Kreiss-Tomkins signed 2021 letter praising Biden’s Covid policies, urging Congress to pursue 100% clean energy

By SUZANNE DOWNING

Sept. 15, 2026 – Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, the former Democratic legislator now running for governor of Alaska, signed a 2021 national letter praising President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 response, his “Build Back Better” spending, and invoking the pandemic response successes to advance a sweeping clean-energy agenda.

The April 21, 2021, letter was organized by the League of Conservation Voters and signed by more than 1,200 state and local officials. Kreiss-Tomkins was one of eight Alaska legislators and three local officials whose names appeared on it. All but one were hardline Democrats, like Rep. Zack Fields and then-Anchorage Assemblyman Felix Rivera.

“We applaud President Biden and Congress for passing COVID relief, including desperately needed state and local government funding and expanded vaccinations,” the officials wrote.

The letter called Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan “a vital first step” and asked Congress to follow it with the president’s American Jobs Plan. Among its stated goals was putting the United States “on the path to 100% clean energy” across electricity generation, transportation and buildings.

The signers also demanded that at least 40% of the benefits be directed to low-income communities and communities of color and called for government support for communities historically dependent upon oil, natural gas and coal.

Read the letter for yourself here:

state-and-local-leaders-call-for-clean-energy-jobs-justice_signers_4.20.21

Then came the bridge between Covid policy and climate policy.

“COVID-19 showed us what can happen when science and health experts are ignored,” the letter said. “We know we cannot make the same mistake on climate change.”

The letter closed by urging Congress to “build back better,” the slogan Biden used for the broad domestic agenda that eventually produced the Inflation Reduction Act and hundreds of billions of dollars in federal subsidies and tax incentives for renewable energy, electric vehicles and other favored technologies.

The document is notable five years later because Kreiss-Tomkins is seeking to become governor of an oil-producing state whose economy, state budget and Permanent Fund were built largely through petroleum development.

It is also a reminder of his close involvement in the machinery that helped guide public and private COVID decisions.

Kreiss-Tomkins was one of four founders of Covid Act Now, launched in March 2020 with Silicon Valley technology workers and public-health advisers. The project produced maps, risk ratings and projections intended to help government officials, businesses and individuals make decisions about restrictions and reopening.

Kreiss-Tomkins was one of the project’s founders, and Covid Act Now says its data eventually covered all 50 states, more than 3,100 counties and hundreds of metropolitan areas. Its application programming interface distributed information about cases, tests, hospitalizations, deaths and vaccinations to other organizations, including government.. KFSK reported on Kreiss-Tomkins’ role in the project, and Covid Act Now’s archived API documentation describes the scope of its massive data collection system.

Covid Act Now informed decisions made by government officials and, in some cases, private employers. It featured a color-coded risk levels and projections were part of the information system used by officials, companies and institutions deciding whether to impose masking requirements, encourage vaccination, or restrict normal activity — lockdowns.

Its website continued recommending masks and provided extensive vaccination information, some of which has now been discredited. The organization also says it advised federal, state and local officials, nonprofits and corporations on data-driven responses.

The benefit of hindsight has changed the public perception of JKT’s pushing of “the science” that dominated public policy in 2020 and 2021.

Covid vaccines may have reduced the risk of hospitalization and death, particularly among older and medically vulnerable people. But early public assurances that vaccination would reliably stop infection and transmission did not hold as immunity waned and new variants emerged. Soon, armed with the “science” of Covid Act Now,  federal, state and private-sector officials used vaccination status as a condition of employment, travel or participation in public life. Many people lost their jobs for refusing to take the shot.

Evidence surrounding widespread community masking was less definitive than political messaging frequently suggested. Mask type, fit, consistent use, setting and viral conditions all affected outcomes.

School closures produced some of the clearest collateral damage. Subsequent research documented learning loss, chronic absenteeism, social isolation, and acute mental-health problems among children. Students from poorer families and students already struggling academically often lost the most; many have not recovered.

Business restrictions also carried costs that were not visible on JKT’s Covid dashboards: There were lost jobs, closed businesses, deferred medical care, substance abuse, and isolation among elderly people. Whether particular restrictions produced benefits exceeding those costs remains disputed.

Covid Act Now’s early projections were scenarios rather than certain forecasts and depended upon assumptions about transmission, human behavior and government intervention. Presenting such projections as settled outcomes gave policymakers and the public more confidence than the underlying data ultimately warranted.

The organization’s financial history also connects Kreiss-Tomkins’ Covid project with the environmental advocacy world behind the letter he signed.

Covid Act Now operates under the Act Now Coalition, a tax-exempt nonprofit. The Sergey Brin Family Foundation, created by the Google co-founder, gave the organization $500,000 in 2020 for general support, according to the foundation’s tax filing.

Brin’s foundation has also financed an extensive collection of climate and environmental organizations, including ClimateWorks, the Energy Foundation, Rewiring America and Earthjustice.

Earthjustice has repeatedly litigated against resource-development projects in Alaska.

The Act Now Coalition subsequently expanded beyond Covid information. Its parent organization became involved in climate and electrification projects, including work with Rewiring America. The League of Conservation Voters, which organized the 2021 clean-energy letter signed by Kreiss-Tomkins, later reported providing $500,000 to the coalition for public education, organizational capacity and advocacy.

Recent tax records also show a multimillion-dollar contribution from Fidelity Charitable, a donor-advised fund. Because donor-advised funds generally don’t disclose individual donors who recommended a grant, the original source of that money is not publicly identified.

Hopewell Fund has also been identified as a supporter of the coalition. Hopewell is part of the nonprofit network managed by Arabella Advisors and has received money from numerous institutional donors, and is part of the George Soros Open Society network.

The documented record is substantial without overstating it: Kreiss-Tomkins helped establish a national Covid-data organization, signed a League of Conservation Voters letter praising Biden’s Covid policies and used the pandemic’s contested appeal to scientific authority to support a transition to 100% clean energy.

Five years later, as he asks Alaskans to make him governor, that record offers voters a clearer view of the policies, organizations and national political networks with which he has aligned himself.

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