“They were able to correct it there and then after I sent in copies of my naturalization certificate with a date before my voter registration date.” - Chris Waigl, a Fairbanks resident who became an American citizen last year, was taken off the state’s active voter list after being flagged by the DMV.
Carol Beecher, the new director of the Alaska Division of Elections, answers questions from reporters on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
By James Brooks and Corinne Smith
The state of Alaska has removed 3,048 Alaskans from the state’s active voter list, claiming they may be noncitizens.
The removals leave those residents able to vote only if they provide extra identity information, and removal puts them on track to be purged from the state’s voter roll altogether.
Migrating summer chum and chinook salmon swim on July 7, 2007, below the U.S. Bureau of Land Managment’s fish weir on the Tozitna River, Alaska. The Tozitna is a tributory of the Yukon River. (Photo by Jason Post/U.S. Bureau of Land Management)
By Yereth Rosen
When 26-year-old Tirzah Bryant was a kid, she knew how to watch the cottonwood trees along the Yukon River for the sign that it was time to fish for salmon.
“We know that the fish are coming when the cotton’s flying from the cottonwood,” she said.
But run collapses and successive fishing closures along the river have rendered the cottonwood signal meaningless.
Stan Zuray’s son Joe hangs salmon to dry several years ago. The fish were dried int he traditional manner; the site was a family fish camp on the Yukon River. (Photo provided by Stan Zuray)
By Yereth Rosen
When Stan Zuray began noticing white spots, a mushy texture and a weird “sour watermelon” smell in the Chinook salmon he was pulling from the Yukon River, he knew something was going wrong.
That was back in the 1980s. By about 1990, he and others just stopped fishing what he calls “the ass end of the king run” because the fish were so low in quality, he said.
Deputy Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District Deputy Superintendent Katie Gardner and Superintendent Randy Trani discuss a concealed-carry weapons proposal during a regular school board meeting at the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District in Palmer on May 5, 2026. (Photo by Amy Bushatz/Mat-Su Sentinel)
COMMENTARY
By R. Brett Stirling
The Mat-Su school board recently passed a policy to arm classroom teachers. I’ve been struggling to find the right word to describe it.
The district claims the policy is about “maintaining a safe and secure learning environment.” In a profession obsessed with research-based decision making, nothing supports the claim that armed teachers make schools safer, especially when there hasn’t been a gun-related death in an Alaskan school in over twenty-five years. The board claims the policy will not “change the educational environment.” When you hide guns in classrooms, the environment changes immediately.
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