Federal Government

Alaska’s interlibrary loan program, an 800 number that was slated to end next week, will continue for at least another year.

The 800# Interlibrary Loan & Reference Backup Service allows rural residents to access books and DVDs that smaller libraries may not have the budget or space for. The program is funded annually by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an independent agency of the federal government. President Donald Trump targeted the agency for cuts through an executive order in March. The move sent libraries around the state scrambling to preserve the program that serves about 70 rural Alaska libraries each year.

In May, a federal judge temporarily stopped the Trump administration from dismantling the agency. Alaska libraries were notified on June 17 that IMLS funding was approved through next year.

“This is a benefit for everybody in the state,” said Sandy Knipmeyer, who runs the 800 hotline out of the Anchorage Public Library. She says more than 4,000 materials were requested through the program last year.

“You want these small towns to be inquisitive, interesting, smart people, and the 800 number helps to provide that because of the access to materials that they have,” Knipmeyer said.

The Cooper Landing Community Library is one of a handful on the Kenai Peninsula that uses the hotline. When it stopped taking requests earlier this year, library director Virginia Morgan says patrons drove to other libraries to find what they were looking for.

“This is just the perfect way for us to put those items in the hands of people when we don’t have the space for everything, nor do we have the funds to purchase everything,” Morgan said.

Morgan says since the program started taking requests again, she’s called in about once a day. Alaska’s interlibrary loan program is currently funded through fall 2026.

With Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s help, Senate Republicans passed a sprawling budget reconciliation bill that contains much of President Trump’s domestic policy agenda.

The bill’s passage followed intense negotiations overnight between Murkowski and Senate leaders, aimed at retooling the bill to overcome her objections to removing benefits from Alaskans on Medicaid and food assistance.

“Did I get everything that I wanted?” Absolutely not,” she told reporters outside the Senate chamber.

Murkowski said she decided to vote yes because Republicans made adequate changes to rural health care and food assistance. But she also said she hopes the House makes more changes, the New York Times reported.

Only three Senate Republicans joined Democrats in voting against the bill: Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. The vote was 51-50 after Vice President JD Vance cast the tiebreaker.

Murkowski, like Collins, was one of the “Medicaid moderates” who didn’t want to see big cuts to the government-funded health care coverage for low- and middle-income Americans. Senate leaders crafted a slew of special Alaska carveouts to win Murkowski’s support.

Murkowski also held out to support better tax treatment for wind and solar energy. The final bill dropped a proposed excise tax on clean energy.

The bill also includes new oil lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska. Murkowski has championed those for years.

The bill goes next to the House, where a different version passed in May without a vote to spare.

The House could pass the Senate bill, which would be the quickest option and might allow Trump to sign it on his July 4 deadline. Lawmakers from both chambers could also meet in a conference committee to work out the differences.

Any changes would have to be approved again in the Senate.

The U.S. Senate continued nonstop debate on its major policy and budget bill Monday, as provisions affecting Alaska continued to be hotly debated.

Senators are advancing toward a vote expected as soon as Monday night, with some attempting to sway the vote of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.

Murkowski is critical to the vote, because there are 53 Republicans in the U.S. Senate, and 50 are needed to pass the bill — dubbed the “Big, Beautiful Bill” by President Donald Trump.

Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Tom Tillis of North Carolina have indicated that they will vote against it. If Murkowski were to join them in opposition, it would leave Vice President J.D. Vance to cast the tie-breaking vote in favor.

If one other Republican were to also vote no, the bill would fail.

Senators are rushing to finish work ahead of the Fourth of July, an informal deadline preferred by the president.

In order to partially pay for tax cuts enacted during Trump’s first term, the bill proposes significant cuts to Medicaid spending and changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps.

Roughly 1 in 3 Alaskans receives health care through Medicaid, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank opposed to the big bill, estimated that 35,000 Alaskans could lose health insurance if the bill passes.

Republicans proposed $6.7 billion in additional Medicaid spending for Alaska to offset some of those cuts, but over the weekend, the Senate parliamentarian ruled that change violated the rules of the budget procedure being used to advance the bill.

Large numbers of Alaskans receive SNAP food aid from the federal government, and the bill would require states to pay for a share of that aid, which is currently fully funded by the federal government.

Alaska, which has repeatedly been scolded by the federal government for mistakes managing SNAP, would be required to pay as much as $37 million per year to keep food aid steady, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated.

Republican senators inserted a provision into the bill that would have temporarily exempted Alaska and Hawaii from having to pay into the program, but on Monday, the Senate parliamentarian seemed likely to nix that benefit as well.

In a weekend opinion column published in the New York Times, Alaska Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage, and Alaska Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, urged Congress to reject the bill, saying it would be bad for Alaska. By phone on Monday, Giessel said her view had not changed since that column was published.

Other parts of the bill, geared toward Alaska, remained intact: a new tax exemption for Community Development Quota fishing groups and an increase in a federal tax deduction for Alaska whaling captains.

The bill contains more than $7 billion for Coast Guard icebreakers and $300 million to homeport a newly purchased civilian icebreaker commissioned into Coast Guard service. That icebreaker is slated to be homeported in Juneau.

On Monday, Murkowski was working to amend a section of the bill that threatens to deter low-cost solar and wind power projects that could reduce energy costs in Alaska.

Currently, federal law provides tax credits that incentivize those projects, but the new bill would eliminate those credits.

In addition, as of Monday afternoon, the bill contained a new excise tax on solar and energy projects placed into service after 2027 if they use parts from China and other prohibited foreign countries.

Almost all solar and wind projects use Chinese components because of their low cost and high quality.

Murkowski was seeking a gradual phaseout of those tax credits by allowing projects to collect them as long as they begin construction by 2027.

The bill would have significant effects on oil and gas drilling in Alaska. It mandates four new oil and gas lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and it requires other sales in Cook Inlet and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

Seventy percent of rental and royalty payments from those sales would go to the state of Alaska, starting in 2034, up from 50 percent currently.

That’s down from a proposed share of 90%, which was in an earlier Senate version of the bill.

The revenue sharing is particularly important for the state because a growing proportion of North Slope oil production is coming from federal land, rather than state land, and most promising new oil finds in the North Slope are on federal land.

An earlier version of the bill proposed to ban states for 10 years from passing laws restricting AI computer software development. That’s now down to five years and has multiple exceptions.

In the Alaska Legislature, Anchorage Reps. Alyse Galvin and Andrew Gray had issued a statement asking the Senate to reconsider the 10-year ban.

A provision advancing development of the Ambler Road was rejected by the Senate parliamentarian, and Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has withdrawn a proposal to sell large amounts of U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land.

Overall, independent analysts have found, the tax cuts within the bill will bring increased financial benefits for the wealthiest Alaskans, while the poorest Alaskans will be left worse off because their tax cuts do not equal the cost of lost federal benefits and services.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a Sunday estimate that the bill will increase the federal debt by more than $3.2 trillion over 10 years.

If the bill advances through the Senate, it will be subject to a vote in the House, where lawmakers passed a different version earlier this year.

That vote could come before the Fourth of July holiday.

Proposed public land sales in Alaska are no longer included in the GOP budget bill that is making its way through the Senate this week. 

A mandate to sell somewhere between 2 and 3 million acres across the western U.S. was first struck down by the Senate Parliamentarian last week because it was irrelevant to the budget. U.S. Senator Mike Lee, the Utah Republican who introduced the provision, then tried to write about 1.2 million acres back in. 

But on Saturday, Lee withdrew the land sale provision completely, announcing on X that it was because he was unable to prevent the land from being sold to foreign interests or BlackRock.

Republicans, including U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, initially said selling the land would allow it to be developed into affordable housing. But much of the identified public lands, which could have included areas of the Tongass and Chugach National Forests and remote parts of the Interior, are not suited for housing development. 

The idea sparked public outrage among outdoor recreation enthusiasts from across the political spectrum. Some Republican representatives from Colorado, Idaho and Montana even spoke out against the sell-off. U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan indicated support for the land sales before they were stripped from the bill. 

Senate Republicans aim to pass the bill by July 4.

The U.S. Senate is voting on amendments and negotiating behind the scenes Monday, trying to get enough Republican votes for the megabill containing tax cuts and many of President Trump’s priorities.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski is one of several Republican holdouts.

Republican leaders added special carveouts for Alaska to try to win her support. But on Sunday the Senate parliamentarian determined that at least two of them — enhanced Medicaid and Medicare payments in Alaska and Hawaii — wouldn’t comply with Senate rules for this type of bill. That might mean they have to be modified or dropped from the bill.

The official’s ruling further complicates the Republican scramble to pass the giant bill, which weighs in at more than 900 pages.

Murkowski helped Republicans get enough votes to open debate late Saturday. Before she did, Senate leaders added a collection of items to make the bill more appealing to her. Those include an increased tax deduction for whaling captains, favorable tax treatment for community development fishing organizations in the Bering Sea and Aleutians and a provision that could relieve Alaska from having to pay some of the costs of SNAP, a federal food assistance program. It would also allow Alaska to seek waivers from new work requirements for SNAP recipients.

Many of the amendments the Senate is considering are from Democrats and have little chance of passing. But Murkowski, along with both of Iowa’s Republican senators, has co-sponsored an amendment to slow the phaseout of tax credits for wind and solar projects. Other Republicans with many pending renewable projects back home have voiced support, too. On the other side, Trump is pressing to kill the clean energy incentives, which were part of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

The Senate could take a final vote as early as Monday night. The bill would then go back to the House. It’s still possible that both chambers could pass the bill by President Trump’s deadline of July 4.

The proceedings are dashing lawmakers’ plans for what was expected to be a week away from the Capitol ahead of Independence Day. Murkowski was supposed to attend a book launch at the Anchorage Museum Monday night for her new memoir, but that event has been cancelled.

A Friday ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, coupled with an executive order by President Donald Trump, has created doubt about the future of American citizenship for Alaskans who are the children of immigrants.

In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled that U.S. District Court judges cannot issue nationwide preliminary injunctions.

In January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order declaring that the federal government would end birthright citizenship — the awarding of American citizenship to every person born in the United States — for the children of non-citizen immigrants.

The new Supreme Court decision has significant implications for Alaska in particular, because it is not among the states that have legal challenges against Trump’s executive order.

Since 1898, the Fourteenth Amendment has been interpreted by courts as offering birthright citizenship to the children of all American residents, regardless of immigration status.

Trump’s order would change the federal government’s interpretation. It declares that citizenship would be limited to the children of citizens and lawful permanent residents, which would exclude refugees, and other people in the United States temporarily, as well as undocumented immigrants.

That change has been blocked nationwide since January by numerous district court judges.

Friday’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court means that those judges can no longer block the order nationwide; they can only block it in states whose district courts are considering lawsuits that challenge the Trump order.

As of Friday, 22 states have legal challenges against the Trump order.

Twenty-eight states, including Alaska, have not. In those states, the Trump administration can start, in 30 days, to begin implementing the executive order, the court said.

The court did not rule on the constitutionality of the Trump administration’s executive order, which could be overturned at a later date.

Neither the office of Gov. Mike Dunleavy nor Attorney General Treg Taylor answered emailed questions asking whether they intend to file a lawsuit in order to protect newborn Alaskans’ citizenship.

Mara Kimmel, the executive director of the Alaska chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said by email that her organization “anticipates this decision could have devastating impacts in Alaska and we are monitoring this very closely as we determine a path forward to protect Alaskan families.”

Meghan Barker, communications and engagement director for the ACLU of Alaska, said that the ACLU nationally has already filed a class-action lawsuit seeking to represent people nationwide, including Alaskans.

“We’re closely following the situation and litigation to ensure that no Alaskans lose their citizenship,” she said.