It’s fitting that there have been as many or more Dump Dan signs as Dump Trump signs at the No Kings rallies in Anchorage. After all, Sullivan has slavishly supported Trump for 10 years, a well-inked rubber stamp for every catastrophic domestic policy, such as tariffs, and every strategically stupid foreign policy. Trump’s war in Iran is therefore Sullivan’s war.
Sullivan has chosen warmongering in Iran over geopolitical and economic stability. But this is bungled warmongering. Experienced leaders and expert staffers in the State Department and the National Security Council were fired by Trump and replaced by incompetent loyalists, leading to the incoherent, aimless strategy we are witnessing today.
Consider what we could do across America and in Alaska with the billions of dollars and counting being spent on Sullivan’s unjustified Middle East war, which costs us $1 billion a day, as the Department of Defense reportedly told Congress. Those taxpayer dollars could have gone toward major increases in programs like childcare coverage, school lunch assistance, Medicaid, community college tuition assistance and housing. Historic rises in prices resulting from this war are making life in Alaska increasingly unaffordable. This is Sullivan’s world.
In Dan Sullivan’s world, the government spends billions on war while prices soar alongside Trump family and Big Oil profits, schools close, businesses dry up, universities shrink, our ferry service founders, and young Alaskans take their skills, enterprise and creativity out of state. Sullivan stands meekly by while an unelected billionaire takes an AI chain saw to agencies we rely on to run our nation and our state. The federal workforce, including many veterans, is gutted. FEMA and public radio — both vital to public safety in rural Alaska — are threatened with annihilation. National parks, key to our visitor industry, close. Food security, including precious salmon runs, is threatened. Armed, masked thugs invade our communities — yes, ICE is here in Alaska among us — etc., etc., etc. A sign I saw at the March 28 rally read simply: “Too Much For One Sign.”
Instead of fighting for good government that improves Alaskans’ lives, Sullivan concedes his constitutional powers as a senator, and billions vanish into the maw of Middle East misadventure.
In Sullivan’s world, Alaskans lose: Medicaid, affordable healthcare, health insurance, affordable housing, reliable, steady federal jobs, an all-of-the-above energy strategy that will help Alaskans, especially young Alaskans, pivot to the future, and science-oriented jobs and projects. All lost to pay for the Sullivan billionaire tax cuts of 2017 and 2025.
In Sullivan’s world, Trump is incrementally taking over elections in our state and making it harder and harder for Alaskans to vote. Remember when Dan incessantly whined about federal overreach? When faced with actual overreach, Dan grins and says OK.
The 2026 election cycle is upon us. Smugly grinning at us from slick ads, Sullivan appears very comfortable in the knowledge that rich and powerful men are dumping money into his campaign coffers. His self-satisfied smile says to us that it doesn’t matter what he does or doesn’t do. He has the invisible billionaires of the Trump PAC behind him. Maybe we can overcome the honey buckets of Outside cash and vote ourselves out of Sullivan’s world. But no matter what happens next fall, Yes-Man Dan will go down on the wrong side of history as an enabler who supported war in Iran and all the rest of Trump’s ruinous regime. A silhouette in the shape of a senator.
Jeff Silverman lives in Anchorage.
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