So, what the heck happened last week?!?

It’s Tuesday, Alaska! Good to be back in a place with non-putrid tap water.

In this edition: I’ve been away for the last week, soaking up the sun (I know, poor me), so let’s catch up on the big news. The House Majority Coalition’s education funding bill advanced past multiple hurdles, but it could still be some time before it reaches a vote as talks continue and Dunleavy Republicans mount objections that range from glaringly insincere and admittedly reasonable. The Congressional Delegation’s response to Trump ranged from off-the-charts levels of concern to obsequious bootlick-ery. And the University of Alaska Board of Regents topped off the week with a vote capitulating to Trump’s anti-“woke” agenda that’s disappointing no matter how many assurances that they don’t actually support the erasure of women and minorities from higher education.

Current mood:😵‍💫

Education bill advances haltingly

Last week, the House Majority Coalition strapped a rocketpack to House Bill 69, Rep. Rebecca Himschoot’s legislation, to greatly increase per-student funding over three years and link it to inflation. First, the measure was discharged from the House Education Committee — a move required in Rep. Maxine Dibert’s medical absence — and then it advanced from the House Finance Committee on a unanimous “what’s the point in debating this a bunch more” sort of vote. Its next stop will be the House floor, but things are once again paused while more closed-door talks go on between the supporters of proper public school funding and Dunleavy Republicans.

While the measure is aimed at restoring buying power that has eroded over nearly a decade of status quo funding — something that many other parts of state government, like prisons and the governor’s budget, don’t have to deal with because everyone seems to accept that those costs increase — Dunleavy Republicans have met it with much performative consternation. Their main complaint is the lack of “reforms” (right-wing education priorities that lacked the support to pass even when they controlled the House), which they insist will yield better results than the funding to ensure classes stay small and kids aren’t shuffled from one shuttered school to another.

I’ll save the more extensive discussion of those priorities and why they’re misguided at best and outright malicious at worst for a bigger piece that I’ve been working on (I was hoping to get it done last week, but, you know, the sun and tacos got in the way, (I know, poor me)). But suffice it to say that the demands for reforms come off as a largely insincere excuse to justify their underlying opposition to equitable funding of the state's public education system.

If anything, the most glaring “policy” problem for public education in Alaska is the starvation diet imposed by Dunleavy and his allies.

One of the few opponents to raise anything near a reasonable objection to the whole process is Fairbanks Republican Rep. Will Stapp, who wondered where the plan is to pay for the legislation. He's not wrong. The state’s sorry financial situation has loomed over the entire legislative session, and the state faces a roughly $200 million deficit before we consider any new education spending.

“I don’t have the money. I don’t see how I can support the bill without having the money. I’m interested to hear what the majority’s proposals are to be able to fund the bill, but I will absolutely bite,” he said during Thursday’s House Finance Committee meeting, according to the Alaska Beacon, before making the motion to advance the bill.

The answers to the revenue side of the equation are still taking shape, but they include the Senate Majority’s interest in revising the state’s oil tax regime — something legislators say could yield more than enough to cover the boost to school funding and other neglected expenses. The other, more immediate solution is, of course, a further whittling away of the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend. That $200 million deficit includes paying a dividend according to the 75-25 split of the spendable revenue from the Permanent Fund. Lower the size of the PFD below that 25% figure, and there will be more breathing room for other spending.

While those are the two major levers, there should also be a discussion on all the other parts of the state government whose budgets continue to grow without the same consternation and insistence for results that conservatives have demanded from public schools. As was outlined in budget hearings earlier this year, $280 million of the $317 million in growth over the past 10 years has gone to prisons and troopers, accounting for nominal spending increases of 57% and 76%.

Funding for the Department of Education, where school funding flows through, fell by $62 million over that period, or about 5%. When factoring in inflation, it’s a loss of nearly $420 million in buying power or about 22.6%.

More coverage: Alaska Beacon, Alaska Public Media, ADN, KTUU

Concern level: Off-the-charts

Two members of Alaska’s congressional delegation, U.S. Rep. Nick Begich III and U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, held town halls last week that offered a very, very different look at how the state’s representation in Washington, D.C., is approaching the Trump era. The meetings came after the state watched millions of dollars of already-approved spending lost in limbo, and hundreds of federal employees were summarily fired as Trump and Musk thrashed through the federal government. According to reporting by the Alaska Beacon, one federal employee union now expects all 1,378 federal employees in probationary status will be fired by the end of the culling, a number higher than initially feared.

In other words, pretty bad.

Unless, of course, you're totally cozied up to Trump and the MAGA movement, owing your recent election in large part to the president's backing. Begich, who has been one of the biggest Trump cheerleaders, held a softball town hall where questions were carefully screened so he didn’t have to expose himself to the growing outrage over the damage Trump is inflicting on the state. Much of his town hall and subsequent meetings with the Legislature and other groups suggest Begich is fully bought-in on the fantasy built up around Trump and Elon Musk, insisting they've done great work finding fraud and eliminating waste. He's even joined the "DOGE caucus," supporting the Musk-y effort to slash federal spending largely in service of paying for planned tax cuts for the already wealthy.

The pain, if it exists, will be worth it, he insists.

"This is no town hall. This is propaganda," one person commented on the Facebook livestream of the event, according to the Juneau Empire.

On Thursday, he told legislators that the state "has become too federally dependent."

Meanwhile, Murkowski, hot off being immediately and predictably burned by Health Secretary Robert F. Brainworm Kennedy Jr’s assurances that he wouldn’t meddle with vaccines, leveled a new round of off-the-chart concern about the Trump administration’s ransacking of the federal government. She spent much of last week as one of the few Republican voices deeply critical of Musk/Trump mass firings, and her town hall last week reflected that. In a pointed rebuttal to Begich's town hall, Murkowski said that she wouldn't be cutting anyone off or shying away from the tough questions, of which there were plenty. She criticized the hatchet approach to cutting spending and called on Alaskans to continue to speak up against the Trump administration.

“These are our friends, these are our neighbors. These are people that are doing good work for us,” Murkowski said, according to Alaska Beacon's reporting. “Determinations appear to be, for the most part, indiscriminate, some on probationary (status), but we’re seeing more that there are beginning to be, just across-the-board cuts. … This is not how we treat any of our workforce. It’s not how we treat our federal employees. They deserve better.”

While not exactly what most want to hear — as Alaska Public Media's Liz Ruskin pointed out in her newsletter, Murkowski is stubbornly dedicated to the process — it was about a firm an admonition as we'll get out of Alaska's senior senator and a sign of a shift in her strategy from the first Trump term. From her newsletter:

Often when Murkowski took a stand against Trump or against her party leadership, she seemed to avoid using public pressure to bring any other Republicans with her. Her confirmation vote on Justice Brett Kavanaugh is an example of that. She held her cards close to her vest until the last possible moment, as though to avoid rallying anyone to her position.

Last night, it sounded like she intends to rally.

To hold Trump to the Constitution, she said last night, more of her colleagues have to join her.

“It requires speaking out and standing up, and that requires, again, more than just one or two Republicans,” she said. “It requires us, as a Congress, to do so.”

More coverage: Juneau Empire, Alaska Public Media, Alaska Beacon (on Murkowski), Alaska Beacon (on Begich)

Board of Regents wipe out words that would trigger Trump

The University of Alaska Board of Regents voted on Friday to erase several keywords that they worry could get them in trouble with Trump's war on diversity and inclusion, ordering the system to strike any mention of "diversity," "equity," "inclusion" and "other associated terms" from its work. The comply-in-advance motion wasn't on the board's agenda and was pushed by conservative regents Ralph Seekins and Seth Church in the final moments of the hearing, according to reporting by KDLL, and paid lip service to inclusivity.

“In a nutshell, we're asking this university to be a welcoming, open-access university, discriminating against none and offering opportunities for all,” Seekins said, according to the report.

To many, including student regent Albiona Selimi, who was the lone vote against the measure, the message came across as insincere, ignoring the real-world impact of minimizing or erasing their values to appease Trump. Others have warned that the approach of appeasement with Trump will only embolden his administration to radically change how the country's higher education system operates.

There's also a degree of grim, cold authoritarianism hanging over it all. What's becoming increasingly clear about the Trump-era initiatives is that they're generally run with AI and other impersonal tools set simply to catch keywords rather than meaningfully evaluate underlying policy.

And as if to put a fine point on the situation, Alaska Public Media reporter Wesley Early pointed out on Bluesky that the University of Alaska's Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program had already scrubbed most instances of "Alaska Native" from its website.

Whew!

Stay tuned.

More coverage: KDLL, Peninsula Clarion, ADN