Federal Government

Liza Sanden put the first weeks of the government shutdown to good use with end-of-summer chores at her East Anchorage home. She pickled beets. She made jam.

“These last two weeks, though, have definitely been – the anxiety has been tripping up,” she said. “When are we going to go back to work? When am I going to get a paycheck again?”

As the government funding lapse became the longest in U.S. history, Sanden is one of thousands of federal workers in Alaska who are on furlough and not getting paid. Thousands of other Alaskan civil servants are working without pay.

Alaska, more than most states, is highly dependent on the federal government, for the services the employees provide and the money that fuels the economy. The state is home to some 15,000 federal workers and the shutdown affects each differently. Many we contacted for this story said they didn’t want to give their names. A few mentioned a silver lining: On furlough they don’t feel as much stress from layoff threats and working in an administration that has low regard for civil service.

One furloughed employee in Anchorage said he has traded the feeling of besiegement for new financial stress as he runs up his credit cards.

Sanden, an employee of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, considers her family luckier than some. She’s taken a furlough gig as a substitute teacher. Her husband collects a pension. They aren’t in danger of losing their house. But without her regular paycheck, the family is economizing. Sanden said her kids are old enough to understand the situation and have pared their Christmas lists.

“When your teenagers ask for $20 LEGO sets, as opposed to Xboxes and new cell phones, I appreciate them, you know, trying to be reasonable,” Sanden said.

She did not want to discuss the politics of the shutdown. Others didn’t mind.

“Even before the shutdown, national parks were facing the biggest staff and budget cuts in history,” said Jason Rogers, a National Park Service archaeologist.

He blames the Trump administration and the Republican leadership in Congress, for the funding lapse and more.

“The administration has imposed new rules censoring what park employees can say about things like gender, like sexual orientation, like basic facts about American history,” he said. “So yes, I’m scared of retribution. But at this point, it’s too important, and I feel like I need to speak out.”

Rogers said the loss of federal pay has cascading effects, beyond the federal workforce.

“My landlord, who doesn’t necessarily pay much attention to politics at all, is suddenly concerned because, of course, he’s worried if I’m going to be able to pay my rent,” Rogers said. “And I’m worried if I’m going to be able to pay my rent.”

The government, he said, has a legal obligation to send backpay when the shutdown ends, but he noticed that the Trump administration is also suggesting that it might not.

“I think at this point, nobody has any guarantees,” he said.

Stephanie Rice, who works for the Bureau of Land Management, has a lot to say. But first her caveat: “I am giving this interview in my personal capacity,” she said, enunciating carefully, “expressing my personal views on a matter of public concern.”

Rice, president of her local union, said that shows she’s exercising her right to free speech and, in theory, shouldn’t face retribution. She doesn’t think her job is safe. Still, she’s calling for action against those in the administration who aren’t spending money as Congress directed.

“They have to impeach these officials,” she said. “If these officials will not follow the law, that is the answer. That is the solution. And Congress has that power.”

Rice and her colleagues are keeping their spirits up by sharing photos of themselves hiking and engaged in hobbies — making, as she put it, lemonade of the furlough.

“They’re really leaning into their volunteer activities,” she said of her co-workers. “They’re getting house projects done. They’re able to spend a little more time with their kids. But it’s still very stressful.”

An extra stress on Interior Department employees is that the administration has already said it intends to fire a lot of them. A judge stopped the government from laying off workers during the shutdown. But once the money starts flowing again, Rice said her particular office within the BLM, which is part of Interior, is slated for a 50% reduction.

“If all we do is hide under our desks — they’re gonna lay me off anyways, so I might as well go down swinging,” she said.

At the U.S. Capitol this week, senators are discussing how to end the shutdown. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters key details are nearing completion.

Senators, like their House counterparts, are slated to be off next week.

The long-planned Donlin Gold mine in Southwest Alaska is the latest Alaska project to gain the support of a federal agency seeking to streamline permitting.

The Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council announced in late October that it had added the massive proposed open-pit mine to a list of projects covered by an obscure Obama-era law meant to speed development, the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act. It’s part of a larger push by the Trump administration to expand resource development in Alaska and around the country.

In an interview, Donlin Gold’s environmental and permitting manager, Enric Fernandez, said the designation will likely not accelerate the mine’s timeline. But the so-called FAST-41 designation gives the company more confidence that it’ll be able to move toward a final investment decision in 2027, he said.

“What the program is going to provide is more certainty on the permitting schedule, you know, and also, you know, accountability for the agencies and transparency on the process,” Fernandez said.

The designation does not allow the mine to skip any steps in the lengthy process to make the mine a reality, he said. Work will begin soon on an updated environmental analysis ordered by a federal court to evaluate the possible impacts of a large spill of mine waste, or tailings, he said.

The project has been in the works for years — the company submitted its first federal permit back in 2012, Fernandez said. The head of the Federal Permitting Council, Emily Domenech, said in an interview that the designation was in line with the Trump administration’s resource development and national security goals.

“Up until this administration, the average time to complete a mine to get through the full federal permitting process was just shy of 30 years, which is just completely unacceptable and makes it impossible for us to really effectively compete with China and other adversaries looking to develop critical minerals around the world,” she said.

The project is controversial. Mine tailings would be stored approximately 10 miles from the Kuskokwim River near the village of Crooked Creek, upstream from communities that depend on the river’s salmon for their food supply. More than a dozen tribal governments and a regional tribal consortium, the Association of Village Council Presidents, have opposed the mine, and some have challenged it in court citing the potential for contamination.

“This insensitive federal action is particularly inappropriate while our region’s Tribes are waiting on the mine’s federal permitting agencies to address flaws identified by a federal court and, more importantly, responding to the humanitarian crisis following the hit our region took from Typhoon Halong,” the Mother Kuskokwim Tribal Coalition said in a statement. “A rushed permitting process threatens to override critical environmental protections and silence Yukon-Kuskokwim communities who depend on healthy rivers for survival.”

Some other tribal groups have backed it — notably, the Calista Corp. which owns the resources the mine would target. The company says it would generate royalties for the Native corporation and its shareholders across the region and Alaska Native corporation shareholders across the state, and improve the region’s economy.

Environmental groups have also opposed the mine. Lindsey Bloom with the group SalmonState said in an interview the fast-track designation was inappropriate for a gold mine.

“Gold is not a critical mineral,” she said. “There’s plenty of it already, and … whether or not we develop Donlin will have no effect on our national security.”

Bloom said she saw the designation as an effort to make the project more attractive to investors.

Alaska might soon regulate its own hazardous waste if the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency authorizes the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation’s new hazardous waste program.

Alaska is one of only two U.S. states without an authorized program, the other being Iowa. That means the EPA regulates the generation, storage and disposal of the state’s hazardous waste. 

Lori Aldrich, the manager of the state’s new hazardous waste program, said the team consists of six DEC employees, including her, who have been training to take on the responsibility for the past three years. If the program gets federal approval, she said the team will take the lead on permitting, inspections and clean-ups instead of the EPA. 

“Honestly, for Alaska, it doesn’t mean that much change, except that you’re going to have somebody at ADEC here to call,” Aldrich said.

The state Legislature adopted new hazardous waste regulations in 2023 that went into effect this summer. For the most part, the state’s rules now mirror the federal rules under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

According to the most recent EPA data, 2,729 tons of hazardous waste were generated in Alaska in 2023. The three largest producers were the Petro Star Valdez Refinery, Eielson Air Force Base — a Superfund site in Fairbanks — and a company that handles hazardous waste and spills. Together, they were responsible for 57% of the hazardous waste generated in Alaska that year.

Aldrich said Alaska’s generation rate is quite low compared to most other states, and one reason is that petroleum, on its own, is not categorized as hazardous waste. 

She said businesses commonly toss things like cleaning solvents, paint and oil contaminated with other chemicals, which are hazardous wastes. Some things are hazardous due to their toxicity, while others are hazardous because of how they react. 

For instance, “cylinder gas is a hazardous waste if you’re throwing it away, because it could blow up,” Aldrich said.

She said that if the program gets approved, her team will start with a lot of outreach to educate Alaskans about what counts as hazardous waste. 

“Getting people to manage it properly and to make sure that it’s not impacting health or environment here in Alaska is what’s the most important part of our job,” she said.

Aldrich said that almost all of the hazardous waste in Alaska is shipped to disposal facilities in the Lower 48, and that her team would only be in charge of the waste when it’s within state boundaries. 

The public comment period on the state’s application to the EPA is open until December 8.

Listen here:

A controversial higher education compact from the Trump administration has sparked a petition from several University of Alaska unions, who say they’re worried about political overreach stifling academic freedom. 

Several University of Alaska staff and community members testified against the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education on Monday, ahead of the UA Board of Regents meeting later this week. A petition from unions representing faculty, graduate workers and university staff opposing the compact also received 659 signatures.

Jill Dumesnil is a mathematics professor for University of Alaska Southeast and the president of the faculty union United Academics AAUP/AFT. She said in an interview that the compact ties federal funding to a political agenda.

“It restricts the freedom to teach, research and learn,” she said. “It undermines institutional autonomy and self governance, and it ties benefits, research benefits, to factors other than scientific merit.”

The compact lays out requirements for universities to receive federal funding. Part of the compact instructs universities “to seek such a broad spectrum of viewpoints not just in the university as a whole, but within every field, department, school, and teaching unit.” It also includes a 5-year tuition freeze and limits how many international students a university can admit.

The U.S Department of Education initially sent the compact to nine universities, and most of them rejected it. In a Truth Social post last month, Trump said any higher education institution in the country could sign on to it.

Even though the UA Board of Regents has not made any move to accept the compact so far, Dumesnil said they want to make their voices heard on the issue. In February, the board suddenly approved a motion to scrub mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion in a process that didn’t give the public an opportunity to comment. 

“We didn’t want that to happen again. So that’s why we, we went ahead and told them what we, what we thought,” she said. “And you know, that’s all we can do.”

Kate Quick works for United Academics at the university, but testified on Monday as an individual. She says the February motion had a “chilling effect” on people in the university and community.

“When the compact came out, people started to say, ‘Oh, just wait. The board will be the first to sign,’” Quick said. “And so that’s why this petition went around, and that’s why people are calling tonight to ask you not to sign.”

But Jonathon Taylor, the director of public affairs for the university, says the motion from February is different from the compact because it was based on a direct communication from the federal Department of Education.

“If there’s a question as to whether or not the university needs to take action on particular direction or guidance changes or policy changes that have been made, we need to see those official communications to the university, because that’s what the standard practice is,” Taylor said.

Taylor said the agenda for this week’s meeting doesn’t include discussion or action items on the compact. The board is scheduled to meet on Thursday and Friday in Anchorage.

For wage-earning Alaskans who were displaced by the remnants of Typhoon Halong, a powerful storm that lashed the western coast of the state earlier this month, qualifying for one special type of federal assistance could be a cinch.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Disaster Unemployment Assistance program provides financial benefits to people who cannot perform their normal jobs because of disaster interference. One qualification for the benefits — $153 to $370 per week for up to 27 weeks, according to the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development — is an inability to reach normal worksites.

Among the hundreds of Yukon-Kuskokwim region residents who were evacuated by military flights to Anchorage, nearly 500 miles to the east of their home villages, those that held wage-earning jobs in their home villages easily meet that requirement.

Beyond that weekly benefit, many evacuees will need to earn income over what might be a prolonged period away from home. To meet that need, companies and government agencies are seeking to place evacuees in temporary jobs and training programs.

At the forefront of those efforts is Calista Corporation, the Alaska Native corporation for the Yukon-Kuskokwim region. It has a series of programs underway to help displaced residents find work and training.

Cleanup and recovery work is a logical opportunity for people from storm-damaged villages, said Thom Leonard, Calista’s vice president for corporate affairs. But there are some obstacles to starting those recovery jobs.

“One of the challenges is: When are they going to go, and where are they going to stay if they are able to go back to the villages?” he said. Villages that lack power, water and other basic services might not yet be able to house the people who would do the cleanup and recovery work to make those villages habitable again, he said. “It’s kind of a chicken-and-egg situation,” he said.

Calista’s construction and environmental services subsidiary, Calista Brice, has been enlisted in the disaster response and is hiring people from affected villages, Leonard said.

More generally, Calista and other partners held a career workshop on Wednesday for evacuees at the William A. Egan Civic and Convention Center in Anchorage, and more such events are planned. Through those events, Calista’s workforce and shareholder team, which operates a year-round program, is connecting displaced residents with job-training opportunities.

Calista has also offered temporary office space to tribal governments from Kipnuk and Kwigillingok, the coastal villages most heavily hit by the storm. The Kipnuk tribal government has taken Calista up on that offer, Leonard said.

Among the individuals getting help from Calista at the Egan Center on Tuesday were Carl and Stephanie Anaver of Kipnuk.

Stephanie inquired about the possibility of working as a home health care aide for her aged sister, and Carl was seeking a building maintenance job similar to the work he was doing at the Kipnuk Clinic. Regina Therachik, manager of Calista’s workforce shareholder development program, counseled them in Yup’ik.

Anchorage was not their first choice for a relocation spot, Stephanie Anaver said. “I wanted to stay in Bethel. But since Bethel was full, they brought us here,” she said in a brief interview.

Rather than staying in Anchorage, the couple has made a temporary home in Wasilla with a family member, she said.

The time in Southcentral Alaska is shaping up to be a period of limbo for the couple. Exactly when the couple will return to Kipnuk, or even if that is possible, is unknown, Stephanie said.

“If they relocate Kipunk to higher ground, yeah, I’ll go back to Kipnuk,” she said.

People who rely on food assistance from SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, could have their electronic benefits cards refilled as soon as this week. Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued a state disaster declaration Monday in an effort to free up state funds to make up for federal money delayed by the Trump administration amid the government shutdown.

“The interruption of these benefits would create an immediate threat of food insecurity and hardship, jeopardize the health and well-being of a substantial population within the state, and a direct threat to public health,” Dunleavy wrote in the disaster declaration.

The roughly 66,000 Alaskans who participate in the federally funded, state-run SNAP program did not have their cards refilled on Saturday as scheduled. Until this weekend, the Trump administration said that funding for the program would run out Nov. 1.

On Friday, two federal judges ordered the administration to tap a contingency fund to at least partially fund SNAP benefits. But the Trump administration says it’ll take time for that money to be distributed, and the administration says it only has enough money to fund half of SNAP recipients’ typical benefits.

Dunleavy’s disaster declaration allows the state to refill benefit cards with state funds quickly and offer money to food banks around the state already stressed by the response to ex-Typhoon Halong and the federal government shutdown.

State House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, an Independent from Dillingham, said in a phone interview it was clear the state needed to act to help Alaskans struggling to put food on the table.

“Compelling stories all around the state of single families and elderly people and others not being able to get food because their cards had run out, you know, were already beginning to come to light, so we knew we had to act quickly,” he said. “I’m really pleased working with the governor and Senate President (Gary) Stevens, that we were able to put our heads together and make this happen.”

Dunleavy previously said it would likely take weeks for any state money to flow to beneficiaries. But on Sunday, Edgmon said, the contractor that handles SNAP cards told the state that recipients’ debit cards could be reloaded much sooner.

As of Monday afternoon, a Department of Health spokesperson, Shirley Sakaye, estimated cards could be refilled by Friday, Nov. 7.

Edgmon said the disaster declaration eliminates the need for a special legislative session to address the issue. Lawmakers and the governor had floated a special session as a possibility as they considered ways to ensure food assistance continued to flow.

Stevens, the Senate president, said the money would likely come from already-appropriated but unused funds in the Division of Public Assistance. Stevens said lawmakers would seek to replace the money with a new appropriation when lawmakers return to Juneau in January. He said he hoped the federal government would reimburse the state at a later date.

The solution is temporary, Stevens said, and likely not sustainable in the long term if the federal government remains closed. The program costs around $8 million per week, he said.

“It would be problematic for us to fill that amount of money on an ongoing basis,” Stevens said.

Democrats and Republicans in Congress have yet to come to an agreement to restore funding for the federal government in a dispute over expiring federal health insurance subsidies. How long the shutdown will last remains an open question.