Photo: Kotzebue wind turbines, July 13, 2024. (Courtesy Chad Nordlum)

More than $130 million in grants for clean energy projects in rural Alaska are now frozen.

That’s after President Donald Trump signed dozens of executive orders during his first day in office, including one freezing funding from the federal Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Alena Naiden, Alaska Desk reporter for our flagship station KNBA, has more.

The projects were meant to lower energy costs in rural communities and bring them additional revenue sources to support crucial infrastructure.

That includes hydroelectric dams, wind turbines, and solar energy systems that were funded in more than a dozen rural Alaska villages with federal grants throughout last year.

Now those projects are in limbo. One example is two large wind turbines in Kotzebue.

Chad Nordlum is the energy project manager for the village.

He says that with the funding freeze, residents are now concerned about the shipping schedule for the turbines and getting the project off the ground.

“Right now, there doesn’t seem to be much we can do on our end. We’re just waiting for clarity.”

The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium has partnered with tribes across the state, including in Kotzebue, to receive the federal grants.

In total, they’ve been awarded contracts for about $132 million, says Katya Karankevich, a project manager at the consortium. But they have not received the money from the government yet.

Karankevich says that the energy from those projects is cheaper than transported diesel, and would help residents lower their bills.

The tribes also would be able to sell that power to local utility companies and get additional revenue to invest in local water and sewer infrastructure.

“We’re trying to get all off the road system communities on board with the idea to do renewable energy in a completely different way in the state, and that is to set up the communities themselves, to sell power to themselves, and to use the earnings for public benefit, like taking care of sanitation infrastructure.”

Karankevich says that the projects in question are at different states of progress but all of them have completed feasibility studies proving their cost-efficiency.

She says that while the funding freeze is a hurdle, the consortium still plans to continue moving those projects forward.

The funding freeze also includes Indian Country plans to improve roads, provide clean drinking water, clean up oil and gas wells, and other projects for tribal communities across the country.

U.S Supreme Court. (Photo: Jarek Tuszyński / Wikimedia)

The nation’s highest court has declined to hear a case about Montana voting laws that tribes and Native vote advocates say would have disproportionately affected Native people.

Kathleen Shannon has more.

Last year, Montana’s Supreme Court decided two laws passed in 2021 to ban same-day voter registration and paid absentee ballot collection were unconstitutional.

Alex Rate, deputy director and legal director of the ACLU of Montana, said people who face too many costs to voting often do not.

For those who already face barriers like long distances to elections offices or no residential mail delivery, the laws could have tipped the scales. Rate argued it was the intention of the bill’s backers.

“That’s what we saw with these laws, was a very deliberate attempt to make it so difficult for people to vote that they would stay home,” Rate asserted.

Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen brought the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which last week opted not to hear it.

Rate noted the high court does not have jurisdiction to pick up a case on state voting laws.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, states passed almost 80 restrictive voting laws between 2021 and 2024, nearly three times the number passed in the previous few years.

So far in Montana’s 2025 legislative session, a half-dozen voting-related bills have been introduced by lawmakers, all Republicans.

These shaggy buffalo graze in the Lakota Tribal Park, an immense section of grasslands on the eastern side of the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. (Courtesy Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Game, Fish, and Parks Department)

More than a dozen Indigenous communities welcomed back more than 500 bison last year to their ancestral grazing lands across the country.

The Indigenous-led effort, which includes the InterTribal Buffalo Council, says bison play a role in spiritual and cultural revitalization, and food sovereignty for Indigenous people.

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