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\n

As Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) remains under the microscope as she weighs her vote to confirm Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon, two of her Republican colleagues jumped Thursday to defend her.<\/p>\n

Ernst, who has met twice with Hegseth and appears to be warming toward him<\/a>, has garnered fierce pressure from within her own party<\/a> over not being immediately ready to support<\/a> the Fox News host as President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s pick for Defense secretary.<\/p>\n

Speaking Thursday at the centrist group No Labels\u2019 \u201cPower to the Middle\u201d conference in Washington, Republican Utah Sen.-elect John Curtis said he had \u201ctalked to a sitting senator today who has what feels like the entire world coming after her, because she may or may not support one of the Trump nominees.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe’s being plummeted with threats, with all sorts of things that don’t belong in political arena, and her staff is. And so you talk about pressure, right?\u201d Curtis continued, without mentioning Ernst by name. \u201cAnd speaking with her, she has to worry about things like, \u2018Well, if I vote against this nominee, what happens to my state when I need something from this administration?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Those threats, he quickly added, had been \u201cnever directly said. It\u2019s implied.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier on Thursday at the same event, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a moderate Republican and outspoken Trump critic, called out Republicans for slamming Ernst \u201cfor not being good enough\u201d \u2014 even though, Murkowski said, she is \u201cone of the more conservative, principled Republican leaders in the Senate right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murkowski added that she is worried Ernst could be primaried by another Republican who shows more loyalty to Trump.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Ernst did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) remains under the microscope as she weighs her vote to confirm Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon, two of her Republican colleagues jumped Thursday to defend her. Ernst, who has met twice with Hegseth and appears to be warming toward him, has garnered fierce pressure from within her own party […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}