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.”
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Saturday that the Trump administration is sanctioning a senior Nicaraguan official over alleged human rights violations.
Rubio said the U.S. is designating Vice Minister of the Interior Luis Roberto Cañas Novoa for his role in “gross violations of human rights” under the government of President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo, marking what he said was the latest effort to hold the regime accountable.
“The Trump administration continues to hold the Murillo-Ortega dictatorship accountable for brutal human rights violations against Nicaraguans,” Rubio said in a post on X. “I’m designating Nicaraguan Vice Minister of the Interior Luis Roberto Cañas Novoa for his role in human rights violations.”
RUBIO TESTIFIES IN TRIAL OF EX-FLORIDA CONGRESSMAN ALLEGEDLY HIRED BY MADURO GOVERNMENT TO LOBBY FOR VENEZUELA
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks at the State Department, April 14, 2026. The U.S. announced sanctions on a Nicaraguan official tied to alleged human rights abuses under the Ortega-Murillo government. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The designation was made under Section 7031(c), which allows the State Department to bar foreign officials and their immediate family members from entering the United States due to involvement in significant corruption or human rights abuses.
The State Department has said the Ortega-Murillo government has engaged in arbitrary arrests, torture and extrajudicial killings following mass protests that began in April 2018.
“Nearly eight years ago, the Rosario Murillo and Daniel Ortega dictatorship unleashed a brutal wave of repression against Nicaraguans who courageously stood against the regime’s increased tyranny, corruption, and abuse,” the statement reads.
The State Department said that the sanction marked the anniversary of the 2018 protests, after which more than 325 protesters were murdered in the aftermath.
A panel of U.N.-backed human rights experts previously accused Nicaragua’s government of systematic abuses “tantamount to crimes against humanity,” following an investigation into the country’s crackdown on political dissent, according to The Associated Press.
The experts said the repression intensified after mass protests in 2018 and has since expanded across large parts of society, targeting perceived opponents of the government.
TRUMP ADMIN ANNOUNCES EXPANSION OF VISA RESTRICTION POLICY IN WESTERN HEMISPHERE
Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega delivers a speech during a ceremony to mark the 199th Independence Day anniversary, in Managua, Nicaragua Sept. 15, 2020. (Nicaragua’s Presidency/Cesar Perez/Handout via Reuters)
Nicaragua’s government has rejected those findings.
The designation follows a series of recent U.S. actions targeting the Ortega-Murillo government. In February, the State Department sanctioned five senior Nicaraguan officials tied to repression, citing arbitrary detention, torture, killings and the targeting of clergy, media and civil society.
Earlier this week, the department also announced sanctions on individuals and companies linked to Nicaragua’s gold sector, including two of Ortega and Murillo’s sons, accusing the regime of using the industry to generate foreign currency, launder assets and consolidate power within the ruling family.
The State Department said the move is part of ongoing efforts to hold the Nicaraguan government accountable for its actions.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Nicaraguan government and its embassy in Washington for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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A man waves a Nicaraguan flag during a demonstration to commemorate Nicaragua’s national Day of Peace, which is celebrated in the country on April 19, and to protest against the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in San Jose, Costa Rica on April 16, 2023. (Jose Cordero/AFP)
The Trump administration has taken an increasingly aggressive posture in the Western Hemisphere in recent months, including a Jan. 3, 2026, operation that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
The U.S. has also carried out a series of strikes targeting suspected drug-trafficking vessels in the region, part of a broader crackdown tied to regional security and narcotics enforcement efforts.
WASHINGTON — Upbeat claims from President Trump over an imminent peace deal to end the war with Iran were met with deep skepticism Friday across the Middle East, where Iranian and Israeli officials questioned the prospects for a lasting agreement that would satisfy all parties.
The outlines of an agreement began to emerge that would provide Iran with a major strategic victory — and a potential financial windfall — allowing the Islamic Republic to leverage its control over the Strait of Hormuz to exact significant concessions from the United States and its ally Israel as Trump presses for a swift end to the conflict.
In a series of social media posts and interviews with reporters, Trump announced that the strait was “fully open,” vowing Tehran would never again attempt to control it. But Iranian officials and state media said that conditions remained on passage through the waterway, including the imposition of tolls and coordination with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iranian diplomats posted threats that its closure could resume at any time of their choosing, and warned that restrictions would return unless the United States agreed to lift a blockade of its ports. Trump had said Friday that the blockade would remain in place.
“The conditional and limited reopening of a portion of the Strait of Hormuz is solely an Iranian initiative, one that creates responsibility and serves to test the firm commitments of the opposing side,” said a top aide to Iran’s president, dismissing Trump’s statements on the contours of a deal as “baseless.”
“If they renege on their promises,” he added, “they will face dire consequences.”
In an overture to Iran, Trump said Israel would be “prohibited” from conducting additional military strikes in Lebanon, where the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seeks to prevent Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy militia, from rearming, a potential threat to communities in the Israeli north.
But in a speech delivered in Hebrew, Netanyahu would say only that Israel had agreed to a temporary ceasefire, while members of his Cabinet warned that Israel Defense Forces operations in southern Lebanon were not yet finished. A top ally of the prime minister at a right-wing Israeli news outlet warned that Trump was “surrendering” to Iran in the talks.
It was a day of public messaging from a president eager to end a war that has proved historically unpopular with the American public, and has driven a rise in gas prices that could weigh on his party entering this year’s midterm elections.
Yet, Republican allies of the president have begun warning him that an agreement skewed heavily in Tehran’s favor could carry political costs of its own.
Trump was forced to deny an Axios report Friday that his negotiating team had offered to release $20 billion in frozen Iranian assets in exchange for Tehran agreeing to hand over its fissile material, buried under rubble from a U.S. bombing raid last year.
That sum would amount to more than 10 times what President Obama released to Iran under a 2015 nuclear deal, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, that was the subject of fierce Republican criticism in the decade since.
“I have every confidence that President Trump will not allow Iran to be enriched by tens of billions of dollars for holding the world hostage and creating mayhem in the region,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a strong supporter of the war. “No JCPOAs on President Trump’s watch.”
Still, Trump said in a round of interviews that a deal could be reached in a matter of days, ending less than two weeks of negotiations.
He claimed that Tehran had agreed to permanently end its enrichment of uranium — a development that, if true, would mark a dramatic reversal for the Islamic Republic from decades developing its nuclear program, and from just 10 days ago, when Iranian diplomats rejected a U.S. proposal of a 20-year pause on domestic enrichment in favor of a five-year moratorium.
He said Iran had agreed never to build nuclear weapons — a pledge Tehran has made repeatedly, including under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, in a religious decree from then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and in the 2015 agreement — while continuing nuclear activities viewed by the international community as exceeding civilian needs.
And he repeatedly stated that Iran had agreed to the removal of its enriched uranium from the country, either to the United States or to a third party. Iranian state media stated Friday afternoon that a proposal to remove the country’s highly enriched uranium had been “rejected.”
Iran’s agreement to allow safe passage for commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz is linked to a ceasefire in Lebanon that the Israeli Cabinet approved for only a 10-day period. Regardless of whether it holds or is extended, Israeli officials said their military would not retreat from its current positions in southern Lebanon — opening up Israeli forces to potential attack by Hezbollah militants unbound by a truce brokered by the Lebanese government.
The Lebanese people, Hezbollah officials said, have “the right to resist” Israeli occupation of their land. Whether the fighting resumes, the group added, “will be determined based on how developments unfold.”
An Iranian official threw cold water on the prospects of reaching a comprehensive peace deal in the coming days, telling Reuters that a temporary extension of the current ceasefire, set to expire Tuesday, would “create space for more talks on lifting sanctions on Iran and securing compensation for war damages.”
“In exchange, Iran will provide assurances to the international community about the peaceful nature of its nuclear program,” the official said, adding that “any other narrative about the ongoing talks is a misrepresentation of the situation.”
Trump told reporters Friday that the talks will continue through the weekend.
While Trump claimed there aren’t “too many significant differences” remaining, he said the United States would continue the blockade until negotiations are finalized and formalized.
“When the agreement is signed, the blockade ends,” the president told reporters in Phoenix.
Times staff writer Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.
CHAMBERS OF
JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN
Supreme Court of the United States Washington, D. C. 20343
February 7, 2016
Memorandum to the Conference
Re: 15A773 West Virginia, et al. v. EPA, et al.
15A776 Basin Elec. Power Cooperative, et al. v. EPA, et al. 15A787 Chamber of Commerce, et al. v. EPA, et al.
15A778 Murray Energy Corp., et al. v. EPA, et al.
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15A793 North Dakota v. EPA, et al.
I agree with Steve that we should direct the States to seek an extension from the EPA before asking this Court to intervene. We could also include, at the end of such an order, language along the lines of the following, to encourage the D. C. Circuit to act expeditiously in its resolution of this matter: “In light of that court’s agreement to consider this case on an expedited schedule, we are confident that it will [or even: we urge it to] render a decision with appropriate dispatch.” See Doe v. Gonzales, 546 U. S. 1301, 1308 (2005) (GINSBURG, J., in chambers); Kemp v. Smith, 463 U. S. 1344, 1345 (1983) (Powell, J., in chambers); Holtzman v. Schlesinger, 414 U. S. 1304, 1305, n. 2 (1973) (Marshall, J., in chambers).
The unique nature of the relief sought in these applications gives me real pause. The applicants ask us to enjoin a regulation pending initial review in the court of appeals. As we often say, “we are a court of review, not of first view.” See Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U. S. 709, 718 n. 7 (2005); cf. Doe, 546 U. S., at 1308 (“Re- spect for the assessment of the Court of Appeals is especially warranted when that court is proceeding to adjudication on the merits with due expedition.”). As far as I can tell, it would be unprecedented for us to second-guess the D. C. Circuit’s deci sion that a stay is not warranted, without the benefit of full briefing or a prior judi- cial decision.
On the merits, this is a difficult case involving a complex statutory and regu- latory regime. Although the parties’ abbreviated discussion of the issues at stake here makes it difficult for me to determine with any confidence which side is likely to ultimately prevail, it seems to me that at this stage the government has the bet- ter of the arguments. The Chief’s memo focuses on the applicants’ argument that the “best system of emission reduction” refers “solely [to] installation of control technologies (e.g., scrubbers).” 2/5 Memo, at 2. The ordinary meaning of “system” is in fact quite broad, appearing to encompass what EPA has done here. Of course, we would want to consider this term in the larger context of the Clean Air Act’s regula-
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