Alaska
Alaska’s arduous Iditarod kicks off with ceremonial start
![Alaska’s arduous Iditarod kicks off with ceremonial start](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/newspress-collage-26007125-1678010257191.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&1677992307&w=1024)
Brent Sass was simply miles from fulfilling his dream of profitable the Iditarod Path Sled Canine Race in Alaska when vicious, 60-mph winds whipped in from the Bering Sea, taking visibility right down to about 10 ft and forcing him off his sled as his canines hunkered down within the snow.
“I didn’t voluntarily make that cease,” laughed Sass, who was nearing his first Iditarod victory final 12 months however had five-time champion Dallas Seavey only a few miles behind. “We obtained blown off the path and it took me an hour to get all my stuff again collectively and determine the place I used to be.”
Sass regrouped and led his staff of 11 canines off the Bering Sea ice and down Nome’s major road to the enduring burled arch end line, profitable the Iditarod, the world’s most well-known sled canine race, in his seventh try.
Sass is again to defend his title within the race, which started Saturday with a fan-friendly 11-mile (18-kilometer) jaunt by the streets of Anchorage, Alaska’s largest metropolis. 1000’s of individuals braved temperatures hovering close to 0 levels Fahrenheit (-17.78 diploma Celsius) to line as much as cheer on the mushers, who carried “Iditariders,” fortunate public sale winners, on their sleds for the ceremonial begin.
Issues get severe Sunday with the aggressive begin of the race that may take mushers almost 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) throughout Alaska. It begins in Willow, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) north of Anchorage.
Sass was enthusiastic to get on the path Saturday, with 11 of 14 canines getting back from final 12 months’s championship staff. “I believe the replacements … are stronger canines, so I’m actually excited,” he mentioned.
He’s anticipating gentle temperatures till mushers hit the western coast, the place there’s been extra fluctuations and predicting path circumstances is sort of meaningless since they modify so quick.
“They’ve went from icy trails to snow trails and forwards and backwards all season,” he mentioned. “I believe we’re going to get what we get.”
That is the 51st working of the Iditarod, however its 33 mushers are the smallest subject ever to start out the race. Mushers and race organizers level to the retirement of some veteran mushers; others taking a break to recoup financially after the pandemic; inflation, and the lack of deep-pocketed sponsors amid persevering with stress from the animal rights group Individuals for the Moral Remedy of Animals.
PETA took out full-page newspaper advertisements in Alaska’s two largest cities decrying what it calls the merciless abuse of canines pressured to haul their mushers and equipment over the race’s thousand miles. The group additionally staged a protest outdoors the mushers’ annual banquet Thursday.
Gordon and Beth Bokhart of Fort Wayne, Indiana, made their first-ever journey to Anchorage particularly to see the Iditarod after getting a style for the game by participating in a sled canine tour in Canada. Since then, they’ve spent loads of time studying concerning the Iditarod and the historical past of the race.
“It’s simply been unbelievable,” he mentioned. Bokhart mentioned individuals he’s spoken to in Alaska concerning the race really feel it would rebound.
“Having been right here, I can let you know it’s an thrilling factor to return and watch, and if everyone else had the identical expertise I’ve had, they’d perceive and wish to come again,” he mentioned.
Six mushers who account for 18 Iditarod championships are usually not racing this 12 months. Final 12 months, the game misplaced one other four-time winner when Lance Mackey died of most cancers. Mackey was named honorary musher for this 12 months’s race.
Solely 823 mushers have reached the end line within the Iditarod’s first half-century, and solely 24 particular person mushers in all have received the grueling occasion. Mushers and their canine groups encounter a few of the harshest circumstances in untamed Alaska, crossing each the Alaska and Kuskokwim mountain ranges, mushing on the frozen Yukon River, trekking by monotonous flat tundra and navigating the treacherous Bering Sea ice.
Alongside the way in which, they cease in quite a few, largely Alaska Native communities that function checkpoints.
“It’s a celebration of spring for villages all throughout the state. It type of brings communities and folks collectively for an occasion that celebrates the historical past of our state and canine mushing,” mentioned Aaron Burmeister, an Iditarod musher who grew up watching the race finish in his hometown of Nome and who completed within the prime 10 eight occasions during the last decade.
Local weather change has and can possible proceed to play a task in how the race is run.
![Attentive sled dogs await the start of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race's ceremonial start in downtown Anchorage, Alaska, on Saturday, March 4, 2023.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/Iditarod-1.jpg?w=1024)
The warming local weather pressured organizers to maneuver the beginning line 290 miles north from Willow to Fairbanks in 2003, 2015 and 2017 due to an absence of snow within the Alaska Vary. That may turn into extra widespread because the climate warms, and the Bering Sea ice main into Nome may additionally turn into thinner and extra harmful, mentioned Rick Thoman, a local weather specialist on the Worldwide Arctic Analysis Middle on the College of Alaska Fairbanks.
Challenges to the globe’s foremost sled canine race are mounting, mentioned Bob Dorfman, a sports activities branding skilled with Pinnacle Promoting in San Francisco.
“With the excessive bills, the low payout, dwindling sponsorship help, PETA stress, the hazard of all of it, it feels extra like a pattern than simply an anomaly,” he mentioned. Sass earned about $50,000 for profitable final 12 months’s race.
Iditarod CEO Rob Urbach says the race is financially wholesome, and he expects the Iditarod to have a good time its a centesimal anniversary in 2073.
Dorfman didn’t disagree, however mentioned the 2073 race could not look that a lot completely different than this 12 months’s race.
“I don’t see the fortunes altering that a lot,” Dorfman mentioned. “I don’t know that it’s going to be greater than 30 members.”
Sass, 43, is taken into account the front-runner to win the 2023 race. Pete Kaiser, the primary Yup’ik and fifth Alaska Native to win the race, is the sphere’s solely different ex-champion.
The winner is predicted in Nome about 9 or 10 days after Saturday’s begin.
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Alaska
Korea- Alaska Friendship Day Festival | 650 KENI | Jun 29th, 2024 | Dimond Center east side of the parking lot
Alaska
Interior Rejects Alaska Mine Road, Protects 28 Million Acres
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The Interior Department on Friday moved to prevent mining across Alaska by blocking a road to the copper-rich Ambler Mining District and protecting 28 million acres of federal land statewide from minerals development.
Ambler Road, a proposed 211-mile mining road across Alaska’s Brooks Range, was formally rejected by the Bureau of Land Management, setting up an expected legal clash with the state.
The Interior Department also took a step toward blocking mining and other development on 28 million acres of federal land known as “D-1″ lands under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. The Bureau of Land Management on Friday …
Alaska
Alaska Supreme Court weighs whether correspondence education lawsuit wrongly targeted state • Alaska Beacon
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Alaska Supreme Court justices on Thursday weighed whether a lawsuit seeking to have the large portions of the state’s correspondence school program found unconstitutional wrongly focused on the state government.
The justices heard arguments in the appeal of a Superior Court ruling that found a correspondence school program law to be unconstitutional.
A central question from the justices during oral arguments was whether plaintiffs should be suing the state’s education department or individual districts.
The case whose decision is under appeal is State of Alaska, Department of Education and Early Development v. Alexander, in which plaintiffs argued that it is unconstitutional for public education money to be spent on private school tuition. Superior Court Judge Adolf Zeman found the spending unconstitutional and struck down the parts of statute that allow homeschool allotment money; he suggested lawmakers could rewrite the law to make it constitutional.
The state constitution does not allow the use of public funds for the benefit of private or religious schools.
Attorneys for the state of Alaska, a group of parents whose children attend private school using allotment money and another set of parents who argue that spending is unconstitutional all made oral arguments. Justices interrupted all three of the attorneys’ arguments with pointed questions about how the case should be decided.
Attorneys for the state appealed Zeman’s ruling and said the case should not hold the state’s education department to account because individual school districts are the only oversight body for homeschool spending.
In May, Gov. Mike Dunleavy and Deputy Attorney General Cori Mills argued the lower court’s ruling should be thrown out because it is too broad, but Elbert Lin, a Virginia lawyer hired by the state, argued that since the Alaska statute that governs homeschool allotment spending has many constitutional applications, such as spending for school supplies as retailers like Target, it should not be thrown out — even if there is also the opportunity for the statute to be applied unconstitutionally.
“It is irrelevant whether the provision might be applied unconstitutionally in the view of the plaintiffs or even this court,” he said. Lin argued that if there is an unconstitutional use of the funds, the plaintiffs should sue individual districts, not the state. That way the courts can enforce any unconstitutional spending with a “scalpel rather than a sledgehammer.”
The state’s education department was once responsible for monitoring homeschool allotment spending, but a 2014 law proposed by Dunleavy, then a state senator, put that responsibility on districts instead.
Justice Dario Borghesan probed Lin’s argument and asked if state law allows allotments to be spent on full-time private school tuition. He said “both text and legislative history” suggest that full-time enrollment in private school is not correspondence study, which requires a certified teacher to come up with a learning plan for the student. “That seems somewhat nullified, or maybe a rubber stamp, if the child is just attending private school full time,” he said.
Anchorage parents who use homeschool allotments to pay for private school educations joined the case as intervenors, as people who could be affected by its outcome. Their attorney, Kirby Thomas West, took a different tack than the attorney for the state, and argued that the court should make a decision to reverse the lower court’s ruling. She argued that it would violate the United States Constitution to tell parents how they can spend their money.
Borghesan pushed back on that assessment because allotments are public school money. He cited previous case law: “While parents may have a fundamental right to decide whether to send their child to public school, they do not have a fundamental right, generally, to direct how a public school teaches their child,” he read. Essentially, he said, states have authority over how public education money is spent, so the state can stipulate that it may not be spent on a private education.
West sought to make her point through a different comparison: “It would be absurd and patently unconstitutional to suggest that the state must police the use of Permanent Fund dividends to ensure that no Alaskan ever uses that money to defray the cost of their child’s tuition at a private school,” she said. “It’s just as unconstitutional to do so here.”
She asked the justices to place a stay, which is a pause on the implementation of a ruling, on the lower court’s decision if they sent the case back to the lower court for reconsideration. The stay would mean her clients could continue to spend public education money on private school tuition.
After the arguments, Chief Deputy Attorney General Margaret Paton-Walsh said she thought the case went well for the defense. “It’s always hard to read the tea leaves, but I think some of the justices certainly seem to be pretty skeptical of that superior court decision,” she said.
She pointed out that it is not typical for the intervenors to make a distinct argument from the defense: “So I think that creates an extra wrinkle for the justices to try to noodle through as they think about the case,” she said.
The plaintiffs’ attorney, Scott Kendall, asked the court to uphold Zeman’s ruling. He argued that the judge was right to strike down homeschool allotments because the intent of the statute is to allow unconstitutional spending.
He pointed to legislative history in his appeal: when Dunleavy proposed the allotment law, he also sought a change to the state constitution to allow public funds to be spent at private schools. Dunleavy also proposed enacting school vouchers, which like the amendment, did not pass.
Kendall said that for that reason the plaintiffs should not have to sue individual school districts, because the statute is meant to allow unconstitutional spending: “When a statute grants a plainly unconstitutional power, as it does in this case — and in fact, the legislative history meticulously explains that that was the very sole reason why this legislation was passed — then it’s clearly unconstitutional on its face,” he said.
Borghesan pushed back on this argument. He repeatedly asked Kendall why the whole statute should be thrown out, rather than targeting unconstitutional uses by suing districts. “Why does that bad purpose, you know, defeat the whole rest of the statute? I mean, we have separation of powers. We’re respectful of the Legislature’s actions,” he said. “We kind of have a duty to uphold constitutional applications of statutes.”
Kendall conceded there may be a way to keep the statute without allowing public education dollars to pay for private school tuition: “There is a possibility this court, with ingenuity, could do a limiting construction — could sever parts of this — and that would be an outcome we would support,” he said.
He then referred to an early court case, in which the Supreme Court invalidated state scholarships for Sheldon Jackson College, a Sitka institution that later closed.
“Because the real core concern here, again, is the core concern when you go back to the Sheldon Jackson case, which is, are we using public funds to subsidize a private educational purpose?” Kendall said. “Here it is clear. It’s clear from the purpose of the statute, it’s clear from the interveners’ very presence here, it’s clear this is happening, and it’s clear this was the purpose of the statute.”
Deena Bishop, the commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Education and Early Development, was in the courtroom. She said after the hearing that, in her view, districts are doing a good job of ensuring state money is spent constitutionally. She did not directly say whether the state education department is in a position to regulate spending. Foremost, she said, her interest is correspondence students: “My purpose and goals are to have a great education every day for young people, and there are nearly 23,000 — it’s 22,900 students — that we want to ensure that their education continues without disruption.”
Chief Justice Peter Maassen said the court would consider the appeal and issue “something” but did not give a time frame for a decision: “No timelines are guaranteed, but we understand the urgency of the matter,” he said. Without a new court ruling, Zeman’s ruling would go into effect on Monday.
Editor-in-Chief Andrew Kitchenman contributed reporting to this story.
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