Matt Buxton

KPBSD board starts talking 2026 school closures | Peninsula Clarion This year, the district closed Nikolaevsk School and very nearly closed Sterling Elementary School.

Less than a month after wrapping up conversations about school closures for the current school year, the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District began talks during a Monday work session about which schools might be closed next year.
#aknews
www.peninsulaclarion.com/news/kpbsd-b...

Gun-toting hippies to the West and pot-growing Republicans in the East.

Hahaha. That’s exactly what made me fall in love with Fairbanks.

Sullivan blocked confirmation of Navy chief while denouncing Democrats for slowing confirmations Sen. Dan Sullivan lifted his hold, a few hours after Politico reported that he was blocking the confirmation to pressure the Navy to re-open the Adak base.

Awkward moment for SenDanSullivan: Politico reports he was blocking confirmation of top Navy officer just as he was on the floor denouncing Democrats for slow-walking confirmations alaskapublic.org/news/2025-08...

Why Did National Geographic Disappear Its Own Documentary About A Queer Climate Scientist? | Defector If you’re not a particular kind of mountain sports nerd, you might not be familiar with the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival World Tour. But for people who live their lives in the overlapping circl...

A couple of inside-baseball things to say about this story. First: Investigations are extremely not my lane! I started as a creative writer first and only learned to report as I went along in magazines, and while I think I've learned a lot, I've always been really intimidated by investigative work.

Oh shoot, the word was wrong!

A #comic of Governor Dunleavy at a podium: "BEHOLD MY VETO POWER COUPLED WITH MY KEEN STRATEGIC BRILLIANCE!" A little porcupine is holding a sign that says "Yay Teachers!" Dunleavy says: "I'M BIG AND SMART AND... eh?" The little porcupine pokes him with a quill and he justt PFFFFTTHBBBBBBTTTTT's away. The little porcupine smiles. Because heck yeah. Eat it.

#akleg Good job everyone. You defeated the Veto Monster.

And the house is done, effectively wrapping up the special session. It’ll stay open so the gov can’t pull any more hijinks on them.

V performative on the part of the GOP

They approve the resolution to basically hold the special session open, thereby blocking the governor from calling them back in for the next 30 days.

Also I looked up the rules for this and it’s just a majority of the chamber to approve the resolution, so all this GOP talk is just that. Talk.

Another Republican got up to whinge, so I turned it off and the Mariners got a two-run homer!

Then McCabe admits that this basically stops the governor from calling them into interminable and pointless special sessions.

Remember most of what Dunleavy wants them to work on is the pseudo privatization of public schools. And he just lost the leverage for force the issue.

Rep. McCabe kisses some Dunleavy butt.

“He says there’s a problem with education! … Our children need us!”

(They did address the problem by approving $50m for k12 funding that Dunleavy vetoed)

It’s not like they’ve done nothing.

Rep. Mia Costello, who just a few weeks ago was suggesting they cancel the special session when it looked like they’d have the votes to override, says they should go ahead and waste everyone’s time and stick around.

Every 3 days*

And now they’re setting up a resolution to basically keep the special session open for the next 30 days without meeting the requirement to meet every 30 days.

The “this is bunk” message about the Department of Agriculture is approved 21-19.

Always leave a little bit of buffer in the stream, so you can fast forward through Saddler.

Rep. Gray, who really has a great interim look, cites the actually important part of the rules that says the governor can’t run the same executive order again.

iirc, Gray supported the Department of Agriculture.

Rep. Stapp, Prax and Johnson also say they think that the governor isn’t breaking the rules.

They cite various rules to ignore the rules that the governor is ignoring.

Rep. Costello says, basically, that actually the governor ISN’T breaking the rules. No reason given, she just believes?

Rep. McCabe, who was never going to support it, says that he should have given an opportunity to debate it and vote against it.

The house is back in.

Seems mostly like wrap up but they’re also reading a message from the legislature through about how the executive order creating the Department of Agriculture, something legislators rejected earlier this year already, is bunk.

Game is in the bottom of the 9th and tied.

I think the idea was the executive needed the power to block potential runaway spending by the Legislature.

Good question!

The constitution sets a threshold of 40 for policy bills and 45 for appropriations (budget) bills. The 45-vote threshold (three quarter) is among the highest in the country.

Also big shout out to @gavelalaska.bsky.social coverage. Now, more than ever, they need our support to provide this essential coverage of the #akleg

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Yes

Can’t believe I nearly switched up my plans to go down for that. Whew!

And they move for the joint session to be adjourned… and it is!

That lets the other vetoes stand. Both chambers are likely to be adjourned shortly.

Man! All done in about an inning!

That’s it for the official agenda for the session. They can take up other vetos to the budget or policy bills, some of which also passed with veto-proof majorities.