Alaska Beacon

The politically appointed board that regulates health care in Alaska voted unanimously Friday to recommend that the state restrict medical care for transgender youth in the state and approved a letter asking Alaska lawmakers to end access to abortion in the late stages of pregnancy.

On transgender care, the board approved a draft regulation that — if made final — would declare that providing gender transition care for someone younger than 18 amounts to “unprofessional conduct” equivalent to drunkenly practicing medicine.

Someone violating that regulation could be subject to disciplinary action. In the most extreme cases, the board has revoked medical licenses after a discipline investigation.

The draft regulation is subject to a public comment period before becoming final or being amended.

In a separate action, the board approved a statement declaring that it does not believe that abortions late in pregnancy are “ethical medical practice” and advised Alaskans to lobby the Legislature to change state law.

Currently, access to abortion in Alaska is protected by a precedent set by the Alaska Supreme Court, which has declared that medical care is covered by the personal privacy clause of the Alaska Constitution.

Both actions come amid a push by Republicans nationally to restrict abortion and gender-affirming care for children. Twenty-seven states, almost all of which are controlled by Republican politicians, have enacted laws or policies restricting gender-affirming care for children.

Abortion restrictions are more common, with only Alaska, eight other states, and the District of Columbia, having no restrictions on abortion care.

Board member Dave Wilson, a commercial pilot who sits in a public seat on the board, said before the vote that the transgender care regulation came about because of public requests.

“This was brought to us as a concern by members of the public, and we acted on that. This is not politically driven. This is not politically motivated,” he said.

Next to Wilson’s image in the board’s Zoom meeting was Dr. Matt Heilala, a podiatrist who is a member of the board and a Republican candidate for governor.

All six of the board’s current members were appointed by Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The board has eight seats, but two are vacant. All six sitting members are male; four are from the Matanuska-Susitna Borough and two are from Anchorage.

Under the draft regulation, medical providers would be acting unprofessionally if they provide “medical or surgical intervention to treat gender dysphoria or facilitate gender transition by altering sex characteristics inconsistent with the biological sex at birth, including but not limited to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, mastectomy, phalloplasty, or genital modification to a minor under the age of 18 years old.”

The term “biological sex at birth” has frequently been used by Christian conservatives who believe gender is immutable and cannot be changed once assigned by birth.

That contradicts recommendations from most medical associations in the United States, which have defined gender dysphoria as a disorder that can affect children. The American Academy of Pediatrics, for example, has continuously supported access to chemical and surgical procedures to treat dysphoria and allow someone to potentially seek gender-affirming surgery.

Other countries, including the United Kingdom, have taken a different approach and have restricted gender-affirming care for children.

Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term in office, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has also changed its policy to be against gender-affirming care for youths.

“Earlier in the year, we’ve seen a lot more study that is alarming,” Heilala said during Friday’s board meeting. “Policy shifts across the world, and we have strong support of the governor on this. More than half of the states have either outright banned or curtailed this care. And I think it does need to be pointed out, a regulation is an opportunity and a tool to be used at the discretion of the board.”

He said that if the regulation is enacted, disciplinary sanction isn’t “an obligation … but it is an option.”

Public testimony on Friday was uniformly against the draft regulation.

Tom Pittman is executive director of Identity Inc., which offers gender-affirming care to minors in Alaska.

Speaking to the board, he said the proposed regulation “strips parents of their ability to work with trusted doctors to make the best decisions for their child. It shrinks the already fragile provider network and endangers children’s lives.”

Dr. Lindsey Banning, a licensed psychologist and the parent of a transgender child, said that the benefits of gender-affirming care are well-established.

“It’s quite simply the standard of care for trans folks that’s accepted by all major medical organizations in this country,” she said. “Blocking access to this care has devastating consequences on the health and well being of trans kids, dramatically raising (their) rates of depression, anxiety and suicide, and yet somehow we’re here watching this politically appointed medical board brazenly ask us to ignore the research and opt to politicize the healthcare choices of Alaskans.”

The draft regulation is expected to be vetted by the Alaska Department of Law, then would be published for a 30-day public comment period.

The Alaska Bar Association has voted to recommend that former U.S. District Court Judge Joshua Kindred be disbarred in Alaska.

Kindred, appointed by President Donald Trump to serve as a federal judge here, resigned last year from the federal bench after investigators found that he had a “sexualized relationship” with a clerk who became a prosecutor and lied about it to a senior judge and investigators, and maintained a hostile workplace for law clerks.

Since that investigation, additional improprieties connected to the U.S. attorney’s office have come to light.

On Thursday, the bar association’s board of governors voted without dissent to recommend that Kindred be disbarred, forbidden from practicing law in the state. The bar association regulates attorneys across Alaska.

The board’s recommendation will go to the Alaska Supreme Court, which must make the final determination. No date has been set for when the court will consider the issue.

Kindred, whose law license is “inactive” according to the bar association’s database, did not participate in the investigation that preceded Thursday’s hearing, said Rebecca Patterson, president of the bar association’s board.

Louise Driscoll, assistant counsel for the bar association, said the association received “lots of calls” when the investigation into Kindred was revealed to the public.

Typically, she said, the association prefers to act when a grievance is filed by someone other than the association’s own counsel, but in this case, the association’s counsel filed the grievance itself in November.

The subsequent investigation, she said, was slowed by the fact that Kindred didn’t respond to requests for a response to the grievance. He no longer lived at his address on file. He had left the federal court. Former acquaintances didn’t know where he was.

Eventually, Driscoll said, a process server found Kindred sitting on the couch at his mother’s house.

“It was Mr. Kindred’s mother who answered the door and accepted service, but you could see Mr. Kindred on the sofa, so he was on notice,” she said.

Even then, Kindred didn’t respond, and in June, a committee recommended that Kindred be disbarred.

Driscoll said the committee considered it “very serious” that Kindred had lied to federal investigators about his activities.

“Lawyers are expected to be honest, and the members of the public have a reason to consider that they will be dealing with honest counsel,” she said.

Kindred’s actions, she added, have caused real harm — there are dozens of cases whose outcomes are now in doubt because Kindred failed to disclose conflicts of interest.

In addition, Kindred’s resignation has left only one active judge on Alaska’s district court bench.

“There’s been grievous harm,” Driscoll said of Kindred’s actions.

In a footnote to the disbarment recommendation, the committee said, “We enter our decision not with any joy. It is our collective hope Mr. Kindred can recover emotionally, financially and physically notwithstanding the hardships Mr. Kindred confronts.”

On Thursday, after Driscoll’s suggestion, the board of governors deleted that footnote.

Kindred, they concluded, should receive no more special courtesy than any other attorney facing the same accusations.

Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor will resign Aug. 29, he told employees at the Alaska Department of Law in an all-staff email Thursday afternoon.

Taylor, who became the state’s top attorney in 2021 after his two immediate predecessors resigned in disgrace, is expected by political observers to join a competitive field of candidates running for governor in the state’s 2026 general election.

Incumbent Gov. Mike Dunleavy is term-limited and unable to run for reelection, leaving the office open to challengers.

This week, former Alaska Revenue Commissioner Adam Crum formally confirmed his plans to run for governor, and former state Sen. Tom Begich became the first Democrat to announce a run for the office. Bruce Walden of Palmer, who ran as a write-in candidate in 2022, filed for the office on Wednesday.

In addition to Crum and Walden, seven other Republicans have filed documents for a campaign: former state Sen. Click Bishop of Fairbanks; current state Sen. Shelley Hughes of Palmer, Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom of Eagle River; Matanuska-Susitna Borough Mayor Edna DeVries; podiatrist Matt Heilala of Anchorage; former teacher James William Parkin IV of Angoon; and business owner Bernadette Wilson of Anchorage.

No independents have filed for the office, and Begich is the only Democrat who has filed.

While Taylor has not formally stated that he will run for governor, he has participated in a significant number of non-state events that appear to foreshadow a campaign.

Next Thursday, he was scheduled to join other Republican attorneys general in Anchorage at an event hosted by the Anchorage Republican Women’s Club. It wasn’t immediately clear whether that event would still take place.

In a written statement, Dunleavy thanked Taylor for his service and noted that he will end his career as the third-longest-serving attorney general in state history. In the same statement, Taylor thanked the employees of the Department of Law.

During four and a half years as attorney general, Taylor has tended to favor Christian conservative and Republican causes, aligning the state legally with other Republican attorneys general.

In 2022, Taylor helped fundraising efforts for a Republican group that ran ads opposing more moderate members of the state House and Senate in that year’s elections. Taylor’s family has backed efforts that would allow state homeschool funding to be used for tuition at private and religious schools.

Earlier this year, Taylor’s travel itinerary drew scrutiny after it was revealed that a corporate-funded group had paid at least $20,000 for a trip to France for Taylor and his wife.

Taylor’s time in office has corresponded with a drop in violent and sexual crime within the state. Alaska ranks among the worst states in the nation for both categories of crimes.

Dunleavy is expected to appoint an acting attorney general on or before Aug. 29.

The Alaska State Legislature is planning a brief session without taking any action on Tuesday, and legislative leaders say they’ve already completed their intended work for the special session, which ends on Aug. 31.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy called the 30-day session, which began on Aug. 2, for legislators to address his education policy priorities and to create a new Alaska Department of Agriculture. The Legislature convened — one senator flying back from U.S. National Guard duty in Poland — and within hours voted to override two of the governor’s vetoes. Lawmakers then adjourned until Tuesday.

Legislators voted to leave the session open and not officially close out the special session to prevent Dunleavy from calling them into another one.

On Tuesday, just “a handful” of legislators are expected to be present for what’s known as a “technical session,” said House Speaker Rep. Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, reached by phone Monday in his district.

Edgmon said he was planning to fly back to Juneau to facilitate proceedings in the House on Tuesday, but said it will be brief.

He said the Legislature’s votes to override two of the governor’s vetoes, including restoring $51 million for K-12 schools, was a success – and their only goal for the special session.

“But the specter of the governor calling us right back in seems to be very prominent,” Edgmon said. “And we had to do what we had to do in terms of allowing members to go back home, go back to their districts, not being Juneau, drawing per diem, costing the state money — with the stated intention, of course, of looking at the governor’s bills, continuing to consider the governor’s bills and the subject matter next session, as we started to do last session.”

The governor introduced three bills on Aug. 2, related to education policy, and Edgmon said they have been referred to related committees.

Edgmon said he’s had no communication from the governor’s office since the veto override votes.

“I wish we had a better relationship with the governor, to where we could plan things out, work jointly in terms of any outcomes for a special session. The governor is acting unilaterally, which, of course, is his prerogative, should he choose. But that does not bode well in terms of any kind of a positive result for special session,” he said.

Jeff Turner, the governor’s communications director, said by email Monday, “lawmakers should not need an incentive to improve public education policy,” and that it was the Legislature’s decision to not take up the governor’s bills during this special session.

Turner pointed to the governor’s comments on an Anchorage-based commercial radio show on Aug. 14, where Dunleavy criticized the Legislature’s veto override restoring school funding, and said additional funding is “not going to change the performance outcomes.”

The House and Senate are scheduled to gavel in at 10 a.m. on Tuesday.

A new joint legislative education funding task force is scheduled to hold its first meeting on Aug 25, where its six members are expected to examine how the state funds schools, as well as Dunleavy’s educational policy items.

Four days before a scheduled meeting with the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, over the possibility of a ceasefire that could pause the Russian invasion of Ukraine, President Donald Trump has yet to announce a firm location or timing.

Trump said last week on social media that he would meet Putin in Alaska on Friday.

Speaking to reporters Monday at the White House, Trump said he would seek to temporarily end the fighting that has resulted since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

He said he isn’t certain what a long-term peace deal would involve, but it likely would entail “some swapping … some changes in land,” he said.

“We’re going to change the lines, the battle lines. Russia has occupied a big portion of Ukraine. They’ve occupied some very prime territory. We’re going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine. But they’ve taken some very prime territory,” Trump said.

In a video address Sunday, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared to reject the idea of surrendering land for peace, saying in part that “Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupier.”

Zelenskyy has not been invited to Trump’s talks with Putin.

In meandering remarks Monday, Trump twice appeared to misstate the location of the expected talks, saying at one point, “We’re going to Russia,” before correctly returning to Alaska as the location.

“I thought it was very respectful that the president of Russia is coming to our country instead of us going to his country or a third-party place. I think we’ll have constructive conversations, and then after that meeting, immediately — maybe as I’m flying out, maybe as I’m leaving the room — I’ll be calling the European leaders who I get along with very well and have a great relationship with, I think, all of them,” Trump said Monday.

“I get along with Zelenskyy, but I disagree with what he’s done, very very severely disagree. This is a war that shouldn’t have happened … but I’ll be speaking with Zelenskyy. The next meeting will be with Zelenskyy and Putin, or Zelenskyy, Putin and me. I’ll be there if they need, but I want to have a meeting set up between the two leaders,” Trump said.

Asked what he would consider a good deal between Russia and Ukraine, the president said he hasn’t made up his mind.

“I’ll tell you after I hear what the deal is, because there could be many definitions,” Trump said.

“We’re going to have a meeting with Vladimir Putin,” he said, “and at the end of that meeting, probably in the first two minutes, I’ll know exactly whether or not a deal can be, because that’s what I do.”

On Saturday, Alaska legislators voted 43-16 to override Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of Senate Bill 183, which is intended to compel the executive branch to provide information about settlements paid by oil companies to the state of Alaska, in order to resolve tax disputes with the Alaska Department of Revenue.

That vote was overshadowed by an education funding veto override that took place minutes later, but the override on SB 183 could be more significant for state revenues in the long run.

Since 2020, lawmakers have unsuccessfully attempted to audit the Department of Revenue’s audit division in order to determine whether the state has been settling tax disputes with oil companies for what Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, calls “pennies on the dollar.”

“I would expect that we will see there has been significant underpayments,” he said, explaining that the state had been collecting tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in settlement payments, “and then it dropped to $250,000. Based on the amount that the settlements dropped, which was huge, I expect there’s probably massive underpayments.”

In comparison, Saturday’s veto override on education funding involved just $50.6 million.

Legislative Auditor Kris Curtis, who has worked in that position since 2012, hasn’t been able to examine the Department of Revenue’s work because the department hasn’t provided the necessary information.

Until 2019, the department supplied that information regularly. Curtis previously conducted an audit of the same division in 2014.

“I’ve never seen this type of non-cooperation with any other administration,” she said in an interview Tuesday.

If the department still does not comply with the new law, the joint House-Senate Legislative Budget and Audit Committee is prepared to issue subpoenas to legally compel the department to release the information, said Sen. Elvi Gray-Jackson, D-Anchorage and chair of the committee.

“The engagement letter has been signed and executed, and the attorneys that we hired to move forward with the subpoenas are just waiting for instruction,” she said, speaking to reporters on Saturday.

Curtis said she hopes it doesn’t come to that.

“My plan is to reach out to the agency and basically restart my audit,” she said.

The commissioner of the Alaska Department of Revenue, Adam Crum, is scheduled to resign on Aug. 8, meaning that the audit will take place under a new commissioner.

“I’m hopeful that I can just restart my audit and everything will just proceed,” she said.

Curtis said she can’t provide much information publicly — or even to lawmakers — since the audit process is confidential.

“If they were to provide (the information) right away, it would be a few months,” she said of the timeline to complete her work. “And we also have financial and federal audits that are competing priorities.”

Asked whether the department will provide the information and for a timeline of work, the Department of Revenue forwarded questions to the Office of the Governor.

“The administration will continue to provide the information necessary for the legislative branch to complete its audits,” said Jeff Turner, the governor’s communications director, in an emailed response.

“Yeah, well, we’ll see,” Curtis said when told about the answer. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt.”

Wielechowski said that under SB 183, state officials could face criminal charges if they refuse to comply. That possibility is a long way off, he said.

“The Legislature is not itching for a fight with the executive branch,” he said. “We just want the information.”