Category: Alaska News

Chilkat Valley Community Foundation held another “People’s Choice Award “ at the Fair last weekend, and 158 people cast a vote for their favorite local nonprofit. Thank you to all these loyal supporters! By random selection, two nonprofits were each awarded a $250 CVCF grant: Four Winds Resource Center and Haines Animal Rescue Kennel. Thank you Chilkat Valley!

Cynthia Allen, for the CVCF Board

The post HARK, Four Winds Resource Center get “People’s Choice Award” appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

 The Alaska voting system dilutes party and billionaire control and elevates the importance of running for office and voting in every election. That’s great! Today in Juneau, bipartisan “majority caucuses” lead the Alaska Senate and House of Representatives. Republicans, democrats, and independents—caucusing together—are getting Alaska’s business done. The minority caucuses? Both are entirely Trump republicans and exactly where they belong. 

Ballot Measure 2 is sort of like Trump’s SAVE-Act, only Alaska style. It would dismantle Alaska’s home-grown electoral innovation, one that constrains power-politics, parties, and billionaire backers. Maybe that’s why Senator Sullivan calls it “rigged.” In November, I will vote No on ballot measure 2. 

Besides the “ranked-choice” general election provision, the Alaska system has other important features: 1) every candidate gets into our one orderly primary election—no members-only caucus, XYZ party primary, “super-delegates”, or the proverbial “smoke-filled rooms;” 2) No “Dark Money.” Alaska requires prompt disclosure for campaign donations over $2000 and if funds are Alaskan, or originate from out-of-state. Trumpian spin-doctors now describe the Alaska system as “inherently corrupt” — a blatant falsity.

The primary election is August 18^th and a lot of names are on the ballot. Seventeen vie to be Governor, sixteen for U.S. Senate. More—not fewer—candidates are better for Alaska and America. Alaska’s system is neither “rigged” nor “inherently corrupt”. Please check out the primary ballot and plan to vote. You’ll also find Ballot Measure 1, which defines rational limits for campaign donations. 

Burl Sheldon

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At least one person in Anchorage had measles in early and mid-July, creating a risk that the highly infectious disease could spread through the state’s largest city, state health officials are warning.

The proof is in the sewage.

Samples taken from Anchorage’s John M. Asplund Wastewater Treatment Facility revealed genetic material from the strain of measles that has caused outbreaks in the Lower 48.

It means someone carrying the virus was in the part of Anchorage served by the state’s biggest wastewater treatment plant, said Dr. Joe McLaughlin, Alaska’s state epidemiologist.

“It doesn’t tell us where exactly they were in the sewershed, and it also doesn’t tell us if there was any human-to-human transmission that’s occurring,” he said.

But it does provide an early warning to health providers and the general public, McLaughlin said.

“It’s important for people to take a look and see if they’ve been vaccinated, or if their children have been vaccinated,” he said. If children have not been vaccinated, “go ahead and get them vaccinated, because we know that this virus has been present in the community. And it may still be present.”

The presence of measles RNA, the virus’ single-strand genetic material, was detected in samples taken on July 7, 8, 9 and 14, health officials said. State and municipal health officials are still waiting for results from more recent wastewater testing, McLaughlin said.

Samples from the Asplund plant are usually taken every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, said Clayton Weingartner, the Division of Public Health’s wastewater surveillance coordinator.

Performing the scan that detects measles genetic material is a complex process, he said. “it’s an expensive test, and it takes longer to get the results,” he said. That is why state officials are still waiting for results from last week’s sampling, he said.

For now, public health officials say, Anchorage residents and other Alaskans should be on the lookout for signs of measles.

Symptoms, which usually arrive a week or two after infection, include a high fever, a runny nose, red eyes and a skin rash. The disease can be serious and even fatal, especially for young children. There were three measles deaths in the United States last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As of Tuesday, there were no new reports of any patients with measles in Anchorage. The last Anchorage case was in October, affecting an adult who tested positive after traveling to the city from the Lower 48, according to municipal officials. There was also a child in Anchorage who was diagnosed with measles in May of 2025.

Elsewhere in the state, there were four measles cases diagnosed last year, according to health officials.

McLaughlin said there are reasons for Alaskans to be vigilant.

There are more measles cases in the United States now than at any time in the past 35 yeas, he said.

 “And we’re at peak tourist season right now, so there are people coming into Alaska from the Lower 48 and from many different countries, and they’re bringing with them, some of them, different pathogens,” he said. “And one of them can be measles. And we know that measles is the most contagious virus that we’re aware of on the planet.”

Additionally, Alaskans are at elevated risk because the rate of measles vaccination is low compared to the rest of the nation.

Medical providers should be notified if there are suspected measles infections, McLaughlin said. Patients should not be in clinic waiting rooms because the virus is so contagious, he said.

Whenever a case is identified, health officials have to trace the places where that patient may have exposed others to the virus, such as daycare centers, stores and recreational sites. “All that kind of stuff takes a lot of work, and that’s just for one case,” he said.

Wastewater sampling in Alaska screens for a variety of infectious diseases, including COVID-19, different varieties of influenza and Respiratory Syncytial Virus, or RSV, as well as measles.

Numerous sites participate in the National Wastewater Surveillance System, or NWSS, that was set up by the CDC in 2020 as part of the national response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But the Asplund plant, which serves most of Anchorage’s residents, is the only one in Alaska that participates in the most advanced testing program, a privately operated system called WastewaterSCAN, Weingartner said.

“The WastewaterSCAN program has very limited testing slots,” he said.

The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, the University of Alaska Anchorage and the Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corp. are also testing wastewater for disease pathogens, he said. Samples are regularly collected from wastewater in Eagle River, Juneau and Bethel.

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It is a disgrace the way our congressional delegation has abandoned U.S. veterans. The Trump administration’s Big Beautiful Bill, which Murkowski, Sullivan and Begich all voted for, gave more tax breaks to billionaires and large corporations, while at the same time squeezing the middle class and the poor. Among the casualties are U.S. veterans. 

In order to fund more tax breaks for the top 1%, government services to everyone else had to be cut. NPR reported that the Trump administration killed a Veterans’ Administration home loan program. Veterans are now losing their homes to foreclosure. The New York Times reported that the Veterans Affairs Department cut thousands of positions for doctors and nurses, and left vacant many unfilled positions. Furthermore, the Trump administration reversed expanded health benefits for women. The VA also pledged to end support for Housing First, the approach that was the VA’s greatest housing success. Huffington Post reported that mass firings at the VA — where many of the employees are veterans — will negatively impact its critical mission in healthcare, disability claims, services for transition to civilian life, suicide prevention and addiction treatment. 

The VA cut funding for research, including a promising study using electronic medical records to improve outcomes for veterans with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The New York Times reported that among the cuts at the VA was a collaborative research study with Harvard Medical School into veterans’ suicide. NPR further reported that the VA is making it harder for male veterans to get care for breast cancer — a rare disease for men, but just as deadly for them as it is for women. It has been widely reported, including in the Huffington Post, that ICE has arrested for deportation legal residents who served in the military with a promise of thereby obtaining US citizenship. Apparently, we are no longer a people of our word. 

The repercussions of the decimation of the staff and programs at the VA will last for years. It will not be easy for a new administration — one committed to honoring the service keeping the promises to our veterans — to undo the damage done by the Big Beautiful Bill by fully funding the agency and its programs. 

While all of our congressional delegation shares the responsibility for this disgraceful bill, I think it is Sen. Dan Sullivan who is the most to blame. He runs his campaigns in part on the fact that he is a former Marine and a champion of veterans’ causes. In a Congressional hearing, he went so far as referring to them as “my veterans.” Well, he has let them down and they are now our veterans. It is up to us to inform our congressional delegation that they will soon answer to us at the polls. Candidates now running for Senate and the House of Representatives should give voters specifics of how they will revitalize the VA.

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This story was supported by and co-published with the America’s 250th Project | American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

As the U.S. war on Iran threw the world’s global energy markets into crisis this spring, Arctic Village was settling into a cold snap. The spruce trees were furled with snow, the air sharp enough to freeze the breath inside your nose. There are no roads leading out of this Gwich’in community in northern Alaska, and its fuel has to be delivered by plane. In other rural parts of the state, diesel is barged up rivers during the short summer. These logistical challenges make the war’s price spikes especially painful.

After the Strait of Hormuz closed, gas surged past $12 a gallon, says Tonya Garnett, a spokesperson for the Gwich’in Steering Committee, a group of tribal leaders. “Everything has to be flown into our community,” she explained, meaning prices shot up overnight – not only for heat and electricity, but also for basic necessities like milk and other staples.

That shock is part of a broader reckoning over Alaska’s energy future. After decades organized around fossil fuel extraction, the state is having the kind of argument societies tend to have when the foundations of an old economic order start to wobble. The men who drafted the Declaration of Independence would find the conversation familiar: They understood that who controls a territory’s resources — and who bears the costs of their extraction — is at the core of political power. 

Many rural Alaskan communities are turning to renewables to save money, and to reduce their dependence on deliveries that can be cut off by weather or supply chain failures. The effort is small-scale, incremental and often creative by necessity. Meanwhile, the state and federal government continue to double down on extractive development. Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy argues that Alaska must accelerate domestic oil and gas production to stabilize both the state’s economy and broader U.S. security. On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order aimed at “unleashing” Alaska’s resources, reopening previously suspended leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and directing faster approval of energy and mining projects. His administration sees the state as key to expanding American oil and gas production, as it pushes for U.S. dominance in global energy markets. That language of national interest is much the same as the Crown once used to justify managing the colonies’ timber, fish and fur. 

That approach centers on maximizing exports and profits. Yet Alaska spends more on energy per capita than any other state, making it vulnerable when the system that oil built begins to crack. Its communities can no longer afford the fuel they need, its utilities are running out of natural gas and its school budgets are lurching into crisis. The state brings in less revenue from oil now than it ever has, reflecting both declining production and a 2013 overhaul that lowered production taxes – which was voted in by state legislators who simultaneously worked for ConocoPhillips, Alaska’s largest oil producer.

“We are an oil state,” says Phil Wight, an environmental historian at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. But that’s no longer because the industry supplies the bulk of the state’s jobs or budget. In 2025, petroleum contributed less than 13 percent to the total state revenue. To cover basic government spending, it increasingly overdraws the Alaska Permanent Fund, a sovereign wealth fund created in 1976 to preserve oil boom revenues for future generations. “We’re trapped in that petroculture, even though that industry continues to fail to deliver,” he said. 

At a time when other states and nations are rapidly diversifying their energy grids, Alaska remains caught between the oil economy that has defined it for generations, and competing visions for what comes next. “Since the early 1970s, we have defined energy independence as drilling more oil in this country,” Wight explains. Though the United States currently produces more crude oil than any other country in history, energy prices under a second Trump administration have soared, accompanied by ballooning inflation and record-high household debt. One of Alaska’s largest utilities, Golden Valley Electric Association, where Wight was just elected to the Board of Directors, just hiked its rates by 60 percent. Speaking as a history professor, Wight asked, “Is this what independence is? Because it doesn’t feel like it.”

The question of who Alaska’s resources are meant to serve stretches back to the first lines drawn across the Arctic by officials in Washington, D.C. When the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, little was known about its vast petroleum reserves. “We were sold from a country that took over us without our involvement, and sold to another country without our involvement,” says Garnett. The Declaration of Independence, written nearly a century earlier, did not extend its principles to everyone living on the land it claimed, calling the country’s original inhabitants “merciless Indian Savages.”

By the 1920s, as the U.S. Navy converted its fleet from coal to oil, President Warren Harding proclaimed a new petroleum reserve across the Arctic coastal plain. Based on its geological features, naval officials suspected it would contain strategic fuels, and called dibs in the name of national security. “Without asking us, for it was our land, our federal government took from us 23,400,000 acres of land, an area roughly the size of the State of Indiana,” Alaska Native leader Eben Hopson later recalled. “Government was often very painful.”

From a young age, Hopson recognized that decisions in Washington were reshaping his home in ways that would outlast the people who made them. At the time, Alaska was still a U.S. territory. Even many white residents came to see the arrangement as colonial, arguing that decisions about Alaska should be made by the people who lived there. During the 1955 Alaska Constitutional Convention, delegate Ernest Gruening said, “Our charters of liberty — the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution — embody America’s opposition to colonialism and to colonialism’s inevitable abuses.”

In 1959, Alaska became a state, with the assurance that it would give residents greater control over their resources. The new state was granted the selection of more than 100 million acres of land. As it moved to do so, Alaska Native communities objected that many of these places overlapped with areas they had long called home. They were ignored. 

Less than a decade later, explorers struck oil on the North Slope. Hopson was one of the Alaska Native leaders who used the urgency of the oil rush to demand greater recognition of Indigenous rights. After the federal government imposed a land freeze until the growing dispute could be resolved, they won the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. In lieu of reservations, it established 12 regional for-profit corporations to manage roughly 44 million acres granted along with subsurface oil and gas rights, and nearly a billion dollars in cash. The idea was that Alaska Native people would be shareholders in their own land — becoming participants in the economy that had been extracting value from their home for decades. 

Whether it worked depends on who you ask. Nauri Simmonds, executive director of Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, says the corporations have come to be treated as the voice of their communities, when they are actually financial institutions. That conflation has created a replica of the inequity it was supposed to correct, “the haves and the have-nots,” she says. Though tribal shareholders have a seat at the table, Simmonds argues the furniture was still built for someone else’s purposes.

The Arctic Slope Regional Corporation has grown into the largest locally owned and operated business in Alaska. It supports oil development on the North Slope, including the Willow project, an $8 billion project environmental advocates call a “carbon bomb.” Simmonds, whose family is from Nuiqsut, a community in the middle of some of the Slope’s most prolific oil fields, has seen the costs of that development up close. Respiratory illnesses soared as wells crept closer to town. Lifelong hunters now struggle with subsistence in ways they never did before, as migration patterns shift and other disruptions transform the landscape. 

During the Willow project negotiations, Simmonds says, residents negotiated a deal to protect about one million acres around Teshekpuk Lake, one of the Arctic’s most important wetland ecosystems. The agreement limited oil and gas development in the area, preserving a right-of-way for subsistence use and putting conservation decisions in local hands. In December of 2025, the Interior Department suddenly cancelled it. “They said, just kidding, you know, adding to the long list of broken promises,” Simmonds says. 

Nuiqsuit Trilateral Inc, a nonprofit formed by the tribal government, city government, and the village’s Alaska Native corporation, filed a lawsuit in federal court. “Our community has always worked in good faith with the State, the federal government, and industry,” said Roxanna Oyagak, the group’s secretary, in a press release. “But we are insisting that the federal government honor the commitments it made.” In March 2026, a judge temporarily restored the agreement.

For Simmonds, the debacle clarified the conviction that real energy sovereignty would not be handed over in a federal leasing agreement or negotiated across a conference table. It would have to be literally generated at home. Across Alaska, some communities have already begun pursuing that vision through renewable energy projects. “What Alaskans need is solutions that are going to be fast and that are going to be efficient,” says Jennifer Hyde, federal engagement coordinator for The Alaska Center, a non-profit focused on environmental and civic issues. “Alaska just has so much to offer in terms of free, unlimited renewable potential.”

The group has helped amplify information about clean energy and resilience projects around the state. One of those is in Yakutat, a small coastal community in the state’s southeast, where rising diesel prices were straining budgets. The town’s school and public safety buildings’ aging heating system was expensive to operate and increasingly unreliable. It was replaced with a modern heat recovery system, which captures waste heat from the town’s power plant. It also routed heat to the town’s health clinic, one of the biggest energy users. In its first year, the new system saved Yakutat $270,000 in avoided fuel costs, says Katya Karankevich, senior project manager at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, who supported the project. 

In the meantime, the Trump administration is supporting new lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an area that has been at the center of years of political and legal battles. In June, the federal government auctioned oil and gas rights in the calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd, sacred land for the Gwich’in. It’s the first of four sales mandated under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The sales are expected to generate as little as $3 million in federal revenue — a fraction of the $200 million the state has already committed to support exploration and development in the refuge. No major oil companies bid, but the state’s own development corporation did. This lopsided investment underscores how much public money has been committed to fossil fuel projects the market has failed to embrace.

“It’s heartbreaking because these areas, each of them are so special in their own way,” says Simmonds, her voice wavering. The land has fed her community for longer than anyone can remember. “It feels like each time there’s a new project, the area that you feel like you can depend on or defend, it just shrinks and shrinks and shrinks.” 

With the state’s backing and the federal government’s enthusiasm for new leases, Alaska’s next wave of extraction is taking shape. ConocoPhillips has already broken ground on the Willow project. Santos, another major oil company, is pushing forward with the Pikka project, another oil reservoir that is expected to produce enough crude to generate 12.6 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. Last fall, Trump also signed an executive order approving Ambler road, a proposed 211-mile industrial access corridor. The Tanana Chiefs Conference condemns it as “a fundamental threat to our people,” including condemning its disruption of faltering caribou migrations. The order simultaneously gave the federal government a 10% stake in Trilogy Metals, the company planning to mine the area. “This machine,” Simmonds says, “will never be satiated.”

“Beautiful Alaska, we love Alaska,” Trump said in his 2025 state of the union speech, before boasting about once again renaming Denali, the state’s highest peak, for President William McKinley. Back in April 2024, Trump had hosted over a dozen oil executives from companies like Chevron and ExxonMobil at Mar-a-Lago, where he reportedly told them they should raise $1 billion for his campaign, a “deal,” he said, compared to the taxes and red tape they would avoid if he won. In other words, the federal agenda now shaping Alaska’s future is being written in rooms as far away from the North Slope as Britain was from the American colonies. 

The ideals behind the country’s founding—of natural rights, and people’s ability to govern the land they live on—have always been easier to proclaim than to practice. The history of Alaska, like that of much of the country, is of people still fighting to secure freedoms that were celebrated long before they were shared. 

After Trump took office, Dunleavy said, “it’s like Christmas every day now.” As governor, he has long advocated for the Alaska LNG project, an 800-mile pipeline and export terminal that would be one of the largest infrastructure projects in the state’s history. In 2025, the state handed the private energy firm Glenfarne Group a 75 percent stake in the project, in a deal whose details have been kept even from Alaska’s own legislature.

Though independent analysts say it’s not economically viable, the LNG project is still being buoyed by up to $31 billion in federal loans and another $7.1 billion in federal tax credits. Meanwhile, the federal government has canceled more than hundreds of millions in support for renewable energy projects in the state, stalling or canceling dozens of critically needed updates. 

At an Anchorage “Sustainable Energy Conference” in May, sponsored by Glenfarne, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum dismissed climate concerns. Outside the ballroom, Alaska has been warming far faster than the global average, which is reshaping its fisheries, prompting bird dieoffs, and “rusting” its rivers. Those changes mean that anyone who lives off the land has a harder time providing for their families. Local governments face bigger bills for sewer repairs, road maintenance, and other everyday infrastructure, as thawing permafrost heaves highways and breaks waterlines. “Energy independence is probably the number one way rural Alaska  — and rural America  — can weather all of these impacts,” Karankevich says. 

The United States’ founding document declares the purpose of government is to secure the “Safety and Happiness” of the people – including, in practice, something as basic as being able to turn on the heat or the lights. In Alaska, that promise is decided in the grid. Renewable projects aren’t just about climate, they’re about not gambling on fuel arriving late, running out, or simply costing too much.

That is not the energy independence being sold by the officials in Juneau or Washington right now. Phil Wight, the historian, puts it more plainly. “The political project in Alaska statehood was all about keeping enough resources in the state to actually sustain local peoples,” he said. “Increasingly it seems that we are failing to do that.”   

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This story was originally published by ProPublica.

For decades, physicists wrestled with a fundamental mystery of the universe.

They wanted to know why certain particles — like the protons in atoms — have mass, while particles of light do not. Whatever the reason was, it was crucial to understanding the origins of planets, galaxies and life itself.

The leading theory stated that particles got their mass from interacting with an invisible field, later dubbed the Higgs field, but no one had ever been able to prove it existed.

Doing so would require one of the most ambitious international collaborations in scientific history. Starting decades ago, thousands of scientists from dozens of countries worked side by side, even though some of their nations considered one another adversaries. The United States contributed a quarter of the workforce and hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.

The investment paid off in 2012, when the team detected the so-called “God particle” or Higgs boson, confirming the half-century-old Higgs field theory. The achievement was so significant that two of the physicists behind the theory won the Nobel Prize.

Under a new rule proposed by the Trump administration, American scientists might be forced to watch similar discoveries from the sidelines. The proposal would restrict international collaboration and give political appointees the ability to decide the most important research to fund, and the power to pull the plug at any time, for any reason.

As soon as he learned about the proposal, one of the U.S. scientists who took part in the landmark project rushed to file his objection with the federal government.

“These experiments take decades to build and require sustained, cooperative international investment,” University of Chicago physics professor David W. Miller wrote in a public comment. “The experiments will continue, without American leadership. … The United States will not just fall behind. It will step aside.”

The rule’s implications reach far beyond physics. Proposed by the Office of Management and Budget, a little-known but powerful part of the White House that guides federal spending, it would give the administration’s political appointees across dozens of federal agencies significant discretion over how grants are awarded and terminated. The appointees don’t have to know anything about science or the subjects of the grants they’re reviewing.

Russell Vought, who runs the office and has made expanding presidential control over federal spending one of his signature goals, has put the philosophy into practice over the past two years, helping to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development and, in another controversial move, blocking funds already allocated by Congress. Vought’s decision last year to cancel 284 Department of Energy grants drew renewed criticism after an agency lawyer recently admitted in court records that the terminations were “based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state” — in other words, blue states.

The rule would cover at least hundreds of billions of dollars in federal grants, touching everything from food stamp benefits and housing assistance to small business loans and funding for the arts. Many cities, states and nonprofits rely on federal grants in their annual budgets. Representatives of domestic violence organizations and museums and the attorneys general of 22 states are among those who have objected to the rule.

Vought’s office wants the final version of the rule to take effect on Oct. 1. Before that happens, the OMB must consider the nearly 500,000 public comments that have flooded in since the rule was announced in late May and address or respond to substantive critiques.

An OMB spokesperson told ProPublica that the “proposed rule will ensure spending is aligned with current law, Executive Orders, and agency priorities.” This is “fundamentally about accountability to the American people and ensuring that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely. It will not disrupt major scientific research or supplant the peer review process — any claims to the contrary are based on spurious assumptions.”

But thousands of public comments come from scientists, who warn that the rule, as written, would severely curtail their work treating pediatric cancers, improving maternal health and advancing fundamental research.

The United States’ world-renowned system of funding science entrusts decisions to subject-matter experts who choose grantees based on a rigorous, merit-based peer-review process, with minimum political interference. Physicists vet proposals from other physicists; oncologists, those of other oncologists. Larger projects get steady funding through multiple years, so that researchers can hire staff, design and purchase equipment, and make commitments to other involved institutions or people, such as patients undergoing treatments.

Few discoveries better illustrate what that system made possible than that of the Higgs boson, considered one of the most significant scientific triumphs of the 21st century.

Miller took ProPublica inside the endeavor, highlighting ways the new rule could imperil similar projects in the future.

“The United States built the greatest scientific enterprise in human history on a simple idea: fund the best ideas, chosen by the best experts, and get out of the way,” he said in his public comment. “This proposed rule dismantles that principle entirely, and it does so in ways that will cause immediate, concrete, and in many cases irreversible harm to American science.”

Miller, 43, said he owes his entire career to government investments in research and education.

He grew up in Chicago and went to public schools. Neither of his parents went to college. His mother was the first female paramedic hired by the Chicago Fire Department. His father, a firefighter, did construction work on his days off. Miller liked building stuff in his dad’s workroom. He made shelves for his bunk bed and etched his own circuit board in high school.

At the University of Chicago, where Miller enrolled after winning a full-ride scholarship for students whose parents worked as police officers or firefighters, he chose to study physics and soon became interested in questions such as: Why do things with mass behave differently from light? Why is there more matter than anti-matter in the universe? Miller said his dad used to sit in his firehouse, clipping newspaper stories on dark matter and black holes to send to his son.

As an undergrad, Miller began doing research at CERN, an international physics laboratory near Geneva that was founded after World War II to facilitate ambitious experiments and build bridges between countries that had recently been adversaries. He took a job there after graduation as a research technician.

Working in a cavern 300 feet underground, he crawled through tunnels, connecting power cables and screwing pieces of steel together. He was helping build the machinery needed to test a theory scientists had been chasing since the 1960s.

Physicists had long theorized that an invisible field of energy gives mass to particles like protons while leaving particles of light — photons — massless. To test the theory, the world’s largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, would smash hundreds of billions of protons together at nearly the speed of light. Miller had been building one of the massive, intricate cameras needed to detect the Higgs boson created by colliding protons. Later, he worked to disentangle the messy data.

Miller was one of nearly 2,000 scientists from the U.S. who worked on the initiative. Three U.S. national labs built components for the collider in-house before shipping them to CERN. Federal agencies invested $531 million into construction and other services. Additional grants went to individual scientists. Miller’s technician role and support for his research when he earned a doctorate in physics from Stanford University were both funded by the National Science Foundation, one of the main government agencies that supports basic scientific research.

Federal grants can’t be canceled without cause, and the reliability of that funding was crucial, Miller said. But the new OMB rule would allow termination with minimal explanation or opportunities for appeal.

That threat “is a tool for political coercion,” Miller wrote in his opposition to the rule. “It tells every scientist in America: your funding is safe only as long as your work, your institution, or your public statements remain acceptable to the current administration.”

An additional threat comes from the rule’s prohibition of researchers using federal funds to “support certain foreign collaborations involving covered foreign countries or covered foreign entities.” The rule accounts for limited exceptions, including collaborations allowed by federal statute and those in which an agency head “determines that the activity does not pose a risk to national security.” An OMB spokesperson did not provide a list of covered countries or respond to ProPublica’s questions about how the provision would be enforced.

More than 60 nations contributed to the Higgs boson discovery. Engineers from India tested superconducting magnets used in the collider. Russian scientists collected spent artillery shells from World War II to source the huge amounts of brass needed for one of the particle detectors. Various countries are contributing to ongoing upgrades for the collider, including special magnets from China, crystals from Italy and cast-iron shielding from Pakistan.

Some of the scientists working at CERN come from countries like China that the Trump administration has already restricted researchers from collaborating with. And it’s unclear how easily others might find themselves listed as adversaries. Since the beginning of his second term, President Donald Trump has picked public fights with a long list of leaders from U.S. allies, such as the United Kingdom, Italy, Denmark, France, Germany, Spain and Canada.

Strict limits on international partnerships fly in the face of how science has worked for centuries, said Chris Llewellyn Smith, a former CERN director who is an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Oxford. The Royal Society of London, a scientific academy founded in the 1600s, appointed a foreign secretary to correspond with scientists from other countries nearly 60 years before the British government appointed a foreign secretary to oversee international relations, he noted.

Global conflict has already degraded the collaborative atmosphere at CERN, Llewellyn Smith said. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, CERN’s governing body voted to ban scientists affiliated with Russian labs — a move that has harmed the careers of Russian scientists and deprived CERN of the hardware and labor Russia could contribute to future experiments.

If the U.S. also retreats due to limits on working with foreign scientists, Llewellyn Smith warned, it “could jeopardize the whole future of high-energy physics.”

That may feel abstract to many Americans. But the technological developments required to study particle physics lead to unexpected discoveries.

A CERN engineer pioneered a touch screen in the 1970s while building research instrumentation. The World World Web was invented by a scientist at CERN who was trying to share data between different institutions. Smaller particle accelerators are used for manufacturing and cancer therapies.

The practical applications may take generations to surface. Take the GPS technology that powers the maps on our phones, Miller said. It depends on century-old equations formulated by Albert Einstein. “I guarantee you that Einstein wasn’t thinking about your ability to find Starbucks this morning when he wrote down the special theory of relativity and the general theory of relativity.”

The OMB says the rule is necessary to prevent waste, fraud and ideological bias.

The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank whose work the OMB cites, praised the proposed changes in a recent column. Empowering political appointees establishes the “kind of adult supervision” that ensures “the taxpayer is funding the activity that he votes for at election time,” the columnist wrote.

But critics say the changes aim to solve problems that either don’t exist or don’t require such a blunt-force tool.

The rule repeatedly cites “woke” funding decisions under President Joe Biden’s tenure as a reason for reform. “Federal grants were politicized by the last administration to promote a far-left DEI agenda,” an agency spokesperson told ProPublica in an email, referring to initiatives promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.

The rule links to a 2024 report from Senate Republicans that summarized — based on a keyword search of terms like “women,” “diversify,” “segregation” and “Hispanic culture” — $2 billion in National Science Foundation grants they said were supporting “radical political perspectives.” ProPublica’s reporting found that many of the projects simply referenced existing social inequities or involved unrelated terms flagged by the committee’s crude methodology. One was a study of the evolution of mint plants.

Fraud in federal science funding does exist, but it’s relatively rare. Investigators at the National Science Foundation have recovered about $54 million from fraud cases involving universities, nonprofits and small businesses over the past 10 years, according to a spokesperson from the agency’s Office of Inspector General. That’s an average of $5.4 million a year — a tiny fraction of the billions of dollars the NSF gives out in grants every year.

Even if the administration believes those problems warrant reform, legal experts question whether the OMB has the authority to impose this solution. The final rule will almost certainly be subject to litigation, they say.

Lawsuits will challenge the OMB’s ability to prescribe the content of individual grants, said Kali Murray, a law professor at Marquette University who specializes in the intersection of administrative and intellectual property law. “This is a hall of famer move by Russ Vought” to expand the power of that office, as the proposal allows the OMB to override existing congressional statutes that govern agency spending, she said.

For instance, the proposed rule’s prohibition of DEI appears to conflict with a statute that directs the National Science Foundation to broaden “participation of underrepresented populations,” especially women, Black and Hispanic researchers, in science, technology, engineering and math, Murray said. Federal physics funding has been less of a political target than grants related to health disparities, racial inequities and LGBTQ+ communities — areas the administration derides as “woke” or “illegal DEI.” But at least several grants designed to support early-career physicists from underrepresented backgrounds have been terminated.

Any change through litigation could take time; lawsuits can’t be filed until the final text of the rule is published.

The next presidential administration could undo it through a formal rulemaking process. That process, too, could take years.

Pressure from congressional leaders, particularly Republicans, might be the only way to compel the OMB to make serious revisions before it releases the final version of the rule this fall. Democrats in Congress have registered their opposition. So has Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who sent a letter to Vought asking the OMB to withdraw parts of the rule “that would unduly burden scientific and biomedical research and small communities.”

Collins took particular issue with the provision that would allow political appointees to review grant proposals, noting that it would undermine the goal of awarding funds “based on scientific merit and value, rather than political ideology.”

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Alaskans will decide whether to overhaul the state’s elections system with a ballot measure that would repeal ranked choice voting, reinstate closed primaries and repeal campaign disclosure rules established in 2020. 

Ballot Measure 2, which will appear on the ballots as 24ESEG, is one of two ballot measures that will appear on the general election ballot in November. Ballot Measure 1, which would impose campaign contribution limits, will be on the primary ballot on Aug. 18. 

Officials with the Alaska Division of Elections held the first of two public hearings to gather input on the ballot measures Monday, as required by law. Campaign supporters, opponents and Alaskans called in from around the state to the Anchorage Legislative Information Office to share their views at an event chaired by Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom. A second day of public hearings for public testimony will be held on Aug. 5.

A similar ballot measure to repeal ranked choice voting was voted down in 2024 by 737 votes out of 320,985 cast. Supporters quickly restarted the campaign in 2025 and collected over 34,000 signatures, required to place the issue before Alaska voters again in 2026. The measure’s primary sponsors are Republican gubernatorial candidate Bernadette Wilson, along with Judy Eledge of Anchorage and Ken McCarty of Eagle River. 

If approved, Ballot Measure 2 would repeal changes established by a 2020 ballot measure. It would repeal the nonpartisan, open primary system and ranked choice general election. 

Currently, Alaska voters of any party affiliation can vote for any candidate in the primary election. If approved, the measure would revert the state’s elections to the closed primary system, where only one candidate from each party advances to the general election, and parties choose who may participate in that party’s vote.

The measure would also repeal some campaign finance disclosure rules. It would repeal limits enacted by the ballot measure passed in 2020 so that individuals and entities who contribute more than $2,000 to candidates or campaigns must disclose the true source, as defined by law. According to the ballot summary from the Division of Elections, the measure would remove spending limits and disclosure rules, including for digital ads, out-of-state donations, undisclosed donations and true source donations. It would also change the definition of “campaign expenditure” and remove some fines for violations. 

If passed, the changes would cost the state an estimated $2.6 million to implement, according to the Alaska Public Offices Commission. 

Supporters of the ballot measure, called the “Repeal Now” campaign, argue that ranked choice voting is confusing and burdensome to voters, and advocated for returning to the pre-2020 system. 

Bethany Marcum, treasurer for Repeal Now, testified at the hearing on Monday, advocating for each voter to have a single vote for a candidate or measure. “Our campaign is about one person, one vote. That’s been the bedrock of the American Republic for the last 250 years,” she said.

Marcum argued ranking choices for candidates is complicated and voters complain about making mistakes. She objected to the tabulation system of counting up to four ranked choices. 

If voters do not fill out second, third or fourth candidates, or all their candidates have been eliminated, their ballot is set aside, which Marcum objected to, falsely claiming “ballots were trashed.” But voters’ top choice candidates are counted.

She also blamed ranked choice voting for delaying election results. She said campaign disclosure rules set in 2020 hadn’t prevented “dark money,” or money whose source is secret, from flowing to Alaska, and she said the campaign finance reporting requirements are burdensome to smaller campaigns.

“So, in our opinion, the money overwhelms the disclaimer, and Alaskans recognize this. Smaller campaigns have to spend up to a third more of their money and their ad space on these disclaimers that do nothing to inform the public,” Marcum said.

Opponents of Ballot Measure 2 argue the ranked choice voting system gives voters more choices at the ballot box, and deters extreme partisans while encouraging candidates to appeal to a wider variety of voters. They argued against repealing campaign disclosure rules they say will welcome more Outside, undisclosed “dark money” into Alaska elections.

Scott Kendall testified on behalf of the No on 2 campaign, registered as a group called Protect Alaska’s Elections. He argued the system is not too complicated for voters, and Alaska has implemented ranked choice voting well. He countered that delays in election results are caused by unavoidable delays in the U.S. Postal Service, as nearly a quarter of the state’s precincts must vote by mail. 

“The mail system in Alaska is what it is,” he said. “We have to wait for ballots to be brought in from across the state before we can tabulate. Again, that has nothing to do with ranked choice voting, because as those of us who have participated know, the actual tabulation process takes mere seconds. It’s nearly instantaneous.”

Kendall argued repealing campaign disclosure rules would have a larger negative impact on Alaska than repealing open primaries and ranked choice voting.

“Ballot Measure 2 is a bit of a Trojan horse … repealing RCV, that is only a fraction of what the measure does,” he said. “No longer will there be a ban on dark money. In fact, any outside billionaire will be able to give money to another organization, and launder their contributions to that organization. And finally, it lowers or actually removes fines for certain campaign finance misbehavior.” 

Kendall also argued returning to closed primaries would give political parties the authority to determine who can vote in their primary elections. 

“In a state like Alaska, where two-thirds of all voters do not register with either party, the thought of taking publicly funded elections and allowing the political parties to choke off who can participate in them should be abhorrent,” he said.

Alaskans who called in or testified in person at the hearing on Monday were split, arguing vehemently in support and against the ballot measure.

Several testifiers in support of the measure said ranked choice voting is too complicated.

“We don’t need confusion,” said Mark Spohn, calling in from Willow to testify. “Anytime you have confusion, your elections aren’t as accurate and honest. It’s completely ridiculous. Let’s get rid of the insanity and go back to one person, one vote.”

Testifiers opposing the measure objected to repealing campaign finance disclosures.

Bryan Schroder, a 24-year veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard and former U.S. Attorney in Alaska, urged keeping the current disclosure requirements and ranked choice system to encourage bipartisanship. 

“Now, when our candidates campaign, they have to appeal to a majority of voters, not just the hardcore wing of any political party,” he said. “We have a Legislature where more members are willing to work together to do what is best for Alaskans, actively choosing against the do-nothing tribal politics that frustrates so many of us, and as a colleague of mine put it, ‘the workhorses are coming to the front, not the show horses.’”

Several testifiers objected to returning to the closed party system, where voters could have to register with a particular party to vote for their candidate, including Michelle Vasquez of Soldotna. She said that forced her to vote only a Republican ballot, and restricted her from voting for other candidates. 

“And that drove me crazy,” she said. “So I was very happy when I changed my party affiliation to unaffiliated like five years ago, so that I could vote however I wished without any confusion or misunderstandings or having to change my voter registration.”

Both the yes and no campaigns criticize each others’ out-of-state funders

Supporters and opponents of the ballot measure criticized each other at the hearing for taking Outside funding from big donors. 

Both campaigns have raised large sums of money since 2025, with contributions from out-of-state political action committees, according to public filings with the Alaska Public Offices Commission and Federal Elections Commission. 

The “Repeal Now” campaign supporting the measure has raised $1.1 million to date. 

The majority of funds, $846,000, have been donated by the Aurora Action Network, a Super PAC based in Wisconsin whose major donors include finance billionaire Jeff Yass of Pennsylvania. 

Other Alaska-affiliated contributors to the Aurora Action Network include Jeff Hildebrand, CEO of Hilcorp; John Binkley, trustee of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp.; Treg Taylor, Republican gubernatorial candidate and former attorney general, and Deena Bishop, state education commissioner, according to FEC filings.  

The opposing No on 2 campaign has raised $5.75 million to date. 

The campaign’s largest donor is Unite America PAC, Inc — contributing $4 million to date — a Colorado-based venture fund founded by a professor and advocate Charles Whelan, focused on funding elections reforms, in particular creating open, all-candidate primaries. Its biggest donors include Jason Carroll, a New York financier; Kent Thiry, a Colorado philanthropist who co-chairs Unite America; and David Randolph Peeler, an executive with the private equity firm Berkshire Partners. 

The campaign has also received $1.5 million from Voters from the American Center, Inc., a Washington D.C. political nonprofit that supports lobbying “to advance democratic participation and strengthen democracy’s core systems,” according to a philanthropic trade outlet, philanthropy.org. 

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