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The Trump administration on Friday moved to exempt oil projects in federal territory on the west side of the North Slope from environmental reviews that have been standard for decades.

An industry-initiated proposed rule announced by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management would eliminate the need for review of individual development projects in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, or NPR-A.

Those projects would be excluded from requirements for individual reviews, as is prescribed by the National Environmental Policy Act, which was signed into law in 1970.

Instead of being subject to case-by-case studies, NPR-A projects would be covered by a single environmental study, under the rule. The BLM would also be required to issue permits to covered projects within 60 days of developers’ applications, under the proposed rule.

The quicker approvals are in the nation’s interest, Trump administration officials said.

“Responsible development shouldn’t be held back by redundant paperwork. By utilizing over 20 years of rigorous environmental data, we are replacing slow, case-by-case reviews with a standardized process that maintains our high environmental standards, while giving operators the predictability they need to build,” BLM Director Steve Pearce said in a statement. “This is about working smarter, honoring the Trump administration’s commitment to energy security, and ensuring Alaskans directly benefit from the resources in their backyard.” 

The statement describes the rule as one that will “streamline” permitting.

The proposal comes in response to a petition submitted in May by the Alaska Oil and Gas Association. The trade organization asked the Trump administration for a new system to fast-track development in the Arctic region that has become increasingly attractive to oil companies.

In its petition, the industry group said the BLM need not do case-by-case environmental analysis of new development projects in the reserve because past environmental impact studies for previously approved projects and management policies have already covered the questions sufficiently.

“Those collective (National Environmental Policy Act) reviews have spanned a period of almost three decades and have generated a substantial amount of information and analyses regarding the environmental impacts associated with production sites in the NPR-A and similar adjacent lands, and the mitigation of those impacts,” the petition said. “For sites meeting the common specifications of those that have already been exhaustively analyzed, the environmental impacts and the mitigation of those impacts are well-studied and well-known.”

The proposed rule is set to be published Sep. 8 in the Federal Register. That will launch a 60-day public comment period, to end Nov. 9.

Opposition expressed

Environmental groups have opposed the idea since May, when AOGA submitted its petition and the Trump administration launched the formal process that resulted in Friday’s proposed rule.

They reiterated their opposition Friday.

“This rule rigs our system for fossil fuel interests by requiring BLM to approve massive oil projects while eliminating the public’s freedom to say ‘No’ to unwanted developments on these shared lands. No company should get a blank check to develop the Western Arctic,” Matt Jackson, Alaska senior manager of The Wilderness Society, said in a statement.

“What we’re seeing here is a concerted attack by the Trump administration to greenlight oil and gas drilling in the Western Arctic while ignoring the harm it will cause to these irreplaceable public lands and also the government’s obligation to protect these lands for wildlife and future generations,” Erik Grafe, an attorney for the environmental law firm Earthjustice, said in a statement. The proposal “flaunts basic environmental laws meant to protect land, wildlife and people,” Grafe added.

Last week, in anticipation of the rule announcement, the leader of a North Slope Native organization issued a statement of opposition.

“Once again, the Trump administration is moving forward with a catastrophic proposal without consulting or considering the communities who will bear its consequences,” Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, executive director of Grandmothers Growing Goodness, said in an Aug. 27 statement. “In the past, we have worked directly with the government to prevent the worst impacts of oil and gas development in the Western Arctic. This new categorical exclusion shuts us out of the process, silencing the people who know the land best and puts our way of life – and future generations – at risk just to serve corporate greed.” 

Other organizations representing the North Slope’s Indigenous people have expressed a more mixed view of the idea.

That was reflected in comments submitted to the BLM in July, during the initial scoping process that led to Friday’s announcement, by the North Slope Borough, the for-profit Arctic Slope Regional Corporation and the Iñupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, a Tribal government,

The groups are “generally supportive of efforts to streamline permitting for production sites in the NPR-A,” the joint comment document said. However, they said they had concerns that the new rule might not allow for proper consultation with local communities and might not adequately protect subsistence resources.

Industry interest

The 23-million-acre petroleum reserve is currently seen as a highly prospective area for new oil development in the Arctic. The northeastern part of the reserve has drawn keen industry interest in recent years, largely because of related geological formations called Nanushuk and Torok that run through it.

ConocoPhillips, the dominant company operating in that part of the North Slope, has numerous fields already producing oil or in development that tap into Nanushuk and Torok oil.

One is the huge Willow project in the reserve, under construction and expected to start producing in late 2029. It is on track to be the westernmost producing oil field in Arctic Alaska, and the company has said peak production is expected to be 180,000 barrels a day from a resource that is estimated at about 600 million barrels.

A federal lease sale held in March, part of a series conducted by the government since 1999, drew a record $163 million in high bids.

Oil  is not the only resource of interest in the Indiana-sized reserve. The site is used by caribou herds, migratory birds and other wildlife, and the area is important for traditional subsistence food-gathering by residents of the region’s Native villages. 

The reserve is also famous for its paleontological resources; an area along the Colville River has yielded numerous significant discoveries of Arctic dinosaurs.

The reserve has had a history of management changes that resulted in a multiple-use approach balancing development with conservation.

It was established by President Warren Harding in1923 as a potential source of petroleum for the nation’s military forces. A federal law passed in 1976 gave the BLM authority over the reserve, and a 1980 amendment to that act established a series of environmental protections. Among those protections was the designation of a special area for Teshekpuk Lake, the largest Alaska lake above the Arctic Circle.

Trump administration policies have sought to strip protections from the Teshekpuk Lake area and the caribou herd that bears the lake’s name. Those policies have resulted in litigation.

The petroleum reserve went undeveloped for most of its history, with only sporadic exploration until the end of the 20th century.

Industry and government attention began to shift to the petroleum reserve after Arco Alaska in the 1990s discovered the large Alpine field on state land bordering the reserve, at the Colville River Delta. Arco’s assets, including Alpine, are now owned by ConocoPhillips. That company in 2015 became the first to produce oil from land within the reserve boundaries. Since then, other production in the reserve has followed.

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The Alaska Gasline Development Corp. plans to ask the Alaska State Legislature for additional funding as it renews its pursuit of a proposed trans-Alaska natural gas pipeline in 2027.

Frank Richards, AGDC’s president, said the state-owned corporation will seek $2.5 million from state lawmakers next year for a previously announced program that would allow Alaskans to invest in the pipeline project.

“It will be something that we’ll have to go to the legislature next year to be able to say, ‘Here’s the program. If the state is interested, then these are the funds necessary for us to be able to accomplish this work,’” Richards said. 

Richards’ remarks came during a Thursday meeting of the state-owned corporation’s board of directors. It was the first time the board had met since the Alaska House voted down a compromise tax-cut bill intended to advance the latest version of the pipeline project. 

Glenfarne, a Texas-based development company, owns 75% of the project. AGDC owns the remaining 25%.

The compromise bill would have cut the state’s petroleum property tax as applied to the pipeline and supporting infrastructure, largely replacing it with a tax on gas shipped through the pipeline. It also would have imposed a corporate income tax on some privately-held oil and gas producers who currently do not pay that tax. Gov. Mike Dunleavy opposed the increase, proposed by members of the state Senate, as did many members of the House. 

The Senate was unwilling to advance the bill without the increase, and the resulting impasse killed the bill. Dunleavy proposed a compromise halfway between the House and Senate-backed ideas during the third special session this summer, but neither half of the Legislature took it up. 

A new governor will take office in December, and new legislative majorities will take office in January.

“So next year we’ll have a new administration. Next year we’ll have — certainly — a newly elected legislature, and they’ll be starting again from scratch. Hopefully, looking at tax relief in some way or form for the project,” Richards said.

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Alaska is set to receive up to $23 million from Meta Platforms Inc. under a landmark $17 billion settlement agreement that would also require the company to implement a sweeping set of safety features for its social media platforms, aimed at protecting children from addictive features and harmful content.

The multistate settlement agreement was announced Wednesday that state officials are lauding as one of the biggest consumer protection settlements in history outside the Big Tobacco…

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This story was originally published by the Anchorage Press. 

The improbable rise of a long-shot Democratic candidate now has the party positioned to capture the Alaska governor’s mansion for the first time in more than two decades, veteran political observers from across the ideological spectrum said this week.

Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, a 37-year-old former state House member from Sitka who’s never run for statewide office, won Alaska’s open primary with 22.5% of votes, according to official results released Monday.

The second-place finisher and the only other Democrat in the field, former state Sen. Tom Begich, dropped out of the race last week — leaving Kreiss-Tomkins, known as JKT, with what insiders say is a clear path to victory amid a splintered Republican field and voter disaffection with incumbent GOP Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who’s term-limited and can’t run again.

Last month, Begich’s campaign had touted analysis by political and polling forecaster Nate Silver that gave his campaign a 71% chance of winning the primary — and Kreiss-Tomkins a 0.0% chance. Prediction markets similarly gave Kreiss-Tomkins long odds.

Now, after a primary campaign that blanketed voters with text messages and sent him to far corners of the state, Kreiss-Tomkins’ political stock is booming and those markets show him as the favorite.

“Jonathan carved 20 points out of thin f—n’ air,” said Joelle Hall, president of the Alaska AFL-CIO, the state’s largest organized labor group, which has endorsed Kreiss-Tomkins. “Everyone else is stuck in another century. JKT is the only one running communications and a campaign that exists in 2026. Everyone else is running a 1990s playbook, and it’s not working.”

Lest you think that’s an opinion held only by his allies, even some of Kreiss-Tomkins’ political adversaries agree.

“He is running a campaign unlike any that has ever been seen in Alaska history,” said Suzanne Downing, the prominent conservative blogger and former spokesperson for the Alaska Republican Party. “He’s running circles around people, because they don’t even know the questions to ask.”

With the Democratic field clear, Kreiss-Tomkins is now poised to also draw support from national groups. The chair of the Democratic Governors Association, which boosts the party’s candidates across the country, issued a statement Tuesday saying the organization “looks forward to working alongside Jonathan to deliver the change Alaskans deserve.”

The Republican Governors Association, meanwhile, has not issued a statement on the Alaska gubernatorial race since primary voting took place last month. Officials there did not respond to a request for comment this week.

Will Republicans ‘rank the red’?

Alaska’s last Democratic governor was Tony Knowles, who left office in 2002. The state has twice as many Republicans as Democrats — some 24% of registered voters to 12% — but nearly 65% of voters are independent, meaning that Democrats can occasionally make competitive runs for statewide office.

Of 17 primary election candidates in the governor’s race, 12 were Republicans, who collectively won some 49.5% of the vote — more than the combined total of 43.3% for Kreiss-Tomkins and Begich.

But many observers say they expect the conservative vote to be split between the three Republicans who advanced to the general election.

Those Republicans include conservative activist Bernadette Wilson, who won 10% of votes in the primary; former Anchorage mayor Dave Bronson, who won 8%; and businesswoman Candi English, who was on the ballot as the running mate to a former Alaska attorney general, Treg Taylor, who was ultimately disqualified from the general election due to violation of the state’s financial disclosure law.

Alaska has a ranked choice voting system that theoretically should allow the top GOP candidate to consolidate the second- and third-choiced votes from supporters of the two lower-finishing Republicans. Supporters of the system say it works best when party candidates cooperate.

But political insiders say that they expect infighting among the Republican campaigns to cause a significant fraction of conservative voters to rank only their favorite candidate and not the others — meaning that some of the votes for the lower-placed Republicans may not help the top GOP candidate in a final tally against Kreiss-Tomkins.

Downing, who’s a friend and supporter of Wilson, is one example. She described Bronson as “pugnacious” and “pigheaded” and said his campaign has been attacking Wilson for weeks through third-party surrogates.

“There’s nothing you could do today to get me to rank Dave Bronson,” Downing said in a phone interview.

Downing and other Republicans noted that if Kreiss-Tomkins is elected, he’s likely to get legislative cooperation from the same type of ruling coalitions that have led the state House and Senate for the past two years — which have tilted Democratic. Primary results suggest those coalitions are likely to persist into next year.

One veteran GOP operative, who spoke anonymously to share frank opinions about the party’s odds in November, also said he was deeply pessimistic about the chances that conservative voters will rank more than one Republican gubernatorial candidate.

He cited the 2022 U.S. House race, in which Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich III traded attacks on each other leading up to the general election. The pair together won more than 50% in the early ranked choice vote count — but ultimately lost to a Democrat in part because nearly 14,000 people who ranked Begich declined to rank Palin, meaning their ballots were “exhausted.”

“I don’t think there’s any way conservatives rank the red,” the operative said. “Dave and Bernadette are going to be Sarah and Nick all over again.”

A spokesperson for Bronson’s campaign, Jesse McCarty, said Bronson was unavailable for an interview but added that “we have made it very clear that we will not speak poorly of Republican candidates publicly.”

“Dave and this campaign will be asking the voters to rank the conservatives,” McCarty said in a text message.

The Alaska Republican Party’s chair, Carmela Warfield, did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday. Wilson did not respond to requests for comment, and a spokesperson for English declined to make her available for an interview.

Kreiss-Tomkins targets moderate voters

Kreiss-Tomkins, meanwhile, was busy campaigning Tuesday. He said he started the morning with an 8 a.m. coffee with a state legislator after working until 2:30 a.m. the night before, then spent the rest of the day on calls and meetings with other donors, business and labor leaders and campaign staff.

“We’re just going to be super heads-down, a heat-seeking missile toward Nov. 3,” Kreiss-Tomkins said in an interview, referring to the general election date. “We just want to focus on the fundamentals and outwork every other campaign, out-raise every other campaign, out-travel every other campaign.”

Kreiss-Tomkins’ primary campaign took him far across the state, from boating down the Yukon River to driving a snowmachine in Alaska’s Northwest Arctic. He also raised more money than any other candidate — though not without drawing criticism for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from California-based employees of an AI company, Anthropic.

He has been using a texting service that’s allowed him to directly exchange messages with hundreds of voters, he said in an interview last month.

Now that the primary election is over, Kreiss-Tomkins said, he’s planning more outreach to moderate Republicans who are “disillusioned with the Dunleavy era and want change.”

Kreiss-Tomkins has hired national campaign consultants who have supported strident progressives like former U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner in Maine and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. But he noted that one of those consultants has also worked with centrist candidates like independent Nebraska U.S. Senate candidate Dan Osborn, who’s volunteered to help Trump build a border wall.

“I’m not an ideological zealot — I never have been,” Kreiss-Tomkins said.

Underscoring Kreiss-Tomkins’ bid to consolidate support among moderates, he spent part of last week in conversations about taking on a new running mate: Click Bishop, a moderate Republican former state senator who also ran in the gubernatorial primary but finished outside the top four.

Kreiss-Tomkins declined to comment directly on those discussions, but a spokesperson for Bishop, Shannon Mason, confirmed that they took place.

Hall, the labor leader, said she expects Kreiss-Tomkins to make inroads with conservative leaning voters who assume the candidate is more liberal than he actually is because of his relative youth.

“Just because he’s young, they believe that he is less moderate than Tom Begich,” Hall said. “He’s 100% a negotiator. He’s the kind of guy who’s going to bring everybody in a room.”

Downing, the blogger and Wilson supporter, said she hasn’t totally given up hope that her preferred candidate could still come out of the race as the winner.

She’s hoping Bronson can still be convinced to suspend his campaign and consolidate support for Wilson. And she said she also thinks that English, the third GOP candidate, may have to drop out: Her current running mate is Jodi Taylor, the wife of the former attorney general who was disqualified for financial disclosure violations. Jodi Taylor made the same omissions on her financial disclosure — some of the details of her sources of income — that her husband did.

“I see a path,” Downing said. “But it’s a narrower path with Bronson in.”

Disclosure: Kreiss-Tomkins facilitated some early-stage meetings around the revitalization of the Anchorage Press. He has no involvement with the organization today.

The post Amid fractured GOP field, a Democrat could be headed for the Alaska governor’s mansion appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

The suicide-death rate for young Alaskans hit a 10-year high last year and the rate of suicide attempts has increased over the past decade, state health officials reported.

From 2016 to 2025, there were 174 suicide deaths among Alaska youths under the age of 18 and 4,101 documented suicide attempts, according to a bulletin released by the Alaska Department of Health’s epidemiology section. The median age of those who died was 16, the bulletin said. The fatality rate, 19.2 per 100,000 children aged 10 to 18, was the highest rate since 2016.

Overall, Alaska’s youth suicide rate is nearly six times the nation average, the bulletin said.

Boys were victims in the vast majority of youth suicides over the 10-year period, accounting for 81% of the deaths, and most used firearms. Girls accounted for about three-quarters of the documented suicide attempts, according to the bulletin.

Those statistics point to “the need to prioritize timely follow-up and intervention following attempts among females and efforts to reduce access to highly lethal means (particularly firearms) among males during periods of crisis,” the bulletin said.

For Alaska Native youths, the statistics are especially grim. Over the decade-long period, the suicide fatality rate among Alaska Natives aged 10 to 18 was 47 per 100,000 children, more than twice the state rate. The rate of documented suicide attempts was 1,098 per 100,000 children, also more than twice the state rate, according to the bulletin.

Special care should be used to address the problem among Indigenous youth, the bulletin said.

“The disproportionate burden of suicide among Alaska Native youth underscores the need for prevention strategies that are culturally responsive and community informed,” the bulletin said.

Statistics cited in the bulletin come from the Alaska Violent Death Reporting System and the Alaska Health Facilities Data Reporting system. The bulletin noted that statistics on suicide attempts likely understate the numbers because some attempts do not result in encounters with the healthcare system and therefore probably go unreported.

Suicide is also a major threat for adults in Alaska, state records show.

It was the sixth leading cause of death in the state across all age groups, according to the most recent Department of Healthstatus reportin the Healthy Alaskans program. In comparison, suicide ranks 11thamong causes of death nationally, according to the report.

There are some prevention programs in place in the state.

One is the national 988 crisis line, which in 2025 alone received nearly 44,000 calls from Alaskans.

Other programs are tailored to Alaska Native communities. One of those was designed for the rural Yukon-Kuskokwim region in Western Alaska by the Center for Alaska Native Health Research at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. And the Indian Health Service has a national program called the Zero Suicide Initiative.

While suicides have been inching up over time, that “doesn’t necessarily mean that prevention strategies haven’t been successful,” Ashley Hannigan, a state epidemiologist who helped write the bulletin, said by email.

“It’s difficult or impossible to pin down the number of suicide attempts prevented by programming like the careline/988 or the Zero Suicide initiative,” Hannigan said. “The peak we see in 2025 for youth and adolescent suicide does emphasize the need to focus on youth-specific, and culturally tailored suicide prevention strategies, however.”

One idea for preventing youth suicide emerged this year in the Alaska State Legislature, but it was rejected by the governor.

Lawmakers passed a measure, Senate Bill 41, that would have established mental health guidelines for public schools. Sen. Elvi Gray-Jackson, D-Anchorage, the bill’s prime sponsor, described youth suicide as “a crisis that impacts every community in our state,” and said the bill would expand mental health services to children who need them but might otherwise lack access. 

Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed the bill on June 18. In his veto message, he said student mental health was important but that the bill would place the state “in the role of imposing upon school districts to mandate the development of mental health education at a time when districts are already working to meet existing requirements.”

Lawmakers attempted the next day to override the veto, but fell short of votes to do so.

The post Suicide deaths and attempts among Alaska youth continue at high rates, report shows appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

A three-judge panel of the Alaska Court of Appeals ruled Friday that state prosecutors misled grand jurors who indicted a Whittier resident for allegedly voting illegally.

Had jurors received accurate information, the court said, “the grand jury likely would have declined to indict.”

Tupe Smith, the plaintiff behind Friday’s decision, is one of 11 people — all American Samoans — whom the state of Alaska has accused of criminally violating state law.

Smith had filed a motion to dismiss the case against her, but a state superior court judge ruled against that motion. 

In Friday’s 20-page ruling, the three-judge panel reversed the lower court’s rejection and in the process, it also defined a high standard that prosecutors must meet in order to convict someone of voting illegally in Alaska.

“The state’s prosecution against me and my family has been extremely difficult,” Smith said in a written statement provided by her attorneys on Friday. “I feel vindicated by today’s court decision. But at the same time I worry it will not mean the end of the state’s criminal targeting of the American Samoan community in Whittier.” 

A spokesman for the Alaska Department of Law said in a statement that the department is “reviewing the Court’s decision and evaluating our available options for how to proceed.”

That could include an appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court.

If Friday’s ruling stands, it has the potential to affect the cases of the 10 other Whittier residents accused of voting illegally — and any other noncitizen voting cases that arise in Alaska.

People born in the U.S. territory of American Samoa are Americans, but they’re not considered U.S. citizens by law and are thus ineligible to vote in Alaska. 

Smith and the other defendants have argued that they were given bad information about whether they could legally vote. As a result, while they intentionally voted, they did not knowingly vote illegally. 

Smith ran for and was elected to the local school board in 2022. A subsequent investigation by Alaska State Troopers found she was not a U.S. citizen and thus ineligible to both serve in office and vote in local elections.

Attention on Smith exposed other Whittier residents who had also voted despite being noncitizens.

Smith, who was charged in 2023, was the first defendant to reach trial. The other cases were filed in 2025. 

Alaska’s felony voter misconduct law states that someone violates it if they “intentionally” affirm their citizenship falsely. The state’s misdemeanor for the same crime requires “knowingly” making a false statement while applying for voter registration. 

State prosecutors argued that “knowingly” and “intentionally” have the same meanings in that context.

Smith’s attorneys argued against that position, saying that “intentionally” requires someone to know that they are wrong and to attempt to deceive officials anyway. Defining the terms differently will prevent people from being prosecuted for innocent mistakes, they argued.

That’s more than a hypothetical. 

Since 2022, the Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles has accidentally registered dozens of noncitizens to vote through errors in the state’s motor-voter program. 

Some of those people have voted in state and local elections, according to a list obtained by the Alaska Beacon. 

If the state’s interpretation of the law was upheld, those Alaskans could also be criminally prosecuted despite believing they were voting legally.

But in Friday’s ruling, the appeals court ruled against the state’s interpretation, writing, “we now hold that ‘intentionally’ for purposes of the voter misconduct statute means something different than ‘knowingly.’”

To make that determination, the appeals court examined related laws that use the two terms for different things going back to 1960, when Alaska lawmakers adopted the original version of the state’s voter-misconduct law.

“Here, the scant legislative history that exists suggests that the legislature intended ‘wilfully . . . swears falsely’ to require purposeful or deliberate action that includes a specific consciousness of wrongdoing,” the court wrote.

In subsequent laws, the 1960 word “wilfully” became “intentionally,” and thus, the court concluded, “the legislature appears to have retained the requirement of a specific consciousness of wrongdoing that is distinguishable from mere knowing conduct.”

Attorney Whitney Brown, who represented Smith in oral arguments in front of the court of appeals, applauded the ruling. “We are delighted for Ms. Smith, whose case has always centered on a simple principle: people should not face felony charges for voter misconduct absent proof that they intended to do something wrong,” she said. “The Alaska Court of Appeals’ opinion faithfully applies the law and provides important guidance on how Alaska’s voter-misconduct statute should be understood in future cases.”

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