Category: Alaska News

Firefighters saved a Fort Seward home Saturday, putting out a basement fire before it could reach the structure above.

The fire started just after 11 a.m. when a spark from a wood stove ignited flammable material nearby, both homeowner Fred Shields and Haines fire chief Zak Overmyer said.

The first fire crews into the basement reported heavy smoke but were able to contain the fire within roughly ten minutes using handheld, water-filled fire extinguishers, Overmyer said.

Shields this week was still working to sort through burnt ash and debris in the basement. Damage around the basement wood-stove includes burns on walls and ceilings and broken windows. While his home and art-gallery above were undamaged, they will have to be professionally cleaned due to smoke, he said.

Shields expects insurance to cover repairs to the basement; likely the more difficult cost will be personal possessions. Many of them, badly charred, Shields took one last look at while cleaning this week, before tossing them finally into the stove that had started the fire.

“There’s an emotional piece to it,” Shields said Tuesday.

Both he and Overmyer commended the effectiveness of the fire crews that responded, which totalled 14 firefighters from the Haines Volunteer Fire Department and eight from the Klehini Valley Fire Department.

“Without the quick response time and the professionalism of the fire department, the outcome may have been very different,” Shields said.

The firehouse was empty when the fire was reported, with an on-duty fire-captain and EMT out on an ambulance call. Nevertheless, firefighters responding from home had the first truck out of the station, crewed by four firefighters, four minutes after first report of the fire, Overmyer said.

Speed was of particular concern given the old fort home, which Overmyer said poses a particular risk, given old, dry wood, potential lack of firebreaks between floors, and studs running from basement to attic.

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The Alaska House of Representatives advanced a bill Wednesday to add a fifth superior court judge in the third judicial district in an effort to lower judge’s caseloads and provide justice to Alaskans in the state’s busiest court.

If the bill becomes law, the number of superior court judges statewide would increase from 45 to 46. It would bring the number of superior court judges in the third judicial district to 29. The third judicial district includes Anchorage, Cordova, Dillingham, Glennallen, Homer, Kenai, Kodiak, Naknek, Palmer, Sand Point, St. Paul Island, Seward, Unalaska and Valdez.

Alaska Court System General Counsel Nancy Meade wrote to legislators in January with the request from the Alaska Supreme Court for one new superior court judge to handle a mix of civil and criminal cases in Palmer.

Meade called the current workload of the four superior court judges in Palmer unsustainable, citing that each judge is assigned 225 cases more than the state average of 458 cases per superior court judge.

The population of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough has increased by 40% and the number of cases filed in the Palmer superior court has increased by 55% since the last time a judge was added in 2006, according to Meade.

Rep. Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage and Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday: “We need to fix this problem so that we can better provide basic justice to all Alaskans.”

According to a fiscal note, the additional judge will cost the state $268,000 annually.

The bill passed with 37 yes votes in the House of Representatives. Three legislators were absent. It has been transmitted to the Senate for consideration.

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On Friday afternoon in downtown Anchorage, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, arrived at the Arctic Encounter Summit at the Dena’ina Convention Center, an annual gathering of policymakers, business leaders and international officials focused on Arctic strategy.

 A day after welcoming news that two additional U.S. Coast Guard icebreakers would be homeported in the state — a development she has sought for decades – Murkowski struck a tempered tone.

“We got what we wanted,” she told an audience at a luncheon. “But not in the way that we wanted it.” 

From this ballroom, not far from where polar ice melt is outpacing earlier scientific expectations, Alaska’s senior senator rattled off a litany of concerns — from repeated Russian incursions in the U.S. airspace to President Donald Trump’s musing about leaving NATO. Murkowski also pointed to tensions over Greenland, which have strained relations between the U.S. and its Arctic allies, troubling a region long recognized as a “zone of peace.” 

Since taking office, President Trump has pushed for the United States to take control of the semi-autonomous Inuit island under the Kingdom of Denmark, at times suggesting it could be acquired by force, despite repeated rejections from Greenlandic and Danish officials. Last week, Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen told NBC News that many Greenlanders “don’t feel safe” amid Trump’s repeated rhetoric to claim the territory.

As these tensions test alliances, new questions were raised at the conference about U.S. strategy in the Far North. Senator Murkowski, arguably the leading congressional voice for establishing U.S. Arctic power, has cast a steady light on the Greenland crisis alongside what she sees as the Trump Administration’s imbalanced Arctic strategy. Despite the administration’s historic investments that are closing the gap on U.S. Arctic engagement — mostly in the form of military and Coast Guard spending — Murkowski expressed concern. “We’re all in on defense,” she said, “But we haven’t prioritized what we need to do with the diplomacy side of things, or the science and research side.”

In January, Murkowski led a bipartisan congressional delegation to Denmark with Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine, followed by a visit to Greenland the next month. The effort to ease rising Arctic tensions would typically fall to the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Arctic Affairs. But for more than a year, the position has remained vacant.  

Meanwhile, changes within the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, including the recent appointment of Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, reflect a broader shift in federal priorities as the agency pivots from its longtime focus on environmental science toward greater emphasis on military and commerce. This shift is one of many now testing the concept of “Arctic exceptionalism,” the region’s long-standing norm of peaceful cooperation, which some speakers at the Anchorage summit say may already be unraveling.

For 13 years, former Murkowski staffers have organized the Arctic Encounter Summit, branded as “North America’s premier Arctic policy and business convening.” Drawing on a network of high-profile colleagues — Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, attended in 2022 — Murkowski has used the annual gathering to advance U.S. Arctic policy, share the stage with international leaders and offer updates from Congress. She has even taken attendees to Utqiaġvik, the nation’s northernmost community and hub for Arctic research and strategy. More broadly, the summit reflects a policy legacy she has carried forward from Alaska’s past — building on the work of previous Alaska Republican Senators like her father, former Sen. Frank Murkowski, and the late Sen. Ted Stevens. Both helped elevate U.S. Arctic interests through science, research and maritime policy.

This year, Senator Peter Welch, a Democrat from Vermont who traveled to Denmark with Murkowski, joined an international group of Arctic parliamentarians. Together they huddled with the Alaska senator for an afternoon of panel discussions on the last day of the Arctic Encounter.

For months, Murkowski has worked mostly with congressional Democrats like Welch to push back on the president’s Greenland bid in an effort to preserve stability in the Arctic. As a founding member and co-chair of the Senate Arctic Caucus formed in 2015, she has also noted that neither the White House nor the State Department has sought the group’s input on the issue.

“I think that is a disadvantage to them because we do have a level of connection through the Arctic Caucus,” she said at the luncheon. “I think we should be viewed as a valued asset.”

Welch is a member of the Arctic Caucus and also the Senate Finance Committee. Recently, he pushed back on Trump administration tariffs, including those threatened against NATO allies that sent troops to Greenland in a symbolic show of support for its sovereignty, last January. After his trip to Denmark, he introduced a resolution to block the tariffs targeting the eight Arctic nations. The effort, while not formally passed, helped prompt the administration to back down.

“What’s so disturbing to me is that even many of our NATO allies are internalizing that they can’t count on the United States, and that’s upsetting to me, because we have been so benefited by that level of cooperation,” said Sen. Welch at the conference. “What Russia is doing now in Ukraine is just so violent and vicious and terrible that we can’t afford to be having any friction that is self-made amongst allies who have a shared interest in standing up for the independence of a sovereign nation.” 

At the same time, Welch is co-sponsoring the Arctic Refuge Protection Act of 2025 which directly challenges Sen. Murkowski’s long-game ambitions to open the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge’s Coastal Plain to oil drilling. To her, the effort represents the “Holy Grail of Alaska politics.” But supporters of the bill describe the extraction plan as a “fictional financial windfall,” citing weak lease sales in 2021 and 2025.

Despite those differences, the two senators united at the summit in their support for maintaining Arctic cooperation and strengthening alliances — a bipartisan approach Murkowski is known for. Days later, they appeared again in Fairbanks for talks hosted by the Conference of Parliamentarians of the Arctic Region, a biennial forum of eight Arctic nations. Murkowski serves as vice chair of its standing committee, while Welch attended as part of the U.S. congressional delegation.

In Fairbanks, Murkowski stopped short of declaring an end to Arctic exceptionalism, instead broadening the definition of security in a changing North — even as she promotes recent military investments for Alaska, like the future commissioning of the U.S.S. Ted Stevens, a missile destroyer. “Security isn’t just military,” she said, pointing to what she described as other forms of security critical to the Arctic: food, family, education and environmental and energy stability.

A key voice for Welch in that discussion was the Inuit Circumpolar Council, an international organization representing about 180,000 Inuit across Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Chukotka, Russia. At the summit, its Alaska branch released an Arctic Strategy outlining priorities for Indigenous self-determination and governance in the region.  Murkowski also invited ICC Alaska delegates to take part in the high-level talks in Fairbanks.

“Their whole culture couldn’t survive without a basic consensus‑oriented and cooperative approach,” Welch said, arguing that Indigenous perspectives must remain central to Arctic governance. And he warned against any agenda that sidelines the Inuit. “There’s an immense amount of anxiety about the new interest in the Arctic where the interests and the values of the Indigenous peoples and everyday Alaskans can be imperiled.”

Murkowski echoed that view, aligning with Welch on the importance of Indigenous leadership in shaping the Arctic’s future.

“Right now, we’re not talking to Russia,” said Murkowski, explaining the impasse as a symptom of the ongoing assault on Ukraine. But she drew attention to how the ICC is still able to maintain dialogue with Chukotka, the Russian region home to the Inuit diaspora there. “They are the only entity that is able to keep a connection with people in Russia – Indigenous people at that level. This is noteworthy,” she said.

Though Murkowski often draws criticism for her middle-way approach in balancing environmental priorities with support for military spending and resource development – a contrast reflected by the League of Conservation Voters, which gives Welch a lifetime score of 95% against Murkowski’s 20% – the senator, nonetheless, described his colleague as an important bridge between Alaska’s old Arctic power brokers and a new generation of leaders. “Your father, Ted Stevens — there’s a real through line,” Welch said.

Across their conversations, the lawmakers seemed to imply that a more assertive congressional role — through funding, diplomatic appointments and Arctic engagement — will be key to restoring stability in the Arctic after the Greenland crisis and shaping whether the region will be governed by cooperation or coercion. That includes the Ambassador-at-large for Arctic Affairs, a position Murkowski codified in the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, elevating it to a permanent diplomatic post.

“The role of Congress has to be much more aggressive, assertive and independent,” said Sen. Welch. “What we need is more Lisa Murkowskis who are pushing actively through the appropriations process to do something.”

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With only four weeks left of the legislative session, the Senate Judiciary Committee has merged several bills into a wide-ranging omnibus crime bill. Even with the tight timeline, some lawmakers are optimistic about its chances for passage before the end of the session.  

The new draft omnibus crime package combines ten bills ranging from raising the age of consent to increasing criminal penalties for AI-generated child sexual abuse material into one large bill supporters hope will have the momentum to pass both the House and the Senate in the next 28 days. 

The Senate Judiciary Committee chair Sen. Matt Claman, D-Anchorage, introduced the 55-page omnibus bill on Friday, saying the bills have a stronger prospect as a package.

“I think that increases the likelihood we’ll be able to pass it,” he said in an interview on Monday. 

With one month to go in the second year of the two-year legislative cycle, this is the last opportunity for bills to be passed by the 34th Legislature. 

The draft omnibus crime bill was added to House Bill 239, sponsored by House Majority Leader Rep. Chuck Kopp, R-Anchorage, who spoke in support at the hearing on Friday.

“This bill has grown, it’s gone from the sports car to the school bus” he said. “Policies I all support as a bill sponsor.”

Gov. Mike Dunleavy sponsored two bills included in the omnibus package, but did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. 

The bills included are in various stages. Some have passed the House, while others are being considered by various committees in the House and Senate. Several lawmakers who sponsored bills now included in the omnibus package agreed that politically it could increase chances of passage by May 20. 

Rep. Sarah Vance, R-Homer, sponsored a bill that would create state felony penalties for AI-generated child sexual abuse material. It unanimously passed the House last month.

“I’m excited that it’s included in the omnibus bill, because that shows intent by the Senate to pass the bill,” Vance said on Monday. “So I have great confidence that it will cross the finish line.”

But Claman, who is running for governor, has drawn public criticism for the process of how the omnibus crime bill was put together this session. 

Advocates for raising the age of consent — along with the Anchorage Daily News editorial board — criticized Claman for holding a bill to raise the age of consent to 18 in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which passed unanimously by the House last year, in order to be included in the omnibus bill. Critics urged Claman and the committee to pass the bill and allow it to move forward as a stand alone bill toward a full Senate vote and final passage.

Claman has argued that despite limited time left in the session, the bills included have been vetted and the combination package will garner more support among legislators and the governor to pass in the last few weeks of the session. 

“I’ve been in the Legislature now since 2015, and so in the last 11 years, we’ve passed 11 different bills relating to public safety,” he said. “So I think there are ten different measures that we put into the bill, and if we tried to do them all individually, probably wouldn’t get them all passed.”

Claman pointed to an omnibus crime bill, House Bill 66, enacted in 2024, with support from Gov. Mike Dunleavy and across political affiliations. “That’s certainly, I think, the best example,” he said. “So I do have confidence we’ll get it passed.”

Rep. Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage, sponsored House Bill 101, the bill that would raise the age of consent from 16 to 18 years old. Backed by advocates for sexual violence prevention, he said the change in law is essential for protecting teens from sexual exploitation and abuse. Under current law, it’s legal for an adult to have sex with a 16 or 17 year old. But when they are assaulted, teens must prove that they did not consent. 

Despite previous disagreement and pushing for a stand alone bill, Gray said Monday he will back the omnibus crime bill in order to see the law changed. 

“If that happens, inside an omnibus crime package that has other bills that are also worthy of passage, I’m fine with that,” he said. “I just want the policy to change.”

The draft omnibus crime bill now contains ten bills that previously stood alone:

• House Bill 239 — would increase criminal penalties for hit and run incidents so that drivers that cause a death and knowingly failing to stop and render assistance, and establishes mandatory sentencing of four to seven years for a first hit and run felony conviction
• House Bill 101 — would raise the age of consent from 16 to 18 years old, with provisions to allow consent to sex with someone up to six years older than them. The draft bill also allows 16 and 17 year olds to consensually exchange sexual or explicit messages within the six year close-in-age gap without penalties.
• Senate Bill 247 — would create state criminal penalties for creating AI-generated images or video that depicts sexually explicit or obscene content involving anyone under 18 years old
• House Bill 62 — Sponsored by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, the bill would establish a statewide tracking system for sexual assault examination kits, expedite processing times, and ensure that survivors can privately monitor the status of their own kit. 
• Senate Bill 100 — Also sponsored by the governor, and would establish the crime of organized theft, including mail theft and medical record theft
• House Bill 242 — would redefine criminal law to prohibit any sexual contact or assault by a health care worker during professional treatment, changing the current law which only applies to patients being unaware of sexual contact or assault for criminal charges to apply. 
• Senate Bill 17 — would establish the crime of airbag fraud for knowingly selling, installing or manufacturing a counterfeit airbag in a vehicle 
• House Bill 81 — would establish minor marijuana related convictions to remain confidential on individuals personal records, under certain criteria
• House Bill 384 —  would expand confidentiality agreements between victims and service providers by updating the definition of “victim counseling center” to include tribal organizations
• Senate Bill 233 — would reassign the Controlled Substances Advisory Committee from being administered by the Department of Law to the Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development. 

The new version of Vance’s bill focused on AI-generated child sexual abuse material included in the bill is closer to her initial proposal. Social media controls for minors added by the House were stripped out of the Senate version. Vance said she supports the amended version given First Amendment protections around social media. 

“I think that was a wise decision right now, because Alaskans are very mixed on how they feel that we should address social media,” Vance said. 

Rep. Sara Hannan, D-Juneau, is the sponsor of House Bill 242, and said she supports her bill being included in the Senate omnibus, but she is still pushing to advance her standalone bill in the House.

“I need people who didn’t serve on the two committees that heard it in the House to understand it,” she said, as the Senate draft will come back to the House for a concurrence vote. “It still helps to educate on the issue.”

Hannan’s legislation follows a high profile case in Juneau last year where the court dropped several charges against a chiropractor because under current law part of the legal definition of sexual assault by a medical provider requires the alleged victim to be unaware the assault is happening. 

“Right now, the victim needs to be unaware, and the perpetrator needs to know that they are unaware,” Hannan said Tuesday. “So to change that in statute, I think is an important policy statement for us to make.”

Hannan said significant policy bills typically take several years to get through the Legislature, with public input, debate and support gathering. But she expressed confidence in the support for the omnibus crime bill in the weeks ahead. 

“We’re running the clock down,” she added. “The only downside, from my perspective, is the advocates and the victims that were directly involved in the case that inspired this bill. You know, they get more acknowledgement when it’s the standalone bill… But in the end, if the goal is to change the policy, there’s no downside to it.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee will continue to hold hearings on the crime bill this week and its members have until Friday to introduce amendments before it advances to the Senate floor for a vote. Claman said he expects that to be in the last week of April. 

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The Alaska House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday banning restaurants from providing food in polystyrene foam containers.

Representative Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, introduced the bill to address what he called an “alarming problem” of plastic pollution.

Josephson cited a statistic from the ​Ocean Conservancy, an environmental advocacy nonprofit, that found polystyrene foam is found in 22% of food takeout containers in the U.S.

Polystyrene foam is a non-biodegradable plastic that is used to make insulated and disposable plates, cups and takeout containers. It contains chemicals that can be harmful when heated and contributes to environmental pollution. Styrofoam is a form of expanded polystyrene foam.

The Ocean Conservancy estimates that Americans use 5.6 billion pieces of plastic foam annually. 

“There’s enough foam produced every year to fill the Dallas Cowboys stadium five times. That’s what’s at issue here,” Josephson said.

If the bill makes it into law, Alaska will become the thirteenth state to ban polystyrene containers. The Alaska municipalities of Bethel, Cordova and Seward enacted bans on polystyrene food containers.

The proposed restrictions would not apply to food prepared outside of Alaska or to areas affected by a disaster emergency. Restaurants would be able to apply to the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation for exemptions.

The bill would prohibit the state from using or purchasing polystyrene foam disposable food service ware and instructs the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation to recommend that restaurants reuse food service ware instead of using disposable containers.

Green Alaska Solutions LLC, Alaska Community Action on Toxics and Oceana, an advocacy organization focused on ocean conservation, supported the bill.

Opponents of the bill included the Foodservice Packaging Institute, the Alaska Chamber, the Plastics Industry Association and the Alaska Cabaret, Hotel, Restaurant, and Retailers Association, or CHARR.

Kati Capozzi, president and CEO of the Alaska Chamber, wrote that the bill would impose financial burdens on Alaska’s businesses and Sarah Oates Harlow, president and CEO of Alaska CHARR, said that the bill would decrease restaurant profit margins, with both expressing concerns that the bill would negatively impact small businesses.

“By requiring restaurants to use more expensive alternatives that may not perform as well—especially for hot or cold foods—this bill threatens to increase operating costs for businesses already struggling with narrow margins. The unintended consequence could be higher costs for consumers and additional strain on small businesses,” Capozzi stated in a letter to legislators.

The bill passed with 25 yes votes and 15 no votes in the House of Representatives.

Rep. Dan Saddler, R-Eagle River, said that he opposed the bill vehemently.

“This is using the power of government to force people to do things that the government believes are best for you…the government seldom knows best on these kinds of things.”

Rep. Sara Hannan, D-Juneau, supported the bill and spoke to its environmental impact.

“It (polystyrene foam) never goes away. It just breaks down into smaller and smaller and smaller particles and finds its way into our diverse ecosystem, primarily waterways.”

She also said that legislators should not only consider the cost of alternative disposable food service ware, but the cost of landfills and Alaskans’ health.

Rep. Ashley Carrick, D-Fairbanks, voted in support of the bill and compared the ban to seat belt laws and the establishment of smoke free workplaces. She told legislators that the long term benefits to public health and the environment outweigh the short term costs.

Lawmakers’ efforts to expand the bill failed in a lengthy amendment process. There were attempts to ban paper straws, to ban polystyrene packaged outside the state, to allow municipalities to allow restaurants to provide prepared food in polystyrene foam disposable food service ware, and to create a telephone line to report violations.

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The state agency leading some of Alaska’s most polarizing development projects has approved a new communications budget, saying it needs to do a better job telling its own story amid attacks from critics.

The state-owned Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority is run by a former chief of staff to Gov. Mike Dunleavy and is charged with promoting economic growth and expanding natural resource extraction and exports.

It is leading work to develop state-owned oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and also hopes to build two controversial new roads to access mining prospects in Northwest Alaska and outside of Anchorage.

Those projects have drawn sharp opposition from conservation organizations and other critics, including lawsuits, critical op-eds and campaigns that have labeled the agency “Bad AIDEA” and caricatured its leaders.

At a meeting in Ketchikan this month, board members, with no public discussion, authorized AIDEA’s staff to spend up to $700,000 a year on a new communications budget — formalizing a plan that the agency says was previously budgeted inconsistently through spending on individual projects.

The new communications plan, the agency said in its formal resolution authorizing the spending, will “ensure proper public engagement, transparency, and stewardship of the authority’s mission.” The money could go toward trade shows and conferences, responding to media inquiries and “other communications-related needs,” according to the resolution.

The agency’s executive director, Randy Ruaro, referred questions about the plan to Dave Stieren, an AIDEA employee who ran an advertising agency and hosted a conservative talk radio show before joining the Dunleavy administration.

Stieren said he could not provide exact figures on AIDEA’s past communications spending, but he acknowledged that the new plan should allow the agency to meaningfully boost its public profile.

The $700,000 a year, he added, is a limit, and the agency will set a final budget through a request for proposals process.

“Mothership AIDEA has done, frankly, little to nothing on a consistent basis to tell our story,” Stieren said in an email — particularly when it comes to its loan programs that have helped finance tourism and hospitality businesses, like the Alaska Club fitness chain and Anchorage’s Bear Tooth pizza restaurant and theater.

“We’re far more than roads,” Stieren said. “But since we’ve really not promoted or showcased our efforts in traditional finance areas, I understand the narrative or lack thereof that folks may have.”

Stieren has also personally defended AIDEA on social media, including over the weekend — when he posted a conservative news website’s positive story about an agency-owned shipyard and said that “when commie libs attack AIDEA, they attack projects like this.”

AIDEA’s board chair, Bill Kendig, declined to answer questions about approval of the new communications budget when reached by phone.

At the Ketchikan meeting, one AIDEA critic, Melis Coady, credited the agency with formalizing communications spending as a “step toward accountability.” But she said that the plan doesn’t “deliver the transparency it describes” because it gives Ruaro, the executive director, authority to approve communications spending, and only requires that he report it to the board if asked.

“The authorization is broad, the dollar amount is undefined, and expenditures are approved solely by the executive director,” said Coady, who leads a conservation group called the Susitna River Coalition.

Ruaro, in an email, said AIDEA will issue reports on communications to board members “whether requested or not.”

AIDEA’s board chair, Bill Kendig, declined to answer questions about approval of the new communications budget when reached by phone.

At the Ketchikan meeting, one AIDEA critic, Melis Coady, credited the agency with formalizing communications spending as a “step toward accountability.” But she said that the plan doesn’t “deliver the transparency it describes” because it gives Ruaro, the executive director, authority to approve communications spending, and only requires that he report it to the board if asked.

“The authorization is broad, the dollar amount is undefined, and expenditures are approved solely by the executive director,” said Coady, who leads a conservation group called the Susitna River Coalition.

Ruaro, in an email, said AIDEA will issue reports on communications to board members “whether requested or not.”

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Voting rights groups launched a legal challenge Tuesday against the Trump administration’s effort to sweep up sensitive data on millions of Americans with the aim of identifying noncitizen voters, arguing that the U.S. Department of Justice is building a dangerous centralized national voter list ahead of the midterm elections in November.

The federal lawsuit, filed in the District of Columbia by the voting rights and civic group Common Cause with help from other organizations, seeks to block the Justice Department from obtaining and analyzing unredacted state voter lists that include driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers. 

The DOJ plans to share the data with the Department of Homeland Security, which operates a powerful computer program that can verify U.S. citizenship. Democratic election officials say the program has wrongly flagged Americans as possible noncitizen voters and could erode faith in election results.

“This is a blatant, partisan power grab designed to cast doubt on the validity of our elections and whose vote should be counted,” Virginia Kase Solomón, Common Cause president and CEO, said in a statement.

The Justice Department has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for the data. But at least a dozen other states have provided the data, handing the Trump administration information on millions of registered voters. 

The latest lawsuit by Common Cause, with legal representation by the American Civil Liberties Union, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and other voting rights groups, opens a new front in the legal fight against the Trump administration’s campaign for the data. It represents an attempt to halt the administration from using the voter information it’s already obtained — and stop it from collecting more.

The suit asks a court to order the Justice Department to halt any actions to compile, use or disclose sensitive voter data. The groups also wants the DOJ to delete the data already in its possession.

Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming have voluntarily provided, or will turn over, their sensitive voter data, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, which has been tracking the Justice Department’s efforts.

Federalization of elections

Since taking office last year, President Donald Trump has moved to assert presidential power over federal elections, which under the U.S. Constitution are run by the states. The president and his allies have framed his moves as necessary to ensure the security of elections by purging noncitizen voters.

Trump issued an executive order a year ago that attempted to impose a nationwide requirement that voters must produce documents proving their citizenship. Federal courts blocked the order. He is also pressuring Congress to pass legislation, the SAVE America Act, containing a similar requirement.

Late last month, Trump signed another executive order clamping down on mail ballots. It directs the U.S. Postal Service to restrict the delivery of ballots and instructs Homeland Security to compile lists of voting-age U.S. citizens in each state, effectively building a national database of voters and would-be voters. Several active lawsuits are challenging the order.

“By attempting to interrogate and exploit voter data for political purposes, President Trump’s DOJ isn’t just threatening the privacy of every American—they are building a system designed to imprison the ballot box and silence millions of eligible voters,” Kase Solomón said. “We won’t stand by while Americans’ rights to privacy and voting are under attack.” 

The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

In other lawsuits, Justice Department lawyers have argued the agency is entitled to voter data under the 1960 Civil Rights Act, a federal law to combat voting discrimination. DOJ lawyers have also denied that the agency is building a nationwide voter list — but they have acknowledged voter data will be sent to Homeland Security for analysis by SAVE, an online tool short for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements.

SAVE was previously used for one-off searches of individual immigrants to check whether they were eligible for government benefits. The Trump administration last year refashioned it into a program capable of checking the citizenship of voters. Some GOP states have begun voluntarily using SAVE to scan their state voter rolls for potential noncitizens.

“That’s how we are going to ensure that they have the proper identification as to each and every voter,” Justice Department Voting Section acting Chief Eric Neff said in federal court in Rhode Island in March, according to a transcript.

DOJ losing streak

Federal judges have so far uniformly ruled against the Justice Department’s efforts to force states to turn over voter data. Federal judges in five states — California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon and Rhode Island — have dismissed the DOJ’s lawsuits.

The Justice Department has appealed some of the rulings. Oral arguments in those cases are set for mid-May.

The DOJ’s most recent court loss came last week in Rhode Island from Judge Mary McElroy, a Trump appointee. In a 14-page order, she ruled that federal voting laws — including the National Voter Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act and the Civil Rights Act — don’t empower the Justice Department to demand state voter data.

“Neither the NVRA nor HAVA authorize DOJ to conduct the kind of fishing expedition it seeks here,” McElroy wrote.

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Time and again, colleagues told bear biologist Beth Rosenberg that her quest to develop a new and less invasive way of identifying and studying Alaska’s brown bears was a futile one. There were simply too many obstacles, too many unknowns, to overcome. 

“It just won’t work,” she heard repeatedly.

Inspired by her hero, the acclaimed primatologist Jane Goodall, Rosenberg stubbornly pushed ahead, just as Goodall had done decades earlier in the face of great skepticism. 

While working at Alaska’s famed McNeil River brown bear sanctuary, Rosenberg had quickly learned that by paying close attention, she, like others on the sanctuary staff, could over time identify the “regulars” among the bears who fished at McNeil Falls, especially mature males.

It’s true the sample size was small. But if people could learn to recognize individual bears among the dozens that pass through McNeil River each summer — and do so repeatedly, despite dramatic changes in their seasonal appearance — wouldn’t it be possible to do the same thing at greater scale, using new, state-of-the-art technologies?

Rosenberg began to build a photo database of McNeil’s most recognizable bears, just as others on staff had done before her. And when promoted to assistant manager in 2016, she made expanding that database a priority. Over the next several years, she enlarged it to nearly 73,000 images, representing 109 individual bears.

Joined by Nathan Wolf, her advisor at Alaska Pacific University — and an enthusiastic supporter of her work — Rosenberg then went looking for computer and technology whizzes who could assist her in this quest. 

The two eventually found such a group at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, led by Alexander Mathis. 

One of the keys to clinching the partnership was Rosenberg’s immense file of McNeil bear images, which Wolf — eventually her research colleague as well as mentor — describes as “a data set that’s unique in the world; there’s nothing else like it.” Another key was Mathis and Rosenberg’s shared excitement about the possibilities their collaboration might open up.

Combining their expertise, a team composed of Alaska biologists and Swiss computer scientists was able to develop an artificial intelligence — or, as Rosenberg prefers to say, “deep learning”— system that they call PoseSwin. 

“Trained” on the dataset of nearly 73,000 McNeil River images, PoseSwin has proved capable of recognizing individual bears across seasons — and even years — despite major changes in the animals’ body size, fur condition, position, and also seasonal and environmental variations, such as light and weather conditions.

Importantly, the researchers emphasize, their work demonstrates it’s possible to accurately — and repeatedly — identify individual bears across space and time using photographs alone, what Rosenberg calls “photo ID.” 

This means there’s no need to physically handle and mark the animals, for instance with collars or tags, or to retrieve fur or blood samples, as routinely done in conventional population studies and other research. That in turn opens all sorts of new possibilities for the study, management, and conservation of brown bears — and other species — in Alaska and beyond.

Adding greatly to the credibility of their work, the Alaska-Swiss team produced an article describing their research and findings: “Individual identification of brown bears using pose-aware metric learning” was published in the February 2026 issue of the prestigious, peer-reviewed scientific journal, “Current Biology.”

While it’s not possible to get into the details of their work in a commentary of this length, I can share several important takeaways.

In developing their new research tool, the team started with this simple fact: brown bears are “unpatterned” animals without distinctive markings — as opposed to zebras, leopards and humpback whales, for instance. Besides that, the appearance of any single bear can change dramatically over time, not only from year to year, but even from spring to fall.

Thus the initial challenge for the scientists and their computer modeling was to determine what characteristics, if any, would allow the AI program to reliably identify individual animals. Rosenberg prefers the term ”computer vision,” rather than AI. It turned out that certain characteristics of the bears’ heads and skull structures were key, because they change little over time, for instance the shape of the muzzle and pattern of “bumps” atop it; the angle of the forehead, called the “brow bone” in the study; the placement of the ears and scarring on the face and head.

Figuring out those few essential characteristics proved  indispensable to the PoseSwin’s successful development.

In its testing of the new photo-ID program, the team showed it is able to not only recognize previously identified bears, but also unknown bears, a key to population studies. And, using images from McNeil River and some donated from Katmai National Preserve, PoseSwin proved capable of tracking the long-distance movements — nearly 50 miles — of individual bears using photographs alone, a historic first.

The team’s initial research also has suggested that citizen science could greatly expand the application of their Photo ID modeling, by using images taken by ordinary bear watchers photographing the animals at popular tourism spots like Katmai’s Brooks Falls and then entering those images into a central data base.

There’s plenty more, but the bottom line, say Rosenberg and Wolf, is that the low-impact, hands-off PoseSwin/Photo ID program promises to revolutionize the way bears are studied and understood by “adding a new tool to our toolbox,” as Wolf puts it. And a greatly advanced tool at that.

The Alaska-Swiss team plans to keep expanding its database and refining its PoseSwin program. All of this will lead to an increased understanding of bears’ individual and collective behavior, their movements across the landscape, and interactions with each other and other species, including — and especially — humans. 

That knowledge in turn promises to lead to more informed, fact-based management of both the animals and the habitat that is essential to their well-being, which can only benefit their conservation, not only in Alaska, but anywhere bears inhabit the landscape. 

Eventually, members of the PoseSwin team are confident, scientists studying other unpatterned species will likely apply this new research tool to their own studies.

Both Rosenberg and Wolf emphasize that PoseSwin and Photo ID technology is not intended to replace other, more conventional research methods, for instance those based on radio-collaring and genetics, but to supplement them with a powerful new tool that, more than anything, figures to benefit the bears.

Here I’ll leave the science arena and move into an area where Rosenberg, Wolf, and the rest of the PoseSwin team prefer not to tread: wildlife politics.

In Alaska, the state’s Department of Fish and Game has long depended on population estimates that many wildlife advocates, including myself, regard as suspect. That’s not so much because the research methods are faulty, but rather because the information is outdated and/or withheld from the public.

This is especially true for predators such as bears and wolves, and “intensive management” programs intended to control their numbers. The recent — and ongoing — Mulchatna bear kill program in Southwest Alaska is a prime example.

Over the past three years, ADF&G has killed close to 200 bears, the great majority of them brown bears, ostensibly to help the Mulchatna Caribou Herd recover from a steep decline that the state’s own biologists have shown has nothing to do with bear predation, without any good idea of the region’s overall bear population. This is a major reason that two superior court judges ordered the department to stop its Mulchatna bear-kill effort in 2025.

State game managers continue to insist that their intensive management programs are based on what they call good science, but remain unwilling to share the specifics of what that science shows or how it’s been done. And they apparently plan to resume the bear killing this spring — no matter the paucity of population data they have — and the lack of evidence that this will benefit the caribou herd.

It may be asking too much for the state’s current wildlife managers to welcome, let alone embrace, the revolutionary research methods promised by PoseSwin and photo ID. Maybe with a change in Alaska’s leadership following this year’s gubernatorial election, a more open and progressive state-run wildlife management program will be put in place, whose leaders recognize the benefits of a new research system truly grounded in fact-based scientific methods.

The post Ground-breaking brown bear research holds great promise appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

Time and again, colleagues told bear biologist Beth Rosenberg that her quest to develop a new and less invasive way of identifying and studying Alaska’s brown bears was a futile one. There were simply too many obstacles, too many unknowns, to overcome. 

“It just won’t work,” she heard repeatedly.

Inspired by her hero, the acclaimed primatologist Jane Goodall, Rosenberg stubbornly pushed ahead, just as Goodall had done decades earlier in the face of great skepticism. 

While working at Alaska’s famed McNeil River brown bear sanctuary, Rosenberg had quickly learned that by paying close attention, she, like others on the sanctuary staff, could over time identify the “regulars” among the bears who fished at McNeil Falls, especially mature males.

It’s true the sample size was small. But if people could learn to recognize individual bears among the dozens that pass through McNeil River each summer — and do so repeatedly, despite dramatic changes in their seasonal appearance — wouldn’t it be possible to do the same thing at greater scale, using new, state-of-the-art technologies?

Rosenberg began to build a photo database of McNeil’s most recognizable bears, just as others on staff had done before her. And when promoted to assistant manager in 2016, she made expanding that database a priority. Over the next several years, she enlarged it to nearly 73,000 images, representing 109 individual bears.

Joined by Nathan Wolf, her advisor at Alaska Pacific University — and an enthusiastic supporter of her work — Rosenberg then went looking for computer and technology whizzes who could assist her in this quest. 

The two eventually found such a group at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, led by Alexander Mathis. 

One of the keys to clinching the partnership was Rosenberg’s immense file of McNeil bear images, which Wolf — eventually her research colleague as well as mentor — describes as “a data set that’s unique in the world; there’s nothing else like it.” Another key was Mathis and Rosenberg’s shared excitement about the possibilities their collaboration might open up.

Combining their expertise, a team composed of Alaska biologists and Swiss computer scientists was able to develop an artificial intelligence — or, as Rosenberg prefers to say, “deep learning”— system that they call PoseSwin. 

“Trained” on the dataset of nearly 73,000 McNeil River images, PoseSwin has proved capable of recognizing individual bears across seasons — and even years — despite major changes in the animals’ body size, fur condition, position, and also seasonal and environmental variations, such as light and weather conditions.

Importantly, the researchers emphasize, their work demonstrates it’s possible to accurately — and repeatedly — identify individual bears across space and time using photographs alone, what Rosenberg calls “photo ID.” 

This means there’s no need to physically handle and mark the animals, for instance with collars or tags, or to retrieve fur or blood samples, as routinely done in conventional population studies and other research. That in turn opens all sorts of new possibilities for the study, management, and conservation of brown bears — and other species — in Alaska and beyond.

Adding greatly to the credibility of their work, the Alaska-Swiss team produced an article describing their research and findings: “Individual identification of brown bears using pose-aware metric learning” was published in the February 2026 issue of the prestigious, peer-reviewed scientific journal, “Current Biology.”

While it’s not possible to get into the details of their work in a commentary of this length, I can share several important takeaways.

In developing their new research tool, the team started with this simple fact: brown bears are “unpatterned” animals without distinctive markings — as opposed to zebras, leopards and humpback whales, for instance. Besides that, the appearance of any single bear can change dramatically over time, not only from year to year, but even from spring to fall.

Thus the initial challenge for the scientists and their computer modeling was to determine what characteristics, if any, would allow the AI program to reliably identify individual animals. Rosenberg prefers the term ”computer vision,” rather than AI. It turned out that certain characteristics of the bears’ heads and skull structures were key, because they change little over time, for instance the shape of the muzzle and pattern of “bumps” atop it; the angle of the forehead, called the “brow bone” in the study; the placement of the ears and scarring on the face and head.

Figuring out those few essential characteristics proved  indispensable to the PoseSwin’s successful development.

In its testing of the new photo-ID program, the team showed it is able to not only recognize previously identified bears, but also unknown bears, a key to population studies. And, using images from McNeil River and some donated from Katmai National Preserve, PoseSwin proved capable of tracking the long-distance movements — nearly 50 miles — of individual bears using photographs alone, a historic first.

The team’s initial research also has suggested that citizen science could greatly expand the application of their Photo ID modeling, by using images taken by ordinary bear watchers photographing the animals at popular tourism spots like Katmai’s Brooks Falls and then entering those images into a central data base.

There’s plenty more, but the bottom line, say Rosenberg and Wolf, is that the low-impact, hands-off PoseSwin/Photo ID program promises to revolutionize the way bears are studied and understood by “adding a new tool to our toolbox,” as Wolf puts it. And a greatly advanced tool at that.

The Alaska-Swiss team plans to keep expanding its database and refining its PoseSwin program. All of this will lead to an increased understanding of bears’ individual and collective behavior, their movements across the landscape, and interactions with each other and other species, including — and especially — humans. 

That knowledge in turn promises to lead to more informed, fact-based management of both the animals and the habitat that is essential to their well-being, which can only benefit their conservation, not only in Alaska, but anywhere bears inhabit the landscape. 

Eventually, members of the PoseSwin team are confident, scientists studying other unpatterned species will likely apply this new research tool to their own studies.

Both Rosenberg and Wolf emphasize that PoseSwin and Photo ID technology is not intended to replace other, more conventional research methods, for instance those based on radio-collaring and genetics, but to supplement them with a powerful new tool that, more than anything, figures to benefit the bears.

Here I’ll leave the science arena and move into an area where Rosenberg, Wolf, and the rest of the PoseSwin team prefer not to tread: wildlife politics.

In Alaska, the state’s Department of Fish and Game has long depended on population estimates that many wildlife advocates, including myself, regard as suspect. That’s not so much because the research methods are faulty, but rather because the information is outdated and/or withheld from the public.

This is especially true for predators such as bears and wolves, and “intensive management” programs intended to control their numbers. The recent — and ongoing — Mulchatna bear kill program in Southwest Alaska is a prime example.

Over the past three years, ADF&G has killed close to 200 bears, the great majority of them brown bears, ostensibly to help the Mulchatna Caribou Herd recover from a steep decline that the state’s own biologists have shown has nothing to do with bear predation, without any good idea of the region’s overall bear population. This is a major reason that two superior court judges ordered the department to stop its Mulchatna bear-kill effort in 2025.

State game managers continue to insist that their intensive management programs are based on what they call good science, but remain unwilling to share the specifics of what that science shows or how it’s been done. And they apparently plan to resume the bear killing this spring — no matter the paucity of population data they have — and the lack of evidence that this will benefit the caribou herd.

It may be asking too much for the state’s current wildlife managers to welcome, let alone embrace, the revolutionary research methods promised by PoseSwin and photo ID. Maybe with a change in Alaska’s leadership following this year’s gubernatorial election, a more open and progressive state-run wildlife management program will be put in place, whose leaders recognize the benefits of a new research system truly grounded in fact-based scientific methods.

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