Alaska
Debate over transgender sports ban brings Alaska House to a standstill • Alaska Beacon
More than 10 hours after it opened debate on a bill that would ban transgender girls from girls sports teams in Alaska, the Alaska House of Representatives remained bogged down on the issue late Saturday.
With the legislative session scheduled to end on Wednesday, the protracted debate forced the postponement of other priority work, including on legislation that addresses crime, a pending energy crunch along the Railbelt, and other education topics.
Republican members of the House, with one exception, are supporting the bill, while a coalition of Democrats, independents and one Republican have vowed to use every possible means to defeat it.
The result on Saturday was a grinding, trench-warfare-like legislative process that saw supporters of the bill defeat or table opposition amendments, one by one, for hours.
“We’re doing it on behalf of women and young ladies and girls who would like to participate in female sports,” said Rep. David Eastman, R-Wasilla.
Supporters of the bill do not believe that transgender women are women, and allowing transgender girls to participate on girls sports teams would mean that “there would be no female sports left to participate in, which would be a disappointment,” he said.
The bill’s opponents vehemently and at times emotionally argued that transgender women are women and deserve to be granted equal treatment under the law.
“Trans girls in sports (are) not a threat to any other girl,” said Rep. Donna Mears, D-Anchorage.
Opposition lawmakers had known for months that the bill was likely to advance to the House floor and prepared dozens of amendments in an attempt to kill the bill by drawing out debate
On Saturday morning, with the House majority ready to table those amendments without discussion, opposition lawmakers grew angry and refused to vote, bringing proceedings to a halt.
“If you would like to set this precedent of just tabling minority amendments because you do not like them, you will reap what you sow for years to come,” said House Minority Leader Calvin Schrage, I-Anchorage.
That statement brought raised voices from Republicans in the House who saw it as a personal threat against Speaker of the House Cathy Tilton, R-Wasilla, and told Schrage should “take it outside” with them.
“You brought this upon us! You are the majority. You said this is your priority. Give us the right to defend the children in our districts who you are hurting because of this,” said Rep. Jennie Armstrong, D-Anchorage, shouting across the House chambers.
“Yeah, well, you’re discriminating against women!” said Rep. Jamie Allard, R-Eagle River, shouting back.
“I’m a woman, Jamie!” Armstrong responded, even louder.
A short break brought more interruptions and delay.
“You’re making a mockery of this,” said Rep. Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake.
“You’re making a mockery with this bill,” Armstrong said.
“Oh, stop,” McCabe said.
“It’s not a bill. It’s an attack on children in our state!” Armstrong responded.
Armstrong, who identifies as bisexual, and Democratic Rep. Andrew Gray, a gay man from Anchorage, have been among the most passionate opponents of the bill, as has Rep. Alyse Galvin, I-Anchorage, who has a transgender daughter.
“One of my four daughters won’t come into this building. She’s very uncomfortable here. It breaks my heart,” Galvin said.
After Armstrong’s heated exchanges, Tilton and Schrage negotiated a compromise that allowed the opposition to present some amendments.
The compromise agreement set a strict time limit for each legislator to speak on an amendment, but even with that restriction, each amendment took 15 minutes or more, and there were dozens.
The bill’s supporters, to save time, declined to speak on each proposal. This left the floor open to the bill’s opponents, who said the bill implicates the state’s constitutional right to privacy. It would require girls to prove that their gender at birth — as shown on a birth certificate and medical tests — matches their gender identity.
“When you’re asking women to give up their constitutional rights to play sports … it’s a shame this is where we think we should be on Day 117 of the Legislature,” said Rep. Sara Hannan, D-Juneau.
Opposition lawmakers repeatedly offered procedural exit ramps to members of the majority, saying they were willing to move on from the issue, if the majority was willing.
But majority Republicans voted down requests to table and indefinitely postpone the bill, keeping the debate going.
As debate extended into the night, lawmakers recognized an important fact: Even after amendments wrap up, a final vote on the bill itself won’t take place until the next legislative day, promising further delays.
“There’s so much hate out there. Why would we move forward with a bill that will just enable more hatred and discrimination? It’s insane,” Schrage said.
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Alaska
Alaska High School Girls Basketball 2026 ASAA State Championship Brackets – March 10
The 2026 Alaska high school girls basketball state championships begin this week, and High School On SI has brackets for all four classifications.
The brackets will be updated with scores and matchups throughout the week.
All four classifications will play their state championship games at Alaska Airlines Center in Anchorage.
The 1A and 2A championships run March 11-14. Classes 3A and 4A play the following week, March 18-21.
Alaska High School Girls Basketball 2026 State Championship Brackets, Matchups, Schedule – March 10
3/11 – Shaktoolik (1) vs. Arlicaq (16)
3/11 – Kake (8) vs. Tri-Valley (9)
3/11 – Fort Yukon (4) vs. Andreafski (13)
3/11 – Sand Point (5) vs. Napaaqutgmiut (12)
3/11 – Scammon Bay (2) vs. Nunamiut (15)
3/11 – Akiuk Memorial (7) vs. Newhalen (10)
3/11 – Davis-Romoth (3) vs. Cook Inlet Academy (14)
3/11 – Hoonah (6) vs. Shishmaref (11)
3/12 – Seward (1) vs. Chevak (8)
3/12 – Metlakatla (4) vs. Cordova (5)
3/12 – Craig (2) vs. Susitna Valley (7)
3/12 – Glennallen (3) vs. Degnan (6)
3/18 – Barrow (1) vs. Kotzebue (8)
3/18 – Grace Christian (4) vs. Galena (5)
3/18 – Monroe Catholic (2) vs. Delta (7)
3/18 – Mt. Edgecumbe (3) vs. Kenai Central (6)
3/18 – Mountain City Christian Academy (1) vs. North Pole (8)
3/18 – Colony (4) vs. West (5)
3/18 – Bartlett (2) vs. Juneau-Douglas (7)
3/18 – Wasilla (3) vs. Service (6)
More Coverage from High School On SI
Alaska
Made In The USA: The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company
This is the Alaska Wall Tent by the Alaska Gear Company, each one is made in the United States from Sunforger 13oz DLX, a double-filled, pre-shrunk, marine-grade canvas ideal for longterm outdoor use.
The Alaska Wall Tent comes in an array of sizes and versions, allowing you to choose the one that best suits your individual use-case. They’re all individually made in Alaska, and perhaps even more importantly, they’re all tested extensively to be able to handle local conditions.

This is the Alaska Wall Tent by the Alaska Gear Company, each one is made in the United States from Sunforger 13oz DLX, a double-filled, pre-shrunk, marine-grade canvas ideal for longterm outdoor use.
History Speedrun: The Alaska Gear Company
The Alaska Gear Company was formerly known as Airframes Alaska, it’s an aviation and outdoor equipment supplier and manufacturer headquartered in Palmer, Alaska. The company is led by majority owner Sean McLaughlin, who bought the original bush airplane parts business when it had just two employees and $100,000 in annual revenue. McLaughlin has since grown it to approximately 100 employees and $20 million in annual sales.
The company can trace its early roots to a licensed maker of Piper PA-18 Super Cub fuselages at Birchwood Airport. Through a series of acquisitions, including Reeve Air Motive (an aircraft parts retailer operating out of Anchorage’s Merrill Field since 1950, Alaska Tent & Tarp, and Northern Sled Works, the company grew well beyond aviation into outdoor recreation and cold-weather gear.
That diversification ultimately drove the rebrand from Airframes Alaska to Alaska Gear Company in late 2023, as the old name no longer conveyed the full scope of what the company produces and sells.
The Alaska Gear Company now operates out of three locations – a 100,000 square foot manufacturing facility in Palmer, a production facility in Fairbanks, and a retail store with an in-house sewing workshop at Merrill Field in Anchorage.
Its product lines span two major categories. On the aviation side, the company is best known for its hand-built Alaskan Bushwheel tundra tires, FAA-approved titanium landing gear, Super Cub fuselage modifications, and a wide range of bush plane parts. On the outdoor side, it manufactures Arctic Oven hot tents, canvas wall tents, custom freight and pulk sleds, and a modernized version of the iconic military bunny boot designed for extreme cold weather conditions.
More recently in 2024, the Alaska Gear Company was named “Made in Alaska Manufacturer of the Year” by the Alaska Department of Commerce.
The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company
The Alaska Canvas Wall Tent is a handmade-in-Alaska canvas tent made from 13oz Sunforger DLX double-filled, preshrunk, marine-grade cotton canvas that’s treated to resist fire, water, and mildew while still remaining breathable.
It comes in four sizes, including 8×10, 10×12, 12×14, and 14×16 feet, all with 5-foot wall heights, and it’s available either unframed (starting at $1,295) or with a frame (starting at $2,300). The unframed version can be constructed in the field using lengths of wood sourced from the area, reducing the initial pack weight – this is crucial for trips into the wilderness by bush plane where every pound of weight is critical.

It comes in four sizes, including 8×10, 10×12, 12×14, and 14×16 feet, all with 5-foot wall heights, and it’s available either unframed (starting at $1,295) or with a frame (starting at $2,300). The unframed version can be constructed in the field using lengths of wood sourced from the area, reducing the initial pack weight – this is crucial for trips into the wilderness by bush plane where every pound of weight is critical.
All tents include a 4.5 inch oval stove jack for use with wood or propane stoves, as well as a 56 inch triangular rear window with insect screening, an 18oz vinyl sod cloth around the base to block drafts and moisture, ridgepole openings at both ends, rope-reinforced eaves, brass grommets, overlapping door flaps with ties, a heavy-duty zippered door, and 100 feet of sisal rope for tie-downs.
The tents are now available to buy direct from the Alaska Gear Company here, and at the time of writing they have stock ready to ship out immediately.

Images courtesy of the Alaska Gear Company
Alaska
Lakes are growing in Alaska. That’s not entirely a bad thing
The St. Elias Mountains in southeast Alaska are dotted with over 100 lakes where glaciers crumble into milky, turquoise water. Those lakes are expanding at an ever-quickening pace.
The lakes will quadruple in size over the next century or two, scientists report March 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This growth will transform landscapes, create new salmon habitat and may even change the course of a major river.
“We are seeing the great age of ice retreat” in Alaska, says Daniel McGrath, a glaciologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. “These glaciers are just peeling back from the landscape,” revealing deep grooves they carved in the Earth, where lakes are now forming.
Glacial hydrologist Eran Hood of the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau, who was not part of the study, adds that “understanding where these lakes are going to emerge is important” because it “changes the whole nature of the downstream ecosystem.”
Hugging the coastline along the Alaska-Canada border, the tiny mountainous region that includes the St. Elias Mountains is losing 60 cubic kilometers of ice per year. Because lakes absorb solar heat, the glaciers that shed ice into lakes are shrinking faster than those that terminate on dry land. Across southeast Alaska, these lakes attached to glaciers have expanded by 60 percent since 1986, reaching a combined area of 1,300 square kilometers.
McGrath and his colleagues wondered how far this runaway expansion might go. So, they combined satellite images with estimates of ice thickness — mapping deeply eroded grooves that are still hidden under glaciers.
The results were “eye-opening,” McGrath says. The team identified 4,200 square kilometers of glacier-covered grooves adjacent to existing lakes.
He and his colleagues predict that the lakes will continue to expand — causing rapid ice retreat — until they fill those grooves, reaching a combined size of around 5,500 square kilometers, an area the size of Delaware.
“By the end of this century, all of these lakes will probably be more or less fully developed,” says study coauthor Louis Sass III, a glaciologist with the U.S. Geological Survey at the Alaska Science Center in Anchorage. But those growing lakes are already reshaping entire landscapes in a way that is often overlooked in public discourse around glacier retreat.
Many of Alaska’s glaciers terminate on dry land, and their meltwater often creates barren, rocky floodplains downstream, where the streams alternate between trickles and floods — constantly branching and shifting course as they lay down sediment released by the glacier.
“Those habitats are fairly inhospitable for a lot of fish,” including some salmon, says Jonathan Moore, an aquatic ecologist with Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada. The water is too cold, and fish eggs “get swept out or buried by the floods every year.”
But as glaciers retreat into lakes and those lakes expand, their meltwater has time to drop its sediment and warm a few degrees in the lake before spilling into a river. Rivers that carry less sediment are less prone to shifting channels.
A 2025 study by Moore and remote sensing scientist Diane Whited of the University of Montana found that as glacial lakes expanded over 38 years in southeast Alaska, the downstream river channels stabilized, allowing willows and bushes to spread across floodplains.
“It creates salmon habitat,” Hood says. A 2021 study by Moore and Hood predicted that by 2100, glacial retreat in southeast Alaska will transform 6,000 kilometers of river channels into decent habitat for some local species of salmon. The lakes themselves will create spawning grounds for sockeye salmon — an important commercial species.
But these changes will come with upheaval.
For instance, one major river, the Alsek, will probably shift its course as retreating glaciers cause two lakes to merge, providing an easier path to the ocean.
People in Juneau are feeling another dramatic effect of expanding lakes. At least once per year, a lake dammed by the nearby Mendenhall Glacier spills out in a flash flood that gushes through town, forcing some residents to build protective levees around their homes.
These ecosystems “are going to be transformed,” Moore says. “But that transformation is going to be pretty violent and pretty dangerous.”
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