The imaginary war on Alaska continues.

“Regardless of who is on the top of the ticket, the National Democrats and the failed Biden-Harris agenda will still be on the ballot this November,” Sen. Dan Sullivan said in a press release after President Joe Biden stepped aside, with Vice President Kamala Harris his likely replacement.

Sullivan’s press release went on to claim that part of the Biden-Harris agenda is “Biden’s unprecedented war on Alaska—with 68 executive orders and actions specifically targeting our state and our working families.”

Sullivan appeared on Fox News on June 26 and said the Biden administration is “actually sanctioning my state, literally sanctioning my constituents, trying to shut down American energy in Alaska, the American energy sector, more than they’re sanctioning the terrorists, the Iranians, Venezuela. So that’s the real remarkable thing, how much they’re targeting American energy and they’re letting the enemies of our country go free.”

Truth is the first casualty of war, even in imaginary wars. U.S. oil production is higher than it has ever been.

I want to deal here today with the 68 alleged executive orders and actions that Sullivan cites in his shock and awe campaign.

On December 8, 2021, in one of the first speeches he gave in Congress about the so-called Biden war on Alaska, Sullivan said multiple times that there were “20 executive orders in eight months” and portrayed these as sanctions or direct attacks on working families. He was harkening back to the halcyon days of Donald Trump.

“Imagine an administration coming in with 20 executive orders in eight months,” Sullivan said.

“The Biden administration is clearly trying to shut down my state. It’s there for everybody to see. Everybody back home knows it,” he said.

Everybody back home doesn’t buy the claim that limiting development is equal to shutting down the state. Because it is not.

On February 7, 2023, Sullivan spoke to the Alaska Legislature about the imaginary war on Alaska.
”You all might have heard me refer to this ‘war on Alaska.’ It sounds a little harsh, I know. But this is what I mean by that: In two years, the Biden Administration has issued 44 executive orders or executive actions solely focused on our state. 44 in two years. Just Alaska.”

“No other state has gotten this kind of unwarranted attention,” Sullivan said.

No other state has 222 million acres of federal land owned collectively by the people of the United States. Like it or not, that’s the reason for the attention.

The number of alleged executive orders and other actions identified by Sullivan has grown throughout Biden’s term. It’s a selective list and a misleading one. Here is his most recent account.

The latest version of Sullivan’s chart claims there have been “66 Executive Orders & Actions Targeting Alaska.” His office has yet to update the total to 68, the number of anti-Alaska actions he is now using in his press releases and interviews.

When Sullivan is interviewed about the war, he is usually quoted about the number of sanctions on his list with no questions asked.

There are lots of questions to be asked.

For one, his chart of sanctions against Alaska only lists a single executive order on the list of “66 Executive Orders & Actions Targeting Alaska.”

The Sullivan chart misleads the public into thinking that the Biden administration has buried Alaska in dozens of executive orders.

To be accurate, the headline should say: “One Executive Order & Actions Targeting Alaska.”

If the text above is too small to read, click here for a bigger version.

President Biden issued Executive Order 13990 on the first day he was in office. It called for a review or reversal of multiple actions by the Trump administration.

The words “executive order” have a power that is missing from the word “action” when it comes to propaganda purposes.

Roughly half of the “66 Executive Orders & Actions Targeting Alaska” are procedural steps that appear to have been added to inflate the length of the list and increase the level of outrage. It’s to hype the imaginary war with imaginary numbers. Federal overreach.

Announcing that something might happen and then announcing that something is going to happen and then announcing that something has happened is a way of turning a single action into three alleged attacks on Alaska working families.

For instance, the Biden administration canceled the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge oil lease sale results, in which the Dunleavy administration was the main bidder.

Sullivan has turned that decision into six separate attacks on Alaska among the “66 Executive Orders & Actions Targeting Alaska,” including a lease moratorium, a suspension of leases, a review of development plans, a bill to cancel leases, a delay in a report and cancellation of the ANWR leases.

There are similar cases of superfluous entries for the Ambler Road, the Tongass National Forest and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, creating a catalog of duplication and a big number to put in press releases and recite in interviews.

Sullivan mentions the review of the Willow project Environmental Impact Statement as one of the sanctions in the war on Alaska. A second attack, he says, was the delay of the final EIS on Willow.

But Sullivan didn’t include the Biden administration approval of the Willow project in March 2023 as one of the “Actions Targeting Alaska,” an omission that undermines the credibility of his bellicose comments.

Also weakening his position and the value of his chart is his overblown rhetoric and the reality that many of the federal actions deal with important questions that are not as simple or clear-cut as he claims.

Expanding the Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area by 4,500 acres or charging fees for using campgrounds on the Dalton Highway are hardly the Attacks on Alaska that Sullivan claims.

"We need a ceasefire on the war against Alaska," Sullivan told the Legislature in 2023.

That’s not enough. We need an end to Sullivan’s imaginary war.

Your contributions help support independent analysis and political commentary by Alaska reporter and author Dermot Cole. Thank you for reading and for your support. Either click here to use PayPal or send checks to: Dermot Cole, Box 10673, Fairbanks, AK 99710-0673.

Write me at dermotmcole@gmail.com.