(The Center Square) – A Thurston County Superior Court judge on Friday upheld the government-drafted financial disclosure statement slated to appear on November ballots for Initiative 645, a high-profile measure seeking to repeal Washington state’s newly enacted income tax on…
(Photo by Krisanapong Detraphiphat/Getty Images)
An attorney defending the Alaska Division of Elections against a lawsuit argued in state court Friday that candidates for state office are not obliged to disclose their finances when they file for office.
If that argument is upheld in court, it would upend existing practices and could end voters’ ability to examine political candidates’ personal finances in the early stages of a primary election.
The lawsuit in court on Friday was filed by the Alaska Democratic Party, which is challenging the eligibility of Jose Roel Tagle to run for Alaska House District 22. Tagle, a Republican, is the only challenger to incumbent Rep. Ted Eischeid, D-Anchorage.
The Alaska Democratic Party challenged Tagle’s eligibility after he filed a completely blank Public Officer Disclosure Form alongside his candidacy application. State law requires candidates to use that form to list all income — including Permanent Fund dividends — that a candidate and their immediate family received during the previous year.
The Division of Elections frequently rejects candidates who file no form at all.
Despite Tagle’s blank form, the Division of Elections accepted his candidacy and rejected the Democratic Party’s challenge, causing the party to file suit.
In front of Anchorage Superior Court Judge Josie Garton, Alaska Department of Law attorney Griffin Deitz said that filing a blank form is acceptable because the relevant law gives candidates 30 days to make corrections.
“A candidate could comply — they could submit a financial disclosure, as Mr. Tagle did here, that was blank, and then if there are financial interests to be reported, could report those at a later date,” Deitz said.
This year, Alaska’s candidate filing deadline was June 1 and election day is Aug. 18. If a 30-day delay becomes common, almost half the primary campaign season could elapse before voters are informed about candidates’ personal wealth.
Garton, from the bench, asked: “Why wouldn’t every candidate file a blank form?”
Deitz appeared to briefly struggle for an answer.
“In this case — well — I couldn’t begin to guess why candidates would or wouldn’t do so,” he said. “But they have that 30 days. So the presumption that the (Division of Elections) would make in this case, Your Honor, is that the Legislature intended to provide this grace period so that people could file at the very last minute and then bring that financial disclosure into compliance before the election.”
Attorney River Sterne, representing the Alaska Democratic Party, said that position is unacceptable.
“An important thing here is that filing a totally blank POFD is the same as not filing a POFD at all,” he said, arguing that the Division of Elections should have excluded Tagle from the primary election ballot.
In written arguments before Friday, and again in court, Deitz argued that the Alaska Public Offices Commission — not the Division of Elections — is the agency that should determine whether a POFD is properly filed.
The Division of Elections does not have investigation powers, he said, and is thus unable to judge. Tagle may have no income to report, Deitz suggested.
Sterne countered that other public records clearly list Tagle as the officer of a privately held company, and there is no “de minimis” exemption for reporting shares of a privately held company if the profits are vanishingly small or nonexistent. Given that, he said, the Division of Elections could easily conclude that Tagle’s filing was incorrect.
Neither Tagle nor the Alaska Republican Party filed legal briefs in support of Tagle’s candidacy ahead of Friday’s oral argument. The party’s chair, Carmela Warfield, did not answer a phone call or email asking why not.
Regardless of how Garton rules on the lawsuit, Tagle’s candidacy appears unlikely to proceed. As of Friday, Tagle had not amended his financial disclosure form, meaning that even under the Division of Elections’ interpretation of the law, he is beyond the 30-day grace period.
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The U.S. Army Golden Knights took to the skies over JBER Friday ahead of the 2026 Arctic Thunder Open House. The free event runs Saturday and Sunday and features the Golden Knights, U.S. Navy Blue Angels, military demonstrations, civilian aerial…
The Golden Knights are among the military and civilian performers taking part in this weekend’s free Arctic Thunder Open House at JBER.
Sen. Lora Reinbold, R-Eagle River, speaks Tuesday, May 10, 2022, on the floor of the Alaska Senate at the Alaska State Capitol in Juneau, Alaska. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
The Alaska Supreme Court on Friday upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit by former state Sen. Lora Reinbold, R-Eagle River, against the state of Alaska and the Alaska Legislature’s committee on legislative ethics.
Reinbold had sued the committee and the state’s executive branch in 2022 after the committee concluded that Reinbold had violated the Legislative Ethics Act by blocking people from commenting on her legislative Facebook page “solely for expressing opinions in disagreement with her own.”
Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews dismissed Reinbold’s case in 2024. She unsuccessfully asked Matthews to reconsider, then appealed to the Supreme Court.
Writing on behalf of the court — which ruled unanimously — Justice Dario Borghesan said, “At no point did the Ethics Committee act outside the statutorily defined investigative process. Therefore, its actions are protected by legislative immunity.”
That immunity derives from Article II, Section 6 of the Alaska Constitution, which states that “Legislators may not be held to answer before any other tribunal for any statement made in exercise of their legislative duties while the legislature is in session.”
Reinbold argued that immunity should not apply because her due process rights were violated.
“But legislative immunity applies even to claims that a legislative body has violated the right to due process,” Borghesan wrote.
Reinbold, reached by text message on Friday morning, said she was unable to immediately talk about the issue because she was at an event with U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
Johnson is in Alaska this week as part of a trip to boost the re-election campaign of U.S. Rep. Nick Begich III, R-Alaska.
After the publication of this article, Reinbold said by text message that she is considering an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In Friday’s 19-page order, Borghesan states that a plaintiff or defendant could make an argument that immunity conflicts with the Alaska Constitution’s guarantee — under Article I, Section 7 — of “fair and just treatment in the course of executive legislative and executive investigations.”
In this case, neither plaintiffs nor defendants briefed that argument, Borghesan said. Reinbold briefly raised the argument, he said, but “offer(ed) no legal authority to help us interpret this constitutional provision.”
“Because Reinbold’s assertion that the Ethics Committee violated her right to fair and just treatment was not adequately briefed, we do not consider it,” he said.
The court’s order this week also upholds Judge Matthews’ decision to deny Reinbold the chance to amend her legal complaint. Reinbold had requested to change it after the deadline to do so.
In addition, the order upholds Matthews’ decision to dismiss claims against the executive branch as moot.
Reinbold had objected to a letter from the governor saying that neither he nor other members of the administration would work with her because she repeatedly spread misinformation about the state’s response to COVID-19.
“Reinbold is no longer a legislator, so we could not order the executive branch to work with her,” Borghesan wrote.
Reinbold had argued that a similar case could arise in the future and that the issue is not moot.
But Borghesan said that if a similar case arises between another legislator and another governor in the future, the court will consider those arguments at that time.
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Friday Night: Cloudy skies with periods of light rain late. Low 53F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%. Saturday: Rain showers early with overcast skies later in the day. High 63F. Winds light and variable.…
Friday Night: Cloudy early with some clearing expected late. Low 52F. Winds light and variable. Saturday: Mostly cloudy skies early will become partly cloudy later in the day. High 69F. Winds light and variable.
A screenshot of a compilation of website posing as news sites published by One Nation.
This article was originally published by Popular Information.
The Alaska Navigator bills itself as “independent news covering the Last Frontier.” On June 10, the outlet published an article headlined, “As Fentanyl Deaths Rise in Alaska, Sullivan Pushes Tougher Penalties and Enforcement.”
The piece, which has no byline, reports that Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) — who is locked in a competitive campaign against Democrat Mary Peltola — “is leading efforts to combat fentanyl trafficking and support law enforcement agencies confronting the epidemic.”
Curiously, although Sullivan has been in the Senate for more than a decade, the piece cites only one piece of evidence: Sullivan’s vote for the HALT Fentanyl Act in March 2025. Sullivan was one of 84 senators to vote for the bill, which classified fentanyl-related substances as schedule I narcotics. But Sullivan did not lead the effort to pass the HALT Fentanyl Act. He was not the bill’s sponsor or one of its 16 original co-sponsors. (Sullivan became a co-sponsor on March 6, 2025, about a week before it passed the Senate).
The Alaska Navigator also reports that “Retired Alaska Wildlife Trooper Director Doug Massie, who spent 25 years in law enforcement… credits Senator Sullivan with supporting tougher penalties for traffickers and policies aimed at reducing the drug’s impact on communities throughout the state.” But there is no direct quote from Massie, who is running for the Alaska state legislature as a Republican, or an explanation of why Sullivan deserves credit. There is no record of Massie making a public statement about Sullivan on fentanyl or any other topic.
Both the content and tone are highly unusual for an independent news outlet. That is because the Alaska Navigator is not an independent news outlet. Rather, it is a website fully controlled by One Nation, a dark money group that works in concert with the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), the super PAC of Senate Republicans. One Nation has directly contributed over $70 million to the SLF this political cycle.
Other content published by Alaska Navigator includes “Senator Dan S. Sullivan’s Legislative Record of Supporting Alaska’s Veterans,” “Sen. Sullivan’s tax policy helps Alaska businesses thrive,” and “Opinion: Dan Sullivan has earned another term by delivering for Alaska.”
One Nation has ensured that Alaskans see this content by spending tens of thousands of dollars on Meta ads promoting Alaska Navigator articles since June. These ads further distort reality. For example, the fentanyl article was promoted with an ad declaring there was a “New Bill to Crack Down on Fentanyl Trafficking, Supported By Dan Sullivan.” But the only bill mentioned in the article was the HALT Fentanyl Act, which was signed into law in July 2025.
While the ad discloses it was paid for by One Nation, it does not disclose that Alaska Navigator is owned and operated by One Nation. That fact is only revealed in small, faint type at the very bottom of the Alaska Navigator website.
Alaska Navigator’s domain, thealaskanavigator.com, was registered on March 20, 2026. The website, however, includes an article dating back to January 2026, making it appear more established. That article was added using a tool called FakerPress, according to the website’s source code. FakerPress markets itself as “a clean way to generate fake and dummy content.”
The fake Alaska news outlet is one of at least six operated by One Nation in states with key U.S. Senate races. Popular Information identified these sites through disclosures in their Meta advertisements. The other five sites in the network include:
Maine Policy Updates (“Maine’s News Source”)
Ohio Pulse (“Your trusted source for local news, investigative journalism, and community stories across the Buckeye State”)
Iowa Voice (“Stay Informed. Stay Iowa”)
Peach State Post (“Georgia’s Premier News Source”)
New Hampshire Daily (“An independent news organization dedicated to covering the stories that matter most to Granite State residents”)
Collectively, One Nation has spent between $198,900 and $274,640 promoting these sites on Meta platforms. Maine Policy Updates has been operating since January, but most of the ad spending for the other sites began in June.
Iowa Voice features a story headlined, “Iowa Farmers Say Potential ‘Death Tax’ Threatens Family Succession Plans.” The piece praises Ashley Hinton, the Republican candidate for Senate, for being “an original cosponsor of the Death Tax Repeal Act, legislation that would permanently repeal the federal estate tax.” The piece highlights that supporters of the bill believe it would “make it easier for family farms and small businesses to remain in family hands across multiple generations.” The piece does not mention that the estate tax impacts only 0.3% of farms. It also does not quote or paraphrase a single farmer.
Other content on these sites mirrors One Nation’s TV ads. A July 30 article on Peach State Post falsely suggests that Senator Jon Ossoff opposes increasing the Child Tax Credit. A One Nation political ad, which has blanketed the state over the last several days, contains the same attack.
The sites attempt to appear more legitimate by cutting and pasting content from actual news outlets. The Peach State Post recently published a story under the headline “Former Atlanta city officials Bickers, Beard who were convicted in corruption cases denied clemency by Trump.” At the end of the piece it says, “Read more here” and links to 11Alive, an Atlanta news website. But the story on Peach State Post contains the full text of 11Alive’s story. There is nothing more to read. There is no indication that Peach State Post secured permission to repost 11Alive’s work. The article is presented as Peach State Post’s original work.
One Nation, which is organized as a 501(c)(4), is not required to disclose its donors. So it is unknown who is bankrolling its fake websites or other activities.
One Nation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Popular Information is an independent newsletter dedicated to accountability journalism.
Helena, Mont. — Volunteers in the Elkhorn Mountains from Helena helped reopen a trail system after windstorms left heavy forest downfall that added to wildfire fuel concerns.
