Alaska News Nightly: Thursday, May 14, 2026

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We deserve an Attorney General who's focused on our public safety, on consumer protection, on missing and murdered indigenous peoples. State lawmakers reject Governor Mike Dunleavy's pick for Attorney General. From Alaska Public Media, this is statewide news on Alaska News Nightly for Thursday, May 14th. Good evening. I'm Casey Grove. Also tonight, officials say the first-sellable oil from PICA, the largest development on the North Slope in decades, is imminent. We expect in this next year, you know, on a conservative oil price, we'll be contributing somewhere around $250 million to the Treasury. Those stories and more tonight on Alaska News Nightly.

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The Alaska legislature in a historic vote rejected Governor Mike Dunleavy's pick for Attorney General, Stephen Cox, today. The 29 to 31 vote is only the second time in state history the legislature has rejected a cabinet-level appointee by the governor, and the first since the first, since the government. the Palin administration. As Alaska public media's Eric Stone reports, Cox's tendency to defer to the Trump administration and his willingness to wade into culture war issues ultimately doomed his nomination. Ambicus briefs, sometimes also called friend of the court briefs, give interested parties

a chance to weigh in on a case, even when they're not directly involved. In Cox's roughly nine months at office, Alaska signed on to more than 100 of them. That's about one every two days. Alaska's Attorney General has enormous discretion. They choose the cases and they put the credibility of the state on the line. That's Senator Lukie Tobin and Anchorage Democrat. She said Cox had not given lawmakers enough reason to trust that he'd use that discretion wisely. We deserve an attorney general who is focused on our public safety, on consumer protection,

on missing and murdered indigenous peoples, on racial justice, on rural protections. and on defending our constitutional rights, not ideological national legal battles. She pointed in particular to a brief in a Supreme Court case, challenging birthright citizenship. That brief signed by 25 state attorneys general argues in support of the Trump administration's position that the simple fact that a child is born in the United States is not enough to establish them as a citizen. Nearly every Democrat and independent in the legislature voted to reject Cox. Republicans aligned with the House and Senate's bipartisan majority caucuses were split. One of them, Senate President Gary Stevens, a Republican from Codiac, said Cox's brief opposing birthright citizenship was reason enough to vote him down.

I just think it's the wrong-headed approach to our Constitution. Constitution makes it very clear that if you're born here, you are a citizen. Now, it wasn't all about amicus briefs. During confirmation hearings, lawmakers also questioned Cox's approach to other conflicts with the Trump administration, like the Division of Elections decision to turn over confidential voter data to the Justice Department, despite the Alaska Constitution's right to privacy. Cox defended himself to lawmakers, saying he'd followed his state law that allows voter data to be turned over to another government for legitimate purposes. And he said most of the amicus briefs he'd signed were written by other states, and he didn't have an opportunity to edit them.

Minority Republicans in the House and Senate defended him on the floor. All but one voted to confirm him. Representative Kevin McCabe, a Big Lake Republican, said he thought Cox was simply carrying out the governor's priorities. I suspect that a lot of what we are talking about here is not some rogue attorney general off on his own. I think that he's had direction. Direction's been provided to him. He's doing a certain number of things that his boss is telling him to do. Other Republicans commended his character, saying they'd been impressed with him in one-on-one interviews.

Representative Julie Colon and Anchorage Republicans said she was grateful for a joint effort between the state and the municipality of Anchorage, targeting retail theft, public disorder, and drug use. We've had a public safety problem for quite some time. AG Cox was vital to making that connection between the governor and resources for the Department of Law to come help our city. And I really, really appreciate that from him. We haven't seen that before. The governor's office announced shortly after the vote that Department of Law attorney Cory Mills would take over as acting attorney general. But the story's not over for Cox. Mike Dunleavy announced he'd appointed him to a new position, counsel to the governor.

basically a legal advisor. After rejecting Cox, legislators approved four other Mike Dunleavy appointed department heads in unanimous or near-unanimous votes. Reporting in Juneau, I'm Eric Stone. Senator Lisa Murkowski voted for the first time with Democrats yesterday to advance a resolution to remove U.S. forces from Iran. But she says her stance is not absolute, and she says she might be willing to approve nearly $30 billion to pay for the war. Alaska Public Media Washington correspondent Liz Ruskin explains Lisa Murkowski's nuanced position. Lisa Murkowski says the Trump administration won't tell Congress key information about the war, like its plan to open the Strait of Hormuz or how America's munitions' stockpiles are holding up.

as it pursues a war that has already cost nearly $30 billion. She's tried for weeks to muster support for an authorization of use of military force, an AUMF. It would have authorized Trump's war, which Democrats don't like, and put some restraints on it, which most Republicans oppose. She's setting that strategy aside for now, but she says that she plans to keep voting for resolutions to end the hostilities. Until such time as the president has basically complies. under the War Powers Act, I think it is time for the administration to begin to withdraw our forces. The War Powers Act says a president has to get congressional authority to continue a war after 60 days. Instead of doing that, Lisa Murkowski says, Trump claimed that the conflict no longer exists.

The president has said on May 1, 60 days after, Hostilities have ended. We've ceased the hostilities. And so therefore, there's no reason for me to come back to the Congress, either requesting an authorization or really for anything. I think that that twists the intent and the meaning and the understanding of the War Powers Act. Other Republicans are backing Trump's view that the hostilities officially ended with last month's ceasefire. Senator Dan Sullivan voted against advancing the Democratic measured, as did one Democrat,

Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. If one more senator flips to yes, the resolution calling for the withdrawal of U.S. forces would go before the full Senate for debate. Meanwhile, Congress still holds the power of the purse over the war. Lisa Murkowski says she's waiting to see the administration's request for a supplemental war spending bill. about with this supplemental is what has been spent. And it's eye-popping. 60-plus days, close to maybe $30 billion, that's eye-popping.

She sits on the Appropriations Subcommittee that oversees defense spending, and she says she wants to see a detailed request to make sure the administration isn't padding with money for future fighting, leading the country into another forefront. Forever War. Reporting from Washington, I'm Liz Ruskin.

Still to come on Alaska News nightly, Juno Middle Schoolers craft traditional canoe paddles. I think it's really cool because being like, it's paddles. It's really cool. And you get to like, you can use all these tools. It's really fun. That's ahead. Stay with us.

When the Picka Oil and Gas Field was discovered in 2013, Industry leaders hailed it as the beginning of a renaissance on the North Slope that would extend the life of the Trans-Alaska pipeline. Now, more than a decade later, the first batch of sellable oil is expected to come from that field soon. In anticipation of Pica's first oil, Santos, the company that operates the field, hosted a tour of the facility this week for journalists. Alaska Public Media's Wesley Early was one of them and joins us now. First, Wesley, where is PICA anyway? Yeah, so Pica's on the North Slope in the Norton. National Petroleum Reserve Alaska or NPRA.

It's about a two-hour drive northwest from Dead Horse. That's the logistics hub, oil field camp sort of town there on the slope. We took a small bus on a long winding road to PICA, where you see long metal pipelines flanking both sides of the road. It's pretty windy that day, snow blowing onto the road as we drove. Several flocks of birds like geese and ducks were on the side. Officials told us they typically come up for spring, but I guess they were early this year. And there were a couple Arctic foxes and some caribou off the road.

It's a lot of tundra, but it's pretty covered in snow right now. Gotcha. Still snow, some wildlife. But here's the big question. When are we going to see oil from PICA? Well, oil is coming out of PICA already through like test drills, but that doesn't mean it's ready to be sold. Santos is still working on testing and installing the last bit of equipment at the PICA facility. Trevor Pallanick is the operations and maintenance manager for this facility.

he laid out what the first oil process will look like. Get the oil out of the ground, get it to the facility, finish commissioning the equipment that actually makes it sales spec crude, and then we can get it to market. Yeah, so Santos admits it's a little behind its initial schedule on that. In fact, at the main camp we stayed at overnight, there was actually this countdown clock to the first oil that had started to a count up.

But they say it's coming soon. When I toured around the pickup facility, the word of the day was imminent. How imminent, that's still up in the air, but Santos says it should come by the end of the month. Imminent. Okay. Well, how does the PICA project play into the wider oil and gas industry in Alaska?

Well, so PICA is part of this westward push across the NPRA in an area called the Nanasuk formation. Most Alaska oil is still produced to the east in Prudo Bay. But Pica is the biggest oil development project on the North Slope in decades. As we all know, the state government gets the lion's share of its revenue from oil taxes, royalties, and fees. and PECA is expected to contribute billions to the state over its lifespan. Here's Joe Baylash, a senior VP for External Affairs at Santos.

We expect in this next year, you know, on a conservative oil price, we'll be contributing somewhere around $250 million to the Treasury. And over the life of the project, it gets closer to $7 billion. So Baylash's name might sound familiar. He's a former State Revenue Commissioner and was the Assistant Interior Secretary for Land and Minerals during the First Trump administration. This job with Santos is Baylash's first foray into the private sector, and he says he's hopeful that the first phase of the Picka project, which again is supposed to bring in like $7 billion over its lifespan, will lead to more exploration in the NPRA. Tell us more about Santos, the company that operates the Pickett Project. What's their deal?

Yeah, so Santos is actually a newer player on the North Slope. They acquired the PICA area in 2021 after merging with the company Oil Search. PICA is actually their only operation in North America. They're an Australian company, and before that their only assets were in Australia and Papua New Guinea. A lot of people I met on the tour have decades of experience with the oil and gas industry, whether it was with BP or ConocoP Phillips or Hillcorp, but a lot of them had only been working with Santos the last few years, and Santos has invested about $3 billion into the PICA project, and there are about 45 wells at the drill site out there.

The operation also includes a processing facility, a seawater treatment plant, both of which were included on the tour. And speaking of the tour, did anything stand out to you? Well, right off the bat, the first thing you notice is how new the facilities are. Lots of components had just been built and shipped in from all over the world. Pollinick, the operations manager, told me a lot of the facilities on the North Slope are decades old. And there's some more modern advances in technology that PICCA is able to take advantage of. One example is the Riggs Control Center.

Polynick says in the past, the control centers were at the Rigs themselves. but Pickas is actually able to operate remotely from the camp. So a lot of the older design of facilities, they call it facility siding, wasn't really well understood. So you had a lot of control rooms that put into hazardous areas. So that's the biggest driver here is that we got them out of there. They're away from the site. So if there's a major incident back there, these guys are safe.

So a lot of the rigs facilities were active when we were there, which meant we had to have a bunch of safety gear, things like coveralls, heavy boots, safety glasses, earplugs. Basically everything a worker has to. wear we were wearing. Another interesting part of the tour was the focus on the relationship between Pica and the local village of New Exit, about nine miles away. The Nupak village of about 450 people has long had a complicated relationship with oil development, balancing money that the local Kukukk Native Corporation gets from owning the surface mineral rights on the land

with concerns over impacts to things like subsistence hunting. Santos officials say they've been working hard to strengthen their relationship with New Exit. Part of the tour was actually a boat launch that Santos built specifically for New Exit residents to use when they're hunting, not even like Santos employees can use it. John Kunaknana is Santos' community liaison with the village and says the boat launch has helped locals out a lot. They would have to go all the way to Uliqo, SCP, which is a couple hour drive by boat. And it shortens the drive by an hour.

So it's well received by the community. Other projects include a local bridge project and upgrades to the village's wastewater treatment plant. Well, Wesley, it really sounds like they rolled out the red carpet for you. You know, I have to admit it was fun and interesting to spend some time in the North Slope and see sort of in person how the oil is taken out of the ground and all the things that go into taking out things like gas and water from it. It's not a place that we as journalists get to see very often. But I do want to point out that while Santos invited us on this trip and facilitated it and, of course, guided the tour. We did pay our own way to get there.

And we aren't the only guest, Santos, is showing the PICA project, too. A lot of the movement in PICA comes amid this national push from the Trump administration, too, as they put it, unleash Alaska's resource potential. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is set to tour the facility on Friday ahead of attending the governor's Sustainable Energy Conference next week. And that will actually come after a tour of Conoco Phillips's Willow Project. That's another major oil development that officials hope will bring a lot of revenue to the state. All right. Well, that was Alaska Public Media's Wesley Ear.

talking about the tour that he went on of the Picka project on the North Slope. Wesley, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. A 44-acre solar power farm in Rangel is starting up. The local borough assembly approved the project at a meeting on Tuesday night. The island town is partnering with a nonprofit that supplies it and two other southeast communities with hydroelectricity. Coast Alaska's Angela Denning reports. Rangel uses diesel generated power every June for at least a week while the local hydropower

system gets maintenance. This year, that short stint is expected to cost Rangel about a quarter of a million dollars. But a new solar farm could offset this cost in the future. This is huge for economic development potential. That's Rangel's borough manager, Mason Valarma, speaking to the assembly. The solar farm will start with the capacity of 1.5 megawatts with plans to expand to 5 megawatts of battery power. That's enough to keep Rangel's lights on during short outages. If there's a burst strike on the lines or a tree on the lines or something like that,

that fluctuation of voltage has the whole grid to go down. Rangel, like Petersburg and Ketchikan, runs mostly on hydroelectricity. generated by two lakes. The system is operated by the public non-profit, southeast Alaska power agency, or SEPA. The communities share a power grid of overland lines and submarine cables. Valarma says solar energy will complement this hydropower system during periods of high demand, such as in the winter. He says it will also prepare Wrangell for economic development on the horizon, like a new shipyard that's expected to be the biggest in the region. The diesel prices skyrocketed given to the war I ran in geopolitical events.

And as such, this project could fully run the town. We wouldn't have to burn any diesel. SEPA will build and operate the solar farm, leasing the land from the city and borough of Rangel for $1 a year. In exchange, Rangel will get priority for the generated power. The location is about six miles south of town on previously lost. land. The Power Agency has been seeking more capacity in recent years as residential use has gone up. The Power Agency also plans to expand its hydroelectric capacity with projects over the next few years. But they also wanted to pursue solar after studying other alternative energy options. They looked at wind,

but in southeast, it's either not blowing or blowing too strongly. Tidal technology is too new, and there are too many unknowns for permitting, and geothermal exploration was too costly. Robert Seedman is SEPA's CEO. He hosted a town hall in Rangel this month about the solar farm. It's built to support local renewable energy goals. We want to stay renewable and stay off diesel. He says people often question solar power in southeast.

After all, it is a rainforest. But he says solar still works. It just works less, say, than a sunny state like Arizona. He says Rangel's farm will run at about 10 to 20 percent of capacity over a year's time. Has anybody been out on their boat, it's been cloudy, and you come home with a sunburn? I think we all have. Solar works in the clouds. It works.

It's not clear exactly when the solar project will be complete. The first phase is expected to cost $6 million. SEPA hopes to use outside funding for most of it, including to save half through investment tax credits. That funding requires the project to be fast-tracked. Some of the construction must be completed by July 4th due to the one big beautiful bill passed by Congress, which killed the federal tax credit for residential solar projects. The borough's land lease term is 25 years. Reporting for Coast Alaska, in Petersburg, I'm Angela Denning.

Consider a gift of stock to Alaska Public Media. You may avoid paying capital gains tax. and receive a deduction. Learn more at alaskapublic.org slash stock or contact your financial advisor. The 2026 Cusca Quim Ice Classic is a wrap. Manager Haley Hansen stood beside the ice-chunked Cusca Quim River as she phoned to the first jackpot winner with the good news. Okay. All right. So I want to let you know that with your guests of May 12 at 8 a.m., you have just won half of our jackpot for a total of 9,550. $50. Super cool. Luis Russell of Bethel's guess of 8 a.m. was, well, right on the money.

The wooden ice tripod depicting a mama and baby moose tripped the clock and drifted downriver early Tuesday morning. But Russell wasn't the only one with a lucky guess. Shannon Samuelson of Naposciak also chose the winning time, 8 a.m. May 12th. The two split the jackpot of $19,100. Samuelson says it was just a random number. As for Russell, the winnings come as part of a bigger celebration. Did you have anything in any reason in particular?

You picked that day in time? Oh, no, that's my birthday, ma'am. Hey, happy birthday! Part of this year's jackpot went to benefit local nonprofits, including teens acting against violence, YK Delta Lifesavers, Delta Illusion Dance Company, and Bethel friends of canines. Breakup arrived in Bethel one week later than last year

when the Ice Classic tripod clock stopped on May 5th. In Ice Classic tradition, the announcement of the winners is followed by the annual breakup bash celebration to ring in the end of the winter with live music and lots of free hot dogs. Well, more than 100 middle school students in Juneau are getting hands-on experience to learn about traditional lingot carving by crafting their own canoe paddles in the classroom. KTOO's Clarice Larson stopped by Thunder Mountain Middle School to learn about the project

and has this story. The sounds of sanding, filing and chipping, and the aroma of spruce fills a classroom in Thunder Mountain Middle School early Monday morning. Students are working on something pretty atypical of a conventional classroom experience. They're carving and designing their very own canoe paddles. I am trying to thin out my handle of my paddle. That's Cash Miller, a seventh grader in one of the 20 or so students in the first period steam class at Thunderman. Mountain. Middle school students who sign up for the class get hands-on experience for tasks like wood and metalworking, electrical circuitry, and basic equipment safety. Miller says he enjoys

the class first thing in the morning because it gets his blood flowing and he doesn't have to think too much. I think it's really cool because you're like, it's fattles. It's really cool. And you get to like, you can use all these tools and it's really fun. Johan Kugelman teaches Thunder Mountain science, technology, engineering, arts, and math classes. He gets help with the carving process from two carving apprentices from Gold Belt Heritage Foundation. The foundation alongside Sea Alaska Heritage Institute collaborates with the Juno School District to connect students to Southeast Alaska's land and indigenous cultures. Southeast Alaska's water is really important.

The ocean, the rivers, the lakes and stuff are really important. So it's really cool to kind of encourage that and kind of tell the kids that where they are growing up is actually really special. It's not like everywhere else in the world. This semester is the first time students at Thunder Mountain are carving full-size five-foot-tall paddles in the class. The Gold Belt Heritage Foundation donated the spruce from HUNA, along with dozens of carving tools. Students get to learn how to use tools like chisels, bench planes, rasps, straw knives, and electric Bernie Sanders. Kugelman, who grew up in Juno and is Anupiac, says it's a special experience for him to be able to share indigenous knowledge through project-based learning. Well, first of all, this kind of program was not kind of existing when I was their age.

So it would have been something that I would have loved to have taken in middle school. Kulguman says he grades students on their safety using the tools and the effort they put into each task of the carving process. Brandon Gomez is Klingit and one of the apprentices helping students as they carve and paint the paddles. He says he's found that many students don't have a problem with putting in the work. There's been a few students that, like, I don't know, Marito may have skipped before, and now they're, like, really, really locked in, and they have some of the best, like, looking paddles, like the sharpest looking paddles because they're really interested in this stuff.

The spring semester is coming to a close soon, and many students will finish their paddles within the next week. While many students said they plan to hang their paddles for display at home, Grayson Dalton says he hopes to bring his to Celebration next month. Celebration is a biannual festival in Juneau where thousands of indigenous people in Southeast Alaska gather to honor and uplift their cultures. Dalton says that before moving to Juneau from Washington, he wasn't really connected to his clinket roots. No, we never really got the chance to do this in Washington. Maybe like once a year we would do like a little project about Native American history, but it's so much funner and better to like learn more about.

in June. He says through the class and project, he's finding that connection and more. It's fun learning more and like getting to know my cultural. School in Juneau ends for most students on Wednesday, May 20th. Celebration kicks off on June 3rd. In Juneau, I'm Clary's Larson.

News Nightly. If you missed any of tonight's stories, we're online at alaskapublic.org and wherever you get your podcasts. We had reports tonight from Eric Stone and Clarice Larson in Juneau, Liz Ruskin in Washington, D.C., Wesley Early at the Pick of Field on the North Slope, Angela Denning and Petersburg and Samantha Watson in Bethel. Our audio engineer tonight is Dave Waldron. Kirsten Dobroth is our producer, and I'm Casey Grove. Good night.

You know,