NORAD- 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, NORAD tracks everything that flies in and around North America in defense of our homelands. On Dec. 24, they have the very special mission of also tracking Santa.
NORAD has been tracking Santa since 1955 when a young child accidently dialed the unlisted phone number of the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) Operations Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, believing she was calling Santa Claus after seeing a promotion in a local newspaper.
The commander on duty that night, was quick to realize a mistake had been made, and assured the youngster that CONAD would guarantee Santa a safe journey from the North Pole.
Thus a tradition was born that rolled over to NORAD when it was formed in 1958. Each year since, NORAD has reported Santa’s location on Dec. 24 to millions across the globe.
Thanks to the services and resources generously provided by numerous corporate contributors and volunteers, NORAD Tracks Santa has persevered for more than 60 years.
Each year, the NORAD Tracks Santa Web Site receives nearly fifteen million unique visitors from more than 200 countries and territories around the world. Volunteers receive more than 130,000 calls to the NORAD Tracks Santa hotline from children around the globe.
Children and the young-at-heart are able to track Santa through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.
Commercial fishing and recreational vessels are docked in the Homer harbor on Oct. 23, 2025. The commercial fishing industry endured a series of challenges over the year, some of them imposed by the new Trump administration. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
For Alaska’s fishing industry and fishing-dependent communities, 2025 was a year of turmoil and uncertainty, much of it imposed by ideological pursuits from the new Trump administration.
The short-lived agency called the Department of Government Efficiency hacked away at federal funding for science across the board. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in particular was in its crosshairs; the Heritage Institute’s Project 2025 blueprint for the second Trump administration heaped scorn on NOAA, saying its National Weather Service, National Marine Fisheries Service and other agencies “form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.” The NMFS’ Alaska Fisheries Science Center, which does the bulk of the research on which fishery managers depend, was among the agencies that suffered deep budget and staffing cuts.
The prospect of more cuts is unsettling, some officials said. “I guess now we’re getting to a point that I’m getting really concerned and almost freaked out about how much data that we’re potentially losing that we’re used to having,” Anne Vanderhoeven, a member of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, said on Dec. 4 during that body’s December meeting.
Even as the Trump administration cuts the support fishery management, it is demanding that the industry harvest more fish, in line with an administrative order issued by the president on April 17.
The federal government shutdown created more problems for fisheries managers, but the North Pacific Fishery Management Council used data from last year to set next year’s harvest limits for Alaska pollock — the nation’s top-volume commercial seafood — and other groundfish in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska.
Hannah Scholosstein, international marketing and grants manager for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, works in her office in Juneau on May 22, 2025, amid promotional materials. A legislative task force has recommended boosted funding and support for ASMI, among other actions. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
Alaska’s seafood industry continues to endure a variety of economic challenges — competition in markets that are glutted, rising costs, declines of some important fish stock and labor shortages, among them. There are fewer people harvesting seafood commercially in Alaska than at any time on record.
Alaska legislators have tried to address some of those woes. A legislative task force made numerous recommendations about financial systems, marketing, industry diversification, workforce development and other subjects. Those recommendations produced a series of bills. Two of them passed during the 2025 session, gaining unanimous support, but Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed one of them, which would have shored up the Alaska Commercial Fishing and Agriculture Bank. The Legislature has the opportunity to address the subject again in the coming session.
The Dunleavy administration ran into trouble with two of its other fishery-related efforts. The governor introduced a bill that would legalize salmon farming, which is widely disdained in the state. The bill went nowhere. The administration is also continuing to try to overturn federal subsistence management on federal sections of the Kuskokwim River, but it has lost in court so far.
There were some notable improvements in 2025.
Bering Sea snow crab stocks are starting to rebound after a massive crash that closed harvests for two years, the first. However, there has been a puzzling boom in the number of snow-tanner crab hybrids. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is treating the hybrids as snow crabs for harvest-management purposes.
The overall salmon harvest was much bigger and more lucrative than last year’s dismal totals. Bristol Bay reds were not as small as last year’s record tiny fish, and the region also had a bigger run than predicted. However, salmon runs in the Yukon River continue to be poor.
But trouble is brewing in the marine and freshwater environments that support fish.
In areas of thawing permafrost, particularly Northwestern Alaska, a phenomenon called “rusting rivers,” has released such high levels of metals that conditions at times are toxic for fish. The thaw creates acid rock drainage, similar to the type of pollution that can come from hardrock mining. Iron and other metals that are freed through the process turn clear waters orange or red. The problem is serious enough to have merited a chapter in this year’s Arctic Report Card, issued on Dec. 16 by NOAA.
A member of a multi-organization team combatting the spread of invasive European green crabs holds one of the crabs trapped in Southeast Alaska in the summer of 2023. The invasive crabs were first discovered in Alaska in 2022. The Metlakatla Indian Community is leading the effort to combat their spread, and this year workers in the program trapped more than 40,000 of the crabs. (Photo by Ginny Eckert/Alaska Sea Grant)
Alaska scientists have also confirmed that invasive northern pike, a bane to native salmon runs in Southcentral Alaska, can swim across Cook Inlet to colonize new territory. The freshwater pike, which gobble up salmon fry and other fish, are too entrenched in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough to be eradicated from waterways there. Biologists have been working to keep Kenai Peninsula pike-free and believed they were successful in 2018, until scientists discovered that pike are able to survive the relatively short swim through the inlet’s saltwater into new freshwater sites. The eradication work has continued, and state biologists believe the peninsula is again pike-free.
Another looming threat comes from the south. Resource managers with the Metlakatla Indian Community, the tribal government in Alaska’s most southeastern spot, have been battling what its officials term an “explosion” of invasive European green crabs. The first Alaska discovery of the invasive crabs, which can devastate native fish stocks, was in 2022 in the Metlakatla area. At first, there were only a few shells. But this year, workers in the tribal program trapped more than 40,000 of the crabs, which have been steadily expanding north.
“I voted” stickers are seen on display at a polling station in Juneau’s Mendenhall Valley on Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
One of Rep. Nick Begich III’s uncles is endorsing his main Democratic opponent, Matt Schultz, in next year’s election. Tom Begich’s name was atop a list released to the Alaska Beacon by Schultz’s campaign this month.
Begich’s endorsement of his nephew’s opponent won’t surprise people familiar with Alaska politics — he’s a longtime figure in the state’s Democratic scene, has been publicly critical of his nephew’s actions and is running as a Democrat in the governor’s election — but Schultz’s list and a similar list of endorsements by Republicans for Begich III shows how the state’s political establishment is settling on a two-person race for U.S. House, unlike the crowded contest for governor.
“It will be awkward. It’s always awkward,” Tom Begich said of the endorsement, “ but my mom taught us to learn to live with disagreement, to move beyond it. It doesn’t change the fact that I love my nephew. Just, I’m not supporting him in this election.”
Tom Begich is among 14 people — 12 Republicans and two Democrats — who have registered to run for governor in next year’s election.
Incumbent Gov. Mike Dunleavy is term-limited and unable to run.
While there are plenty of candidates for the governor’s seat, the number of people running for federal office is tiny. Incumbent U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican, doesn’t have a well-known challenger yet. Former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, a Democrat, has been rumored as a possible opponent but has yet to file.
The same is true on the Democratic side, where support for Schultz appears almost entirely united.
“I’m very pleased to support him and glad he’s running,” said state Sen. Matt Claman, D-Anchorage and the other Democratic candidate in the governor’s race.
“I think he’s more connected with the general, broad spectrum of values in Alaska, more connected with some of the challenges we’re facing. He’s really looking carefully at how we’re dealing with homelessness, and I think he’s concerned about some of the affordability issues that are particularly a challenge in rural Alaska,” Claman said of Schultz.
Among the other people endorsing Schultz are independent state Rep. Alyse Galvin, who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. House in 2020 and 2018, and Forrest Dunbar, a Democratic state senator who ran unsuccessfully for House in 2014.
One notable absence is Peltola, who held Alaska’s U.S. House seat for one term before Begich III defeated her in the 2024 election.
Also missing is longtime Democrat Mark Begich, the incumbent Republican’s other uncle and Alaska’s U.S. senator from 2009 to 2015.
“There’s definitely been a lot of support from Democrats all around the state, and I’m very grateful for that. It seems to be a lot of coalescing support,” Schultz said by phone.
A pastor in Anchorage, Schultz spoke on the day that the U.S. House announced that it would not vote to renew subsidies for health insurance policies purchased on the federal marketplace.
Without those subsidies, the prices of many policies will spike with the start of the year.
“That’s really, really sad and disturbing,” Schultz said. “It seems like it should be a no-brainer that you start out by making sure that people can afford their lifesaving medicine.”
Schultz said that as he’s gone around seeking early support for his campaign, he’s found joy and excitement among people who want to find a common good.
“It really is this wonderful excitement to say — just like we pulled together as a nation to go to the moon, we can pull together as a state to provide food and health care to people. It’s a goal that matters so much and is so basically good at its heart that people can’t wait to start working for it,” he said. “I think there’s a hope out there that has felt absent in the last decade or so.”
Cook Inlet near Clam Gulch is seen on Oct. 23, 2025. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
The Trump administration on Friday affirmed a controversial federal Cook Inlet oil and gas lease sale held at the end of 2022, asserting that impacts to endangered beluga whales and other resources were adequately considered and no changes in the leasing plan are needed.
In a Federal Register notice scheduled to be published on Monday, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced its decision to uphold Lease Sale 258 as held. The decision “balances the national policies mandated by Congress to expeditiously and safely develop the natural resources of the (Outer Continental Shelf), subject to environmental safeguards, in a manner that is consistent with the maintenance of competition and other national needs,” the notice said.
The lease sale, mandated by Congress in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, offered 193 blocks over nearly 1 million acres, but it drew only one bid. The sole bid was from Hilcorp, the dominant oil and gas operator in the inlet.
The auction went through a tumultuous history and remains a subject of debate.
Planning for the sale started in 2020, but two years later, the Biden administration canceled it, citing a lack of industry interest. The sale was resurrected by a provision in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 that was inserted by then-Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia. That provision required Lease Sale 258 to be held by the end of 2022; it was ultimately held on Dec. 30 of that year.
Environmental groups that sued to block the sale secured a victory after it was held. U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason ruled in July 2024 that pre-sale studies failed to properly analyze impacts to endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales and other resources. Gleason ordered BOEM to do the new analysis of beluga and other resource impacts, putting the sole lease that was sold into suspension.
The agency considered three additional alternatives that would have increased protections for belugas and other resources, but it rejected those and kept the original plan in place, according to the document.
“As LS 258 has already occurred, selecting any alternatives other than those described above would not affirm that lease sale and would void the one lease issued as a result of it,” the Federal Register notice said.
In its supplemental environmental impact statement, BOEM asserted that the risks of leasing and the development that would result from it are minor for Cook Inlet belugas and other marine mammals.
“The likelihood of a large oil spill affecting Cook Inlet marine mammals is relatively low, but the consequences could affect some populations. Sea otters face the highest vulnerability from a large spill due to their dependence on fur for insulation, resulting in a moderate impact level. Cook Inlet beluga whales are at risk due to the small population size, but geographic and temporal factors substantially reduce the risk of exposure to a large spill, yielding a minor overall impact level,” the document said.
The agency’s impact statement also describes impacts of noise as minor. While Cook Inlet belugas are highly dependent on hearing other whales’ calls to navigate the murky waters, ship and industrial noise that would drown out those calls “are expected to be temporary, with anticipated localized effects on beluga behavior and no anticipated long-term effect on survival or fitness.” Additionally, no injuries to belugas are expected from lease-related activities, the document said.
A beluga mother, in front, and her darker calf swim in Cook Inlet waters in this undated photo. A federal judge ordered the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to do more to analyze oil leasing impacts on the endangered Cook Inlet beluga population. (Photo by Janice Waite/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
The three new alternatives that BOEM considered would have added new protections for marine mammals and for subsistence and commercial fishing. Those alternatives would have reduced the available leasing territory in different increments, ranging from about one fifth to nearly half, according to the document.
The environmentalists who sued to overturn the lease sale criticized the decision and the lack of public participation leading up to it.
“BOEM’s decision to conduct the whole process in secrecy represents the federal government’s new approach to cutting the public out of decisions about our waters, and favoring the billionaire class and giant corporations over the people who call this place home. We are disgusted by this rushed and sloppy process on this final SEIS,” Bridget Maryott, co-executive director at Cook Inletkeeper, said in a statement, referring to the agency’s just-published supplemental environmental impact statement.
Hannah Foster, an attorney for Earthjustice, the environmental law firm that represented the plaintiffs, called the process leading to the decision a “black box.”
“We won our challenge against this lease sale because Interior failed to adequately consider sale alternatives and the impacts to the endangered beluga whales that will be harmed by blaring vessel noise and other oil industry operations. Yet BOEM has now reaffirmed the sale without seriously considering new alternatives or imposing any new measures to protect belugas,” she said in the statement.
Foster said Earthjustice and its clients are still reviewing the information about BOEM’s decision.
Including the lease sold in 2022, there are currently eight active leases in federal waters of Cook Inlet, all held by Hilcorp.
The Trump administration has already started planning a new Cook Inlet oil and gas lease sale, the first of six nearly annual sales mandates for the inlet through 2032 under the sweeping budget bill that was called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Additionally, the administration included five Cook Inlet lease sales among the 21 it has proposed for federal waters off Alaska through 2031. Those 21 sales are proposed in the administration’s five-year outer continental shelf oil and gas leasing plan, released last month. It envisions oil development in nearly all federal waters off the state’s coasts.
The five-year plan drew praise from Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Trump ally.
“Once again, the Trump Administration is leading the way to American energy dominance by restoring confidence in the federal government’s offshore leasing policies,” Dunleavy said at the time in a post on the social media site X.
Road construction is seen on March 12, 2017, at ConocoPhillips’ Greater Mooses Tooth Unit in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. (Photo by Sarah LaMarr/U.S. Bureau of Land Management)
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration is proposing to divert money from a program intended to compensate North Slope communities for the side effects of oil and gas drilling on federal land near them.
As Dunleavy prepares to unveil a long-term fiscal plan, the state is proposing to use at least some of that money across Alaska instead.
“Definitely a big deal,” said Alexei Painter, director of the Legislative Finance Division, which analyzes the budget on behalf of legislators.
It’s funded through revenue generated by oil production on federal land in the North Slope, and it is expected to grow significantly in coming years as more oil is produced from projects like Willow, which is located in the vast petroleum reserve between Utqiagvik and the Prudhoe Bay oil field.
The Willow project alone, for example, is expected to generate $3.1 billion for the grant program between 2029 and 2053, a boon for the borough’s 10,583 residents.
But in documents published recently, the Department of Revenue has reclassified money for the program as “unrestricted,” meaning it could be spent in a variety of ways.
During a Wednesday meeting of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. board of trustees, CEO Deven Mitchell told the board that he had just heard “that there’s been a federal law change” that could see more money end up in the Permanent Fund.
Mitchell couldn’t recall where he had read about that change, but it appears in the state’s newly published revenue forecast, which covers the fiscal year that starts July 1.
In several footnotes, the Department of Revenue describes a shift in policy. Currently, revenue from the leasing of federal land in the petroleum reserve is deposited in “a special revenue fund” dedicated to a particular purpose.
That changes with the new fiscal year, when “these payments will be divided between unrestricted revenue (74.5%), the Permanent Fund (25%) and Public School Trust Fund (0.5%).”
That would mean money from NPR-A would end up in the state’s general-purpose accounts, usable for services statewide or the Permanent Fund dividend.
Last year, the department wrote, “The federal government dictates that shared NPR-A revenue must be used for specific purposes, and therefore it is considered restricted revenue in this forecast.”
This year, that sentence doesn’t appear.
Comparing the two forecasts shows the difference. Last year, the department labeled NPR-A revenue as “restricted,” or locked in to a particular purpose. In the new fall forecast, it’s “unrestricted,” or available for general use.
While only $9.6 million in NPR-A revenue is expected in the next fiscal year, the state forecasts that amount will rise significantly after the end of the decade — to more than $200 million per year by 2033.
Speaking to reporters last week, an official with the Office of Management and Budget said the Alaska Department of Law was evaluating how changes to federal law in the Big Beautiful Bill Act will change the distribution of revenue to the state and local communities.
That act, passed with the enthusiastic endorsement of Republicans in Congress and President Donald Trump, calls for the state to receive 70% of revenue from oil and gas leases on federal land in the National Petroleum Reserve, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Cook Inlet, starting in fiscal year 2034.
The Department of Revenue concluded that clause will ultimately have little effect.
“Since all current and forecasted production in the NPR-A is located on leases issued before 2025, only a small portion of revenue within the current forecast period is expected to receive the 70% share,” the department wrote in its new forecast.
More important for the short term, the Act contains a clause stating that “for each of fiscal years 2025 through 2033, 50 percent (of federal-land oil revenue) shall be paid to the State of Alaska.”
Previous federal law contained a 50-50 split but also contained a clause stating that “in the allocation of such funds, the State shall give priority to use by subdivisions of the State most directly or severely impacted by development of oil and gas leased under this Act.”
That priority doesn’t appear in the Big Beautiful Bill.
As a result, the Alaska Department of Law is determining whether the state may choose to keep that money for direct uses instead of sending it to communities, the OMB official said.
As a precondition for the interview, reporters agreed to allow the official to speak on background and not be quoted directly.
The Alaska Department of Law did not respond to an emailed inquiry about the effort, nor did staff for any of Alaska’s three members of Congress, who were instrumental in adding that language to the Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The North Slope Borough was unable to comment before deadline Wednesday. Officials from VOICE of the Arctic Inupiat, an organization that has acted as a local booster for oil production, also did not return a message seeking comment.
The sun at midnight in early July reflects on the Chukchi Sea and slabs of sea ice near the coastline of Utgiagvik. Credit: Lisa Hupp/USFWS.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued its annual Arctic Report Card on Tuesday, which documents the way rising temperatures, diminished ice, thawing permafrost, melting glaciers and vegetation shifts are transforming the region and affecting its people. The agency has released the report for 20 years as a way to track changes in the Arctic.
“The Arctic continues to warm faster than the global average, with the 10 years that comprise the last decade marking the 10 warmest years on record,” Steve Thur, NOAA’s acting administrator for oceanic and atmospheric research and the agency’s acting chief scientist, said at a news conference Tuesday.
The report card is a peer-reviewed collaboration of more than 100 scientists from 13 countries, with numerous coauthors from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. It was officially released at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in New Orleans, where Thur and other officials held the news conference.
The report is the first under the second Trump administration, at a time when the federal government’s commitment to documenting Arctic climate change has diminished: The president has repeatedly called climate change a hoax and federal departments are cancelling climate change-related research and projects, as well as scrubbing climate information from public view.
Under directives from the Trump administration, NOAA no longer provides information that the National Snow and Ice Data Center once used to monitor sea ice and snow cover, for example. The Colorado-based center now relies on satellite information from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency for its sea ice reports, and it has reduced its analysis.
A national dataset about the melt of the Greenland Ice Sheet has also been lost to the Trump administration’s cutbacks, said Rick Thoman of the UAF’s Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Preparedness, one of the report’s main editors. The ice sheet is still being monitored by European satellites, but the data is not equivalent, he said.
Government entities like NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center, which regularly provides scientific information that goes into the Arctic Report Card, have endured deep budget cuts and staff firings.
On Tuesday, Russel Vought, President Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget Director, said the administration plans to close the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a Colorado research facility that has operated since 1960. The facility “is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country,” Vought said in a post on the social media site X.
And this year, unlike the other years since 2006 when NOAA published the first Arctic Report Card, the agency declined to issue a news release about it.
Thur, asked if NOAA will continue to publish report cards in the future, said the agency will continue the work that goes into the annual documents.
“What I would say in response to that question, is that we’re here today and that we have released the 2025 version,” he said. NOAA has continued its long-term environmental observations in the Arctic, both with satellite observations, he said. “So I think one of the things that the community can rely upon is that our efforts to continue to observe the planet will remain present,” he said.
The Mendenhall River is seen at flood levels, just a few hours after the record-breaking peak of 16.65 feet, from the Brotherhood Bridge in Juneau on Aug.13, 2025. The flood, caused by an outburst of meltwater from Mendenhall Glacier, was mentioned in the 2025 Arctic Report Card as one of the impacts of glacial melt. (Photo by Corinne Smith/Alaska Beacon)
Thur also demurred when asked whether NOAA still stands by the statements about fossil fuels made by the agency’s prior administrator, Rick Spinrad. When last year’s report was issued at the end of the Biden administration, Spinrad said the changes in the Arctic were directly related to fossil-fuel emissions. Thur did not mention fossil fuels.
“What I would say in response to that question is that we recognize that the planet is changing dramatically,” he said during the news conference. “Our role within NOAA is to try to predict what’s going to occur in the future by documenting what’s occurring today,” he said. “There is a human role, as our administrator currently, Dr. Neil Jacobs, said during his congressional confirmation hearing, for humans in influencing those changes.”
Matthew Druckenmiller of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, another lead editor of the report, made no such equivocations.
“Let us start by first acknowledging that the warming of our planet driven by human greenhouse gas emissions into our atmosphere is amplified in the Arctic,” he said near the start of the news conference. “The Arctic continues to warm much faster than the globe overall, amplified by the loss of reflective sea ice and snow, causing more of the sun’s heat to penetrate into land and ocean.”
Druckenmiller also said the Trump administration did not interfere with drafting of the report.
“I can say that in producing the Arctic report card in 2025, we did not receive any political interference with our results,” he said.
Lower sea ice, more precipitation, more melt and thaw
Some of the main messages in this report concern superlatives, while others describe a continuation of long-term changes.
It was the Arctic’s hottest year in a record dating back to 1900, the report said. The past year’s winter sea ice maximum was the lowest in the satellite record, which dates back to the late 1970s, and sea ice is much thinner and younger than it was in the past, the report said.
The region set a record for precipitation for the 12 months that ended in September, despite an unusually dry summer in parts of northern Canada and Eurasia. Warmer air holds more moisture, and a long-term trend of higher precipitation continues, the report said.
Across the Arctic, June snow cover extent has declined by 50% over the past six decades, since the 1960s. “Even though you’re starting out in season with more snow, it’s melting faster,” Thoman said.
For rain, there is another pattern: more heavy rain events. Those included last January’s powerful, northward pushing “atmospheric river” that stretched from the Aleutian Islands through mainland Alaska, bringing midwinter rain and flood conditions to Anchorage and elsewhere.
Alaska figures prominently in this year’s report card, as it has in past years’ reports.
Patrick Sullivan stands by an acid seep on July 15,2023. Sullivan is part of a team of scientists who tested water quality in Kobuk Valley National Park’s Salmon River and its tributaries, where permafrost thaw has caused acid rock drainage. The process is releasing metals that have turned the waters a rusty color. A chapter in the 2025 Arctic Report Card described “rusting rivers” phenomenon. (Photo by Roman Dial/Alaska Pacific University)
One chapter is devoted to changing conditions in the Northern Bering Sea and the Chukchi Sea, where a warming-related process termed “borealization” is ongoing. That refers to the transition from an Arctic ecosystem to a more southern ecosystem.
In both seas, the report said, boreal species ranging from commercially important fish like Alaska pollock and Pacific cod to tiny organisms that make up the base of the food web, have been pushing out the more cold-adapted Arctic species like Arctic cod, saffron cod and snow crab. There are impacts to people and marine mammals, the report noted.
“Warming temperatures, declining sea ice, and shifting productivity in the Chukchi and northern Bering Seas drive ecosystem changes with significant implications for fisheries, food security, and Indigenous subsistence,” the report said.
In both seas, about a third of the boreal species groups examined over time increased, while about a third of the Arctic species groups decreased. Some of those boreal species populations spiked in recent years. That long-term trend is evident despite a lot of year-to-year variation and anomalously cold conditions in the Chukchi over the past year.
A chapter about mountain glaciers, a major contributor to global sea level rise, highlights this summer’s glacial outburst flood in Juneau, a phenomenon that has become an annual occurrence in Alaska’s capital city. Glacial outburst floods are increasing in frequency and severity in certain parts of the Arctic and subarctic, said Gabriel Wolken of UAF at the news conference.
Glacial melt is also tied to another extreme event that happened this summer in Southeast Alaska: the collapse of a mountainside along narrow Tracy Arm, which generated a local tsunami that rose nearly 1,600 feet up the opposite side.
“Glacier retreat combined with slope instability can lead to landslides,” Wolken said, adding that those slides can lead to far-reaching tsunamis. “The August 10th, 2025 landslide in Southeast Alaska’s Tracey Arm illustrates the sheer power of these hazards,” he said.
A chapter in the report is devoted to “rusting rivers,” a permafrost-related phenomenon documented throughout the Arctic but especially in Northwestern Alaska. The name comes from the conversion of clear streams to rust-colored waterways, the product of iron and other chemicals that leech out from rocks because of permafrost thaw. There are more than 200 such rusting watersheds in Alaska, said Abagael Pruitt, a University of California, Davis scientist studying the subject.
Another chapter in the report describes the Indigenous science monitoring being done at the community level. That includes work by the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, a tribal government that has established its own lab to screen traditional foods for mercury contents.
While much of the report was devoted to impacts within the Arctic and to people living in the region, its coauthors pointed out that rapid climate change in the far north affects latitudes far to the south. Sea level rise, disrupted weather patterns and shocks to commercial fisheries that are important global food sources are among the far-ranging effects of melt, thaw and other changes, they said.
Wolken, at the news conference, put it this way:
“From the deep oceans to the highest peaks, the Arctic cryosphere is undergoing rapid, interconnected and unprecedented change, and those changes matter far beyond the Arctic.”
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., talks with reporters inside the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday he will not allow a floor vote this week on a bipartisan amendment supported by moderate Republicans that would extend the Affordable Care Act enhanced tax credits.
Johnson was confident that blocking the amendment would not lead centrist GOP lawmakers to oppose the Republican health care bill scheduled to get a vote Wednesday.
“There’s about a dozen members in the conference that are in these swing districts who are fighting hard to make sure they reduce costs for all of their constituents. And many of them did want to vote on this Obamacare, COVID-era subsidy the Democrats created,” Johnson said. “We looked for a way to try to allow for that pressure release valve and it just was not to be.”
The enhanced ACA tax credits are set to expire at the end of the year, sharply increasing the cost of health insurance for the roughly 22 million Americans who purchase plans through the exchange and benefit from the subsidies.
The House Republican health care bill wouldn’t extend those tax credits, frustrating GOP lawmakers in that chamber who are most at risk of losing their reelection bids during the November midterm elections.
Johnson said he expects that GOP bill will pass, though he didn’t address its prospects in the Senate, where bipartisanship is needed for nearly all bills to advance under that chamber’s 60-vote legislative filibuster.
‘Idiotic and shameful’
New York Republican Rep. Mike Lawler said in a speech on the House floor that GOP leaders’ decision to let the enhanced ACA tax credits expire was “idiotic and shameful,” especially after changes were added to address fraud and reduce costs.
“So we have been forced to sign onto two discharge petitions,” he said. “And yet my Democratic colleagues will not join us, but for those that were at the negotiation table.”
Lawler then criticized House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, of New York, for not encouraging Democrats to sign onto the bipartisan discharge petitions, noting that would likely get the 218 signatures needed to force a floor vote. He argued that’s because Jeffries “doesn’t actually want to solve the problem, he wants the issue.”
“This place is disgraceful,” Lawler said. “Everybody wants the upper hand. Everybody wants the political advantage. They don’t actually want to do the damn work. This problem could be solved today if everybody who says they care about extending this signs the discharge.”
GOP-only bill in 2026?
When the House returns from its two-week holiday break next year, Johnson said, leaders may try to use the complex reconciliation process they used to enact the “one big, beautiful bill” to address health care.
“What we anticipate going into the first quarter of next year is, possibly in a reconciliation package or in regular order a stand-alone, ideas just like this,” Johnson said after being asked a question about Health Savings Accounts. “We have a long list of things that we know will reduce premiums, increase access and quality of care.”
President Donald Trump said Monday he wants Republicans to use the reconciliation process or to eliminate the Senate’s legislative filibuster to address health care and other policy priorities.
“Republicans should knock out the filibuster and we should approve a lot of things,” Trump said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has said repeatedly he doesn’t intend to change or scrap the filibuster.
Direct payments or tax breaks
Trump also reiterated during the Oval Office event he would like to see Congress send direct payments to Americans to help them buy health insurance or afford health care.
“I want all money going to the people and let the people buy their own health care. It’ll be unbelievable,” Trump said. “They’ll do a great job. They’ll get much better health care at a much lower cost.”
The Senate voted last week on two health care bills, one from Republicans and one from Democrats, but neither received the support needed to move toward a final passage vote.
Republicans’ bill would have provided direct payments to some people enrolled in either bronze or catastrophic ACA marketplace plans with up to $1,500 in payments annually for 2026 and 2027.
Democrats’ legislation would have extended the enhanced ACA marketplace tax credits for three years.
Cost most urgent issue, poll finds
A bipartisan group of senators is trying to find solutions that bridge the political divide, though they are unlikely to achieve consensus on the details before the end of this week.
A poll released Monday by the West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare in America shows that cost is the “most urgent” health issue facing the country, followed by access and then obesity.
Just 57% of those polled said they were satisfied with how much they pay for their own health care and only 16% were satisfied with the total cost of health care.
Nearly two-thirds of those in the survey said they believe it’s the federal government’s responsibility “to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage,” while 33% said it’s not.
Gift card displays, such as this one in a CVS in Harlem, N.Y., have been a source of concerns for lawmakers hoping to combat gift card fraud. “Card draining,” or stealing numbers from poorly packaged cards, is one of the costliest and most common consumer scams, and states are trying to combat it with consumer alerts, arrests and warning signs on store displays. (Photo by Robbie Sequeira/Stateline)
The Federal Bureau of Investigations’ office in Anchorage issued an alert warning Alaskans of scams impersonating law enforcement or government officials demanding payment. Alaskans lost an estimated $1.3 million due to this type of government impersonation scam in 2024 — more than five times the previous year’s losses.
Officials say Alaskans should not respond to calls claiming they have missed jury duty or have warrants out for their arrest. Officials say anyone targeted by such calls should not provide personal information or payment to the caller, but they should report scams to the agency.
“This scam isn’t new, but we are certainly seeing an uptick in this type of scam here in Alaska,” said Chloe Martin, a public affairs officer with the FBI Anchorage office.
In 2024, the bureau reported 6,670 fraud complaints from Alaskans, with over $26.2 million in losses.
Scammers are calling residents and identifying themselves as an FBI official, a member of state or local law enforcement, or a government official. The scammer then claims the victim has missed jury duty or that a warrant has been issued for their arrest and demands payment from the victim, Martin said.
Sometimes scammers will call using personalized information to appear official. “So when they look at their caller ID, it might actually look like it’s a caller from a legitimate law enforcement agency,” she said.
Martin said scammers use urgency, intimidation and fear to demand immediate payment in the form of cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, prepaid gift cards or wire transfers.
Martin urged Alaskans to pause, not give personal information or make payments and report the fraud to their bank and to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, a reporting hub for cyber-crime.
“If reported immediately, it’s actually not outside the realm of possibility to recover funds, so timely reporting is key,” she said. She added that victims should contact their bank to freeze funds if they have responded to a scam.
Last year, the FBI recorded a more than five fold increase in losses from these scams, from nearly $250,000 lost in 2023 to more than $1.3 million in 2024.
Austin McDaniel, a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Public Safety said it is common for scammers to impersonate Alaska State Troopers.
“These scammers will go through and find the name of an Alaska law enforcement officer at that agency and call, pretending to be an actual state trooper, so that they’re sophisticated,” he said.
“This happens across the state. This targets every age demographic, and it’s something that we see a lot of,” he said. “I have personally received these types of scam calls demanding that I pay some type of exorbitant fee because I missed jury service. And thankfully, I know that’s definitely a scam, but not everyone does.”
McDaniel said it’s difficult to track, investigate and prosecute scammers because some of them are calling internationally, and are difficult to trace. He urged Alaskans to be cautious and not to make payments.
“Law enforcement, the government, a utility, a bank, is never going to call you and demand money with a gift card or with Bitcoin,” he said. “If you get some type of suspicion that something’s wrong, it probably is.”
Earlier this month, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued an alert warning Alaskans of scammers posing as government officials, insurance agents or aid workers targeting residents impacted by Typhoon Halong receiving disaster assistance.
Officials urged residents to contact FEMA to verify if a call is legitimate.
McDaniel and Martin said their departments could not confirm cases of scammers specifically targeting residents impacted by the Western Alaska storm at this time, but McDaniel emphasized his department sees scammers victimize those who may already be more vulnerable.
“We see it happen with missing persons,” McDaniel said. “Someone will call and try to defraud family members of missing people. Usually any type of situation where there’s some type of tragedy or emotional response to something, scammers will attempt to go through and exploit that.”
According to FBI data, Alaska ranked No. 1 in the nation in the number of internet crime complaints reported, at a rate of 914.7 complaints per 100,000 residents. Scammers target older residents because they can be more susceptible to scams The bureau estimates Alaskans in the age group of 60 or older lost more than $8.1 million to scams in 2024.
Cryptocurrency scams are growing nationwide, as they are difficult to trace. In 2024, the FBI estimates 45% of Alaskans’ losses, approximately $11.7 million, were related to cryptocurrency related scams.
Such scams have become a means to cheat investors, also known as “pig butchering,” according to the bureau. Scammers target victims, develop a relationship, and introduce a fraudulent investment opportunity in cryptocurrency. Victims are coached to invest more and more money into the fraudulent investment, only to then be unable to withdraw their funds.
Internet-based scams and fraud can range from emergency calls and extortion to identity theft and phishing or spoofing, where scammers identify as a trusted source and aim to gain login details or personal information to steal money or data. The FBI reports that complaints increased nationally by 33% in 2024, with $16.6 billion in losses.
The trans-Alaska pipeline, seen on Oct. 8, 2008, threads over snow-covered terrain in the Brook Range foothills. A gryfalcon is perched on one of the pipeline’s thermosphyons in the lower center of the photo. (Photo by Craig McCaa/U.S. Bureau of Land Management)
Though the state of Alaska is anticipating more oil production in the fiscal year that starts July 1, money from oil continues to make up a dwindling share of general-purpose state revenue, according to a forecast published Wednesday by the Alaska Department of Revenue.
Altogether, the state expects to earn $6.2 billion in general-purpose dollars between July 1, 2026 and June 30, 2027, the next fiscal year. Officially known as “unrestricted general fund revenue,” it’s the section of the budget where lawmakers and governors focus most of their attention.
Federal money and money designated for specific programs can sometimes be shifted around to different priorities, but not easily. General-fund dollars can (and are) assigned to different priorities each year.
The forecast for next year’s unrestricted general fund revenue is higher by almost $260 million than the current year’s expectation, but most of that increase isn’t coming from oil.
Since 2018, an annual transfer from the Alaska Permanent Fund to the state treasury has been the No. 1 source of general-purpose dollars for services and the Permanent Fund dividend.
That’s more true than ever, according to the state forecast.
In the next fiscal year, just 23% of the state’s general-purpose revenue is expected to come from petroleum revenue — royalties, property taxes and production taxes.
The Permanent Fund transfer would account for almost 66% of the general-purpose money.
That difference comes despite an expectation that oil production will rise significantly between this fiscal year and next — from an average of 457,000 barrels of oil per day to 517,800 per day on average.
According to the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, that’s due to the startup of production in the Pikka oil field and other new production on the North Slope.
Despite that new production, oil revenue is expected to rise only slightly — from $1.43 billion to $1.44 billion.
That’s because the state is expecting North Slope oil prices to average just $62 per barrel during the next fiscal year, down from $65.48 in the current fiscal year.
At the same time, the Permanent Fund transfer is rising by almost $200 million, causing oil to become a still-smaller share of state revenue.
Even though revenue is expected to rise between the current fiscal year and the next one, the projected deficit in Dunleavy’s proposed spending plan stands at more than $1.8 billion.
If oil revenue alone were needed to fill that deficit, average North Slope prices would have to be near $100 per barrel, or the state would have to produce more than 1.2 million barrels of oil per day during the next fiscal year, an amount that is geologically, economically and mechanically unfeasible. The state hasn’t posted an annual average of over 1 million barrels of North Slope oil per day since the turn of the century.
Alaska U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan (Alaska Beacon file photos)
Alaska Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan joined Senate Democrats and a handful of other Republicans on Thursday in voting to extend federal subsidies that would have prevented a major spike in health care prices at the end of the year.
Sixty votes were needed to advance a bill containing the extension, but the vote failed 51-48. An alternative Republican-backed bill, which would have offered marginal help to offset the cost increases, also failed despite support from Murkowski and Sullivan.
Barring additional action before Jan. 1, thousands of Alaskans and millions of Americans who buy health insurance through the federal marketplace will pay significantly more for health care next year.
“I would just suggest that we have failed,” Murkowski said in a floor speech following the votes.
Sullivan, in a written statement, said in part that “there is little doubt that a lot of hard-working Alaskans, families, entrepreneurs and small business owners will be negatively impacted if these enhanced premium tax credits expire.”
Both Murkowski and Sullivan said they would continue working to try to find a compromise before the end of the year.
The failed Democratic proposal would have offered a flat three-year extension of subsidies that were put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic emergency and extended during the Biden administration.
Most Republican senators opposed a flat extension and emphasized instances of fraud and abuse, saying that further changes were needed to the program.
Even with those changes, the Republican-backed proposal offered only a small cash payment and didn’t extend the subsidies; many Americans and Alaskans would still face large cost increases.
“Now that both the Republican and Democrat proposals failed to advance, I will redouble my efforts to develop a compromise solution. In the longer-term, we need to focus on getting federal government health care dollars out of the hands of insurance companies and into the hands of the people,” Sullivan said in his statement.
