Nathaniel Herz

Alaska’s Legislature adjourned last week without addressing an issue that many residents of coastal, Native villages see as urgent: expanding access to commercial fishing careers.

A permitting system designed in the 1970s was supposed to make Alaska’s commercial fishing industry more sustainable and more profitable. But over the past 50 years, it has hollowed out many Indigenous coastal villages where residents no longer can earn a living by harvesting salmon.

Once offshore oil platforms drain their wells, the government has the power to force the companies that own them to tear the structures down. But the owners can put off that costly process using a strategy one critic calls “delay, deny and diddle around.” And in Alaska, the state has let them do it — for decades.

The municipal board that approved the sale — and a below-market lease — includes two members with ties to former Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, who also used to represent Alaska in the U.S. Senate.

Graphite is a critical ingredient in the batteries needed to power America’s electric vehicle revolution. But every ounce of it is imported. A proposed mine in a remote part of Alaska would change that. But some of the people who live nearby fear it will endanger their way of life.

Jeremy Cubas resigned from his $110,000 a year job as Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s pro-family policy adviser after Alaska Public Media and APM Reports revealed that Cubas defended Hitler, used racist slurs and said a man raping his wife is "an impossible act."

Bean’s Cafe cashed in big running the Sullivan Arena homeless shelter.