Murkowski: ‘We are all afraid’ of upheaval, retaliation under Trump

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told a group of nonprofit leaders in her home state earlier this week that she is among many people she knows who are “afraid” about the upheaval President Trump has created in the federal government since taking office in January, and she worries about potential retaliation for criticizing the president.

“We are all afraid,” Murkowski told the group who attended an annual leadership summit in Anchorage. “It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before.”

“And I’ll tell you, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right,” she said in comments reported by Anchorage Daily News.

Murkowski spoke about her personal anxiety about the chaos that has consumed Washington amid Trump’s first three months in office, during which he has signed 124 executive orders, slapped steep tariffs on allies and trading partners, clashed repeatedly with federal judges and overseen sudden cuts to federal agencies without input or authorization from Congress.

“It is head-spinning,” Murkowski said. “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.”

The senior senator from Alaska said the turmoil in government today is “as hard as anything I have been engaged in, in the 20-plus years I’ve been in the Senate.”

Murkowski said she texted White House chief of staff Susie Wiles to relay her concerns about Trump’s plan to shut down AmeriCorps, the agency that promotes public service and volunteerism, but wasn’t sure if she would have any effect.

She said Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are moving so fast that lawmakers have a hard time keeping up.

“I share this with you not to say that ‘we don’t know anything,’ but I’m saying that things are happening so fast through this Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE,” she said.

“None of us understand the half of it,” she added.

Murkowski’s latest comments come nearly a month after she told reporters in Washington that many of her Republican colleagues are afraid to challenge Trump or Musk for fear of retaliation.

And she noted that she’s taken a lot of political flak for criticizing the president.

“They’re looking at how many things are being thrown at me, and it’s like, ‘Maybe I just better duck and cover,’” Murkowski said last month.

“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 — there’re going to be primaries, they’re going to be giving names in the media,” she said.

But Murkowski argued that GOP colleagues have a duty to stand up for their principles and constituents.

“We cannot be cowed into not speaking up,” she said.

Murkowski won reelection in 2022 despite Trump’s support for her MAGA-aligned challenger, Kelly Tshibaka, who formerly served as commissioner for Alaska’s Department of Administration.