The Anchorage community town hall on Trump’s impacts on Alaska may not have been nearly as boisterous as one held in the early days of his presidency, when mass layoffs and funding holds were fresh in everyone’s mind, but it was still peppered with chants of “Vote him out, vote him out” as attention turned to what’s next.
Where the first town hall served as a sort of protest, featuring an open mic for people to air their fears and grievances with Trump’s opening gambit, the one held at UAA’s Wendy Williamson auditorium by a coalition that includes the Alaska AFL-CIO, the 907 Initiative and Fair Share America was a more focused first step in directing that energy into change.
Those chants of “Vote him out” weren’t directed at Trump, but rather at the members of Alaska’s Republican delegation who will be on the 2026 ballot.
Both U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan and U.S. Rep. Nick Begich have been major cheerleaders for the Trump administration, reliably siding with the Trump agenda despite worries about the outsized impacts it’ll have on the state. Alaska has a large presence of federal employees and relies heavily on federal dollars for a slew of services, infrastructure and social safety net programs. Sullivan has seen his popularity slide along with Trump.
The event previewed the messaging heading into the 2026 elections, casting Trump Republicans as out-of-touch elites who favor billionaires over working-class people. Signs reading “No tax cuts for billionaires” and “Tariffs are taxes” were also handed out.
“I recognize so many of your faces from walks and rallies and actions, and I know you’ve made the phone calls, and I know we do things and we’re sometimes very disappointed with the outcome of those things, but not doing them is not an option,” said Joelle Hall, the president of the Alaska AFL-CIO. “It’s not an option. You’ve got to keep doing it.”
Hall and other speakers said it’ll be particularly important to focus on working-class issues as well as pro-union measures in the year to come, highlighting federal legislation that neither Sullivan nor Begich has supported.
A handful of speakers also talked about the impact that Medicaid cuts — a key piece of the recent Trump mega bill that all three members of Alaska’s delegation voted for — will have on a state where health care is already expensive and not always accessible.
“Cuts to Medicaid mean that families like mine will be forced to go bankrupt for trying to buy care, loved ones will be sent to underfunded institutions instead of staying in their homes, thousands will simply fall through the cracks, left off the care that they need to survive,” said Sarah, who works in special education and as a personal care assistant, about the importance of the program in ensuring her son gets the specialized care he needs.
“People talk about Medicaid as if it’s riddled with fraud and waste. They imagine the lazy people taking advantage of the system. They don’t see families like mine, families that work hard but barely stay about water, good people fighting every day, support and care for their loved ones at home.”
The event closed with a question-and-answer session, which included discussions on reaching out more broadly to younger voters as well as bringing more attention to environmental issues and climate change.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Bluesky.
