Published July 9, 2026 03:00AM
Alaska
David Eastman: Corruption on full display in Alaska during Ethics Committee confirmation
By DAVID EASTMAN
The legislature recently held confirmation hearings for three appointees to the hyper-partisan Legislative Ethics Committee. I highly recommend watching the first hearing, as it offers a rare glimpse into why it is not at all surprising to legislators that Alaska was just again ranked the #1 most corrupt state in the union.
By the end of the hearing, Democrats on the committee were in full blown damage control mode.
Watch the committee meeting here.
For years, the unelected members of the Legislative Ethics Committee have operated as highly partisan quasi-legislators who have never actually been elected to any office.
Because they were never elected and are therefore not subject to recall, they don’t represent voters. Nominally, they represent the chief justice of the Alaska Supreme Court, who appoints them to 3-year terms. However, since most of the public members have worked with the committee for well over twenty years, for all practical purposes, they simply represent themselves.
This is what was on full public display during yesterday’s confirmation hearing.
While the committee is supposed to be politically neutral, of the six individuals currently appointed to the committee by the chief justice, four participated in the effort to recall Governor Dunleavy (a no-no for appointees to the committee), the fifth appointee has teamed up with the ACLU in her current lawsuit against the Division of Elections and received a $50,000 contract from the Ethics Committee itself (a clear no-no for appointees to the committee), and the sixth appointee is a Democrat megadonor with frequent donations to groups like “Stop Republicans” and the Alaska Senate Democratic Campaign Committee (again a clear no-no for appointees to the committee).
According to testimony from the returning appointees, they see nothing wrong with the current makeup of the committee and would like it to continue “for the sake of continuity”. Democrat legislators on the Judiciary Committee were also quick to applaud their “many years of service” on the Ethics Committee, despite the fact that all three appointees have participated in clear ethics violations since their appointment.
While the recall petition and lawsuit were each mentioned in passing, the bulk of the committee’s questions related to the fifth appointee, Joyce Anderson. She received the $50,000 contract from her long-time fellow members of the Ethics Committee (a no-no for an appointee to any committee, least of all an appointee to the ethics committee).
Her fellow members of the Ethics Committee saw nothing wrong with this arrangement. She asked the attorney they hired and he said it was ok.
Even so, when she was asked during her confirmation hearing what her hourly rate was under the contract she refused to answer.
It is an interesting study in human psychology to watch as individuals who have been sitting on the Ethics Committee, enforcing public transparency requirements for decades, come finally to view those same public transparency requirements as entirely optional in their case.
Imagine the state of mind required to have an hourly state contract of up to $50,000, paid by taxpayers, then to come before the legislature for a confirmation vote and refuse to answer questions about how much you were getting paid for your work.
The irony here is that when this contract was about to be voted on by the ethics committee a fellow member of the committee asked her on the record what her hourly rate was, and she declined to answer then as well. At the time, she dodged the question by saying that she didn’t know what her hourly rate was, but that her hourly rate had been approved by the committee at their previous meeting. Only, it never was.
The hourly rate for each of the committee’s contracted staff were discussed in detail and approved at a previous meeting; that is, the hourly rate for every contract, except hers.
The Contract That Never Was
The missing details from the contract sparked questions over how the contract had come to be approved in the first place, and by whom. Notably, when the Judiciary Committee requested a copy of the missing contract they were informed that a copy of the contract was unavailable because no such contract actually existed.
The contract that the public was told had been approved by the Ethics Committee turned out not to be a contract at all. The chair of the Ethics Committee, whom Ms. Anderson had worked closely with for the last twenty-three years, and whom she anticipated continuing to work closely with for another 3-year term, arranged for her to instead be hired as a legislative employee with full benefits.
Of course, state law (that same law the Ethics Committee is supposed to be enforcing) explicitly bars a legislative employee from being appointed to, or serving on, the Ethics Committee.
“A legislative employee may not serve in a position that requires confirmation by the legislature.” (AS 24.60.030(f))
“A committee employee, including a person who provides personal services under a contract with the committee, may not be…an elected or appointed official…” (AS 24.60.130(f))
“Public members of the committee serve without compensation for their services…” (AS 24.60.130(f))
Ms. Anderson, while serving as a voting member of the Ethics Committee, was also hired as a legislative employee of the Ethics Committee on July 17, 2023. At the August 10th meeting of the Ethics Committee, she sought blanket, retroactive approval of her employment, described then as a contract, She also requested a retroactive “temporary leave of absence” beginning on July 17th. As a voting member of the committee, when the vote was taken she abstained from voting on her own request.
Because of the inherent conflict of interest associated with hiring someone with whom you are currently working on a board (and in this case had served with on the same board for many years and intended to serve with on the same board for many years to come), our state ethics laws explicitly bar you from continuing to hold your appointed seat on that same board. This would be true for any legislative committee, least of all an ethics committee.
It is noteworthy that none of the permanent members of the ethics committee noticed anything inappropriate with this arrangement at the time. It is perhaps even more notable that when Ms. Anderson and Mr. Cook were questioned about it they continued to insist that retroactive approval from their fellow members on the committee fully resolved the conflicts.
Ms. Anderson’s employment with the committee began on July 17th and continued through February 21st. While employed by the legislature, Ms. Anderson continued to serve alongside other committee members on the committee’s official subcommittee. While employed as a legislative employee, she also went to meet with the chief justice and lobby him to reappoint her to the Ethics Committee, which he did. When questioned about the propriety of this, she did not see anything wrong with this.
As there were some concerns that the legislature might not immediately confirm appointees who had already served on the committee literally for decades, the committee requested that the chief justice delay reappointing members of the committee until their current terms of office had already expired. By intentionally delaying the reappointments until later in the legislative session, current members of the committee could stay on the committee an extra year, even if the legislature flatly rejected their reappointment. The chief justice did so. Again, when questioned, Ms. Anderson did not see anything concerning about this.
As Ms. Anderson reported, she appraised the chief justice of the circumstances surrounding her continued employment with the committee and he saw nothing wrong and went ahead and reappointed her, despite the fact that she was legally barred from accepting an appointment to the committee while continuing to be employed by the legislature.
- “A legislative employee may not serve in a position that requires confirmation by the legislature.” (AS 24.60.030(f))
No doubt a retroactive leave of absence from some of her long-time colleagues on the committee will be in the works for this latest appointment as well.
After all, the hyperpartisan character of the committee could be put in jeopardy if even one member of this committee ever retires.
Given that the four longest-serving members of the committee, including Ms. Anderson, average more than twenty years a piece with the committee, efforts to retain the current political orientation of the committee are likely to grow increasingly difficult over time.
Resumes for each of the three recent appointees to the committee are available on the House Judiciary Webpage.
Rep. David Eastman is a legislator representing Wasilla District 27.
Alaska
Black bear breaks into Alaskan mall, eats a peach and relieves itself on floor before leaving: video
Can bearly believe it!
A black bear was caught on camera seemingly running errands at a local shopping mall in Anchorage, Alaska over the weekend.
The bear entered the commissary mall at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson around 9 a.m. Sunday, KTUU reported, citing a JBER spokesperson.
Wild footage shows the young cub strolling through the commissary’s automatic doors and exploring all that the mall had to offer.
The hungry bear stole and ate a piece of fruit before emptying its bowels on the hallway floor on its way out of the building.
Kory Godbout, who works at the barber shop on the military base, was waiting for his first customer of the day when he spotted the furry intruder traveling through the automatic doors.
“My coworker, who is cutting hair in front of me, she yelled, ‘Bear!’” Godbout recalled.
“And I looked up from my phone and the bear was walking into the barber shop right in front of me,” the barber said. “And we all ran into the break room and shut the door behind us.”
After a few minutes, Godbout and his coworkers emerged from the break room and followed the out-of-place bear into the commissary, where it took a peach from the grocery store and ate it.
The barber recalled that a few onlookers were “going big to try and scare” the bear out of the grocery store.
But all of a sudden, the black bear returned to the barber shop.
“By that time, we were able to run back to the shop and then lock the door,” Godbout said.
“And then we were watching him from the window and then that’s when he decided to, you know, use the restroom in the hallway.”
Officers from Conservation Law Enforcement attended the peculiar grizzly scene and were able to direct the wild animal towards a river and into the woods, according to the JBER spokesperson.
JBER’s wildlife program manager Colette Brandt said in a press release that the bear had triggered the automatic doors and that Sunday’s events were entirely incidental, KTUU reported.
While there has been a decline in bear-related calls since the military base installed bear-resistant dumpsters, seven bears have been put down at JBER for public safety over the past year.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – The southbound lanes of the Glenn Highway were closed Thursday morning near the S-curves due to a fatal crash, according to the Anchorage Police Department.
Police confirmed shortly after 11 a.m. that at least one person was dead. As of 12:45 p.m., one southbound lane is now open to traffic.
An Alaska’s News Source reporter on the scene said the crash took place near the Eagle River Loop Road. Video from the scene shows multiple vehicles took damage in the incident.
This is a developing story. It has been updated with new information.
See a spelling or grammar error? Report it to web@ktuu.com
Copyright 2026 KTUU. All rights reserved.
Alaska
Did I Find a Cure for Male Loneliness? No, But I Found a Way to Embrace Solitude in the Wild.
On the longest solo trip of my life, I stepped off a two-seat float plane onto the rocky shore of Upper Twin Lake in Alaska’s Lake Clark National Park.
I had taken four flights from New Jersey to Alaska to write about the iconic cabin handbuilt by Richard “Dick” Proenneke, the self-taught naturalist whose 30-year solo life in the wilderness was captured in the beloved PBS documentary Alone in the Wilderness. Proenneke never married, never had children, and spent nearly three decades completely alone, save for the birds he fed by hand and bears that occasionally clawed at his logs.
“He must have been lonely out here,” a fellow traveler said during the park ranger’s tour of the cabin.
On that chilly June morning last year, I found myself wondering the same thing. I was just coming to a different conclusion.
Park officials told me the cabin has seen a recent uptick in visitors, which they attribute to Proenneke’s newfound popularity on social media, and to a direct flight to the property by an outback flying service. I visited the cabin as a member of a tour group led by two guides. My group included a doctor, a retired attorney, a veterinarian, and a handful of National Parks superfans. Still, I stuck mostly to myself, spending the trip deep in my own thoughts. In Alaska, I wound up pondering a life like Proenneke’s, sans the means or skills to make it happen.
According to podcasters, writers, polls, therapists, influencers, and anyone else with a mouth or keyboard, there’s a male loneliness epidemic eroding the dated fabric of masculinity, like the snake of patriarchy eating its own tail.
Remedies for this epidemic are everywhere in the media, with new ones popping up weekly. The New York Times wondered if pickleball held the answers; others have suggested buying a personal watercraft, joining a mosh pit, or taking off your shirt at a college football game, or watching a horror-comedy starring Paul Rudd. In recent months, brunch, AI-powered companion dolls, and Jack Black have been mentioned as cures.
Outside wondered whether “outdoor friendships,” volunteering, or getting a pet could work.
These cures may seem unrelated and even, perhaps, a little silly. However, the common theme between them seems to be social interaction, choosing community over individualism, a bowling league or running club over your PlayStation.
Some entrepreneurs have even launched businesses to combat male loneliness. A deep-dive earlier this year in the New Yorker revealed how fathers are paying men to turn their sons into “alphas,” while others are joining men-only retreats to be screamed at. Men are taking reams of peptides, smashing their cheekbones with hammers, and getting chin implants in an effort to chase some warped standard of masculinity.
Most of these solutions seem alien to the introverts of society, myself included. I’m not sure I’ve ever been lonely, per se, or even bored, unless I’m stuck in small talk. I’ve never loved team sports or double dates either. In school, hearing a teacher say “let’s break into groups” made me groan.
During my trip to Alaska, I realized that Proenneke enjoyed solitude but not loneliness. The former feels intentional and rewarding, as opposed to the latter, which causes anxiety and depression. He wasn’t a misanthrope. He welcomed visitors and was thoughtful enough to whittle a variety of walking sticks to match their height.
Monroe Robinson, author of The Handcrafted Life of Dick Proenneke, spent nearly 20 years living at the cabin and maintaining it for the National Park Service. Robinson knew Proenneke, who died in 2003, at the age of 86. “He liked when people came to visit,” Robinson told me later in a call, “and he also liked when they left.”
I can relate.
My aversions to crowds and clubs have been a source of personal confusion over the years. I’m not a misanthrope, either. As a reporter, I crave deeply personal interactions with others and get invested in the people I write about to a fault. Part of me always thought loneliness was a good way to avoid heartbreak. I’ve loved deeply anyhow, and lost people in my life to suicide and divorce.
In June of 2024, I learned my then-wife was deeply unhappy in our marriage. I had a real breakdown. The ensuing algorithms of online divorce content can be toxic for men, a slippery slope greased by manosphere grifters. Well-intentioned friends and family will often just take your side during a breakup, too, and there’s not much growth in that. So I tried to avoid that noise, choosing to walk inside myself, to find a “vast inner solitude” as the poet Rainer Marie Rilke advised.
I wanted to confront my own bullshit.
I spent a few dozen nights sleeping in tents for the rest of that year, mostly in the Northeast. Sometimes I slept in single-digit temperatures. I’d reserved a tent site for my wedding anniversary, a campground where I’d wanted to renew my vows. But after my marriage began to crumble, I took my young daughter, instead of canceling. I put her in a hiking backpack to slog my way up a few summits. I kept on punishing myself too, on trail runs and difficult hikes, hoping exhaustion would tamp down the urge to beg my ex and anyone who knew her for answers. Bad cell service helped with that.
(I also found a great therapist, thankfully.)
On a long-planned family vacation to Southwest Colorado in August of 2024 that I couldn’t afford and couldn’t cancel, the San Juan Mountains loomed everywhere I went. I saw them from the window of my cabin, the dirt roads I drove along with my kids, and the hammock where I finished The Snow Leopard, in which author Peter Matthiessen joins an expedition to find the mythic beast in Nepal after the death of his wife.
The mountains felt timeless and unavoidable there, and they spoke to me, a perfect epilogue to the book’s zen message.
“Accept what’s happening” they said.
And so I accepted that my marriage was over.
In May of 2025, the divorce was finalized. A few weeks later, I was in Alaska as a freelancer, pinching myself as my plane touched down on the icy, blue lake.
Robinson, when I asked, said “feeling lonely was not a thing” for Proenneke. He was too active, too busy trying to survive. Proenneke left society, yes, but he didn’t withdraw from life. In the long winters, when no sun hit Proenneke’s sod roof, when no planes landed on the frozen lake, he would spend months penning thoughtful letters to close friends, family, and his growing legion of fans.
Proenneke cared about his cabin’s appearance too, about beauty, and that matters. He built a stone fireplace, an extra bunk for guests, and hand-carved a much-beloved Dutch door. Windows would be an inconvenient luxury in a trapper’s cabin in Alaska, but Prokenneke fashioned one that offered a grand view of the lake anyway.
While I was contemplating Proenneke’s contentment in Alaska, I was also watching contentment in action with the two young guides in charge of us there. For a moment or two, I envied both of them, the same way I envied Proenneke. Guide Dom Gawel, who is in his mid-20s, was the quieter of the two, and he led a few of us on some longer hikes while others stayed behind at camp. Later, I asked Dom about loneliness. He thought young men feel lost today “because they are comparing themselves to others in a negative way through social media” and “disconnected from nature.”
Luckily, there’s nothing close to a signal at Lake Clark National Park, no texts you feel compelled to answer, no influencers to interact with. That’s not easy to do in the United States.
I also found kinship with Dr. Adam Bolour, my kayak partner at Twin Lakes and roommate at Port Alsworth, a tiny Alaskan village on Lake Clark where we slept on our final night. We talked about fatherhood, relationships, and nature. He was traveling solo too, from California, and while he was upbeat and talkative with everyone, I watched him steal away to read some Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance by the lakeshore. I did the same with Proenekke’s book there.
I emailed to ask about male loneliness, when I got back to New Jersey.
“I cherish solo trips, whether I’m married, feeling alone, feeling super connected with someone or a big group,” he wrote. “It’s just great to get away and convene with silence and space.”
My revelations in Colorado and, later, at Proenneke’s cabin, helped me realize I must connect deeply with myself in the outdoors from time to time. Nature can’t just be an emergency room for me, either. It’s long-term maintenance for my physical and mental health, whether it’s trail running, floating in a swimming hole, or staring at mountains. It’s more than a hobby. The version of me who returns from those trips is a better father and, hopefully, a better partner someday.
Unlike Matthiessen, who spent months away from his young, grieving son in search of a snow leopard, or Proenneke, who spent 30 years away from almost everyone, I couldn’t and wouldn’t want to pull myself away from my children and responsibilities to that extreme. I have been guilty of that in the past. I’ll make do with a vow to see mountains like the San Juans as much as possible, even if it’s just a few days to convene with solitude, as Adam does. And if I can’t get to the Sawtooths or Switzerland, I’ll cut myself a break and keep exploring Pennsylvania or the Catskills.
A few months after I got back from Alaska, I tackled Pennsylvania’s Black Forest Trail. It’s the state’s most difficult hike, a 43-mile loop with a mind-boggling 8,500 feet of elevation gain. I was craving solitude, again, and found the trail emptier than the Alaskan backcountry. I saw as many rattlesnakes as people on that trip.
On my final night of the hike, after pushing hard for about 18 miles, I took off my boots and socks and stretched out on a shady vista as the sun began to sink. Two hikers came in, a father and son, after their own long day. They hoped to camp there too and asked if I minded. I said it was fine and then, a few minutes later, reached for my socks and boots.
I shouldered my heavy pack, wished them a deep sleep, and pushed on to find solitude, that little bit of loneliness all the world says is a problem.
Jason Nark is a reporter who covers the outdoors for the Philadelphia Inquirer and and a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Outside, The Alpinist, Adventure Journal, National Geographic, Dwell, and other outlets.
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