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Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) acknowledged during a leadership summit in Anchorage this week that “we are all afraid” three months into President Donald Trump’s second term in office. Murkowski has been a fairly outspoken critic of Trump in a Republican Party that publicly worships him.
An audience member asked Murkowski what she would say to people who are feeling afraid or to the lawmakers who represent them.
“We are all afraid,” the Republican told the audience of 500 nonprofit leaders. She paused, then added: “It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been before. And I’ll tell ya, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right. But that’s what you’ve asked me to do. And so I’m going to use my voice to the best of my ability.
“I’ve got to figure out how I can do my best to help the many who are so anxious and are so afraid,” Murkowski said.
Murkowski voted to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial, when he was charged with inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. She is the only Republican who voted to defund Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). She was also one of only three Republican senators to vote against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s confirmation, and one of two to vote against FBI Director Kash Patel.
Trump called Murkowski “lousy” and “worse than a Democrat” at a 2022 rally in Alaska, and supported her opponent in her Senate election that year.
“She is the worst. I rate her No. 1 bad, and we have a couple of bad ones, but she’s by far the worst,” Trump said.
Murkowski said Monday that protesters should continue challenging Trump. “Keep calling. Keep the emails. Keep the social media going,” she said.
“It’s important that the concerns continue to be raised, rather than allow the fatigue of the chaos grind you down,” she added. “Don’t let it grind you down.”
Murkowsi said the situation is “as hard as anything that I have been engaged in, in the 20-plus years I’ve been in the Senate.”
“It is head spinning,” she said of Trump’s second term. “It seems that just when you’ve made a little bit of progress on one issue that had caused so much anxiety, there’s another one.” Murkowski noted that she had recently texted Trump Chief of Staff Susie Wiles about rumors that AmeriCorps would be cut, but she wasn’t sure if that approach would be effective. Two days later, DOGE placed hundreds of AmeriCorps employees on leave.
Murkowski also addressed the possibility that Republicans in Congress would significantly cut Medicaid, the government health insurance program for low-income and disabled people. About 23 percent of Alaskans were on Medicaid in 2023, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. “I’m not saying you can’t touch Medicaid at all,” she said. “What I hope we’re moving away from is an $880 billion cut to Medicaid. Because if that happens, this is going to be a very, very different state.”
Last month, Murkowski told reporters that Republican lawmakers are afraid of Trump.
“That’s why you’ve got everybody just zip-lipped, not saying a word, because they’re afraid they’re going to be taken down — they’re going to be primaried, they’re going to be given names in the media,” Murkowski said. “We cannot be cowed into not speaking up.”
“It may be that Elon Musk decides that he’s going to take the next billion dollars he makes off Starlink and put it directly against Lisa Murkowksi. And you know what? That may happen. But I’m not giving up one minute, one opportunity to try to stand up for Alaska,” she said.
On Monday, Murkowski said that Congress needs to take an active role.
“Sometimes it’s easy, particularly when things are so turbulent and really very, very chaotic right now, you want to be able to blame somebody else, but we cannot,” she said. “Congress has ownership in this, and this is where I say it’s sitting down with our colleagues to say, ‘We have a role here too.’ We just can’t say, ‘Well, we’ll let the courts sort it out.’ We’ve got to step it up.”
