Senate Confirms Aaron Peterson As Alaska’s Newest Federal Judge
There is now one less federal judge vacancy in Alaska after the U.S. Senate voted 58 to 39 to confirm Aaron Peterson as the state’s newest federal judge. Peterson is currently the state’s natural resources attorney.
Peterson said in a legal notice issued soon after the vote that he would be leaving the Alaska Department of Law right away. There are three federal judges in Alaska, but since Joshua Kindred resigned in July 2024 amid a misconduct scandal, there has been only one sitting judge.
Peterson, a registered Republican, will take over for Judge Tim Burgess, who retired on the last day of 2021. That open seat was one of the oldest in the whole U.S. federal court system, as reported by Alaska Beacon.
Alaska’s federal court has had to rely on judges from other states and semi-retired judges who are on senior status because it only has one full-time judge.
There was a lot of bipartisan support for Peterson’s confirmation, with six Democrats voting for it along with most of the Senate’s Republicans. All 39 “no” votes came from Democrats, and three senators did not vote.
Sen. Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois and the highest-ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee from the opposing party, voted “yes.”
Peterson said last year that he wouldn’t say whether President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election or whether the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was legal because he might have to rule on the matter as a judge.
Carl Tobias, the Williams Chair in Law at the University of Richmond School of Law, has been closely monitoring Peterson’s confirmation process.
“It wasn’t a party line vote. And so I think that means that some of the Democrats are signaling that if a person looks like he’s going to be competent, as I think Peterson will be, then they’re going to move forward and vote for that person,” he said.
Alaska Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan organized a committee that examined Peterson’s judicial application and forwarded it to President Donald Trump for official nomination.
The committee bypassed the usual procedure, which relies on advice from the Alaska Bar Association.
“I’m confident that he will be a great federal judge for our state,” he said in a prepared written statement.
According to the information Peterson submitted to the U.S. Senate’s judiciary committee, he was born in Anchorage in 1981 and served in the U.S. Air Force from 2000 to 2003 before attending the University of Alaska Anchorage, graduating in 2007. He attended Gonzaga University School of Law and graduated in 2010. He was admitted to the Alaska bar that year.
He returned to Alaska after graduation, serving first as a clerk to Judge Michael Spaan of the Anchorage Superior Court, then as a prosecutor with the Municipality of Anchorage.
Peterson worked in the Anchorage District Attorney’s office starting in 2012, including on violent felonies, such as murder and sexual assault. He moved to the Department of Law’s office of special prosecutions in 2015 before beginning work with the Department of Law’s natural resources section in 2019.
Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski didn’t participate in Peterson’s application process but offered her support after Trump nominated Peterson and voted for his confirmation on Wednesday.
“I look forward to Mr. Peterson hitting the ground running to help an overworked court, while working to address and reform the culture of abuse and low morale that has permeated the District Court in recent years,” Murkowski said in a prepared written statement. “Mr. Peterson is a born-and-raised Alaskan with a strong record of legal practice in our state, including in natural resources and criminal and civil law, and his leadership will be invaluable to Alaska. We now turn our focus to filling the remaining vacancy as soon as possible.”
My 15-year-old daughter had been suffering from nausea and severe stomach pain, but my husband brushed it off and said, “She’s faking it
My 15-year-old daughter had been suffering from nausea and severe stomach pain, but my husband brushed it off and said, “She’s faking it. Don’t waste your time or money.” I took her to the hospital behind his back. The doctor studied the scan, then lowered his voice and whispered, “There’s something inside her…” In that moment, all I could do was scream.
The first time my daughter doubled over in pain, my husband didn’t even look up from his laptop.
“She’s faking it,” Greg said flatly from the kitchen table. “She has a math test tomorrow. This is convenient.”
My fifteen-year-old daughter, Ava, was curled on the couch with both arms wrapped around her stomach, her face gray with pain and sweat dampening the hair at her temples. She had been complaining for three days—nausea, cramping, stabbing pain low in her abdomen, then vomiting, then pain again. Not dramatic crying. Not a performance. Just that awful, breathless silence people make when they hurt too badly to keep talking.
I knelt in front of her. “Ava, look at me. On a scale from one to ten?”
“Eight,” she whispered. Then, after a pause: “Maybe nine.”
I turned to Greg. “She’s going to the hospital.”
He gave a short, disgusted laugh. “And tell them what? That she has a stomachache? Claire, do you know what an ER visit costs? She wants attention. Stop feeding it.”
That was Greg’s talent—taking real suffering and speaking over it until it sounded expensive, inconvenient, or manipulative. He had done it to me for years with smaller things. Migraines. Exhaustion. Panic attacks. If he couldn’t control it, he minimized it. If it cost money, he mocked it. If it belonged to Ava, he called it teenage drama.
I should have stopped listening to him sooner.
That night, Ava woke me at 2:00 a.m. with tears streaming down her face and one hand pressed hard against her side.
“Mom,” she whispered, shaking, “I really can’t do this anymore.”
That was enough.
I got her into the car before sunrise.
I didn’t leave a note. I didn’t ask permission. I didn’t even wake Greg.
The drive to Mercy General felt endless. Ava spent half of it bent forward in the passenger seat with a blanket over her legs, breathing in short, fast bursts. Twice I almost turned around from pure habit—from hearing Greg’s voice in my head telling me I was being hysterical, wasteful, stupid.
Then Ava made a low sound in the back of her throat like her body was trying to fold in on itself.
I pressed harder on the gas.
At the hospital, they took one look at her and moved fast. Much faster than Greg ever would have expected. Bloodwork. Urine sample. IV fluids. Pain medication. Then imaging. The ER doctor, a woman named Dr. Shah with tired eyes and a steady voice, asked careful questions: any chance of pregnancy, drug use, fainting, fever, injury, recent procedures.
Ava answered weakly. No. No. No.
I sat beside her bed trying not to let her see how frightened I was becoming.
When the scan came back, Dr. Shah didn’t speak right away.
She studied the screen.
Then studied it again.
Then she looked at Ava, then at me, then quietly asked the nurse to step out and close the curtain.
Something inside me dropped.
The room felt suddenly smaller.
Dr. Shah lowered her voice and said, “There’s something inside her…”
For one second, my brain failed completely.
Then she turned the monitor toward me.
And all I could do was scream.
Because inside my daughter’s stomach—clear as day on the scan—was a tightly wrapped plastic capsule.
For a moment, the world stopped making sense.
I stared at the screen, trying to force the image into something familiar—something harmless. A cyst. A shadow. Anything.
But it wasn’t.
It was too defined. Too deliberate.
A small, oval shape. Smooth edges. Wrapped.
Placed.
“What… what is that?” I whispered, my voice breaking.
Dr. Shah didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, she asked gently, “Ava, sweetheart… has anyone given you something to swallow recently? A pill, maybe? Something unusual?”
Ava shook her head weakly, her face pale. “No… I don’t think so… I just feel sick…”
Her voice trailed off into a groan as another wave of pain hit.
I grabbed her hand, my own shaking now.
“This doesn’t make sense,” I said, louder this time. “How could something like that just be there?”
Dr. Shah met my eyes.
“It doesn’t just happen,” she said quietly. “Objects like this are either swallowed… or placed.”
The word hung in the air.
Placed.
My stomach turned.
Things moved very fast after that.
A surgical team was called. More scans confirmed it—there was a foreign object lodged in Ava’s stomach, and from the inflammation around it, it had been there long enough to start causing damage.
“She needs it removed,” Dr. Shah said. “Immediately.”
“Is she going to be okay?” I asked.
“We caught it in time,” she replied. “But we can’t wait.”
They wheeled Ava away before I could fully process what was happening.
One minute she was clutching my hand.
The next, she was gone behind double doors.
I was alone.
Alone with a plastic chair, a buzzing fluorescent light… and a thought that wouldn’t stop forming.
Placed.
My hands went cold.
I pulled out my phone and stared at Greg’s name.
For years, I had ignored the small things. The dismissals. The control. The way he decided what was “real” and what wasn’t.
But this…
This wasn’t something you could talk over.
When the surgeon finally came out, I stood up so fast the chair scraped loudly behind me.
“She’s okay,” he said first, and my knees nearly gave out.
“They removed it. No rupture, no internal bleeding. She’s going to recover.”
I covered my mouth, tears spilling instantly.
“Can I see her?”
“Soon,” he said. Then his expression shifted—professional, but serious. “There’s something else.”
My chest tightened again.
“We opened the capsule.”
I froze.
“And?”
He hesitated just long enough to make it worse.
“It wasn’t empty.”
The room tilted.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“There was a substance inside,” he said carefully. “We’ve sent it to the lab, but based on initial appearance… it may be a form of concentrated narcotic.”
I stared at him.
“No,” I said immediately. “No, that’s not possible. She’s fifteen. She doesn’t—she wouldn’t—”
“I’m not suggesting she did this willingly,” he said quickly. “But we need to consider all possibilities.”
My heart was pounding now, loud and uneven.
Someone had put that inside her.
Not an accident.
Not a mistake.
Someone.
When Ava woke up, she was groggy, confused… but no longer in pain.
“Mom?” she murmured.
“I’m here,” I said, gripping her hand.
She blinked slowly. “It doesn’t hurt anymore…”
“I know,” I whispered, brushing her hair back. “You’re safe now.”
She nodded faintly.
Then, after a long pause, she said something that made my blood run cold.
“Mom… that drink… at Dad’s office…”
I went still.
“What drink?”
“The night he made me come with him,” she said, her voice weak but steady. “He said I should learn how business works… I felt weird after… like really sleepy…”
Every muscle in my body locked.
“When was this?” I asked.
“A few days ago… before I got sick…”
It clicked.
All of it.
The timing.
The dismissal.
The refusal to take her seriously.
My hands started to shake again—but this time, it wasn’t fear.
It was something else.
Something sharper.
I didn’t call Greg.
I called the police.
They arrived quietly. Listened carefully. Took everything seriously in a way Greg never had.
The hospital handed over the capsule. The lab results came back within hours.
It was drugs.
High-value. Precisely packaged.
Smuggled.
And my daughter…
had been used as a carrier.
Greg was arrested two days later.
Not at home.
At his office.
The same place he had taken Ava.
The same place where she drank something that made her “sleepy.”
The same place where someone had decided a fifteen-year-old girl was a safe place to hide something illegal.
I saw him once after that.
Through glass.
He looked smaller.
Not powerful. Not confident.
Just… exposed.
“You’re blowing this out of proportion,” he said, even then. “You always do.”
I stared at him.
“No,” I replied quietly. “This time… I finally see it clearly.”
Ava recovered.
Slowly.
Physically first.
Then emotionally.
There were hard days. Questions. Fear. Anger.
But she was alive.
That was everything.
Sometimes I think about that moment in the ER.
The screen turning toward me.
The words: “There’s something inside her…”
I thought that was the worst thing I would ever hear.
I was wrong.
The worst thing…
was realizing it hadn’t been a mystery at all.
It had been betrayal.
Living in my house.
Sitting at my table.
Calling itself her father.
And the only reason my daughter survived…
was because, for once—
I didn’t listen to him.
