The 2026 NFL Draft is here. While the San Francisco 49ers were loaded with capital last offseason, they made a number of trades with their picks this year. They moved their fifth-round pick for Bryce Huff, their sixth-round pick for Brian Robinson Jr., and their seventh-round pick for Khalil Davis.
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Battle for The Last Frontier: Republicans look to take back historically GOP-held House seat in Alaska
Rep. Mary Peltola, the first Democrat to represent Alaska in the House in nearly 50 years, is looking to retain her post in Congress after flipping the seat from red to blue in 2022.
It’s been more than a year since Peltola, who previously served for a decade as a member of the Alaska state House, was sworn in as the singular voice for Alaskans in the U.S. House of Representatives. Her purported loyalty to her party, however, has left Peltola unable to address constituent concerns on Capitol Hill, according to two leading Republicans who are looking to oust her from Congress.
“Voters are furious,” Alaska GOP congressional candidate Nick Begich III told Fox News Digital about Peltola’s performance in office thus far.
Peltola first won election to the House in an August 2022 special election to replace 49-year GOP incumbent Don Young, who died five months prior. She went on to win the state’s general election later that year to serve for a full term.
HOUSE GOP CAMPAIGN ARM LAUNCHES AD BLASTING ALASKA DEMOCRAT FOR VOTING AGAINST MILITARY PAY RAISE
Alaska at-large congressional candidates from left to right: Nick Begich III, Rep. Mary Peltola, Alaska Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom. (Getty Images, Nancy Dahlstrom campaign)
“She was able to run a campaign that was pretty moderate in its tone and tenor in 2022,” Begich said of Peltola. “She liked to continuously invoke Don Young, our late congressman, as a central part of her campaign messaging. But the reality is she’s not voting anything like Don Young would have ever voted.”
Begich, whose father represented the state’s at-large congressional district in the early ’70s, previously ran to represent Alaska in the House during the 2022 election cycle.
Pointing to Peltola’s congressional record, Begich insisted the congresswoman’s actions had contributed to the inflationary pressure felt around the country, saying she “never saw a spending package she didn’t love.”
“She’s a big government, big spending liberal Democrat,” the Alaska native said. “She has no interest in balancing the budget, no interest in assuring that our nation has a fiscal foundation that’s solid going forward. She’s simply interested in finding any and all packages that will allow her to buy votes back home.”
Highlighting what he believes landed Peltola in Congress, Begich, who has received endorsements from Florida GOP Rep. Byron Donalds and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, said she “ran ostensibly as the outsider candidate, but has immediately become the D.C. insider candidate.”
“She continues to see government as the ultimate solution to life’s problems,” Begich added of the Alaska lawmaker. “She does not believe in the importance of the private sector. … She seems to believe that the private sector is the enemy and the government is your friend. I couldn’t disagree with her more.”
Like Begich, Alaska Republican Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, who announced her campaign to unseat Peltola last November, said she believes Peltola’s congressional record has proven she isn’t what Alaskans need.
“We like Mary as a person, but we don’t like her voting record. She’s not speaking for Alaskans,” Dahlstrom told Fox.
ALASKA MAN INVOLVED IN VIOLENT KILLING CAPTURED ON STOLEN MEMORY CARD FOUND GUILTY OF FIRST-DEGREE MURDER
Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, poses for a portrait in her office on Capitol Hill on July 27, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Dahlstrom said her values differ from those held by the congresswoman and pointed to Peltola’s support for Biden’s re-election bid as proof of that. During a December appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Peltola claimed Biden’s “mental acuity is very, very on” and that he’s one of the “smartest, sharpest people” she met in D.C.
“I am a much more law and order person,” Dahlstrom said. “My values and Mary’s values are a little bit different. Mary has endorsed Biden for re-election, and I think that Mr. Biden needs to go.”
“Mary’s a nice lady, but we need a strong, strong candidate who wants to keep our country safe and lets us start prospering again,” added Dahlstrom, whose campaign has received endorsements from Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.
Peltola — who serves as chair of the Blue Dog Coalition, a self-described group of “fiscally-responsible Democrats” — has faced criticism for a number of actions she’s taken in the House since joining Congress. Last October, she voted against H.R. 4394, an appropriations bill that included $26 million in critical funding for multiple Alaska port projects, including more than $12.5 million for the port in Anchorage.
“Unfortunately, Peltola’s vote against the appropriations bill jeopardizes the timely completion of these critical repairs,” Bill Ball, an Alaska engineer and surveyor with four decades of experience, recalled at the time in an op-ed for the Anchorage Daily News. “By casting a ‘nay’ vote, she essentially signaled to her colleagues in Congress that Alaska’s port infrastructure is not a priority. This perception could make it significantly more challenging to secure the federal funding we need to address these pressing challenges.”
“Peltola indicated she voted against the bill because she believed it to defund the Denali Commission — this proved incorrect, as the bill in fact contained full funding for the Denali Commission. But regardless of her reasons, her vote against it has inadvertently undermined the efforts of her colleagues to secure funding for vital Alaska projects,” Ball added.
Alaska GOP chair Ann Brown echoed both Begich and Dahlstrom in criticizing Peltola, insisting that her sole representation of the state has been “one embarrassment after another.”
“Living in Alaska, D.C. can help or hurt us. Having Mary Peltola as our sole Representative has been one embarrassment after another,” Brown told Fox News Digital. “Rep. Peltola has served the interests of lower 48 progressives by attacking our way of life, our jobs, and our businesses. Particularly, Alaska is home to many military families and veterans, which is why her vote against a military pay raise and VA funding last year was so devastating.”
ALASKA FACES TEACHER SHORTAGE AS EDUCATION FUNDING DEBATE DOMINATES LEGISLATURE
Women of Impact honorees Ashley Biden, Elena Velez, Rep. Mary Peltola and Oriaku Njoku attend the Women of Impact Celebration hosted by ELLE at Ciel Social Club on April 28, 2023, in Washington, DC. (Paul Morigi/Getty Images for ELLE)
She said it’s clear to her that Peltola is “more interested in serving the interests of the Biden administration than the interests of everyday Alaskans,” adding that the lawmaker “has given her full-throated endorsement to a presidential candidate whose dwindling mental acuity is obvious.”
The Republican campaign to oust Peltola from office is an effort that’s also being championed by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), both of which are working to help the Republican Party maintain its majority in the House.
The at-large congressional district in Alaska is one of more than three dozen seats identified by the NRCC as “prime pick-up” opportunities for Republicans in 2024. Last year, the House GOP campaign arm launched an ad targeting Peltola for voting against a military pay increase.
The ad, which was titled “Under Attack” and targeted to military bases throughout Alaska, says our “soldiers are under attack” and blasted Peltola for her vote last year against the House defense appropriations package that included a 5.2% pay raise for the troops.
Additionally, the ad hit Peltola for voting en bloc against a funding bill for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and veterans’ benefits with other House Democrats.
“Alaska represents one of Republicans’ best pickup opportunities as a red state represented by Joe Biden’s chief enabler in Congress,” NRCC spokesperson Ben Petersen told Fox News Digital. “Mary Peltola broke her promises and instead sided with Biden and extreme liberals’ agenda destroying Alaska, which is why Alaskans will elect a strong Republican this fall.”
Similar to that of the NRCC, the CLF is also expected to target Peltola with thousands of dollars worth of digital ads later this spring.
“Mary Peltola presents herself as above the political fray, but her record tells the real story. Peltola has repeatedly rubber-stamped Biden’s disastrous policies that harm Alaskans way of life,” Courtney Parella, CLF’s communications director, told Fox.
Alaska Democrat Rep. Mary Peltola, center, attends a vote for Speaker of the House at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on October 17, 2023.
Peltola’s campaign did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Alaska’s primary election, which will use ranked-choice voting, is slated to take place on August 24. The four candidates who receive the most votes, regardless of party affiliation, will move on to the state’s general election on Nov. 5.
Alaska voters in 2020 approved the switch to open primaries and having ranked voting in general elections. Alaskans for Better Elections was behind that successful push. Supporters of ranked voting say it gives voters more choice and encourages candidates who need a coalition of support to win to move away from negative campaigning. Opponents claim the process is confusing.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Merve Berker
26 April 2026•Update: 26 April 2026
US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump were evacuated Saturday night from the annual White House Correspondents’ dinner in Washington, DC, after a security-related incident at the event.
Trump and top-level administration officials seated by him at the head table were escorted out by Secret Service agents as part of heightened security measures, while other guests remained inside the Washington Hilton ballroom.
The president and Vice President JD Vance were later reported to be “safe and secure.”
Witnesses reported hearing loud noises during the event.
“We were sitting here, and we just heard a loud ‘pop, pop, pop.’ Everybody just went under the table, and we didn’t know what was happening,” broadcaster NewsNation quoted its White House correspondent Kellie Meyer as saying.
The head table was rushed off the stage as part of security measures, while other guests remained inside the ballroom.
Meyer said she observed Cabinet members being escorted out of the venue.
Further details were not immediately available regarding the nature of the incident or any injuries.
Host Weija Jiang later informed guests that the event would resume at a later time.
The Tate Geological Museum at Casper College is showcasing a first-of-its-kind fossil from Niobrara County.
The 2-foot-long bladed structure belonged to one of Wyoming’s extremely elusive giant squids.
According to J.P. Cavigelli, the museum’s collections specialist, this “big chunk of calamari” has tentatively been identified as part of the internal shell of a Niobrarateuthis, a giant squid that lived in Wyoming’s last ocean around 80 million years ago.
“We found it last year,” he said. “If I told you any more, I’d have to kill you and all your readers.”
Cavigelli is very protective of this squid and the spot where it was found because it’s a rare and unique find for Wyoming.
There could be more giant squid and other prehistoric monsters of the deep waiting to be found there.
“It’s the last time the ocean was here, according to traditional dogma,” he said.
Monster Of The Not Too Deep
The fossil recovered by the Tate is a partial gladius, the hard bone-like structure inside the otherwise soft bodies of squid.
It’s the same as a cuttlebone in a cuttlefish, itself a modern relative of this prehistoric squid.
“We call it the squid pen,” Cavigelli said. “It’s not bone, but I guess you could call it a skeleton, of some sort.”
Cavigelli said this giant squid was found in the Sharon Springs member of the Pierre Shale, a rock layer from the Late Cretaceous Period.
It preserves the inhabitants of the Western Interior Seaway, an inland sea that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean.
“It’s a black shale from the bottom of the ocean that split North America in half,” he said. “It wasn’t a very deep ocean but pretty expansive.”
The prehistoric squid pen is incomplete, but still over two feet long. That’s enough to quantify it as a truly giant squid.
“We saw (a squid pen) in a North Dakota museum that was five or six feet long and really thick, which would have been a really big animal,” Cavigelli said. “Ours is large, so still from a big animal, but not that huge.”
How big? It’s hard to say.
Paleontologists believe Niobrarateuthis and contemporaneous cephalopods could grow up to 10 feet long, and possibly much larger depending on the length of their tentacles.
“They could have been long or very short,” he said. “All we know is that it was much bigger than your average squid.”
Secretive Squids
Modern-day scientists are struggling to learn much about today’s giant squids. Paleontologists have an even harder time trying to understand prehistoric giant squids, especially given the rarity of their fossils.
Not much is known about North America’s prehistoric giant squids.
Just like today’s squid and octopuses, most of their bodies were composed of soft tissue rather than hard parts, meaning they usually decomposed before they could be buried and fossilized.
Did Niobrarateuthis have long, terrifying tentacles like the modern-day colossal squid, or several smaller tentacles like today’s cuttlefish and Humboldt squid?
According to Cavigelli, either is possible.
“We don’t know enough about it to give it long tentacles,” he said. “I’m sure it had tentacles, because all squids do, but we wouldn’t be able to say how long they were, because that’s quite variable in squids.”
A squid might not even be the best modern analogy for Niobrarateuthis.
Although they outwardly resembled squids, paleontologists believe the Pierre Shale’s cephalopods are more closely related to modern-day octopuses.
The Tate’s fossilized gladius came from the back end of the giant squid. In life, the gladius was surrounded by a large, fleshy mass containing all the internal organs called the mantle.
A giant, squishy squid would have been appetizing dinner option for many of Wyoming’s sea monsters.
It’s What’s For Dinner
From what paleontologists can determine, Niobrarateuthis and the giant squids of the Western Interior Seaway would have had a healthy seafood diet of everything from plants and algae to crabs, fish, and each other.
They would have processed this varied diet with an extremely strong beak, the only other hard part in modern and prehistoric cephalopods.
Meanwhile, even a fully-grown, 10-foot-long giant squid might not have been big enough to stay off the menu of the Western Interior Seaway’s biggest sea monsters.
Giant marine reptiles were at the top of the Pierre Shale’s food chain. One of the largest of these, the mosasaur Tylosaurus, might have grown over 50 feet long, with a 5.6-foot skull.
With such a big head, full of dozens of serrated teeth, a Niobrarateuthis would have made a soft, substantive meal for a fully-grown Tylosaurus. Fortunately, there’s fossilized evidence supporting this predator-prey interaction.
A large squid pen at the Museum of Natural History at the University of Colorado Boulder was found with a huge kink in the middle.
It belonged to Tusoteuthis, another species of giant squid that lived in the Western Interior Seaway.
Multiple grooves found on this Tusoteuthis specimen matched the size and shape of mosasaur teeth. That suggests the giant squid might have survived a failed predation attempt by a large Tylosaurus.
Cephalopods of all sizes were extremely abundant in prehistoric seas.
Smaller squid pens are among the most common fossils found in many marine deposits from the Mesozoic Era and often turn up in the stomachs of marine reptiles.
“I think mosasaurs would have had a great time with them,” Cavigelli said.
Searching for Sea Monsters
Niobrarateuthis and the other denizens of the Pierre Shale went extinct when the Western Interior Seaway disappeared.
The Tate’s Niobrarateuthis gladius was prepared by fossil preparator Bryan Aivazian. It’s currently on display in the museum’s lobby.
Cavigelli said giant squid fossils are an incredible find anywhere in Wyoming.
In addition to their inherent rarity, there aren’t many spots in the state where the Sharon Springs member of the Pierre Shale is exposed and accessible.
“You can find fossils in it, but there aren’t many spots where you’d expect to find these things, and the preservation is typically pretty lousy,” he said.
Other rare specimens from Wyoming’s Pierre Shale exposures include the huge-eyed Unktaheela and the long-snouted Serpentisuchops.
These are both polycotylid plesiosaurs, a family of marine reptiles that probably would have enjoyed feeding on Niobrarateuthis while the giant squid was young and bite-sized.
Notable specimens from the same formation include the 15-foot-long, three-ton sea turtle Archelon, the 34-foot-long plesiosaur Elasmosaurus, 20-foot-long cannibalistic fish, and the famous flying reptile Pteranodon.
The Tate’s squid pen was found during a field trip for participants of the museum’s annual paleontological conference in May 2025.
That’s why Cavigelli will continue to be excited and secretive about the spot where this squid surfaced.
“We collected the squid and the first Cretaceous marine bird bones from Wyoming in about three hours on the same trip,” he said. “I’d say it was a pretty good field trip.”
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
San Francisco even got additional capital from the Jordan Mason trade last offseason, where they acquired a 2025 fifth-round pick and a 2026 sixth-round pick from the Minnesota Vikings in exchange for the running back.
However, they also moved that sixth-round pick during the season for New England Patriots defensive lineman Keion White.
With the draft here, let’s go back and revisit that Mason trade with all of the moving pieces.
Original terms of the Jordan Mason trade
- Minnesota Vikings receive: RB Jordan Mason
- San Francisco 49ers receive: 2025 fifth-round pick (No. 160 overall) and 2026 sixth-round pick (No. 198 overall).
What did the 49ers do with the picks from the Jordan Mason trade?
San Francisco used the first of the two picks on Kansas State safety Marques Sigle last offseason.
Then, as mentioned above, they traded the second of the two picks for defensive line help, acquiring Keion White at the trade deadline from the New England Patriots.
Who won the Jordan Mason trade?
This is still a wait-and-see, as both of the 49ers contributors still have time to develop in San Francisco.
Sigle was a contributor as a rookie for the 49ers, playing 15 games while making seven starts. He had 52 tackles, two pass breakups, and one tackle for loss.
While there were certainly flashes from the rookie safety, including his closing speed and willingness to hit, there were also some major learning moments that showed Sigle wasn’t quite ready to start last year. He’s still got a ways to improve in coverage and with his tackling, which will be points of emphasis this season.
Still, there’s the potential there to be a starting safety for the 49ers in the future.
White, on the other hand, was arguably San Francisco’s most disruptive pass rusher last year, at least on the interior after coming in during the trade deadline. He was a versatile piece, being used both on the edge and the inside, and had 24 pressures in 11 games, ranking third overall on the team.
White’s 12.5 percent pass rush win rate was third among defensive linemen behind Yetur Gross-Matos and Bryce Huff, and he also had more than one year of team control.
He’s got a cap hit of just $1.8 million for the upcoming year, and should fit in better in more of a rotational role for the 49ers this season.
Jordan Mason was a key piece for the Vikings last year, emerging as their starter, as he rushed for 758 yards and six touchdowns on 4.8 yards per carry. He was better than the 49ers No. 2 running back last year, but the two-year, $10.5 million price point was likely too high for San Francisco.
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