Alaska’s leading Republicans, with the notable exception of Sen. Lisa Murkowski and some others, accept the gibberish of Donald Trump as the price of membership, never daring to question his competence or identify his lies.

Sen. Dan Sullivan, Gov. Mike Dunleavy, Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, Nick Begich the third and the entire Republican Party apparatus—from Carmela Warfield and Craig Campbell to Cynthia Henry and Cheryl Markwood don’t dare openly discuss the matter of whether someone who rambles incoherently about sharks and electric boats and World War III can be trusted with the power to order a nuclear holocaust.

Discussing that in the open would require them to confess that Trump’s mental state, as expressed in the dear leader’s lies, should disqualify him from the presidency. As close as any of them come to backing Trump’s behavior is the often-expressed excuse from Sullivan that “maybe the rhetoric wasn’t so great.”

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The Dunleavy administration remains at odds with local government agencies responsible for developing plans to spend federal highway dollars in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Mat-Su.

The bureaucratic fog is still thick enough to prompt a dozen Democratic and independent legislators to ask Transportation Commissioner Ryan Anderson to cancel road planning changes announced in July to the State Transportation Improvement Plan. They said the wide-ranging changes in projects and allocations will put the 2025 road construction season in the three areas at risk.

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Even during his Indiana high school days at the Culver Military Academy boarding school in the early 1980s, Dan Sullivan must have learned about the complicated history of the Vietnam war.

And he certainly couldn’t have finished his studies at Harvard and Georgetown without knowing about the institutional failures within the nation’s political and military institutions that led to the worst U.S. foreign policy disaster of the last century.

But here we have Sullivan asking the U.S. Senate to conclude that “the Vietnam war was an extremely divisive issue in the United States, as a result of certain biased and shameful attacks from some in the media, academia, politicians and many others.”

That is not why the Vietnam war was an extremely divisive issue in the United States.

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AT&T says that declining phone business in rural communities from Akutan to White Mountain is prompting it to propose an end to Alascom intrastate long distance telephone services in 42 villages, which will affect 500 residential and 1,400 business customers.

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Gov. Mike Dunleavy led a successful pressure campaign to block a $150 million bond proposal with Wells Fargo Bank proposed by the staff of the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation.

That’s according to Fairbanks Mayor David Pruhs, an AHFC board member, who praised Dunleavy for leading the charge to get the board to kill the deal.

The $150 million plan with Wells Fargo Bank died for political reasons, not for financial reasons. It was “political correctness payback” against Wells Fargo, Pruhs said.

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The fallout from the judicial scandal related to former Judge Joshua Kindred continues to spread.

Bloomberg Law reports that the former law clerk woman who complained about Kindred’s behavior alleges that the U.S. attorney’s office denied her a job because of the ruckus that ensued. The former law clerk said her boss at the prosecutor’s office informed her about her failure to get a job via an all-staff e-mail last September.

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If you see or hear a claim that the Alaska Permanent Fund ended the fiscal year June 30 with a $428.3 million shortfall—and you might—don’t jump to conclusions.

This is more about the antiquated structure of the $80 billion fund than it is about recent performance. For nearly a quarter-century, the advice from financial experts has been clear—the fund needs a modern structure that provides more flexibility in dealing with tens of billions in global assets.

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The Alaska Legislature approved a bill this year that, among many other things, will make it harder for Gov. Mike Dunleavy to appoint unqualified people to the Regulatory Commission of Alaska.

But Dunleavy has yet to sign the measure, House Bill 307, and one of the five commissioner jobs is vacant, so we’ll see if another unqualifed person is appointed.

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With only one of three federal district court judgeships now occupied, the Alaska federal courts face a judicial emergency under the definition used by the nonpartisan administrative office of the federal court system.

A judicial emergency requires specific criteria about excessive case load levels. An emergency is also assumed to exist in “any court with more than one authorized judgeship and only one active judge.”

With the forced resignation of Judge Josh Kindred, the only federal district judge in Alaska is Judge Sharon Gleason.

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Gabrielle Rubenstein announced plans to resign from the Alaska Permanent Fund Board of Trustees Wednesday, but not before providing a key vote in removing Ethan Schutt as chairman and replacing him with Jason Brune.

Former Attorney General Craig Richards referred to it as a “coup.” I have heard from other sources that the trustees had informally agreed in private to make Brune the chair. The vote was 4-2 with Richards and Schutt opposed.

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