If you need a little hope this morning - the current tween trend involves decorating clothespins with affirming messages, then clipping them on friends' backpacks when they're not looking. Here are a few that my 11-year-old decorated this weekend ❤️

Apparently I wasn't the only one who found the appearance of Halibut Olympia on the menu for the dictators luncheon to be one of the more surreal points of the day. Thanks to @jomalley17.bsky.social for bringing this absurdity to national attention! 😆 www.nytimes.com/2025/08/16/d...

This week’s newsletter with all eyes on Anchorage:

The wireless emergency alert system has gone off in Juneau as the Mendenhall Glacier prepares to flood. #Alaska #Juneau

Got to help out with this story — so curious how they’ll work out the logistics for this visit in the middle of tourist season.

Curious about my Alaska food newsletter? Here’s what subscribers are saying:

This week in the newsletter: Notes on SALMON, the women’s page in Alaska’s old newspapers, dry-brining for dinner, a new way to fillet, Thai Village, delicious tonics, gluten-free peach muffins, quick pickles, working women, local news and sourdough. juliaomalley.substack.com/p/i-found-an...

On today's episode of "The Daily," a family physician in western North Carolina explains what she thinks will happen to her patients as a result of Republicans' domestic policy bill.

What form of sociopathy required them to need a court order to stop doing this?

If you are grilling salmon tonight, make a little extra for breakfast. 🍳❤️ www.adn.com/alaska-life/...

There was a visitor to the Mt. Shishaldin volcano webcam in the eastern Aleutians about a week ago. 🐻

First actual paper book I have finished in over a year. Thanks, @jomalley17.bsky.social ! I know I’m late to read it but now I’m looking forward to trying out the recipes! Loved how the book captured a sense of what it is to live in Alaska through the lens of food.

I got permission to share this, and I'm extremely grateful for that. The Onion got this letter from one of our subscribers in Alaska. She works with dementia patients and decided to leave a copy in the car for each one. This email made my year. Read it and you'll see what I mean. People are good.

“The rapid rise in autism cases is not because of vaccines or environmental toxins, but rather is the result of changes in the way that autism is defined and assessed — changes that I helped put into place,” writes the psychiatrist Allen Frances.

The Wall Street Journal had a piece last night that the Judicial Conference of the United States — the policy making body for the federal judiciary — is discussing whether the Judiciary should have its own armed security force rather than rely on the U.S. Marshals for federal judges’ protection.

An Alaska village of 160 people raked in $1 million a month from a payday-loan style business. But here’s who was making the real money … www.adn.com/business-eco...

Filipino organizations in Alaska have worked to bring a documentary to Alaska called "Nurse Unseen." The film was shown at the Anchorage Museum Wednesday to spotlight a group of immigrants whose service and sacrifices are often overlooked.

In this week’s Alaska food newsletter: how to love Anchorage, Walmart's immaculate vibes, perfect avocados, the People's Carrs, the smoothest hummus, Tang ice cream, chicken cutlet, ordering Top Bop, "Feeding Ghosts,” peeping other people’s shopping carts. juliaomalley.substack.com/p/join-the-f...

This fellow is such a treasure — a smart, helpful, highly valuable resource.

This week, a word on meal trains — In Alaska, when our friends and neighbors grieve, we bring over loaves of bread and jars of soup and fillets of fish and backyard honey and, sometimes, we just set them on the porch. This is a custom here, in this dangerous place where everybody knows everybody.

NEW: The total loss of NOAA’s office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research —a nerve center of global climate science, data collection and modeling — represents a setback for climate preparedness that experts warn the nation may never recover from. By @abrahm.bsky.social

I had a lot of fun eating a messy halibut sandwich and talking about Alaska’s food culture with Pati Jinich last summer for her show “Pati Jinich Explores PanAmericana.” It airs tomorrow night on @alaskapublic at 8 p Alaska time or it can be streamed on the @pbs app. Here’s a clip!

Support Alaska’s public radio and television stations!

“Some FAA personnel have been implicitly threatened with having their lives ruined by potential criminal charges from the Trump Justice Department if they blab about Project Lift, according to a person familiar with the situation…

We are pulling out the stops to save our program. If possible, please join us May 1 at 2pm for listening session. Tell us why ACCAP matters to you so we can pass it up. Register at the link: if that time doesn’t work for you, fill out our short survey. Basi’. #climate uaf-accap.org/event/specia...

The Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the org I work for, is funded through OAR. We’re in our 20th year of providing Alaskans with reliable and actionable info. If OAR is destroyed, so is ACCAP.

and Alaska's Congressional delegation, especially Sullivan and Nick Begich, are pulling that zipper down.. 😥

In this week’s newsletter: Taking a clear-eyed view of the possibility of tariffs and a potential Canadian toll on top of inflation in a place with some of the most expensive groceries in the country, I made a shopping list for your Alaska pantry. open.substack.com/pub/juliaoma...

In this week’s newsletter: Anchorage’s crispiest hash browns, not waiting for breakfast, Wild Scoops’ latest pie and other local food notes. (Plus: I’m trying to get to 1000 subscribers!)

For @adn.com I’m making my family’s classic ‘70s bunny cake but swapping out the box mix for a vintage olive oil carrot cake recipe with coconut, pineapple, walnuts, golden raisins and cream cheese frosting.

In this week’s newsletter: Google alerts me when my name shows up online so I can tell when my stories publish. This is how an obituary for a woman with my exact same name came zinging out of the ether into my email and shot me in the heart. (Plus swanky poke, DIY refried beans, and bunny cake…)

Alaska lays off 30 public health workers as Trump cuts ripple through state government alaskabeacon.com/briefs/alask...

In this week’s Alaska food newsletter, notes on: perfect little lunch spots, hamburger healing, kimchi, copy-cat Starbucks lemon loaf, Costco flatbread, a 🤯 croissandwich and Journey songs at hockey games.

This story is so darling and well written, from Robert Woolsey with KCAW in Sitka. I can't even pick a favorite line ! What a guy, "now a hale and hearty eighty-year-old" - Burgess www.kcaw.org/2025/03/31/a...

In this week’s newsletter, notes on: A mail carrier's funeral, disaster-preparedness baking, Kenai dip, TikTok sushi bake, Costco cocktails and chicken wings you've got to try 🍪🌋

😬

“One young man sobbed when a guard pushed him to the floor. He said, ‘I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a barber.’ I believed him. *** He “began to whimper,” as his head was roughly shaved, “folding his hands in prayer as his hair fell.” He “asked for his mother & cried as he was slapped again.”

Signs of the times: the Haines Borough Assembly in Haines, Alaska, has passed a resolution recognizing Canadian sovereignty. www.hainesalaska.gov/media/88586

A draft lawsuit floated to attorneys general in several states argues Congress must call a constitutional convention over the national debt. Alaska is the only state listed on the draft. (Via Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica)

Federal officials told the university it must immediately place its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department under “academic receivership for a minimum of five years.”

What I did today. #Alaska alaskapublic.org/shows/progra...

Struggling to contain a raging measles epidemic in West Texas, public health officials increasingly worry that residents are relying on unproven remedies endorsed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, and postponing doctor visits until the illness has worsened.

The president of the American Bar Association says that the Trump administration is targeting judges and lawyers who make decisions it disagrees with.

Alaska part of this suit 👇 wapo.st/3DxOwR5

"The answer to a politics of scarcity is a politics of abundance; a politics that asks what it is that people really need and then organizes government to make sure there is enough of it," writes our columnist Ezra Klein.

In this week’s Alaska food newsletter — my favorite old school Anchorage restaurant dishes, DIY breakfast focaccia, when Golden Donuts are freshest and what not to buy at Costco.

They Saved Taxpayers Billions. Trump Fired Them Anyway. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...