Alaska

WASHINGTON — Sen. Lisa Murkowski was among a group of senators who met with the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland Wednesday, trying to provide an assurance that they couldn’t get from the White House: That Greenland is safe from a U.S. military incursion.

“I think it’s important to send the message that here in the Congress, we recognize and support the sovereignty of the people of Greenland,” Murkowski, the sole Republican in the meeting, told reporters afterward.

President Trump continues to say that the United States must take Greenland, for strategic purposes.

Murkowski and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., co-sponsored a bill this week to prohibit the administration from spending any funds to “blockade, occupy, annex or otherwise assert control” over Greenland or the territory of any NATO ally.

“This is a message that I think it’s very clear, and very strong,” Murkowski said. “And, quite honestly, one that I never thought I would have to author and introduce into the United States Congress.”

Murkowski didn’t say whether any other Republicans agreed to support the bill, though Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., gave a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday saying an aggressive move on Greenland would be a calamity and gain the United States nothing.

He, like Murkowski, say seizing Greenland would shatter the NATO alliance.

Murkowski said it’d be better if the president changes his rhetoric on his own, without Congress having to pass her bill.

“I hope it’s ultimately not necessary,” she said. “But we are operating in times where we’re having conversations about things that we never thought even possible.”

Whether Congress has any appetite to rein in the president is unclear.

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said the legislative branch isn’t living up to its constitutional duty to check and balance presidential authority.

“Congress has abdicated its power, largely,” King said. “I’d say it’s the seventh inning. We’re behind four to three, but the game isn’t over.”

Minutes after he said that, the Senate voted to reject a resolution that would have curtailed Trump’s future use of military force in Venezuela.

Alaska’s senators, as expected, split on the issue. Murkowski, like King and all the Senate Democrats, supported the resolution, which would have required Trump to seek Congressional approval for further military action. Sen. Dan Sullivan opposed it.

The vote in the Senate on whether to block the measure was 50-50, requiring Vice President J.D. Vance to cast the tie-breaker.

The business arm of Southeast Alaska’s largest tribe has earned nearly $40 million from U.S. Navy contracts in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba – money some tribal members are concerned comes from supporting immigrant detention. 

While tribal corporation leadership says their operations are separate from the detention center on the military base, what’s happening on the ground may tell a different story.

Guantánamo Bay is the site of an active U.S. Navy base with about 6,000 military personnel living and working there. It also houses a detention facility. That facility’s main purpose was to detain people accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. 

The Trump administration has been using the detention facility to detain migrants as part of its aggressive deportation policies that many deem inhumane and unconstitutional.

Tlingit Haida Tribal Business Corporation is the business arm of the Southeast Alaska tribal  government — the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. The corporation currently has a contract in Guantánamo Bay.

In 2018, the corporation’s subsidiary, KIRA, announced a contract with the U.S. Navy to provide maintenance services, port operations and waterfront administration for the base. That contract lasted until 2022. According to a government website that tracks contracts, a similar contract started two months before it ended and is set to last until February 2028. The value of the two contracts together has so far reached just under $40 million.

Tlingit and Haida said the corporation’s contract provides services to the Navy base; it does not support detention operations at the base. But some tribal members, like Clarice Johnson, have doubts about that.

Tribal involvement in Trump’s detention operations

Johnson said she’s been concerned about the contract since it began seven years ago. But when the Trump administration vowed to hold thousands of immigrants in Guantánamo, it brought new urgency to her concerns.

“It makes me ill to think of Tlingit and Haida making money off the abuse of other people,” Johnson said. “Especially those who are just looking for a better life.” 

Guantánamo Bay’s detention center has been known for human rights violations for decades. It’s also notoriously secretive.

In 2023, a United Nations investigator researched the facility and reported “ongoing cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.” The report suggested that the facility be closed. But two years later, the second Trump administration pledged to use it for migrant detention. 

In other parts of the state, Alaska Native tribal members have protested their corporations’ investments in immigration detention centers. NANA Regional Corporation’s subsidiary, Akima, has been directly investing in ICE detention operations, including in Guantánamo Bay, for years. 

In the rest of the United States, Indigenous people are questioning their own tribal governments’ involvement in detention centers.

When stories about inhumane conditions at Akima-run detention centers surfaced this fall, Johnson said she started posting in a Facebook group called “Shareholders of Sealaska,” to make sure tribal members like her knew Tlingit and Haida also had connections to Guantánamo Bay. 

“I didn’t want people to forget that whenever they’re criticizing other corporations for doing this, that our own tribe was also participating,” she said.

Her posts garnered discussion with other tribal members, who posted their own concerns. In response to public criticism, Tlingit and Haida posted a statement in early December saying the contract is “strictly limited to the operation and maintenance of multiple watercraft and port facilities,” and that the corporation is obligated to continue the work until the contract ends. 

What Tlingit Haida Tribal Business Corporation is doing in Guantánamo Bay

But Johnson is worried that some of those watercraft transport migrants to the detention center in Guantánamo Bay.

Richard Rinehart is the CEO of Tlingit Haida Tribal Business Corporation. He said it’s against taking on contracts that assist in immigration detention. 

“We don’t have anything to do with that,” Rinehart said.

Instead, the corporation contract relates to vessel operation and maintenance, he said. 

“We run a ferry that goes from the leeward side, which is where the airport is, to the windward side, which is where the naval base is,” he said. “Goes back and forth.”

However, Rinehart said he’s heard that the ferry the corporation operates is used to transport detainees. But, he said, he and his staff aren’t involved with that process. 

“There are times — I hear, I’ve not seen this — but my manager there tells me that they do come across and they’ll put somebody on the ferry. It’s usually late at night, and it’s all just their vehicles, all their staff,” he said. “They move across and they go to the airport, but we have the only ferry going from the airport to the windward side, where everything is.” 

At least 700 migrants were detained at Guantánamo Bay in the past year, and were initially flown there, according to previous reporting by NPR and the New York Times. 

In an email to KTOO in response to follow-up questions, Rinehart said he could not speak to how many migrants have been transported via the ferry the tribal corporation maintains and operates. 

KTOO could not confirm whether or not there is another way migrant detainees are transported from the airport to the facilities they are held in. 

From the corporation’s perspective, he said involvement in migrant transport is “outside our visibility and control and is not tracked, directed, or managed by [Tlingit Haida Tribal Business Corporation] as part of our contractual duties.” 

Though Guantánamo Bay is often linked with the detention facility, Rinehart says he doesn’t think a lot of people realize it’s primarily a naval base with about 6,000 military personnel. And that’s who Rinehart said the contract serves. 

Johnson said even incidental involvement in migrant detention is still too close for her comfort. 

“I understand why they want to claim six degrees of separation from ICE,” she said. “But I think that their actions at Guantánamo Bay place them in much closer proximity than many tribal citizens realize.”

And she wants to know if the tribal corporation will take a stance on migrant detention as more opportunities to profit from it arise. 

“Will Tlingit and Haida jump on the money train?” Johnson said. “Or will they actually have guidelines on which contracts they will bid on, as some corporations have?”

Clarification: This story has been updated to reflect that Tlingit Haida Tribal Business Corporation has earned nearly $40 million from U.S. Navy contracts in Guantánamo Bay. 

Residents living in avalanche-prone downtown neighborhoods got the all-clear to return home Wednesday after the city lifted its last remaining evacuation advisory this morning. 

Mary Amor was finally preparing to leave Juneau’s emergency shelter at Centennial Hall. She’s been staying there with her brother since last Friday, when the city issued an evacuation advisory for residents in all known slide paths downtown and along Thane Road.

“I know that a snow avalanche is nothing to play with,” she said. 

Amor lives on Gastineau Avenue, which borders the city’s avalanche hazard zone and has seen multiple landslides in recent years. She evacuated with her brother because they were scared for their safety. Amor is in her 60s and is disabled. 

She said living away from her home has been stressful, but she was grateful to have a safe place to hunker down.  

“It’s much a blessing, because there ain’t nowhere else to go out except outside,” Amor said. “This is a real blessing, them helping out the people that need it, in a time of need.”

Amor was one of 13 people to stay at the shelter Tuesday night, according to Britt Tonnessen, the community disaster program manager for the American Red Cross of Alaska in Southeast. She says more than 50 people used the shelter over the six days that the risk of large avalanches loomed over downtown neighborhoods and Thane. 

“The partners that came together, I think, did a really incredible job and utilized the limited resources we have in Juneau, brought in what was needed and cared for people to the extent that we could,” she said. 

The Red Cross plans to close the shelter on Thursday morning. 

Some evacuees stayed with family or friends instead, like Carlos Cadiente and his wife. Cadiente said he returned to his home in the Behrends slide path Sunday night after looking at the remaining snow on Mount Juneau and deciding he felt safe enough.

And he said he’s glad to be back.

“Oh it’s a relief,” Cadiente said. “I’m happy that the big one didn’t come down. I mean, nobody got hurt.”

But now, he said his basement is flooding, and he thinks it’s because some of the shingles on his roof are too short to shed water away from the house.

The Behrends neighborhood evacuation advisory ended Wednesday morning, after the advisory for all other neighborhoods, including Amor’s, ended Sunday evening. 

John Bressette is an avalanche advisor at the City and Borough of Juneau. He said that the city didn’t decide to lift the evacuation advisory lightly. 

“I think people can feel good about going back to their homes,” he said. 

Concern grew again on Tuesday due to winds forecasted to reach as high as 60 miles per hour overnight. 

But Bressette said the city’s new radar system did not detect any new avalanches on Mount Juneau overnight. On Wednesday morning, drone flights showed him that previously undetected avalanches at high elevations had happened earlier on the Behrends slide path, then the rain and warm air melted a lot of the snow that would have made a large avalanche possible. 

“Overall snow levels being reduced quite a bit by all the rain, especially in the lower elevations, where avalanches have a tendency to entrain more snow. There’s just not a whole lot of snow left for that to happen,” he said. 

But Bressette said people in avalanche zones should keep ‘go’ bags packed in case conditions change. 

Alaska’s congressional delegation introduced legislation Wednesday that aims to reduce bycatch in parts of southwest Alaska using better marine data, technology and gear.

The Bycatch Reduction and Research Act, introduced by U.S. Sens. Dan Sullivan, Lisa Murkowski and Congressman Nick Begich, would address research gaps in environmental data and improve monitoring of fisheries in the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands and Gulf of Alaska. It would also establish a fund for fishermen to purchase updated technology and trawl gear to limit seafloor contact and bycatch. That’s when harvesters accidentally catch species they’re not targeting.

The proposed legislation builds on recommendations from the federal Alaska Salmon Research Task Force, which concluded in 2024 and aimed to better understand how humans cause declines in fish and crab species, including through factors like bycatch.

The legislation would revive the salmon task force under the new name of the Bycatch Reduction and Research Task Force. The group would review National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research on Alaska salmon and trawl gear impacts on the seafloor, and provide recommendations for future research.

“In recent years, Alaskans have witnessed unprecedented declines among some fish and crab species in parts of the state while, in other parts, runs have been strong and historic,” Sullivan said in a press release. “We need to get to the bottom of all potential causes of this increased variability, including concerns about bycatch and trawl gear habitat impacts, to strengthen the sustainability of our fisheries.”

For years, fisheries stakeholders have debated if and how fishing gear types, especially trawl gear, impacts marine species and seafloor habitats. Conservation and tribal groups and various stakeholders have pushed fisheries managers to take stronger action on limiting both bycatch and seafloor contact in trawling.

Representatives in the trawl industry have supported stricter regulations around bycatch, but also cautioned that more extreme limitations could be burdensome to the massive pollock industry, which is a major economic driver to some Western Alaska communities, including Unalaska.

The regional council that manages Alaska’s federal fisheries will discuss chum salmon bycatch management at its upcoming meeting in early February.

The proposed legislation still has to pass both the Senate and House before it would go to the president to be signed into law.

The Alaska House of Representatives will have two new faces when lawmakers return next week for the start of the legislative session. Gov. Mike Dunleavy appointed Mat-Su Republicans Steve St. Clair and Garret Nelson to fill two open seats in the state House.

So, who are these two new lawmakers, and what do they hope to accomplish in their first year as a budget crunch looms?

The newcomer: Rep. Garret Nelson, R-Sutton

Newly minted Rep. Garret Nelson says he’s doing his best to get up to speed with the session fast approaching.

“I’ve never been up until 2 o’clock in the morning so many days in a week in my life as I have been this week, trying to figure this stuff out,” Nelson said in an interview.

Nelson grew up on a family cattle ranch in Mackay, Idaho, and has spent most of his life in the private sector. He spent some of his early career as a welder, later moving into sales at the financial services firm Gravity Payments. He, his wife and nine children moved to the Mat-Su community of Sutton in 2016, where he served as chair of the local community council.

Nelson is steeling himself for what could be a tough first year. He called the world of politics a “cesspool.”

“My expectations are, like, to hold to principles as much as I can,” he said. “I just expect to go down and get my teeth kicked in.”

Nelson has already found himself in something of a spat with a senior Republican senator, Anchorage Sen. Cathy Giessel, who suggested in a newsletter that his large family could compromise his ability to act in the state’s best interest when voting on the Permanent Fund dividend.

“At what point does a vote for a ‘full dividend’ comprise a conflict of interest, or even a breach of ethics? Legislators have gone to jail in the past for accepting money in payment for their votes,” Giessel wrote in a newsletter to constituents.

Nelson said the comment was “grossly inappropriate” and “weird.”

In a text message, Giessel stood by the comment and said she had raised a legitimate question. Giessel said any suggestion that she had insulted Nelson’s family was “absurd.”

Nelson calls himself an “unashamed conservative” and often references his Christian faith and devotion to family. He says he’s in favor of paying large Permanent Fund dividends in line with a formula outlined in state law, about $3,800 this year. Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s budget proposal would do exactly that by taking $1.8 billion from the state’s main savings account.

At the same time, though, Nelson said that drawing from savings might not be the right move. The state shouldn’t just try to live off its savings and put off harder questions for another day, he said, just as a family shouldn’t spend more than it brings in.

“We could raid the Permanent Fund and pay all our bills this year, piece of cake, you know what I’m saying? We could pay all the bills and give everyone a full PFD, and everyone’s going to be happy, but that’s not a good long term solution.”

Nelson says he hasn’t quite figured out the right approach — he says he’s still boning up on the ins and outs of the myriad issues facing the Legislature.

But Nelson says he’s planning to bring with him a built-in support system. Nelson says the whole family will join him in Juneau for the session.

“The way that we’re doing it is, like, it’s a family adventure,” he said. “We are all in this together.”

The veteran: Rep. Steve St. Clair, R-Wasilla

Joining Nelson in the House is Rep. Steve St. Clair, a longtime staffer for former House speaker and now-Sen. Cathy Tilton, a Wasilla Republican. St. Clair spent two decades as a military policeman, including a stint at Fort Wainwright in the early 2000s, before moving into conservative politics.

Like Nelson, St. Clair said in an interview that he, too, is spending long nights preparing for his first session. But with seven years of experience in the Capitol, plus an MBA, he said he thinks he’ll be able to hit the ground running.

“I’m a budget guy,” he said, “but I’m also very familiar with all the other departments, their budgets. I’ve worked on amendments. I’ve worked on bills.”

That means he’s coming into the session with some ideas for how to shrink the state’s budget gap — for example, freezing state workers’ pay, and gradually reducing so-called optional Medicaid services offered by the state. Those include things like dental and vision care and prescription drugs.

“They’re not required by law. Basically, it’s the Cadillac version instead of the (Ford) Pinto version,” he said. “I think we need to pare that down.”

St. Clair said he’s also concerned about proposals to restructure the Permanent Fund to function more like a university endowment, one area he expects the bipartisan House and Senate majorities to focus on this year.

But on most fronts, St. Clair acknowledged he might not get his way, given that he’s in the minority for his first year in office.

St. Clair said he’s not expecting lawmakers to solve the state’s budget issues in the four months of the session, given that it’s an election year, but St. Clair says he’ll do his best to contribute.

“I’m humbled to be here and (I’m) going to do the best I can for my district and Alaskans,” he said.

A Juneau-born athlete is headed to Italy next month to represent Team USA’s biathlon team in the 2026 Olympic Winter Games. 

Last month, 24-year-old Maxime Germain made the team for the event that combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting. 

This week, Germain spoke to KTOO from Germany, where he’s racing in the Biathlon World Cup. He said he’s very excited to represent Alaska, as well as the U.S., in the Olympic Winter Games. 

“There are a lot of opportunities, especially (because) our sport has never had a medal,” he said. “As a team, we’re very excited, and I’m very excited to get that opportunity this year.”

Germain was born in Juneau in 2001, but he says his family moved away after about a year. Then, after living in Hawaii and France, he returned to Juneau for another year to attend kindergarten at Sayéik: Gastineau Community School. 

“I didn’t ski when I was a little kid in Juneau because there was no snow and also I was too young,” he said. “But it made me appreciate the wild as well. I like training in the mountains and open areas like Alaska.”

He spent most of his youth in France, but returned to Alaska when he was a teenager, where he graduated from West Anchorage High School in 2019. During his time in Anchorage, he trained with the Anchorage Biathlon Club and raced for the APU Nordic Ski Center. 

“Maxime has worked really hard throughout the off season, improving his mental game and bringing an overall level up to the World Cup this year,” said Lowell Bailey, U.S. Biathlon High Performance Director, in a press release. “This showed right away at the first World Cup in Ostersund, where he proved he can be among the world’s fastest and best biathletes. Maxime will be a great addition to the U.S. Olympic team!”

Germain said he’s grateful for his time in Alaska. He said living and training in the state was pivotal for his career. He pointed to other successful skiers that have come out of the state, like Gus Schumacher, Luke Jager and Zanden McMullen.

“The Alaskan community in Nordic is awesome. Like, we’re one of the highest producers of high-end athletes in the country, especially in Nordic,” he said. 

The 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Italy begin on Feb. 6.