Alaska is unlike any other state in the country. And when I say that, I’m not referring to its size or its natural beauty or even its resource abundance—although all three are relevant to the discussion. Rather, what I mean is that Alaska is different from the other states in that everybody, everywhere, thinks they get to have a say in what happens there. People in Montana, for example, don’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting to keep the people of Massachusetts from approving new businesses or utilizing their state’s physical assets. People in Texas don’t organize groups and found nonprofit organizations to interfere in and oppose new development in Alabama, despite never having been there or only having visited for a football game or two. For the most part, the states have a certain amount of autonomy over their own internal affairs. Of course, the federal government is often intrusive and overweening, but beyond that, states are generally left alone to govern themselves and their activities. Except Alaska. Now, to be fair, a big part of this is the fact that the rest of the people in the country do “own” a larger chunk of Alaska than they do of other states—at least nominally. Roughly two-thirds of the state is federally owned and managed, meaning that about one-third of all federally managed lands are in Alaska, almost four times as much land as the state with the second-largest federal plot (Nevada). Certainly, that gives people the impression that Alaska belongs to them at least as much as it belongs to the Alaskans. A bigger part of the issue here, though, is that people tend not to think of Alaska as a “real” place where real people live, work, start businesses, and try to experience the American dream. Despite being larger, geographically, than the next three largest states (Texas, California, and Montana) combined, Alaska has the third-smallest population in the nation. Couple that with the fact that it’s an extremely popular vacation destination and the subject of innumerable nature documentaries and reality shows, and people tend to think of it as little more than a massive entertainment experience, a theme park with bears and moose. They don’t really care about how Alaska’s resources or the effort that its residents put into developing them. They only care that the fishing and the hunting and the big-game watching remain undisturbed long enough for them to visit—or visit again, as the case may be. Consider that the Pebble Mine project in the Bristol Bay region of the state is estimated to hold the second-largest deposits of copper and gold in the entire world, but its development has been halted time and again, largely because out-of-state interests worry that mining there could maybe, possibly, theoretically disturb the salmon, herring, and rainbow trout fishing nearby. In 2020, the Trump administration killed the permits to begin development on the Pebble Mine, in part because Donald Trump, Jr. and Tucker Carlson—the former of which likes the fish there—publicly objected to the project, despite the Army Corps of Engineers having determined that it would have “no measurable effect” on fish populations. The same is true of the interminable debate over oil drilling in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Although the plain is home mostly to massive swarms of mosquitoes and other insects, its development has been debated and delayed for decades by out-of-state environmental activists, most of whom have never been to Alaska and all of whom think they know better than the state’s residents and mineralogical experts. Next week marks the first anniversary of the launch of a financial product as unique as Alaska itself, an investment fund designed specifically to do two things to alleviate the impacts of the economic neglect created by outsiders’ treatment of the state: take advantage of the underinvestment in Alaska’s immense resources and opportunities that are typically overlooked because of politically animated opposition from outside the state; and provide investment dollars for the state’s vital but otherwise under-capitalized businesses. That fund—The Frontier Economic Fund (AKAF)—was developed by Derek Kreifels of Prospr Aligned, in conjunction with Alaska’s business interests, and is managed by ETF and portfolio experts at Vident Asset Management. It is described on its website as “An ETF designed to help support resilient growth and opportunity within the Last Frontier”—i.e., to combat the perception that Alaska is just Disneyland on steroids. AKAF tracks the Alaska Last Frontier Index—a rules-based, tier-weighted index of roughly 150 companies selected based on the extent of their business activities connected to Alaska: operational presence, natural resource utilization, local employment, capital investment, and participation in state-sponsored initiatives. The index methodology is designed to recognize the importance of companies doing business in the state and even motivate them to expand their presence there. Unsurprisingly, given Alaska’s resource profile, the portfolio is heavily weighted toward industrials (35%), consumer discretionary (18%), energy (17%), and materials (12%). Top holdings include ConocoPhillips, Exxon, SLB, Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Delta, Alaska Air, UPS, FedEx—companies with significant Alaskan operations. It also includes smaller Alaska-specific plays like Northern Dynasty Minerals (the aforementioned Pebble Mine), Trilogy Metals, Novagold, Pantheon Resources, and several junior miners with Alaskan exploration projects. As I said, AKAF is distinctive. When it was launched, the state’s then-Commissioner of Revenue, Adam Crum, described it as “prioritizing our top economic sectors including energy development, mining, tourism, cargo, transportation, and retail.” The fund’s launch was also timed to take advantage of the federal government’s recent interest in enabling the development of the state, exemplified in President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order, “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential.” Additionally, the fund serves as an unofficial embodiment of the pushback against ESG (environmental, social, and governance investing), the anti-democratic use of capital markets to advance the political predilections of a small, largely leftist group of investors and financial gadflies. Given this last bit, AKAF has frustrated ESG supporters. This only makes sense, of course. ESG interests do not align with investors’ interests. Nor, for that matter, do they align with the interests of Alaskans. For this reason, the index excludes companies that have policies or made statements hostile to development in the state or that conflict with the best interests of the state’s residents, making an implicit but undeniable statement against politicizing investments. Opportunity abounds in Alaska, yet it has been mostly overlooked and undermined by personal and political considerations of people and organizations from outside of the state. Creating an investment product that rebalances the scales and puts the focus back on development, profit, and shareholder returns is, in many ways, the opposite of politics. With returns of roughly 33% since inception (an admittedly short timeframe), AKAF makes that case for itself. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Major employers can systematically—or unintentionally—blacklist conservative nonprofits from their employee charitable giving programs through a third party. Corporate generosity platforms such as Benevity act as middlemen, connecting employers such as AT&T, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and Starbucks to a host of nonprofits. Benevity, for example, connects “nearly 1,000 enterprise companies” to a network of 513,000 nonprofits after vetting 2.2 million of them. But these middleman platforms often refuse to partner with mainstream conservative or Christian nonprofits, because yet another third party—the Southern Poverty Law Center—puts those nonprofits on a “hate map” with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. The SPLC, which gained its reputation by suing Klan groups into bankruptcy, now stands accused of funneling money to Klan members, propping up the hate threat in order to raise money by claiming to oppose it. The SPLC claims it paid these Klan members as informants, to snuff out violent threats, but a federal grand jury indicted the SPLC for wire fraud and bank fraud based on claims that the SPLC paid for Klan robes and reimbursed a cross-burning, among other things. At least one of these corporate generosity platforms has stopped using the SPLC in its entirety, but others continue to use it. Calls to Stop Using SPLC 1792 Exchange, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing ideological balance back to public companies, and Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian law firm on the SPLC “hate map,” called on corporate generosity platforms to stop using the SPLC. “The scandal-ridden, federally indicted Southern Poverty Law Center has demonstrated for decades that it is a laughably unserious organization,” Greg Scott, executive vice president at 1792 Exchange, told the Daily Signal. “Its defamatory ‘Hate List’ is nothing more than a blacklist used to smear mainstream conservative, pro-life, and Christian organizations.” “Charity processing platforms like Benevity, Deed, and YourCause should immediately stop relying on the SPLC to ban legitimate nonprofits from corporate generosity programs,” Scott added. “Unfortunately, many business leaders still don’t realize their companies are indirectly relying on the SPLC’s thoroughly discredited ‘hate map’ to make important business decisions—imposing viewpoint discrimination on their own workforce and customer base in the process,” ADF Senior Counsel Jeremy Tedesco told the Daily Signal. “No business leader wants to explain to their board why they’re outsourcing decisions to a federally indicted organization,” he added. “The reputational and legal risks of continuing to rely on the SPLC are entirely unjustified—and the only responsible move is to cut ties completely.” Some companies have directed their corporate generosity platforms to stop using the SPLC to screen eligible nonprofits. DoorDash directed the platform Deed to stop using the SPLC for this purpose. According to Bowyer Research and previous reporting, companies that use Benevity have opted out of using the SPLC, including American Express, AT&T, Mastercard, McDonald’s, Morgan Stanley, Nvidia, and Salesforce. Verizon directed CyberGrants, another such platform, to stop using the SPLC for its employee giving. Only one of these platforms has sworn off the SPLC, however. Benevity “Benevity’s platform is designed to give clients flexibility and control over which nonprofits are eligible for their programs, including which third-party data sources, if any, they choose to apply,” a company spokesperson told the Daily Signal. “These options are not a default setting.” Scott has disputed this claim, saying it is “hard to square with [Benevity’s] own history.” In 2021, then-Benevity CEO Kelly Schmitt delivered a PowerPoint presentation explicitly stating that the company had “vetted” almost “2 million nonprofits,” adding that it used the “Southern Poverty Law Center Hate List.” Bonterra Bonterra, the company that owns Deed and the similar platform CyberGrants, told the Daily Signal that it is giving the companies that use its services the option to stop using the SPLC as a filter and to remove the SPLC from the program as a recipient of grants. “Bonterra is actively monitoring the SPLC indictment and evaluating any implications for our platform and the programs we support,” Melanie Mahaffey, senior director of strategic communications at Bonterra, told the Daily Signal. “We maintain nonprofit eligibility standards grounded in a robust internal compliance framework, which we review on an ongoing basis to ensure they remain current and defensible.” “In light of this developing situation, we are giving our customers two options: the ability to disable SPLC-based vetting within their program, and the ability to remove SPLC as an eligible nonprofit organization within their platform — both at their discretion,” she said. Groundswell Groundswell, a similar platform that offers “workplace giving, volunteering, matching, and grantmaking technology,” said it no longer uses third-party vetting systems like the SPLC “hate map.” “Historically, Groundswell incorporated third-party nonprofit data sources, including SPLC designations, as part of platform-level eligibility screening in line with common industry practices at the time,” Sarah Kuntsal, the company’s head of product marketing, told the Daily Signal. In 2024, however, the company “introduced enhanced controls that give customers more granular authority over nonprofit eligibility and restrictions,” Kuntsal explained. “As a result, Groundswell no longer applies platform-level restrictions based on any single third-party designation system.” The platform encourages employers to give workers “broad opportunities for participation and giving.” Groundswell “does not prescribe or advocate for any particular nonprofit screening methodology,” and it “does not discuss the specific configurations, preferences, or decisions of individual customers.” Groundswell’s frequently asked questions page stated that the platform “does not process donations to organizations denoted as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center” as recently as December 2025, but the page no longer includes this language. Millie Giving Millie Giving, another corporate generosity platform, published a blog post in 2022 citing the SPLC on “hate groups.” The blog post claims that “vetting for hate groups in-house would be very difficult,” and states that “All vetting for the Millie database is even through the SPLC!” Millie Giving did not respond to the Daily Signal’s requests for comment. 2 More Platforms Two other corporate generosity platforms partner with companies but have not said they use SPLC “hate map.” The Daily Signal also reached out to Submittable, which runs a similar corporate giving platform, and Blackbaud, which owns the corporate generosity platform YourCause. Neither of these companies has publicly stated any use of the SPLC “hate map” in the past, and neither responded to requests for comment.  The Southern Poverty Law Center did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment.

A coalition of litigation groups, at least two of which have been backed by taxpayer dollars, is targeting the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement in court. The two leading organizations are Democracy Forward, chaired by Democratic lawyer Marc Elias, and UnidosUS, a Hispanic left-of-center group that has reportedly received millions in government funding in previous years. The other partners include the left-leaning National Immigrant Justice Center, a group that has also received government grants; the libertarian-leaning legal group Institute for Justice; and the left-leaning Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center. The chief aim of the coalition is suing the government over alleged misconduct by officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement or with Customs and Border Protection. Specifically, the new national initiative plans to expand the use of the Federal Tort Claims Act, or FTCA. The law allows people to bypass sovereign immunity to sue the U.S. government for personal injury, property damage, or wrongful death caused by the wrongful or careless conduct of federal employees. More than 100 lawyers from 60 organizations convened in Chicago last week for training and discussion on FTCA litigation. “This convening is just the beginning of what will be a coordinated network of attorneys representing people harmed by federal officers’ actions at the administrative claim stage and in federal litigation, and Democracy Forward is honored to offer training, research, litigation guidance, screening tools, and ongoing technical support to make sure partners have the tools they need to hold government accountable,” Democracy Forward President Skye Perryman said in a public statement. “The Federal Tort Claims Act can be an incredibly powerful civil rights accountability tool,” she said. The nature of the statute makes it different from many of the politically oriented lawsuits that have amassed from groups on the left since President Donald Trump returned to office last year, said Robert Stilson, senior research analyst at the Capital Research Center, an investigative think tank. “The Federal Tort Claims Act is for individuals wronged by government employees, and it could be legitimate complaints,” Stilson told the Daily Signal. “I wouldn’t call it lawfare. On the other hand, Unidos is clearly politicized. Democracy Forward is clearly politicized.” UnidosUS, formerly known as the National Council of La Raza, has received tens of millions in funding through government grants. The UnidosUS website contends that federal immigration enforcement itself is rooted in structural racism. “Immigration laws in this country are often designed to keep Latino immigrants out, or when allowed, treated as disposable, marginalized, and often illegal,” the website says. In 2023, the group received $11.2 million from taxpayers, or about 20% of its budget, according to the Capital Research Center. From 2008 to 2017, the federal government provided about $38 million to UnidosUS. The group received no grants from 2018 through 2020 during the first Trump administration. But during the Biden administration, the organization received $35.9 million in federal grants from 2021 through 2023. “Unidos is a good illustration of sending significant federal grant money to recipients with openly political agendas,” Stilson said. “It’s sending taxpayers’ money to groups representing one side of the political spectrum.” A UnidosUS spokesperson did not respond to inquiries from the Daily Signal about the government grants. The group’s president, Janet Murguía, previously touted the initiative when it was launched in June. “As mass deportation efforts escalate, holding the federal government accountable for abuses of power, excessive force, and misconduct is critical to protecting our communities and mitigating the harm these enforcement actions cause,” Murguía said. Democracy Forward has filed more than 150 lawsuits against the Trump administration in the first year of Trump’s second term and dozens more in the first six months of 2026. Elias, the chairman of the board of Democracy Forward, served as an election lawyer for the Democratic National Committee and for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. The National Immigrant Justice Center, formerly the Midwest Immigrant Rights Center, provides pro bono or discounted legal services to low-income immigrants. It has advocated for halting ICE detention and defunding ICE. In 2024, the NIJC received $2.6 million—or about 32% of its revenue—from government grants, according to the Capital Research Center. An NIJC spokesperson did not respond to inquiries from the Daily Signal. The MacArthur Justice Center litigates for people it considers to have faced injustice from the criminal justice system and advocates for overturning death sentences. The organization was founded in 1985 by the adult children of J. Roderick MacArthur. The group, with a sizable $89.6 million in net assets, does not appear to receive government funding. A spokesperson for the group did not respond to inquiries for this story. The Institute for Justice has litigated against law enforcement abuse in the past but is perhaps best known for lawsuits in defense of property rights, the First Amendment, and advocating for deregulation. And there is no evidence the libertarian-leaning group gets government funding.

As major gun manufacturers relocate from Virginia to Georgia over firearm regulations, constitutional experts told the Daily Signal that the increasing momentum for left-leaning policies in the Peach State could jeopardize the manufacturers’ new home. Their remarks come as Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., runs for reelection and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who is endorsed by former President Joe Biden, eyes the governor’s mansion. Polls show that both candidates have a favorable chance of winning their respective seats. “From the policy perspective, every time you have elected officials in office that are not protecting the Second Amendment, one runs the risk of losing ground to their policies,” Zack Smith, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Constitutional Government, told the Daily Signal. He added that businesses “would move to a more business friendly environment; they want to be in an environment where their Second Amendment rights are protected.” In early June, Rideout Arsenal announced that it would relocate a firearm manufacturing factory valued at $22 million from Virginia to Georgia over new anti-gun laws enacted by Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat. While Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp welcomed the move, saying his state “endures support for constitutional freedoms,” Republican political operatives say Ossoff’s anti-gun stance could jeopardize future moves by gun manufacturers. “Whether it’s stripping law-abiding citizens of their right to safely own firearms, or protecting criminal illegals like Laken Riley’s killer, Jon Ossoff always puts the radical Left first,” National Republican Study Committee spokesman Nick Puglia told the Daily Signal. During his 2020 campaign, Ossoff publicly said he supports “a ban on the sale of semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines to the general public.” The manufacturing plant that relocated to the Peach State specializes in semi-automatic firearms. On a different occasion, Ossoff said he supports “universal criminal history checks for gun purchases” and “red flag laws to protect family members and domestic partners concerned about the mental health of their loved ones.” Kyle Brosnan, general counsel for the Oversight Project, told the Daily Signal that Ossoff wouldn’t affect the pro-Second Amendment climate in Georgia “so long as the state Legislature and governor offices are held by pro-Second Amendment political leaders.” However, he predicted that the anti-firearm stance of Spanberger and other blue-state politicians will continue to hinder those states. “People and businesses have been voting with their feet in response to progressive, state-level policies for years now. That is why states like California, New York, and Illinois are projected to lose congressional seats following the 2030 census, and freedom-loving states like Texas and Florida stand to gain seats,” Brosnan said. According to Smith, many blue states “violate the Second Amendment rights of their citizens,” driving businesses out. “I think that like many business, gun businesses will continue to move to business-friendly environments. This is not good for local economies. Often, the jobs at manufacturing plants are high-skilled jobs. [Spanberger] should be concerned with the economic consequence of this.”

While some problems caused by California’s one-party government get significant press, there’s one major issue that’s virtually ignored: The state’s 911 system is dangerously outdated, and the attempt to update it has already cost taxpayers $502 million with little to show for it.   California has an analog emergency warning system from the 1970s. There is broad agreement that the current system puts Californians at risk. Gov. Gavin Newsom proudly announced in 2019 that California would update its system. In a 2019 press release, Newsom’s office explained some of the failures of the current system. At the time, there were 13 system outages a month on average. Newsom’s office said federal regulators estimated that speeding up average emergency response times by a single minute could save 10,000 lives each year. The project is clearly necessary, but its cost has been astronomical, and progress has been sluggish. In 2019, Newsom asserted that the project would be completed by 2022 and cost approximately $132 million. He also explained that the project would be managed by a little-known governmental entity called the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES). With a name like that, Newsom cannot duck responsibility for the failure that has followed. The contractors initially decided to implement regional systems, with the first place to enjoy the new service being Tuolumne County. This county has a relatively small population, around 53,000 at the time. Thus, minor kinks in the system could be worked out on a small scale. However, the system had far more than just some minor kinks. It fell flat on its face, being unable to process many incoming calls, and it could not reliably identify locations or even callers’ phone numbers. The failure in Tuolumne caused Cal OES to abandon the regional approach. But by then, Newsom was too busy trying to jump-start a run for president to respond effectively. It took years to pull the plug on the regional system. Of course, Newsom and his team blamed the contractors, but failures like this always start at the top. Today, the statewide 911 system teeters on the brink of disaster. The state’s taxpayers have now spent $502 million and still don’t have a solution. Cal OES put in place a bridge contract until the new system is up and running. The current backup provider will be paid $80 million a year for 30 months to operate the decrepit old system. A representative of Cal OES told me, “Transitioning to a statewide NG [Next Generation] 911 system is a complex, multi-year effort. The bridge contract ensures Californians continue to receive reliable 911 service and allows for additional deployment of NG 911, particularly in high-priority areas like Los Angeles ahead of the 2028 Olympics.” You can now sleep comfortably knowing they have matters under control. The reason the public is largely unaware of this disaster is because its funding comes from designated fees on California residents’ telephone bills. The money collected goes directly to a secluded fund, and the state legislature has no control over the expenditure. “California’s 911 system is funded through the State Emergency Telephone Number Account (SETNA) fee, and any costs do not impact the state’s general fund,” a member of the Cal OES team told me. “SETNA is a surcharge on telephone lines in California and is among the lowest in the nation.” We finally found a low tax in California. The problem is it is being largely wasted. A representative of Cal OES also told me that the office spent $138 million in 2025 from this secluded fund on NG 911. And the governor increased the amount for 2026 to $141.9 million “as a one-time increase in SETNA funds for 2026-27 to accelerate the statewide transition to NG 911.” Cal OES is now hoping for full implementation of the system by 2030. Time will tell if that occurs. The project—which was scheduled for completion in three years—will now be completed after 12 years. The project—which we were told would cost $132 million—will cost about $1.4 billion. Based on the failure of the original regional plan, we can only pray this one will work. A state’s 911 system has real consequences. People’s lives often hang in the balance. Given how blatant the failure to modernize the system has become, I’m not sure why people keep voting to keep the same clowns in charge of our state. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.