilliard said.

Many scientists, however, question whether the NIH can still fulfill its public mission.

“There’s been a fundamental destruction,” said Daniel Dulebohn, a researcher who spent nearly two decades at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana. It’s going to “take a very, very long time to rebuild.”

Dulebohn left the NIH’s infectious disease and allergy institute in September.

He analyzed how molecules and proteins interact in diseases, such as Lyme disease, HIV, and Alzheimer’s — information that’s key for new treatments. Dulebohn was a resource for scientists when they hit walls trying to understand, for example, if molecules could prevent infection or react to a treatment.

Now he and his wife are living off savings in Mexico with their three young kids. Dulebohn’s thinking about what’s next. One option: real estate.

The expert in biochemical analysis operated equipment few others know how to use. His exit further depletes resources in the specialty.

“It’s clear when someone comes out with a drug and now you’ve just cured a disease. But you never know which ones could have been cured,” Dulebohn said. “We don’t know what we’ve lost.”

Laura Stark, a Vanderbilt University associate professor who specializes in the history of medicine and science, said wiping out NIH staff will propel a shift toward private-industry research, with its profit motives, “as opposed to actually helping American health.”

“We just don’t have people who are now able to pursue research for the public good,” Stark said.

From Support to Scrutiny

Stark said the seeds of the present-day NIH were planted during World War II when the U.S. government spearheaded an effort to mass-produce the antibiotic penicillin to save soldiers from infections.

The agency has played a central role in lifesaving discoveries and treatments — including for heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis.

With bipartisan backing from Congress, the NIH budget has grown significantly over time, sitting at $48.7 billion for fiscal 2026. The NIH allocates roughly 11% of its budget for agency scientists. About 80% is awarded to universities and other institutions.

The money may be there, but the people who get it out the door are not, scientists said.

Jennifer Troyer left the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, on Dec. 31, after working in various positions at the NIH for about 25 years. The division she led reviews research and oversees grants to organizations studying the human genome — or a person’s complete set of genes — and how it can be used to benefit health.

Last year, she said, her division lost about two-thirds of its staff. “There really are not enough people there right now to actually get the work done,” Troyer said. “It’s extreme harm.”

She decided to quit the day Trump issued an executive order in August that prohibited the use of grants to “fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate” what it described as “anti-American values.” It also allowed political appointees to review all funding decisions.

“I wasn’t going to operate a division under those orders,” Troyer said. She hasn’t figured out her next career steps.

‘Enough Is Enough’

Research aligned with the administration’s stated priorities has suffered.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease — a tick-borne infection that can cause debilitating lifelong symptoms — a priority. In December, Kennedy said the government had long dismissed patients burdened with a disease that nearly 500,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with annually.

That same month, Stewart, who had dedicated his career to ticks and Lyme disease as a federal scientist, retired early. He’d worked for the government for 27 years. Stewart said workforce cuts and travel delays stalled his efforts to confirm how far Lyme-carrying ticks had spread — information that could help doctors recognize symptoms sooner.

Stewart was a lead scientist on research published last year identifying a black-legged tick, or deer tick, in Montana. It was the first time the tick best known for transmitting Lyme disease had been confirmed in the state. He wanted to determine if the discovery was a fluke or an indicator that the species was gaining ground.

“The advice we’ve been getting is, ‘Put your head down below the trench line. Don’t look. Don’t peek over and risk getting shot,’” Stewart said. “At what point do you finally say, ‘Enough is enough’ and ‘We’re not being effective anymore’?”

Scientists said those early in their careers are looking abroad for jobs and training. People who want to stay in the U.S. are running into problems getting hired because of cuts to research grants and uncertainty about funding.

Collectively, people studying diseases warn the U.S. could lose its long-held position as the global leader in biomedical research, with devastating impact.

Stanley Perlman, a University of Iowa virologist who studies pediatric infectious diseases, said that title earned the nation more than prestige; it drew top scientists from the world over to the U.S. to study diseases that particularly affect people here.

There’s no guarantee halted research will be picked up elsewhere, whether by private industry or other countries. If others are doing that work, Americans could face delays in seeing benefits, he said.

“If you don’t have access to how the work was done,” Perlman said, “it’s harder to reproduce and adapt it for your country.”

KFF Health News data editor Holly K. Hacker contributed to this report.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Residents of the two Western Alaska communities hardest hit by the remnants of Typhoon Halong have reached a consensus about their futures: they want to move their villages entirely.

In the Yup’ik village of Kipnuk, where almost all of the approximately 700 residents were airlifted after storm waters swallowed their community last October, tribal members have voted overwhelmingly to relocate.

An outreach campaign that contacted nearly all adult tribal members, now dispersed into temporary living quarters in Anchorage, Bethel or elsewhere, resulted in a 92% vote in favor of moving.

“We got a really big number,” said Rayna Paul, environmental manager for the Native Village of Kipnuk, the tribal government.

Paul summarized the results at a panel discussion Tuesday at the annual Alaska Tribal Conference on Environmental Management.

Most of those voting also showed preference for a relocation site near a higher-elevation place farther inland. The preferred site was used by the ancestors of Kipnuk residents until about a century ago, when the federal government chose the current village site for its ship access.

Deciding on relocation creates “another burden,” especially since the federal and state governments have a contrary message, Paul said. “They are saying ‘No, you have to rebuild in place,’” she said.

For Kwigillingok, a Yup’ik village of about 400 residents, a consensus was reached in February in favor of moving, said Dustin Evon, tribal resilience coordinator, and Lucy Martin, the tribal government’s resilience assistant.

More details about the plans should be released in April or May, Evon said.

“We’re looking at two sites right now,” he said. “We’re in the process of making maps.”

Several remote communities, far from road networks or other infrastructure, were slammed by ex-Typhoon Halong. More than 1,600 residents were evacuated from the remote region of the Yukon-Kuskowim Delta. Impacts were most severe in Kipnuk and Kwigillingok, both of which are low-lying communities located on the Bering Sea coast.

In Kipnuk, 90% of homes were destroyed, while in Kwigillingok, about a third of the houses were knocked off their foundations and set afloat, said James Benzschawel, an Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium emergency preparedness manager who gave a presentation at the conference.

Representatives of those two communities described harrowing experiences and storm damage conditions that appear to make the sites uninhabitable, at least for now.

In Kipnuk, Paul said, one man jumped from his floating and rocking house and tried to swim to safety, Paul said. He managed to climb aboard a piece of floating boardwalk, struggled for hours and watched dislodged coffins flow by on the river before he was rescued. About 100 of those gravesite contents have since been recovered, but “some are still unaccounted for,” she said.

Similar scenes played out in Kwigillingok, Martin said.

“When I looked out the window right before the power went out, it was like a real-life horror movie. You could see graves rolling. You could see buildings floating away, boardwalks floating before it hit our house,” she said.

Her own house was set adrift sometime after 2 a.m., shortly after the same thing happened to her parents’ house, she said. Houses sent afloat sometimes hit each other; that happened a few times to her house before it finally came to rest upstream several hours later, she said.

Now, at the insistence of her parents, who wanted to be as close as possible to their traditional fishing and hunting areas, the family is living in Bethel, Martin said. Though the hub community of roughly 6,500 people is much bigger than Kwigillingok, it has a housing shortage that affected evacuated families like hers.

Paul is now living in Anchorage, along with hundreds of other displaced Kipnuk residents. She said one challenge is addressing stress and mental health problems, exacerbated by easier access to alcohol and drugs. She suggested that some kind of central gathering place be set up to help evacuees strengthen their sense of community and culture.

Federal changes

In a keynote address at the conference, the state’s top emergency manager called ex-Typhoon Halong the worst event he has experienced in the 32 years he has been responding to disasters in the state. 

“This is the most severe disaster that I’ve responded to in my entire career,” Bryan Fisher, director of the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management,  told the conference audience on Tuesday.

Damages were worse than those inflicted in 2022 by another ex-typhoon, Merbok, which reached a wider region, he said. The Halong response required “the largest domestic evacuation of Alaskans in state history, even more, we believe, than evacuations that were accomplished during World War II.”

Fisher acknowledged that the residents’ ongoing displacement puts them in a degree of limbo and adds several daily challenges. And he acknowledged that the general U.S. disaster-assistance system, designed for the nation as a whole, is not always suited to rural Alaska needs.

That is particularly the case for traditional subsistence needs, he said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency can provide money to replace gear lost from subsistence camps, “but they can’t provide funding to rebuild the cabin,” he said.

But there is some good news out of Washington, D.C., about disaster response and prevention efforts.

FEMA has now reinstated the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, known as BRIC, which dispersed grants for projects aimed at preparing for and mitigating disaster impacts. That reinstatement was in compliance with a March 6 order issued by a federal court in Massachusetts.

That is a big victory for Alaska, Fisher said, even though Alaska was not among the 22 states that sued over cancellation of the BRIC program and the grants made by it. The lawsuit, filed last year, was led by officials in the state of Washington.

“Without that funding, my agency was really at a loss,” Fisher said. “We really relied on that funding. So it’s great news that that has been turned back on.”

With Kristi Noem as secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, FEMA canceled the entire BRIC program, including already awarded grants to states and tribal governments. Noem was particularly critical of grants aimed at providing resilience to climate change effects.

“Under Secretary Noem, DHS is eliminating waste, fraud and abuse. The BRIC program was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program. It was more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters,” said a statement issued by FEMA on April 4, 2025.

Now, under new department leadership and at the court’s direction, FEMA has committed to paying grants. On Wednesday, FEMA announced the availability of $1 billion in funding for resilience projects.

Fisher said Alaska will benefit from another change: the appointment of Markwayne Mullin to replace controversy-plagued Kristi Noem as secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Mullin, who served for three years as a U.S. senator representing Oklahoma, is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation.

“I think it’s an incredible win for the state of Alaska, that we have somebody with a Native background that’s going to be the Secretary of Homeland Security,” Fisher told the conference audience. “He understands the reality of doing business as sovereign tribal governments with the federal government, and I think he’s going to be a great advocate for all of you, for all of us, moving forward.”

Over the past two summers, a pair of remote and treeless volcanic islands in the eastern Bering Sea broadcast signals of climate change danger in the marine ecosystem that feeds Alaska residents and supports much of the state’s economy.

Tribal employees monitoring St. Paul Island’s beaches came across 10 dead but seemingly well-fed northern fur seals in August of 2024, their bodies lying amid piles of dead fish and birds.

Testing revealed that the seals had been killed by an algal toxin that causes paralytic shellfish poisoning. It was the first ever conclusive case of marine mammals killed by saxitoxin, the algal toxin that causes paralytic shellfish poisoning.

The people living on St. Paul, numbering about 400, most of them Unangax, are highly dependent on the marine environment for their food. They are aware of the algal toxins that pose risks of paralytic shellfish poisoning in faraway Southeast Alaska. But seal deaths from algal toxin poisoning on their own island came as a big surprise to local people, said Aaron Lestenkof, who is part of the tribe’s Indigenous Sentinels Network.

“It never occurred to us that it may happen to our marine mammals here,” Lestenkof said. “I guess it was just a matter of time.”

The St. Paul die-off was not a one-time incident. In August of 2025, tribal residents found 21 dead fur seals on a beach at St. George Island, a sister island of St. Paul. Along with the seals were two dead fin whales, a dead sea lion and several dead seabirds.

The events show that deadly levels of algal toxins, once believed to be confined to the warmest waters in the warmest months in southernmost Alaska, are spreading north and into regions and parts of the food web that previously caused no worry for local people.

“This is the scary, ‘I-don’t-know’ moment of this event now happening in consecutive years,” said Mike Williams, one of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration biologists who happened to be on scene at St. George to gather samples and document the event.

St. Paul and St. George, which has about 70 residents, are the only inhabited islands in the four-island Pribilof archipelago. Located about 750 miles west of Anchorage and 300 miles from the mainland, the islands are far from Alaska’s population centers. But the Pribilofs are at the center of a Bering Sea ecosystem so rich with marine life that they are sometimes called the “Galapagos of the North.”

The waters around the islands support some of the nation’s biggest seafood harvests, with vessels catching pollock, cod, halibut, crab and other fish. Millions of migratory seabirds of a dozen species flock each year to nest in the Pribilofs. The Pribilofs are the breeding grounds for two-thirds of the world’s approximately 1 million northern fur seals. Each summer, they gather on the islands’ rocky beaches in noisy congregations to give birth to and nurture their young, molt their fur and rest.

The algal discoveries on the St. Paul and St. George beaches point to a bigger phenomenon in the ecosystem, but how much bigger is yet to be determined.

“The problem is they die at sea. They’re being poisoned at sea, and they can’t even make it back to land, right?” Williams said.  “We don’t know how this may have population consequences because we don’t really have a true estimate of the number of animals that are dying.”

Paralytic shellfish poisoning: a history

Paralytic shellfish poisoning is a long-known hazard in the southern coastal areas of Alaska and other warmer parts of the world. Alaskans still know a spot in Southeast Alaska as Poison Cove, named for the approximately 100 people who died in 1799 after eating tainted mussels. The victims were Native hunters, either Unangan or Alutiiq, who had been brought to the site by Russian colonizers.

Saxitoxin is colorless and odorless. It cannot be cooked out or frozen out of food. Once ingested, there is no antidote. The poison acts within minutes, interfering with signals from the nervous system that enable vital bodily functions. In mild cases, many of which may go unreported, patients feel some numbness and possibly nausea and other symptoms before recovering. In fatal cases, saxitoxin blocks the nervous system’s functions, causing paralysis that suffocates victims.

From 1992 to 2021, 132 people in Alaska were reported sickened with paralytic shellfish poisoning, according to state epidemiologists. Between 1994 and 2020, five people died after eating saxitoxin-tainted food.

Understanding the exact chemical process that leads to paralytic shellfish poisoning took decades of scientific research. Saxitoxin was first identified in 1937 in an Alaska butter clam by a team led by Hermann Sommer at the University of California, San Francisco. They named the toxin for the species of the clam in which it was found: Saxidomus gigantea.

In later decades, researchers purified saxitoxin extracted from host clams and mussels. That led to a covert military operation. During the 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency made mass purchases of tainted Alaska clams and developed saxitoxin into an alternative to the cyanide capsules that spies would use to kill themselves as a last resort if caught. Francis Gary Powers, the spy plane pilot who was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, was carrying a lethal dose of saxitoxin hidden in a modified silver dollar. He did not use it; he was freed in a spy trade in 1962.

The days of saxitoxin as a military tool are over. Now the ominous factor is climate change.

Saxitoxin is produced by a particular algae species, Alexandrium catenella, that blooms in warm conditions. The association of warmth and algal toxin risks was well-known; an old rule of thumb for harvesters was to gather clams only in months with the letter R in their names. An even older guideline was to use the end of herring spawning — an event usually in late spring — as the signal to pause harvests of clams for the season.

There are inescapable facts about the proliferation of Alexandrium and other harmful algae in Alaska: Ocean waters are getting warmer, and staying warmer longer, meaning there are more blooms producing more toxins and creating more exposure risks for marine life and for the people who depend on food from the sea.

Kathi Lefebvre, a NOAA Fisheries research biologist who specializes in algal toxins, ran through the trends during a presentation at January’s Alaska Marine Science Symposium in Anchorage. She showed charts and graphs of reduced sea ice, warming temperatures and Alexandrium blooms even in Arctic waters north of the Bering Strait.

“Do we predict that these blooms will continue to increase and toxins will be increasing in Arctic food webs? Yes, they will,” Lefebvre said in her presentation.

Risks increasing in the Bering Sea and farther north

Eight years before the St. Paul die-off, Lefebvre and her colleagues published a landmark study that documented at least trace amounts of algal toxins in each of the 13 marine mammal species tested, as far north as the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic. Toxins detected included a domoic acid, produced by an algae called Pseudo-nitzschia and the cause of mass die-offs of sea lions, seals and other marine mammals in California. Domoic acid has not yet proved to be a problem in Alaska, but scientists are watching for trends.

A more recent study led by Lefebvre found saxitoxin in feces of bowhead whales swimming in the Arctic.

In 2019, an especially warm year, scientists retrieved clams from the Bering Strait and Chukchi Sea that had levels of saxitoxin well above the threshold for safe consumption by people. That coincided with a large Alexandrium bloom in the region. Three years later, in another warm year, the Northern Bering Sea had one of the largest and densest Alexandrium blooms ever recorded in the nation, indicating more risks for poison-laden clams.

In July of 2024 and July of 2025, a month before each of the Pribilof seal die-offs, large blooms developed around those islands.

Don Anderson, an expert on harmful algal blooms who runs a lab at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, said there are now two major sources of far-north blooms.

Most of that algae is believed to have been carried north by ocean currents. But climate change has created a possible bigger local source of blooms, he said: germination from massive seed beds that are, by far, the largest and most concentrated ever documented in the world.

The Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas used to be dead ends for Alexandrium cysts, the equivalent of seeds. They settled in the sediment after decades and centuries of being washed north, remaining dormant in the cold temperatures.

“We kept having repeated inputs of transported blooms from the south, and that gave us these enormous cyst concentrations that we haven’t seen anywhere else in the world, something we’ve called the sleeping giant,’” Anderson said in a presentation at the marine science symposium in Anchorage.

The warm conditions that enable them to germinate have arrived, albeit sporadically. If temperatures at the seafloor reach a little over 8 degrees Celsius, the cysts can germinate within about 10 days and proliferate during the long daylight hours of Alaska summers, he said.

The new findings have created unease for some Western Alaska residents.

Valerie Tony of Alakanuk, a Yup’ik village near the mouth of the Yukon River, is one of them. At a February workshop on algal toxins held in Anchorage, she asked about the abundant freshwater clams that her people harvest from tundra ponds.

“Does that mean our clams are no good now?” Tony asked. “Any kinds of toxins, we’ve never had to deal with these before.”

The bivalves enjoyed in Alakanuk and other Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta villages are actually mussels colloquially known as Yukon floaters. They should be safe for now, said Thomas Farrugia, coordinator of the Alaska Harmful Algal Bloom Network, a multiagency program.

For St. Paul and St. George residents, food questions are a bit different.

The traditional subsistence diet in the Pribilofs relies little on clams or mussels, wild foods that are the usual sources of the toxins that give people paralytic shellfish poisoning. But residents of St. Paul and St. George rely heavily on the sea for food. That includes fish, like halibut, cod and crab, but also fur seals that are legally hunted in traditional Indigenous harvests.

It is unclear how the fur seals are getting exposed to saxitoxins. Unlike marine mammals considered to be at risk for algal toxins like clam-gobbling walruses and sea otters,  fur seals do not eat bivalves. They do eat squid and schooling fish, including a tiny, slender, silvery fish called sand lance, which is known to absorb large concentrations of saxitoxin.

Luckily for seal hunters, Lestenkof said, the new pattern of Alexandrium blooms seems to be timed to late summer, in between early summer and autumn hunts. But whatever fish the dead seals were eating could be food that the people eat as well.

Sitka a model of testing

About 1,300 miles east of St. Paul, in the rainforest-surrounded coastal town of Sitka, a tribally-operated lab was established in 2016 to help keep locally harvested food safe.

The Sitka Tribe of Alaska Environmental Research Lab is the state’s main algal toxin testing facility for personal harvests. The other main lab in the state, located in Anchorage and operated by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, focuses on commercial harvests.

The Sitka lab accepts any samples brought or sent to it. Mostly, those have been from harvests from Southeast Alaska, though it has tested samples from as far away as Nome.

The lab uses a method called Receptor Binding Assay, a widely used scientific method that measures how well certain chemicals bind to selected materials.

As Environmental Lab Manager Matteo Masotti describes it, the process used in Sitka is intended to parallel what would happen if people ate the tested clams, mussels and other items.

The testing starts with a slurry created once shellfish are delivered. “We blend them up into what we call a shellfish smoothie,” Masotti said. Effective testing generally requires six individuals or 100 grams of tissue, he said.

From there, acid is extracted, “basically simulating the pH of the stomach as if someone was digesting.” Then samples are tested for how well they bind to a swine tissue, a stand-in for a human stomach membrane. Once samples bind, another material is added that converts their chemical radiation into flashes. Those flashes reveal saxitoxin quantities.

It is only one method of testing shellfish. Other labs, such as the state’s Anchorage lab, use different methods, each of which have advantages and disadvantages.

The goal in Sitka is to get results to people within a couple of days, which is not always easy.

“The people out there have to harvest the shellfish, they have to get it to the airport, send it to us – assuming it doesn’t get delayed at the airport and assuming we pick it up immediately, which we try to be really good about,” he said. “We get them, we have to blend them up, we have to extract them, we have to then run them on the test, and then we have to analyze the test. And so we try to give people results in one to two business days after submission. Not always possible, but we do our best.”

There is even a slogan for the process of waiting for test results: “Harvest and Hold.”

In a lot of ways, the Sitka operation is a big success story.

Sienna Reid, a young tribal employee who grew up in Sitka, said the lab’s operations are giving people confidence that their traditional harvests are safe.

She said she has seen no decline in clamming, despite what is now an abundance of information about algal toxins’ presence in the environment. That was not the case in the past, she said. “I remember clam digging growing up. I don’t remember even thinking about algal toxins,” she said.

But for Amos Philemonoff, another young tribal employee who happens to be from St. Paul, information about algal toxins is still off-putting.

When he learned from a St. Paul friend about the 2024 seal paralytic shellfish poisoning deaths, he was taken aback. “I thought that was so weird. I’ve never heard of that before,” he said.

Though he enjoys plenty of wild food, Philemonoff stays away from clams, even though they are widely enjoyed in his adopted home of Sitka. That is specifically because of algal toxins, which he learned about when he was attending Sitka’s Mount Edgecume High School, a boarding school. “It’s kind of scary now, after learning about it in marine biology,” he said. “I kind of stepped away from eating shellfish.”

New challenges in old places

While paralytic shellfish poisoning is a long-recognized hazard in Southeast and Southcentral Alaska, climate change has exacerbated the threat in those regions.

The old guidelines about months with the letter R or timing of herring spawning no longer hold because algal toxins are present beyond the summer.

A significant bloom of Alexandrium was detected last September in Southcentral Alaska’s Kachemak Bay. It was the highest abundance measured since 2016. Blue mussels and butter clams found that month had saxitoxin levels about the safety threshold. The bloom followed a spate of bird and marine mammal die-offs earlier in the summer in the bay, and it did not dissipate until early October.

There are algal toxin  hotspots even in winter. In the far Southeast community of Hydaburg, for example, information from the shellfish data system includes a butter clam found on Dec. 5 with saxitoxin levels more than four times the safety threshold for human consumption. It turns out that some bivalve species, like butter clams, can retain algal toxins in their tissues for several months, and sometimes for more than a year.

Another challenge facing the Sitka lab, also related to warming conditions, is the proliferation of invasive European green crabs in the most southern parts of Southeast Alaska.

The invasive species, known for mowing down eelbeds and devouring native fish, was not seen in Alaska waters until 2022. Last year, the tribal government in Metlakatka, in the far southeast corner of the state, trapped more than 40,000 of them.

To avoid spreading the invasion further, the Sitka lab requires that samples sent from the most southeastern part of the state be frozen for at least 24 hours to kill any green crab larvae that might be attached.

Replicating Sitka success

Compared to other states, Alaska has little safety testing for personal harvest of shellfish. Tribal and science organizations are trying to change that.

The Sitka lab’s services are available free of charge to all personal-use harvesters in the state, but deliveries from remote areas outside of the Southeast Alaska region are logistically difficult.

Locally focused shellfish-screening labs have also been set up on the Kenai Peninsula south of Anchorage: in Seward, at the Native-owned Alutiiq Pride shellfish hatchery, and last summer in Homer at the Kachemak Bay Research Reserve.

An innovative research program led by the Knik Tribe, based in the Matansuka-Susitna Borough near Anchorage, has been tracking the movement of toxins through the food chain. It has gathered samples from various parts of the state, including some from as far away as the Bering Strait. Tests are conducted at the state Department of Environmental Conservation lab.

The Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning Risk Management Project is examining not just clams and mussels but also crabs and finfish, and the program has discovered high levels of saxitoxin in some unexpected places.

Livers and digestive tracts of salmon from the Yukon River and Cook Inlet turned out to have saxitoxin levels above the safety threshold. Hermit crabs from the Kodiak Archipelago and the Alaska Peninsula were found to have saxitoxin levels 15 to 17 times the safety threshold. And a stickleback from Wasilla north of Anchorage was found with a level more than 50 times the safety limit. Sticklebacks are small spiny fish found in different varieties and widely abundant in Alaska in both freshwater and saltwater systems; they are not generally eaten by people, but they are important prey for birds and larger fish.

Funding for the four-year research program, provided by the federal government, ends this year. The Knik Tribe and the Alaska Federation of Natives have urged the state to take up responsibility for funding the program into the future.

No lab in the state tests marine mammals for saxitoxin. Tests of the dead Pribilof northern fur seals were conducted at a lab in Seattle that is part of a West Coast program monitoring toxins in marine mammals.

For residents of St. Paul and St. George — both remote and often fog-bound islands dependent on air service that is spotty, inconsistent and expensive — relying on distant labs for toxin testing has been burdensome.

“I mean, there’s just a million billion things that sometimes are against us to get this information back to the community in a timely manner,” said Chelsea Campbell, marine mammal programs manager for the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island. It can take weeks to get results back to the island, she said.

That is why the tribal government is planning to add algal toxin testing to its on-island science program, Campbell said. The tribe already operates a facility, the Bering Sea Research Center, that tracks things like mercury and microplastics in the ecosystem. It is taking the necessary steps to add algal-toxin testing as early as this summer, as long as equipment arrives and workers are available and trained, she said.

The hope is that in time, the St. Paul lab will serve other remote communities in Western Alaska, from the Aleutians to the Bering Strait. “It’s going to be much easier for Saint George to send us samples than it is to send samples to Seattle, right?” she said.

Such a lab would be a big improvement over status quo in Western Alaska, which is to either take risks or use an old-fashioned screening process that Alex Zaochney, a researcher and tribal council member with the Native Village of Atka, described at the Anchorage workshop on harmful algal blooms.

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Zaochney said. “Traditionally, we would touch the tip of your tongues on it and wait 20 minutes. If you start to get a tingle, that is not good.”

This article was produced as a project for USC Annenberg’s Center for Health Journalism and Center for Climate Journalism and Communication 2025 Health and Climate Change Reporting Fellowship.

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump, who wants to ban mail-in voting, said he had the right to vote by mail-in ballot in Florida’s special election Tuesday “because I’m president of the United States.”

The president’s statement at his Cabinet meeting Thursday comes as he aggressively pushes U.S. Senate Republicans to break the long-standing filibuster to pass a restrictive voting bill ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. 

The legislation, which would require a birth certificate and other documentation for voter registration, also would federally prohibit universal voting by mail without special approval, according to the Brennan Center and other sources.

“Because I’m president of the United States, and because of the fact that I’m president of the United States, I did a mail-in ballot for elections that took place in Florida because I felt I should be here instead of being in the beautiful sunshine,” Trump told reporters at the White House. 

“We have exceptions for mail in ballots. You do know that, right?” he said to the reporter who asked about his mail-in ballot. “So if you’re away, we have an exception. If you’re in the military, we have an exception. If you’re on a business trip, we have an exception. If you’re disabled, we have an exception. And if you’re ill, if you’re not feeling good. So I was away mostly in Washington, D.C., so I used a mail-in ballot.”

The president regularly travels on Air Force One between the nation’s capital and Florida, including taking a trip to his Palm Beach home this past weekend.

The White House declined to comment on whether someone other than the president requested, picked up and dropped off or mailed the president’s mail-in ballot. 

Florida election law states that only a person’s immediate family member or legal guardian can do so.

“As President Trump has said, the SAVE America Act has commonsense exceptions for Americans to use mail-in ballots for illness, disability, military, or travel — but universal mail-in voting should not be allowed because it’s highly susceptible to fraud. As everyone knows, the President is a resident of Palm Beach and participates in Florida elections, but he obviously primarily lives at the White House in Washington, D.C. This is a non-story,” White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said in a written statement.

Trump’s statement also was made three days after conservative Supreme Court justices appeared skeptical that federal law allows states to accept mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day but not received until after polls close, during a five-day grace period. While the case was out of Mississippi, 14 states — both red and blue — have similar laws.

2020 election refrain

Discrediting mail-in voting has been a common refrain of Trump’s since the 2020 presidential election, which he lost but still falsely claims he won.

Roughly 30% of voters cast mail-in ballots in the 2024 election, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

Eight states and Washington, D.C., allow all elections to be conducted entirely by mail, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. They are: California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington state.

Nebraska and North Dakota permit counties to opt into conducting elections via mail.

Idaho, Minnesota, New Jersey and New Mexico allow mostly mail elections for certain small jurisdictions. A handful of other states permit mail voting for local elections.

SAVE America Act and filibuster

Writing on his social media platform Thursday morning, Trump said: “When is ‘enough, enough’ for our Republican Senators. There comes a time when you must do what should have been done a long time ago, and something which the Lunatic Democrats will do on day one, if they ever get the chance. TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, and get our airports, and everything else, moving again. Also, add the complete, all five items, SAVE AMERICA ACT items. Go for the Gold!!! President DJT”

Trump complicated negotiations Monday when he said at an event in Memphis, Tennessee, that he would not approve a deal to end the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, ongoing since mid-February, unless senators could find a way to also pass his voting bill, dubbed the SAVE America Act.

The filibuster requires nearly all legislation to receive 60 votes to advance to passage in the Senate. With all Democrats against the legislation, the bill would not garner enough support in the upper chamber, which is split 53-47.

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A man was convicted by a federal court jury in Juneau on Wednesday of shipping fentanyl pills to Skagway that resulted in the deaths of two people, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Jacob Cotton, 34, of Spokane, Washington, shipped a parcel with the pills to a person in Skagway who received it in January of 2023, according to a press release issued Wednesday.

Anthony Bowers, 28, who received the pills, and James Cook, 44, who was among the people seeking to buy some of the pills, both died of overdoses — the first Skagway deaths officially linked to fentanyl, according to a KHNS report at the time Cotton was arrested.

The U.S. Attorney’s office release states Skagway was “dry” — meaning no fentanyl was available — when Cotton agreed to send about 150 pills to the community.

“The object of the conspiracy was to have Cotton buy fentanyl in Spokane for a cheaper price, ship it to Alaska and then charge a premium price for purchase in Skagway,” the release states. “Cotton and the individual agreed to split any distribution proceeds.”

Bowers received the pills on Jan. 11 or 12, 2023, and contacted multiple individuals about purchasing the drugs, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

“On Jan. 13, around 11:30 p.m., the individual selling the pills was found unresponsive on his bathroom floor and later declared deceased after attempts to revive him,” the release states. Subsequently, at about 4:30 p.m. on Jan. 14, “the 44-year-old man was found dead in his bedroom.”

Cotton was arrested in June of 2024, according to KHNS. Prosecutors during the five-day trial presented evidence of records confirming Cotton’s shipment of drugs, digital messages and other forms of payment connected to the illegal drug sales, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Cotton was convicted of one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with the intent to distribute fentanyl resulting in death, and one count of distribution of fentanyl resulting in death, according to the release. The federal jury also found Cotton guilty of a “death resulting” enhancement for both victims, which required proof that the fentanyl pills Cotton distributed were the cause of each victim’s death.

Cotton faces between 20 years and life in prison on each count. Sentencing will be scheduled at a future date.

This story was originally published by the Juneau Independent.

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Wednesday’s 77th annual Juneau Lions Club Gold Medal Basketball Tournament was an elimination day. That means if teams lose, they don’t have to go home but they can’t play in the tournament anymore this year.

Eight quality teams fell in the fourth day of Gold Medal action.

The day started with a classic Angoon/Hydaburg classic B-style matchup, with Angoon getting 11 three-point shots and Hydaburg 10. Angoon’s Aquino Brinson closed out the third quarter with a shot past the arc and then on a turnover, Brinson was double-teamed and teammate Beebucks Kookesh cut back door, missed a shot, but rebounded for a cutback score and a 66-58 lead. That lead evaporated in the opening moments of the fourth quarter, as Hydaburg opened with an 11-2 run behind two shots past the arc by Jaren Carl, one from Vinnie Edenshaw and a basket inside by Trevor Olsen off an Edenshaw assist. Edenshaw then drove for a score and a 71-70 lead. Angoon came back with two shots past the arc by Clayton Edwin and regained the lead at 80-75 with two minutes left and closed out the game 85-77.

Kake then nipped Angoon 71-69 behind 30 points from Rudy Bean — and despite giving up a 10-point lead late in the game. Angoon tied the game late, Kake took a two-point advantage, and Angoon had a last-second shot miss as Kake’s defense limited a good look for a score. Angoon was led by 14 points from Michael Pitka, 13 from John Croasmun JR and 11 from Guy Hunter. Kake added 14 points from Derek Knudsen and 10 from Shea Jackson.

Not to be outdone for a thriller, the boys of FILCOM toppled Mt. Edgecumbe 100-91 in A bracket double-overtime behind 32 points from Samuel Lockhart and 24 points from Brady Caranadang. MTE had 32 points from Jamal Alstrom. Tied at 75-75, the first extra five minutes featured an opening free throw by FILCOM’s Bryce Swofford and was answered by a drive by MTE’s Tyrell Cromer. The two teams exchanged baskets, with MTE pulling out to an 80-77 lead with a behind the arc shot by Cromer. FILCOM tied the score with two free throws by Carandang and a drive by Alwen Carrillo. A loose ball scramble twice went to MTE and with 2.1 seconds left, Jamal Alstrom scored and was fouled for an old-fashioned three-point play and an 83-80 lead. A timeout gave FILCOM the ball at the side and Carandang hit a long-distance jumper to tie the game at 83-83 as the buzzer rang. Swofford kick-started FILCOM in the second extra five minutes with a rebound score and a free throw. MTE’s Jaylin Prince hit a free throw and missed the next. FILCOM’s Swofford rebounded and started a fast break basket by Carandang to push the score to 88-84. MTE’s Alstrom hit from the arc to pull to 88-87, but a free throw by FILCOM’s Lockhart and his swish past the arc pushed the advantage to 92-87. MTE would be forced to foul down the stretch and FILCOM’s Lockhart, Carandang and Phillip Gonzalez all hit a pair from the line to secure the win.

The second half of the day saw Angoon defeat Kake 56-48 behind 14 points from Tasha Heumann, Kiara Kookesh added 13, Mary Johnson 11 and Cheyenne Kookesh 10. Kake’s Katie Jackson scored a game-high 24 points in the elimination game loss.

Sitka defeated Angoon 73-48 in their Masters bracket elimination game behind 22 points from Jeremy Plank, Efren Arce added 17 and Jimmie Jensen 14. Angoon’s Levi Johnson scored 17.

Metlakatla toppled Yakutat 65-53 in their C bracket elimination game behind 27 points from Mace Hayward and Clifton Guthrie added 17. Yakutat was led by 18 points from Adam Johnson.

Metlakatla also won their Womens bracket elimination game 66 – 32 over Hoonah behind 17 points from Alexis Russell 17 and 14 from Ryley Booth.  Hoonah’s Jonelle Staveland scored 13 and Antonia Fogg 10.

In the nightcap game Kake jumped out to an 18-3 lead against Hoonah and ran away with a 71-45 win behind a game-high 29 points from Ethan Kadake. Hoonah was led by 13 points from Oroin Dybdahl and 12 from Samuel Lamebull.

B – Angoon 85 (2-1), Hydaburg 77  (1-2) eliminated

Angoon 25 19 24 17 — 85

Hydaburg 20 13 25 19 — 77

Angoon — Tajaun Jamestown 22, Aquino Brinson 20, Jonathan Jack-Nixon 14, Isaiah Nelson 9, Clayton Edwin 6, Christian Nelson 4, Gregory Bennum 4, Duncan O’Brien 4, Beebucks Kookesh 2. 18 2PT / 11 3PT / 14-21 FT / 9 fouls – C. Nelson 3.

Hydaburg  — Vinnie Edenshaw 28, Jaren Carl 22, Jessie Louie 16, Greg Frisby 7, Trevor Olsen 4. 17 2PT / 10 3PT / 10-11 FT / 17 fouls – Carl 5, Frisby 4.

C – Kake 71 (1-1), Angoon 69 (0-2) eliminated

Kake 15 25 14 17 — 71

Angoon 20 8 19 22 — 69

Kake — Rudy Bean 30, Derek Knudsen 14, Shea Jackson 10, Dean Cavanaugh 8, Travis Aceveda 4, Kelly Brown 3, Trevor Rostad 2. 17 2PT / 9 3PT / 5-15 FT / 11 fouls – Rostad 2, Bean 2, Aceveda 2, Jackson 2.

Angoon — Michael Pitka 14, John Croasmun JR 13, Guy Hunter 11, Logan Lee 9, Curtis Lane 9, Michael Howard 7, Thomas Bell 6.  11 2PT / 11 3PT / 14-16 FT / 15 fouls – Croasmun JR 4, Pitka 3, Lane 3.

A – FILCOM 100 (1-1), Mt. Edgecumbe 91 (0-2) eliminated

Filcom 21 19 18 17 8 17 — 100

Mt. Edge. 24 20 18 13 8 8 — 91

Filcom — Samuel Lockhart 32, Brady Carandang 24, Bryce Swofford 15, Alwen Carrillo 13, Sean Oliver 7, Phillip Gonzalez 4, Męki Toutaiolepo 4, Tony Yadao 1. 22 2PT / 12 3PT / 20-28 FT / 9 fouls – Swofford 3.

Mt. Edgecumbe — Jamal Alstrom 32, Tyrell Cromer 17, Jaylin Prince 14, Aaron Porter 12, Jake Friske 9, RJ Didrickson 5, Andrew Friske 2. 20 2PT / 15 3PT / 6-10 FT / 21 fouls – Alstrom 4, A. Friske 4, Porter 4, J. Friske 3.

W – Angoon 56 (1-1), Kake 48 (0-2) eliminated

Angoon 10 13 17 16 — 56

Kake 6 9 17 16 — 48

Angoon — Tasha Heumann 14, Kiara Kookesh 13, Mary Johnson 11, Cheyenne Kookesh 10, Frances Mills 4, Gabbi George Frank 2, Joylynn Tripi 2. 14 2PT / 4 3PT / 16-38 FT / 16 fouls – Johnson 4, George Frank 4, Heumann 3, Tripi 3.

Kake — Katie Jackson 24, Courtney James 9, Monica Ashenfelter 7, Brenda See-Williams 3, Talia Davis 2, Jordan Wagner 2. 10 2PT / 5 3PT / 13-21 FT / 24 fouls – Davis 5, Jackson 5, Ashenfelter 4, James 4.

M – Sitka 73 (1-1), Angoon 48 (0-2) eliminated

Sitka 17 18 17 21 — 73

Angoon 8 19 11 10 — 48

Sitka — Jeremy Plank 22, Efren Arce 17, Jimmie Jensen 14, Justin Bagley 7, Thomas Anderson 7, David Johnson 2, Steve Edenshaw 2, Cliff Richter 2. 19 2PT / 8 3PT / 11-15 FT / 7 fouls – Anderson 2, Jensen 2, Plank 2.

Angoon — Levi Johnson 17, Ken Willard JR 9, Demetrius Johnson 6, Travis See 6, Al Tagaban 3, Kyle Johnson SR 3, Byron Jack JR 2, Nick Nelson 2. 11 2PT / 8 3PT / 2-4 FT / 13 fouls – K. Johnson SR 2, See 2, D. Johnson 2, Marti Fred 2.

C – Metlakatla 65 (1-1), Yakutat 53 (0-2) eliminated

Metlakatla 9 16 18 22 — 65

Yakutat 18 12 11 12 — 53

Metlakatla — Mace Hayward 27, Clifton Guthrie 17, Jason Enright 8, Chris Booth 6, Apollo Marsden 5, Dan Marsden 2. 19 2PT / 7 3PT / 6-11 FT / 12 fouls – Hayward 3, A. Marsden 3, Enright 3.

Yakutat — Adam Johnson 18, Stephen Adams 15, Sam Ferguson 10, Jay Sin 5, Ralph Wolfe 3, Jay Johnson 2. 11 2PT / 9 3PT / 4-9 FT / 12 fouls – Ferguson 3, Wolfe 3.

W – Metlakatla 66 (1-1), Hoonah 32 (0-2) eliminated

Metlakatla 17 22 17 10 — 66

Hoonah 9 6 7 10 — 32

Metlakatla — Alexis Russell 17, Ryley Booth 14, Drena Hayward 14, Ashley Huffine 8, Jezimay Ribs 4, Myra Guthrie 2, Talia Marsden 2, Vanessa Anniskett 2, Sally King 2, Disney Williams 1. 20 2PT / 4 3PT / 14-22 FT / 10 fouls – Booth 4.

Hoonah — Jonelle Staveland 13, Antonia Fogg 10, Larissa Dybdahl 5, Alona Howland 2, Krissy Bean 2. 6 2PT / 5 SPT / 5-13 FT / 14 fouls – Carlynn Caspersen 3, Dybdahl 3, Bean 3.

B – Kake 71 (2-1), Hoonah 45 (1-2) eliminated

Kake 18 20 23 10 — 71

Hoonah 5 15 9 16 — 45

Kake — Ethan Kadake 29, Keontay Jackson 9, Tristan Ross 9, Simon Friday 8, Shawn Merry 7, Dominic Ross 5, Bryce Knudsen 2, Jonah Davis 2. 18 2PT / 11 3PT / 2-4 FT / 16 fouls – Knudsen 3, Kadake 3, T. Ross 3.

Hoonah — Orion Dybdahl 13, Samuel Lamebull 12, Sean Oliver 7, Jaylin Prince 6, RJ Didrickson 6, Tyrell Cromer 1. 12 2PT / 3 3PT / 12-18 FT / 10 fouls – Malakai Nichols 4.

THURSDAY GAMES

9 a.m. – C bracket elimination, Kake (1-1) vs. Metlakatla (1-1)

10:30 a.m. – Womens elimination, Metlakatla (1-1) vs. Angoon (1-1)

Noon – B bracket elimination, Angoon (2-1) vs. Kake (2-1)

1:30 p.m. – Masters, Hoonah (1-0) vs. Klukwan (1-0)

4 p.m. – C bracket, Hydaburg (2-0) vs. Hoonah (2-0)

5:30 p.m. – A bracket, AML (1-0) vs. Metlakatla (1-0)

7 p.m. – B bracket, Haines (2-0) vs. Yakutat (2-0)

8:30 p.m. – Womens, Craig (1-0) vs. Yakutat (2-0)

SUNDAY SCORES

10:30 a.m. B bracket – Haines 98 (1-0), Klawock 58 (0-1)

12:00 p.m. Womens – Kake 62 (1-0), Metlakatla 46 (0-1)

1:30 p.m. B bracket – Hoonah 66 (1-0), Angoon 65 (0-1),

4:00 p.m. Masters – Hoonah 56 (1-0), Angoon 50 (0-1)

5:30 p.m. Womens – Yakutat 51 (1-0), Angoon 46 (0-1)

7:00 p.m. B bracket – Yakutat 65 (1-0), Metlakatla 58 (0-1)

MONDAY SCORES

9 a.m. B bracket – Hydaburg 82 (1-0), Kake 80 (0-1)

10:30 a.m. Womens – Craig 58 (1-0), Kake 50 (1-1)

12 p.m. C bracket – Hydaburg 94 (1-0), Yakutat 59 (0-1)

1:30 p.m. B bracket – Haines 79 (2-0), Hoonah 71 (1-1)

4 p.m. Womens – Yakutat 71 (2-0), Hoonah 26 (0-1)

5:30 p.m. Masters – Klukwan 86 (1-0), Sitka 66 (0-1)

7 p.m. B bracket – Yakutat 69 (2-0), Hydaburg 54 (1-1)

8:30 p.m. C bracket – Hoonah 82 (1-0), Angoon 51 (0-1)

TUESDAY SCORES

10:30 a.m. B bracket – Angoon 82 (1-1), Klawock 70 (0-2) eliminated

Noon C bracket – Hydaburg 95 (2-0), Kake 71 (0-1)

1:30 p.m. Open – AML 87 (1-0), Mt. Edgecumbe 79 (0-1)

4 p.m. C bracket – Hoonah 76 (2-0), Metlakatla 72 (0-1)

5 p.m. Open – Metlakatla 86 (1-0), FILCOM 75 (0-1)

7 p.m. B bracket – Kake 86 (1-1), Metlakatla 58 (0-2) eliminated

WEDNESDAY SCORES

9 a.m. B bracket – Angoon 85 (2-1) vs. Hydaburg 77 (1-2) eliminated

10:30 a.m. C bracket – Kake 71 (1-1), Angoon 69 (0-2) eliminated

Noon A bracket – 2 OT, FILCOM 100 (1-1), Mt. Edgecumbe 91 (0-2) eliminated

1:30 p.m. Womens – Angoon 56 (1-1), Kake 48 (0-2) eliminated

4 p.m. Masters – Sitka 73 (1-1), Angoon (0-2) eliminated

5:30 p.m. C bracket – Metlakatla 65 (1-1), Yakutat 53 (0-2) eliminated

7 p.m. Womens – Metlakatla 66 (1-1), Hoonah 32 (0-2) eliminated

8 p.m. B bracket – Kake 71 (2-1), Hoonah 45 (1-2) eliminated

This story was originally published by the Juneau Independent.

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The 2026 Alaska Permanent Fund filing deadline is quickly approaching on March 31.

The online application is available through 11:59 p.m. next Tuesday. Paper applications can be mailed, with residents being reminded to ensure they receive a certified mail receipt or their envelope gets postmarked by the post office no later than the deadline. Paper applications can be delivered to PFD office locations in Anchorage, Fairbanks, or Juneau by March 31 between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.

The Juneau office is located at 333 Willoughby Ave. on the 11th floor, side B of the State Office Building. The mailing address is Alaska Department of Revenue Permanent Fund Dividend Division, P.O. Box 110462

Juneau, AK 99811-0462.

Documents can also be faxed to (907) 465-3470 or emailed to dor.pfd.info@alaska.gov. A phone number for additional support is (907) 465-2326.

After filing, it is recommended by the PFD office to keep proof of the application for each family member. Applications that are received or postmarked after March 31 will be denied as a late application.

The Permanent Fund website notes the division is experiencing a staff shortage.

“Documentation mailed or emailed to PFD will be worked as quickly as is possible. We appreciate your patience as we get through the filing season,” the website states. “The most important thing right now is to get your application submitted to the division before the filing deadline ends. Supplemental documents/information can be submitted later.”

Last year’s PFD was $1,000, the lowest ever when adjusted for inflation since dividends were first issued in 1982, due to what state lawmakers called a serious fiscal crisis resulting in part from low oil prices. Oil prices have skyrocketed during the past month due to the Iran war and the Alaska Department of Revenue in an updated forecast earlier this month declared the state may get more than $500 million extra during the coming fiscal year — in theory enough to boost the PFD of all eligible recipients by several hundred dollars.

But Sen. Bert Stedman, a Sitka Republican who co-chairs the Senate Finance Committee, said Tuesday he is still telling Alaskans to expect a PFD similar to last year’s.

“My personal opinion is concentration on deferred maintenance is a pretty high priority,” he said. “We’ve got schools that are virtually falling down.”

However, a debate among legislators is likely. House Minority Leader DeLena Johnson, R-Anchorage, when asked about uses for extra revenue during a recent press conference, said higher PFDs should be a priority.

This story was originally published by the Juneau Independent.

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