Alaska News Brief April 2025—It’s been a month, and I’m pissed off
Sigh. It’s been a month and then some.
Late in March we got a messy court ruling that allows the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority to hold onto oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, despite the Biden administration cancelling those leases because of severe legal problems with the 2020 leasing program itself.
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge near the Canning River Delta. Photo courtesy of USGS.
The decision rests on a procedural issue where the court says the Department of the Interior needed to get a court order to cancel leases. The decision says nothing about the legality of the leasing program itself or our arguments outlining its profound legal problems. Still, it comes as a blow, as losses along the way always do. Those leases give AIDEA rights to lands sacred to the Gwich’in of Alaska and Canada, and vital to the Porcupine caribou herd and the many animals vital to local communities and the health of the Arctic.
However unfortunate and messy, this court decision does far less harm than the loot-and-leave agenda of the current administration because we have the processes and agency that the rule of law provides. And yet, we hear the GOP is looking toward selling off public lands to fund the $4.5 trillion tax cut for billionaires, as if public lands that people call home or rely on to thrive are theirs to exploit and leave polluted, destroyed, desecrated.
Don’t even get me started about that national security group chat on Signal. I know what it means to hold client confidences, and I sure know that “national security” and security clearances are in place to protect us all, and government officials swear an oath to do so, especially at the highest levels of government.
The double standard at play threatens us all. A federal employee making the “mistake” of building a career dedicated to public service suddenly gets fired for no reason, but a bunch of people with national security responsibilities make a reckless and shameless mistake without accountability?
The double standards appear as a gaping black hole sucking in our nation’s pride, wisdom, and common sense. Freedom of speech? Well, anything the billionaires in power or Project 2025 deem as so-called “woke” and uncomfortable to them is out, but using the federal government to detain and deport people for expressing their views is in; banning words from federal websites is in; threatening universities with financial cuts because of words and ideas is in; an executive order claiming to defend the first amendment following the many executive orders that in fact threaten freedom of speech is in; attacking law firms doing their jobs representing T2’s “opponents” and criminal defendants is in; using state power to shut people up is in.
Signs at the April 5th ‘Hands Off!’ rally in Ames, IA. Photo by Vicki Clark.
All these actions, the double standards, the inability to look for and attend to mistakes, let alone acknowledge and be accountable to them, and most especially ignore the rule of law puts the entire nation at risk. It makes us all unsafe.
If your “mistake” means you sent a man—Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man married to a U.S. citizen with children and an immigration court order protecting him—to a prison known for human right abuses because of an administrative error that you say you can’t do anything about, then you’ve shown us you feel entitled to have zero accountability for human life. If your “mistake” means you got rid of people charged with national safety and security and you don’t immediately put in place measures to avoid doing that again, then you have shown us you have no intention of keeping us safe and secure. If your “mistake” is gutting agencies in the name of saving money only to hand yourself contracts to do the very same work you gutted, then you have shown you’re swindling the American people. If your “mistake” is sharing military operation details on a commercial messaging platform that includes a journalist, you have shown you cannot be trusted to keep American troops and the rest of us safe.
The people in this administration do not care. If people don’t have jobs, lose access to health care, can’t get their social security checks, and suddenly lose access to medicines vital to their survival, it’s the price of doing “business.” But the government isn’t a business. It’s purpose is to uphold the U.S. Constitution and all of the rights and protections it provides for people in this country. One of those rights is the right to due process before losing your life, liberty, or property.
Elon Musk literally blamed “empathy” for the imaginary problem of “weakness in Western civilization,” and has proven his allegiance to this self-serving justification for cruelty. In fact, whatever role he is serving in government, it seems obvious that he hasn’t taken an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution or to protect U.S. citizens. Of course, that would require empathy.
Look, if you make everything a “deal” and “transaction” and “weapon for retribution,” then you have clearly decided to put your obsessive personal grievances and greed ahead of an entire nation and the necessary leadership for the entire world. If you decide to ally with strong men, you willingly sacrifice us all to a series of reckless and dangerous tit-for-tat, deals and betrayals.
Alaskans like to pride ourselves on the fact that, no matter what your politics and views, you stop to help someone when they need it, because no one survives or thrives here alone. And you know what that’s called? You guessed it. Empathy. And we can truly thrive when we have it and we work together.
Vicki at the April 5th ‘Hands Off!’ rally in Ames, IA. Photo by Vicki Clark.
This administration does not stop to think, fix, reflect, or help the people left on the side of the road by their mistakes. Their mistakes are a feature of their plan, not an error. Their mistakes fuel the fear-cycle used to try to keep the rest of us quiet and under control. And the lack of empathy dehumanizes the many categories of people deemed “enemies.” Remember Germany in 1938?
I don’t know about you, but I’m pissed off. I care about my community, and I care about Earth. I won’t keep quiet, and I will do everything in my control to pull over and lend a hand to the people on the side of the road, and I hope they will do the same for me.
We can’t let those who are careless and who don’t care about us define who we are as people, as communities, and as a country that once dreamt its own dream and can do so again.
Empathy and care empower us with health and power, humility and humanity. Without it, we will find ourselves on that proverbial road, powerless and without a soul in sight.
PS. Thanks to supporters like you, we can continue fighting to protect Alaska’s land, water, air, wildlife and people.
Brown bear paws in Katmai National Park and Preserve. Photo by Kaiti Critz, NPS.
Wildlife management or managing ourselves—a look at predator control practices in Alaska
Western Arctic Caribou Herd. Photo courtesy of Western Arctic National Parklands.
On beings and biomes—a year in the tundra
A favorite of Tracy’s from Amy Katoh’s fabric collection in Japan. Photo by Tracy Lohman.