Liz Ruskin-AK public radio reporter

You can literally just type the word "Fish." And Mary Peltola will retweet you.

.@lisamurkowski says it’s time for Congress to assert itself on the Iran war. Meanwhile, @SenDanSullivan faced Sec. Hegseth and raised no concerns about the war or the Trump admin pursuing it without Congress alaskapublic.org/news/politics/…

Here are the 35 House members (23R, 12D) who voted against allowing SNAP (food stamp) benefits to cover the purchase of 'hot rotisserie chicken'

7 things to know about money in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race Wanna know which one raised more from Alaskans and the contributions for PACs? Click through to read the story. alaskapublic.org/news/politics/…

Sure. With a whale ladder I assume 🐳 nytimes.com/2026/04/24/cli… via @NYTimes

This looks super-cool. Great to see @DaviSusan on the beat

@gothburz Weren’t the bottles uncorked so that they could be served with the first course, which was already underway?

I am a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. I have worked eleven of these. I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired. The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass. A champagne flute hit the floor of the International Ballroom at approximately 9:47 PM. Then a second. Then the sound that I have since been told was a 12-gauge shotgun, which from inside the ballroom sounded like a heavy door slamming in a parking garage. Then the Secret Service moved. They moved the President, the Vice President, the First Lady through the east corridor in under ninety seconds, which is protocol, which is practiced, which is the one part of the evening that worked exactly as it was designed. Everything else was improvised. I know this because I ordered the wine. 94 tables. Two bottles per table. 188 bottles of a Willamette Valley pinot noir that the Association selected in February after a tasting committee spent three meetings debating between Oregon and Burgundy. Oregon won. The budget was $14,200. I signed the invoice. I can tell you the vintage. I can tell you the distributor. I can tell you the per-bottle cost because I negotiated it down from $89 to $76. What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation. I can tell you what I saw. A correspondent from a network I will not name picked up two bottles on her way to the east exit. Full bottles. One in each hand. She was wearing heels and she did not spill. A man in a tuxedo tucked one inside his jacket the way you'd shoplift a paperback at an airport bookstore. A woman picked up a bottle, looked at the label, put it back, and took a different one. She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That's editorial judgment under pressure. The theme of the dinner was "A Free Press for a Free People." The banners were still hanging when the evacuation began. I know because I hung them. Twenty-three banners, navy blue, gold serif lettering, $11,400 for the set. They were still hanging when 2,600 guests were directed to the exits by Secret Service agents, one of whom had just taken a shotgun round in his ballistic vest and walked to the ambulance on his own feet. The agent's vest costs approximately $800. The wine that left the building was worth $11,172 at Association cost. At restaurant markup, roughly $29,000. The guests saved more in wine than the vest that saved the agent. That's priority. The video went viral by 10:15 PM. Not the video of the evacuation. Not the Secret Service response. The wine. Three guests in formalwear grabbing bottles off white tablecloths while being told to move toward the exits, while a man with a shotgun stood in the same motor entrance where John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan 45 years ago. A woman near the service entrance was crying. She said "I just wanna go home." She was not holding wine. She was holding her phone. She was the only person I saw that night who looked afraid rather than inconvenienced. That's the distinction. The rest of the ballroom did not look afraid. They looked interrupted. An active shooter at the WHCD is a logistical problem. The dinner was disrupted. The timeline was off. The after-party at the French Ambassador's residence would need to be rescheduled. These are contingency matters. Contingency matters have solutions. Fear is for people who attend events without security details. I have produced eleven of these dinners. I have managed seating charts that require diplomatic-grade negotiations. I have handled comedians, cabinet secretaries, network anchors, and the editor of a major newspaper who once threatened to leave because his table was behind a column. I have never, in eleven years, seen a guest leave a $76 bottle on the table during an evacuation. I have also never seen a guest check the label first. Both observations are consistent. The bottle is worth taking. The evacuation is worth surviving. The instinct is to do both simultaneously. 188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken. A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.

WHAT THE WHAT?!?! … I’ve barely adjusted to % and now this

‘Junior reporters’ pepper Hakeem Jeffries with tough questions politico.com/live-updates/2… via @politico

Democratic House Majority PAC has Alaska in its sights, suggesting they think they have a shot at unseating U.S. Rep. Begich. Their GOP counterparts aren't making the same bet. They're planning to spend their ad $ elsewhere. alaskapublic.org/news/politics/…

Oh sure blame it on Alaska washingtonpost.com/weather/2026/0…

Two new icebreakers will be homeported in Alaska. Somewhere. The Coast Guard hasn't decided where. In the meantime, the announcement adds a feather to @SenDanSullivan's cap as he runs for a third term. alaskapublic.org/news/politics/…

President Trump appoints Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy to a side gig on the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. A bit unusual to have a post like this while working as guv, but maybe akin to Trump's appt of Gov. Landry to be envoy to Greenland. alaskapublic.org/news/2026-04-1…

iykyk

Underappreciated in #MESEN: Susan Collins chairs the Appropriations Committee and has been making it absolutely rain all over the state. GOP leaders and WH are very interested in helping her keep her seat, so she's been able to bring $425 million+ to Maine in FY2026 alone.

@SeanNadeau70500 @MaryPeltola I see. New genre. You could call it “fun fiction”

@lruskin @MaryPeltola My plot is a lot more fun. Otherwise its just a story about someone not filling out paperwork.

The complaint against @MaryPeltola hinges on a legal question that sounds like a philosophical riddle: Does a political campaign exist if the public isn’t aware of it? alaskapublic.org/news/politics/…

@SeanNadeau70500 @MaryPeltola Way too many conspiracy theories here already. Try next planet.

@lruskin @MaryPeltola Even better conspiracy. She was set up. They knew full well she wasn't willing to run, but they knew her greedy little fish first hands could resist the temptation of the money. Once she took the bait, it was all over. She had to run.

Murkowski to Alaska Legislature: “We need you to meet the match.” alaskapublic.org/news/politics/…

@rock_taster That would be a lot cheaper.

@lruskin Sell a bunch of securities, which are speculatively valued on the mineral rights, keep selling them. Sell it all, for 10x the value, except a divided interest in the land, so you have to be paid in perpetuity. No mining required.

Rep. Hoffman, D-Calif., calls out the Trump admin’s investment in an Alaska mine. A Trump insider appears to have made millions from the deal. “The corruption—it’s the same template,” Huffman says. alaskapublic.org/news/politics/…