Federal Government

Federal funds for adult education services were among those blocked by the Trump administration on July 1, causing immediate cuts to Alaska adult education and workforce development programs and staff layoffs.

The U.S. Department of Education has withheld more than $6 billion in congressionally approved grants for education, including over $629 million for adult education basic grants, and more than $85 million in adult integrated English literacy and civics education grants. The administration has said that it’s withholding the federal funding to review the grant programs to ensure they align with the Republican president’s priorities.

Adult education can range from classes that help adults learn basic literacy to programs that assist students in gaining certificates equivalent to high school diplomas, and can teach skills that are essential to performing certain jobs.

Alaska had over $1.1 million allocated as part of an adult education basic grant, according to the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, which administers the grants. A department spokesperson said on Tuesday the grant amounts for English literacy and civics education this year were not available, but the state received more than $99,600 last year.

The withheld funds means immediate cuts to services for Alaska adult learners and staff layoffs, according to grant recipients.

“We were definitely blindsided,” said Lucie Magrath, executive director of the Literacy Council of Alaska, a Fairbanks-based nonprofit that provides adult education programs, including adult literacy, English language learning, civics and General Educational Development, or GED, preparation classes.

Magrath said an estimated $180,000 in federal funding, or over half of their budget, was impounded, causing immediate cuts to services and staff layoffs. While the organization did not identify the number of layoffs in an interview last week, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner has since reported that there were five layoffs.

“So we are having to make some pretty drastic decisions with staffing and programming,” she said in a phone interview on Thursday. “We likely will not be able to serve nearly as many people this year, and we’re making staffing cuts right now.”

The organization provides in-person and virtual instruction and mentoring to adult learners in Fairbanks, as well as in villages in the Interior and Western Alaska, stretching from the Yukon Flats to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.

They also have a workforce development program, the Pathways Program, serving youths and young adults ages 16 to 24, and run the used bookstore Forget-Me-Not Books in Fairbanks, which provides revenues for its programs, jobs training and employment.

Shelby Cooke is the assistant executive director of the Literacy Council of Alaska, and said it’s difficult to fill such a large funding gap, especially on such short notice, and Alaskans will be impacted.

“The real detriment is to our students and Alaskans who need that GED credential to go to work, or maybe they’re a super-skilled person in their native tongue, but they need enough English to be able to navigate a job interview,” she said. “Those are the folks that are suffering, and in turn, our economy suffers too.”

Magrath said some programs will be suspended immediately. It’s possible that these suspensions will be temporary, as her organization figures out its next steps. “We’re looking at restructuring some of our programs just to be able to use the resources that we have to the maximum impact for our community and our students,” she said. “So we have a lot to figure out right now.”

Southeast Regional Resource Center is a nonprofit educational services agency that provides a variety of services statewide, including adult education, English language learning and workforce development programs. In addition, SERRC provides educational and business services to school districts, including special education programs, human resources and grant administration.

“We do have some state funds, and so we’ve had to modify our budget just off what we know we have for funding — for state funds — and we are looking at having to reduce our staffing,” said Chris Reitan, its executive director, in a phone interview Thursday. He said the organization is looking at cutting at least two staff positions and a few part-time positions. “So we are concerned about the ability to have the same level of impact.”

Reitan said the federal funding freeze withheld over $86,600 for adult education programs in Southeast Alaska, and over $64,000 in the Aleutians region.

He said SERRC’s program served 112 students last year in the areas of GED support, English language learning and workforce development across the state.

“Number one, adult education provides a kind of a lifeline for Alaskans seeking to improve their lives, and it also helps strengthen our state’s workforce,” he said, and will have an immediate impact on adult learners, “which then could immediately impact their ability in regards to getting good-paying jobs, their ability to provide for their families, their ability to contribute to their local communities.”

He added: “I see this as being a significant impact across the state, in regards to our citizens being able to have the opportunity to better themselves.”

SERRC and the Literacy Council of Alaska are two of 14 adult education programs across the state with grant funding administered by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development. A department spokesperson, Adam Weinert, said by email that the department has continued to award available state matching funds for the programs, totaling more than $1.9 million.

“Sub-grantees were informed that we were moving forward at this time with state funding only,”  Weinert said of the programs. “Once federal funding is released, we will move forward with a budget modification to provide for the federal funding.”

The full impact of how the freeze will affect some programs in the long term remains unclear.

The University of Alaska system has several adult education programs, funded in part by federal funds, as well as state and local funding. Jonathan Taylor, the university’s director of communications, said by email Monday that “discussions are ongoing” around funding but those programs are scheduled to continue.

Taylor said at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the Bristol Bay Adult Education program will start up in August with funding from Bristol Bay Economic Development Corp.

Within the University of Alaska Anchorage, there are adult education programs at Kodiak College, serving the Kodiak Island Borough; Kenai Peninsula College, serving the Soldotna, Homer and Seward regions; and Prince William Sound College, serving the Valdez, Cordova and Copper Basin regions.

“We have received assurances that all three will receive some sort of funding this year,” Taylor said. “To our knowledge, the state will initiate these awards using either state funding or federal funding it has access to. If additional Federal Funds become available, the state will amend the agreements to make up to the original intended funding amount. Currently, this is an active endeavor and ongoing discussion with the state.”

A bill to defund public broadcasting of about $1 billion and claw back more than $8 billion in foreign aid has cleared its first hurdle in the U.S. Senate.

Fifty Republican senators voted yes on a procedural motion to consider the bill Tuesday evening. With the tie-breaking vote of Vice President JD Vance, the bill has enough support to get to the Senate floor for debate and possible amendment.

Sen. Dan Sullivan voted yes on taking up the bill. Sen. Lisa Murkowski is one of of three Republicans who voted against the preliminary measure. She said public broadcasting is vital, particularly for rural areas.

“It’s not just your news,” she said, just before Tuesday’s vote. “It’s your tsunami alerts. It is your landslide alert. It is your volcano alert. It is the weather to let you know it’s safe to go out and get on the fishing grounds. It’s your educational programming. I am going to continue to be an advocate for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.”

More importantly, Murkowski said, it’s Congress’s job to appropriate money, and the White House hasn’t even specified which specific programs would be rescinded.

Next, the Senate will vote on a long series of amendments, a process referred to as “vote-a-rama,” which can stretch on all day and night. A final vote is expected late Wednesday or Thursday.

Senate Republican leaders have already made changes to bring a few Republican holdouts on board. They ditched a plan to cut an international AIDS program known as PEPFAR. They’re also restoring other specific overseas health and nutrition programs.

So far, the bill still rescinds roughly $1 billion dollars — two years of funding — for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. To win over Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, the administration promised to use other funds to keep 28 tribal stations in nine states going. It’s not clear that any of those are in Alaska.

About 4,000 miles from the Capitol, in Bethel, Kristin Hall was following the action closely. She’s the interim general manager of KYUK, a radio and TV station that’s not tribally owned.

“Truly, we’re all kind of on pins and needles. It feels almost surreal,” she said.

KYUK broadcasts across the vast Yukon-Kuskokwim delta, reaching an area roughly the size of South Dakota. About 70% of its funding comes from the federal government, through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Hall said the rescission would decimate the station.

“We would have to cut a majority of our staff,” she said. “Our services would be just really stripped down to the bare minimum.”

In addition to saving money, the rescission achieves long-standing policy ideals for conservative Republicans who want to shrink America’s role in international aid and feel public broadcasting doesn’t reflect their perspectives.

The U.S. House narrowly passed the bill last month, with the help of Alaska Congressman Nick Begich. If the Senate makes changes, it will have to go back to the House. The bill has to become law by Friday or the rescissions measure expires.

Editor’s note: Alaska Public Media receives funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This story was written and edited within the Alaska Public Media newsroom. No Alaska Public Media corporate officials read it before publication.

Democrat Mary Peltola, who was Alaska’s sole member of the U.S. House, lost her re-election bid last year.

But her margin of defeat of less than three percentage points, in a state that Donald Trump won by double-digits, showed that Peltola remains a formidable candidate.

And that means “every national Democrat is salivating” at the idea that Peltola could challenge incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan next year, said Jim Lottsfeldt, a longtime Anchorage political consultant.

“I’ve been asked by some famous ones, by some less famous ones, ‘What can you do to convince her?’” Lottsfeldt said.

But many Democrats inside Alaska see Peltola as the party’s strongest candidate for governor next year, when Republican incumbent Mike Dunleavy is barred by term limits from seeking re-election. And they’re waiting to see which race she enters.

“If she chooses to run for either U.S. House or U.S. Senate, I will absolutely run for governor,” said Tom Begich, the Democratic former state senator from Anchorage. “If she doesn’t choose to do that, but chooses to run for governor, then I’ll be supporting her.”

As for the potential candidate herself?

She’s biding her time.

Peltola, who declined to comment, earlier this year took a job with a national law and lobbying firm, Holland & Hart, where she works with her former chief of staff, Anton McParland.

Peltola has not made up her mind about whether to run for governor, U.S. Senate or U.S. House, said Elisa Rios, a former campaign manager for Peltola who still speaks with her regularly.

“It’s really just where she can make the greatest impact for Alaskans,” Rios said. “She is going to make that decision on her own time.”

While some operatives and prospective candidates may be impatient for Peltola to make up her mind, the filing deadline for the 2026 elections isn’t until June 1. And she can afford to wait, said Joelle Hall, president of the Alaska AFL-CIO, the state’s largest organized labor group.

One poll earlier this year found that Peltola had higher favorability ratings than all three members of the Alaska congressional delegation, as well as Dunleavy.

“She’s Mary Peltola — she has 100% name ID, and she will raise money,” Hall said. “Is waiting, in any way, a problem for Mary? Absolutely not. She can decide on her own terms.”

Alaskans elected Peltola to the U.S. House two times, in quick succession, in special and regular elections in 2022 after the death of Republican Don Young, who held the seat for a half-century.

Peltola, a former member of the Alaska House, defeated Republican former Gov. Sarah Palin in both elections; she quickly became a star in national Democratic circles as the first Alaska Native woman elected to Congress.

In the U.S. House, Peltola established herself with a brand of centrist politics unique to her state: supporting abortion rights, crusading against factory fishing and salmon bycatch while also endorsing large-scale mining and oil projects.

Her term, however, was marked by the death of her husband Buzzy Peltola, who was killed when the small plane he was piloting crashed in September 2023.

Mary Peltola ran for re-election last year but lost to Republican Nick Begich III. Begich, a nephew of Tom Begich, won by a final margin of 2.5 percentage points after two other candidates’ support was redistributed in Alaska’s count of ranked choice votes.

Peltola  has largely kept a low profile since her loss. But in recent days, she has emerged publicly. On July 1, the same day Sullivan voted in favor of President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” Peltola made her first post to social media in nearly five months.

“We can not secure Alaska’s future by increasing healthcare and energy costs for regular Alaskans, so millionaires, like many of my former colleagues in Congress, and their billionaire donors, can get even richer,” Peltola said.

Peltola also served as grand marshall at Anchorage’s Pride parade last month, sporting a rainbow scarf and flag as she told an enthusiastic crowd that it was “so good to be here with all these people who are pro-love.”

Officials with the Senate Democrats’ recruitment and campaigning arm, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, did not respond to requests for comment.

But Jessica Taylor, who tracks U.S. Senate races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said that if Peltola decides to challenge Sullivan, she would “put that seat into play.”

“I think Sullivan would certainly not want to run against her, because she’s won statewide before,” Taylor said.

A spokesman for Sullivan’s campaign declined to comment.

Winning a U.S. Senate race would net Peltola a six-year term — two more years than she’d get by winning a gubernatorial race.

She has also proven to be a formidable fundraiser in federal elections, bringing in more than $12 million total for her campaign in 2023 and 2024.

But political observers say there are also reasons that a U.S. Senate campaign might be less attractive for Peltola.

If elected, she’d have to resume a 3,300-mile commute to Washington. She’d likely face millions of dollars in attack ads from conservative groups.

A U.S. Senate campaign could also complicate her job at Holland & Hart, the law and lobbying firm.

While Peltola is barred from lobbying Congress for a year after leaving office, the the firm, whose clients include oil and gas companies, mining businesses and pharmaceutical giant Bayer, does have contact with members of Congress.

That includes Sullivan, who Peltola would be running against. McParland, Peltola’s former chief of staff, has visited Sullivan’s office in his new role at the law firm, according to a person with knowledge of the visit.

In a bid for governor, meanwhile, Peltola would not have to face an incumbent. Of the multiple Republicans who have announced campaigns so far, only Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom has held statewide office.

“When she enters, it’s going to be Snow White versus the seven dwarfs,” said Lottsfeldt, the consultant. “The governor’s race is just wide open for her.”

Lottsfeldt, citing the state’s economic woes, said he wants Peltola to run for governor — even though he often earns substantial sums as a local consultant for national Democratic groups when high-profile candidates like her run for congressional races.

“It would be a crazy amount of money. And, you know, I suspect I would do very well — you can quote me,” he said. “But I live in Alaska. The state is failing. The need for a governor is our highest priority right now. And so we have to focus on that.”

The Trump administration is reviving the hopes of the company behind the proposed Pebble Mine in southwest Alaska.

Vancouver, B.C.-based Northern Dynasty, the parent company of the Pebble Limited Partnership, says it’s in talks with the Environmental Protection Agency and hoping the agency will swiftly withdraw its veto of the project.

The proposed open-pit copper and gold mine would be upstream from Bristol Bay and is widely opposed in Dillingham and the region, where it is seen as a threat to the bay’s prolific salmon runs.

Environmental studies found it would damage or destroy miles of salmon streams and more than 2,000 acres of wetlands.

National sportfishing groups have also campaigned against the mine.

Northern Dynasty has a pending lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Anchorage to get a prior EPA veto of the project thrown out. A document filed in that case says the company and the agency are discussing a possible settlement and expect to reach an agreement by July 17.

In his first term, President Trump seemed to run hot and cold on Pebble. His first EPA administrator in 2017 let the project move forward, then reversed course a few months later. The mine proposal seemed to get back on track, but then the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied Pebble’s permit application in 2020.

That came after Donald Trump Jr., a sportfisherman who visited the region, publicly announced his opposition.

President Donald Trump recently signed a budget bill with almost $25 billion for new Coast Guard construction, including almost $9 billion for new icebreakers and $300 million for new Coast Guard facilities in Juneau.

On Friday, Rear Adm. Bob Little, the new commander of the Coast Guard in Alaska, said it remains to be seen how those new ships will be used and when they will arrive in the Arctic.

“What I hope is, regardless of where in the service that capacity ends up, is that it will overall increase the capacity for the Coast Guard and that the Arctic District can certainly benefit from that increased capacity,” he said.

Until this month, the Coast Guard’s Alaska force was known as District 17. As part of a nationwide renaming project, it’s now the Coast Guard Arctic District. In a Juneau ceremony, Little took command of the newly renamed district from Rear Adm. Megan Dean, who has been assigned to Coast Guard headquarters in Washington, D.C.

“It’s a change in name, but our missions, our priorities remain the same,” Little said.

Alaska has the largest commercial fishing fleet in the United States and produces more than half of the nation’s seafood. Key maritime trade routes between Asia and California run through Alaska waters, and cruise ships carry more than 1.5 million passengers through Southeast Alaska each year.

Altogether, the Coast Guard employs almost 2,500 people, including almost 2,000 active-duty Sentinels, as active-duty members are formally known.

Speaking at the ceremony, the head of the Coast Guard in the Pacific Ocean, Vice Adm. Andrew Tiongson, noted that it has been an extraordinarily busy year for the agency, which responded to fishing disasters, medical emergencies, foreign ships near American waters, and the recent sinking of a cargo ship carrying 3,000 cars.

Last year, the Coast Guard responded to 16 cases of foreign ships approaching the international border near Alaska, Tiongson said, calling it “the most significant foreign military presence in our waters near Alaska … in decades.”

Tiongson, who will retire later this month, said he expects the number of foreign ships near Alaska to grow.

Both China and Russia have sailed military ships through international waters near Alaska recently as part of freedom-of-navigation missions to demonstrate their right to travel through international waterways. The United States conducts similar missions near both countries.

Foreign fishing vessels frequently catch fish near the international boundary that marks the economic activity zone between Russia and the United States.

“We have an obligation to be present and to push back, to deter or deny malign activity anywhere that we have sovereign U.S. rights, and in the Arctic District, we have a lot of those and a lot of interest,” Little said.

Right now, the big budget bill isn’t expected to bring immediate help for the Coast Guard in dealing with those issues.

The Coast Guard’s Polar Security Cutter program, which received $4.3 billion under the federal budget bill, isn’t expected to deliver its first new ship until 2030 at the earliest.

When that ship, the Polar Sentinel, arrives in service, it likely will replace the Polar Star, which was commissioned in 1976 and is primarily used to keep open the sea lanes to American research stations in Antarctica.

Additional ships are expected in the following years.

The budget bill also contains $3.5 billion for a new Arctic Security Cutter program, which seeks to launch a lighter icebreaker within three years of a contract being awarded.

That ship, according to published specifications, would only be able to break ice up to 3 feet thick, less than the capability of the Coast Guard’s sole medium icebreaker, the Healy, and equivalent to a Class-5 icebreaker, second-lowest on the six-level international standards rankings.

The bill also contains $816 million to procure additional, unspecified light and medium icebreaking cutters.

That could involve buying and converting commercial ships.

Next month, the Coast Guard is expected to commission the icebreaker Storis in Juneau. That ship was formerly the Arctic oil drilling support ship Aiviq but was purchased by the Coast Guard as an interim icebreaking solution.

Speaking Friday, Little confirmed that the Storis will be operating on a more limited basis until it undergoes a comprehensive refit.

“She’ll be transitioning from kind of an initial operating capability into what we’ll eventually consider full operational capability,” he said. “But that doesn’t diminish the fact that we’ll have a U.S. Coast Guard cutter, painted red with a Coast Guard stripe, operating in the region this summer.”

The budget bill includes $300 million to construct a new port and support facilities in Juneau to support the Storis, but Little said he didn’t have any information Friday on the timeline for construction and development.

For this summer, he said, the plan is to “limit the mission space” for the Storis until its crew and the Coast Guard are familiar with the ship.

“We’ll step into that very thoughtfully,” he said.

Friday’s ceremony didn’t include as much discussion of aviation. The budget bill includes $2.3 billion for up to 40 new MH-60 helicopters, the long-distance workhorses of Coast Guard heliborne aviation.

It also allocates $1.1 billion for six new HC-130J fixed-wing aircraft. In Alaska, five of those aircraft are based at Kodiak and used for extremely long-range search-and-rescue missions, as well as “Arctic domain” flights that can involve flights along the American border in the Arctic Ocean.

The budget bill also contains $2.2 billion for new maintenance facilities nationally, $4.4 billion for shoreside facilities — including the $300 million for Juneau — and $266 million for long-range drone aircraft, an under-developed area for the Coast Guard.

Little said that kind of spending is a “fundamental change” for the Coast Guard, whose annual budget is only about $14 billion.

Coming into his new job, he said he’s aware that as ship traffic increases in the Arctic Ocean and surrounding waters, there are “increased risks, increased commercial traffic, increased tourist traffic, cruise ships, and increased access to what were otherwise hard-to-access waters.”

The risk of a “no-notice incident that we might have to respond to — and it might be a large incident in a more remote area than we’re accustomed to operating, that would be the thing that would maybe keep you up at night.”

An immigration detainee originally from Peru and recently held at the Anchorage jail was later hospitalized in Washington state with tuberculosis, his attorney said.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska, detainees held in Anchorage in the care of the state Department of Corrections were told by federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials that they were exposed to tuberculosis, a contagious bacterial infection of the lungs that, if left untreated, can be fatal.

State Corrections officials said claims that ICE detainees were exposed to TB at the Anchorage jail are false.

The Peruvian man, who was seeking asylum in the United States, was among 35 immigration detainees transferred from the Anchorage Correctional Complex to Tacoma, Washington on June 30, according to the man’s Washington D.C.-based lawyer, Sean Quirk. The detainees were part of a group of 40 men that had been transferred to Anchorage from Tacoma on June 8.

The man missed two scheduled calls after he was transferred back to Tacoma, Quirk said. An official with the GEO Group, which operates the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, told Quirk his client was at a hospital, but they wouldn’t tell him which one, he said.

“We ended up cold-calling hospitals in which I found him at Tacoma General Hospital in the ER, and he had tested positive for tuberculosis,” Quirk said. “However, I was not able to speak with him because the GEO officer, who operates at the behest of ICE, refused access to my client.”

Quirk said he doesn’t know where his client contracted TB or how severe his client’s case was. He said his client was discharged from the hospital Wednesday afternoon.

In response to a written statement the ACLU sent reporters Wednesday, Betsy Holley, a spokesperson for the state Department of Corrections, said no one there were no documented cases of TB among the men in custody in Anchorage.

In her statement, Holley called the ACLU’s claims “categorically false and dangerously misleading.”

“All ICE detainees were thoroughly screened for tuberculosis upon admission into our care, not by ICE, but by our own qualified medical staff,” Holley wrote. “Out of an abundance of caution, one individual underwent additional testing due to symptoms; all subsequent tests for active TB came back negative.”

Holley added that latent TB is not contagious, and that active TB is typically transmitted over a longer period of time than the 23 days the detainees were held in Anchorage.

“It requires prolonged, close contact, typically months, not mere days,” Holley wrote.

But Meghan Barker, a spokeswoman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska, said when the detainees got to Tacoma they were told by ICE that they had been exposed to TB back in Anchorage.

The ACLU had been assisting ICE detainees held in Anchorage. Detainees told them there wasn’t a consistent medical check when they arrived in Anchorage, Barker said. Two men had tested positive for a latent form of TB, she said.

“Some folks who are detained told us that they just had a casual conversation with a nurse when they were, you know, brought in and transferred to (the Anchorage jail),” Barker said. “But then some, like the two that reported that they were tested for tuberculosis, they obviously had a different level of testing than what others got.”

Barker said the ACLU is concerned that ICE detainees, as well as correctional officers and staff at the Anchorage jail, might not have been properly screened for TB. They also questioned whether TB cases were reported to the state Department of Health.

After his client’s release from the hospital Wednesday, Quirk said he remained concerned that ICE officials are not allowing him and other attorneys to communicate with their clients, which he said violates the U.S. Constitution.

A spokesman for ICE did not immediately respond to questions over whether officials at the Tacoma facility told the transferred detainees that they were exposed to TB in Anchorage, or whether ICE was barring detainees from communicating with their lawyers.