Politics
Congress’s Fight Over Trump’s Agenda Runs Through Alaska
Twice a month, planes land on the gravel airstrip in Noatak, Alaska, about 70 miles north of the Arctic Circle, carrying the diesel that residents need to heat their homes in the bitter cold.
And once a month, they receive electricity bills four times higher than those for most of the rest of the country that include two separate charges: one for the cost of the energy itself, and another for the cost of the fuel used to fly it there.
“The fuel cost is the thing that kills,” Bessie Monroe, 56, who works as an assistant to the village’s tribal administrator, said as she pulled up her bill. Even though she supplements the heat from her generator with a wood-burning stove — and can still sometimes feel the chill of wind through one of her walls — Ms. Monroe has paid roughly $250 a month for electricity for her small one-bedroom house this winter.
So a few years ago, in an effort to build a local source of electricity and save residents money, the Inupiat village of 500 worked with its utility company to install a small farm of solar panels. And when Congress approved new tax credits for clean energy projects in 2022 through the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the village saw an opportunity to buy more.
But the fate of the project — and dozens more like it in Alaska and around the country — is now in doubt, leaving villagers unsure of their financial future.
Those doubts are at the root of an intraparty feud unfolding among Republicans in Washington, where G.O.P. members of Congress are casting about for ways to pay for President Trump’s domestic agenda. Some fiscal hard-liners have zeroed in on clean energy tax credits as a prime target for elimination.
Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, has become an outspoken proponent of keeping the tax credits.
“A wholesale repeal, or the termination of certain individual credits, would create uncertainty, jeopardizing long-term project planning and job creation in the energy sector,” Ms. Murkowski and three other Republicans wrote in a letter to the Senate majority leader last month to make the case for preserving the clean energy breaks.
The calls to scrap them have already had an effect. The leading builder of solar farms along Alaska’s Railbelt, the state’s most populous region, cited uncertainty over the tax credits’ future when it pulled out of a major project. Dozens more projects have been left in limbo after Mr. Trump signed an executive order in January to freeze federal grants financed by the law.
And all of it comes as Alaskans prepare for looming natural gas supply shortfalls, which have prompted state officials to warn of the possibility of rolling blackouts.
“It seemed like two, three years ago, there was a lot of enthusiasm moving forward with a lot of these projects,” said Matt Bergan, an engineer who worked for the electric association based in the hub city of Kotzebue, 50 miles south of Noatak.
“We know what we need up here,” Mr. Bergan continued. “We need the wind and the solar and the storage to make heat, and get away from diesel fuel. And the stars were aligning. These big federal dollars were going to be coming through. We got our projects shovel-ready to go. And now all the stars are have unaligned.”
Similar stories are playing out all across the country. But nowhere has the law had a more profound effect on everyday access to power than in Alaska, where energy companies have sought to leverage the tax credits to build out renewable energy infrastructure in isolated communities.
“There is still a substantial amount of money that has to come out of pocket in order to make these projects work,” said Bill Stamm, the chief executive of Alaska Electric Village Cooperative, a nonprofit electric utility serving residents in 59 locations throughout rural Alaska, including Noatak. “If you can get some of that money back, especially for folks that have a tax appetite — that I think, swayed the movers and shakers, the folks that are going to decide, ‘Do we want to actually get involved in this kind of business?’”
At an event last month in Anchorage, Ms. Murkowski recounted a conversation she had had with the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, in which he commented there would be little support from the Trump administration for wind energy projects.
“Remember that so many of the communities in the state of Alaska are never going to benefit from a natural gas pipeline,” Ms. Murkowski recounted replying. “It’s not going to do a spur out to Togiak. It’s not going to do a spur out to Kobuk. So please, please don’t forget the opportunities that come to our more rural communities that are more isolated, who need to be able to access the resources that are there.”
Even simple tasks in Noatak are often difficult. For years, the utility company servicing the village would send some diesel by barge during the spring and summer months. But the Noatak River’s water levels have since dropped so low that the utility can now only fly in the fuel. There are no roads to Noatak, and the closest city, Kotzebue, population 3,000, is more than an hour away by all-terrain vehicle.
“You could probably get to Hawaii as cheap as you can get to Noatak from Anchorage,” said Mr. Stamm, the utility executive. “So it’s not insignificant that we have to fly people there to do repairs. We have to fly all of our material in there to do repairs.”
Late last year, the planes used to fly in the diesel suffered mechanical issues and were grounded for weeks. The village rationed diesel for residents, forcing many, like Ms. Monroe, to rely heavily on their wood-burning stoves. It was 25 to 35 degrees below zero then, she and other residents recalled.
“It happens a lot, fuel shortages,” said Tristen Ashby, the village’s tribal administrator. “And some people don’t have wood stoves up here, so they only have one source of heat.”
The cold in the winters, Mr. Ashby added, “is like you wouldn’t believe.”
During that shortage, Ms. Monroe ran out of the wood she asks her 20-year-old daughters to chop. “I was asking, ‘Lord, I need wood today.’ Later on, there were two logs outside of my house. I walked out and there were two logs. And that was a humbling experience.”
When diesel is accessible, its fumes linger in the air over residential streets.
“When I came into this office, I asked the previous administrator, who got us the solar panels, ‘How could I get another farm?’” said Mr. Ashby, who, at 22, is the youngest person to ever serve as tribal administrator. “With solar energy, there’s no fuel emission. Every day we see smoke coming out of the plant.”
But the real reason he hopes to pivot to solar energy, he said, is to bring down costs.
While the average residential electricity rate in the United States is around 16 cents per kilowatt-hour, Noatak pays more than a dollar. On a recent visit, heating fuel was running $13 a gallon.
Some larger homes cost $1,700 month to heat, and residents say it is not uncommon for them to pay their electric bills in installments. Robbie Kirk, who lives in Noatak in a house he built himself, recalled receiving a $2,500 electricity bill one month about seven years ago, when the temperature sunk to negative 60 and stayed there for weeks.
That often presents tough decisions. Mr. Kirk described how he and others each winter must decide whether to heat their water line. If they do, it drives up their electric bill. If they don’t, the pipe could freeze and burst.
The more common trade-off, he said, is deciding between spending money on heating fuel or gasoline for the ATVs and snow machines they use to drive across the snow-covered gravel roads that cut through the village. Around 5 p.m. each day, just before the single gas pump at the village store closes, a small line forms. On a recent Thursday afternoon, Tianna Sage was filling up her brother’s snow machine so he could use it to go duck hunting. She said she would need to refuel it every day for him, at the cost of $11 a gallon.
“I work three jobs to make sure the struggle is not there,” Mr. Kirk said. “But I have a lot of family here, a lot of widowed uncles, widowed aunts that they’re not able to, just not physically able to. So just watching them struggle with those decisions on whether they should buy heating fuel or buy gas. That determines — I don’t want to say how well they live their life — but how much easier it could be.”
Sitting in her office, Ms. Monroe said she still had hope that Congress would preserve the federal support for villages like Noatak. She said she would worry about her daughters’ ability to pay their bills each month if some kind of change did not come.
“Our future, it doesn’t look good, per se, with the cost of living right now,” she said. “I start to realize that all this is going to come upon them. They’re going to have to carry the burden of heating their homes or buying food.”
Politics
Melania Trump challenges Congress to make her foster care executive order permanent law: ‘Their birthright’
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First lady Melania Trump delivered a plea to lawmakers on Wednesday, demanding “action over awareness” to secure the futures of America’s foster children by turning her recent executive action into permanent law.
During a bipartisan congressional committee meeting, Trump outlined her vision to transform vulnerable youth into financially independent business owners, explaining the American dream should be “their birthright.”
While describing the Fostering the Future executive order she signed in November as a “transformative vision,” she said Congress now has an opportunity to create a lasting, positive impact by passing permanent legislation.
Since the start of her nationwide initiative, Fostering the Future, in 2021, the program has a footprint in more than 20 universities across the country, including major institutions like LSU, the University of Virginia, University of Texas and Ohio State University.
First lady Melania Trump listens during opening remarks at a roundtable discussion with the House Ways and Means Committee on the foster care system at the Longworth House Office Building Wednesday in Washington, D.C. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
FIRST LADY MELANIA TRUMP: AI COULD IMPROVE TEACHING AND HELP DELIVER A WORLD-CLASS EDUCATION TO OUR CHILDREN
Rather than relying on perpetual government assistance, Trump said her goal at the university level is to prepare those in foster care to secure entry-level jobs, become financially independent, create new businesses and generate employment opportunities.
She also highlighted roadblocks within the current system, noting that only roughly 3% of people in the foster care community earn a college degree.
First lady Melania Trump and Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., arrive to attend a House Ways and Means Committee roundtable discussion on advancing legislation protecting American foster care children, her second major legislative initiative of the second Trump administration, Wednesday on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
“We can close this gap, but still, foster youth face a special set of challenges outside the classroom that have a serious impact on their academic performance,” Trump said.
“These issues include housing instability, educational advocacy, financial barriers [and] transportation continuity,” she continued.
“New legislation for the foster care community is a moral imperative.”
First lady Melania Trump gives opening remarks at a roundtable discussion with the House Ways and Means Committee on the foster care system. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The first lady added that safeguarding foster children’s well-being helps “shape the integrity of our nation” and reminded bipartisan lawmakers that “America’s children are our moral equals.”
Jocelyn Fetting, center, and Jaden Martinez, right, who were in the foster care system as children, speak during a roundtable discussion on foster care Wednesday in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
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“As parents and leaders, it is our ethical obligation to ensure American children develop emotionally and physically within a safe environment,” Trump said.
“As a community, we strive to nurture our children’s curiosity, protect their innocence and guide them with hearts full of care. … But to get there, a strong knowledge base is required. Education is the cornerstone of a child’s future.”
Politics
Post-Stephen Colbert, CBS still wants an original late-night show
CBS hasn’t given up on producing an original late-night show — despite easing Stephen Colbert out the door.
“The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” ends next month after CBS canceled the popular program, citing financial pressures. The network’s top two executives told reporters during a press briefing in Hollywood on Wednesday that the network still wants to be a player in the 11:35 p.m. hour.
CBS struck a one-year deal with media mogul Byron Allen to bring his “Comics Unleashed” syndicated show to the prominent time slot once occupied by David Letterman until Colbert took the mantle a decade ago. President Trump, in social media posts, has taken credit for getting Colbert, whom he dislikes, tossed off the air.
Colbert’s final broadcast will be May 21.
Beyond the stop-gap arrangement with Allen, network executives acknowledged they don’t have a long-term plan for the late-night hours — but development executives are working on it.
“We are still going to develop other ideas, other concepts,” said George Cheeks, whose role as chair of TV Media at Paramount includes running CBS. He added that Allen’s programs, including “Funny You Should Ask” at 12:35 a.m., will allow the company to immediately turn a small profit — an increasingly critical mandate as CBS prepares to absorb the high cost of keeping NFL football on its schedule.
“If we are going to go back into that space, we have to go back into that space with a different financial model,” Cheeks said, in contrast to a show set in a theater with a band, live audience and large group of writers and support staff to stage a nightly show with numerous guests.
“I grew up in late night — I believe in late night,” Cheeks said. “The reality is that the reach is still there, but the reach is primarily on YouTube.”
It’s become increasingly difficult for CBS or other major networks to make money on a topical show when the majority of the audience, particularly younger viewers, watch snippets on YouTube.
CBS Entertainment President Amy Reisenbach acknowledged the network wasn’t actively developing a replacement late-night show; instead the effort was in the brainstorming stage. “They’re just conversations at this point,” she said.
CBS can make money on “Comics Unleashed” because Allen pays CBS for the hours and covers production costs. In return, Allen’s company receives most of the commercial spots in the programs, which his company can sell to advertisers to defray its costs.
Cheeks dismissed concerns that Allen’s programs, which have been in syndication for years, would not be viewed as “CBS-level quality.” He called Allen “a great partner.”
“Comics Unleashed” has run at 12:35 a.m., but CBS is moving it one hour earlier on the schedule, where it will have more exposure and benefit from running immediately after TV stations’ local late news. “Funny You Should Ask” will air in the 12:35 a.m. time slot.
“I actually think the shows are strong. … They have a point of view,” Cheeks said of Allen’s programs. “It’s a change in format … a change from what people are used to.”
It’s been a rough year for CBS.
The last 12 months have included a nasty spat with Trump over a “60 Minutes” segment with Kamala Harris, which Paramount ended by paying the president $16 million. Then came the tempest over Colbert’s cancellation just days after he called the Trump settlement “a big fat bribe.”
The network got new owners — David Ellison and Skydance Media — in August and Ellison promptly installed a new boss at CBS News, Bari Weiss, who has made talent moves to shake up the division.
Six weeks ago, Paramount prevailed in the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery — a deal that will bring more turmoil to Paramount, CBS and Hollywood production.
Because of last year’s Paramount change in ownership, the NFL has the ability to reopen the network’s TV license deal, which is expected to increase the cost of retaining the NFL by as much as $1 billion a year, potentially cutting into CBS’ programming budget.
“Capital allocation is always a major consideration,” Cheeks said. “But I would harken back to something that David Ellison said recently, which was content investment was mission critical to the future of this company.”
CBS unveiled its new fall schedule Wednesday, announcing that fan-favorite LL Cool J was returning to star in a new show, “NCIS: New York,” with Scott Caan, and the introduction of a new legal drama, “Cupertino,” from hit-making executive producers Robert and Michelle King. CBS will serve up two other new shows, including a comedic drama, “Einstein,” and a half-hour vampire family comedy, “Eternally Yours.”
Cheeks also acknowledged that, for the first time in 18 years, CBS would not end the television season in first place in viewers. This year, that honor goes to NBC, which broadcast a blockbuster February with the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics.
Politics
Video: Vance Gets Heckled at Turning Point Event and Pushes Back Against Pope
new video loaded: Vance Gets Heckled at Turning Point Event and Pushes Back Against Pope
transcript
transcript
Vance Gets Heckled at Turning Point Event and Pushes Back Against Pope
An audience member heckled Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday at a Turning Point USA event. And Vance addressed Pope Leo’s criticism of the war in Iran, saying he should be careful when speaking about theology.
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[Heckler] “Jesus Christ does not support genocide.” [Vance] “I certainly think the answer is yes, [Vance] and I agree. [Vance] Jesus Christ does not — [Vance] I agree, Jesus Christ certainly does not support genocide, [Vance] whoever yelled that out from the dark.” [Heckler] “You’re involved, JD. You’re killing children.” [Vance] “Right now, you see more humanitarian aid [Vance] coming into Gaza than it has [Vance] any time in the past five years. I recognize that a lot of young voters don’t love the policy that we have in the Middle East.” “I like that the pope is an advocate for peace. I think that’s certainly one of his roles. On the other hand, how can you say that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword? Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated France from the Nazis? I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology. And I think that one of these issues here is that there has been, is — again, hey, random dude screaming, I told you I’d respond to your point.”
By Shawn Paik
April 15, 2026
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