{"id":8328,"date":"2025-04-17T15:46:52","date_gmt":"2025-04-17T15:46:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/we-are-all-afraid-murkowski-says-fear-of-retaliation-from-trump-administration-is-real\/"},"modified":"2025-04-17T15:46:52","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T15:46:52","slug":"we-are-all-afraid-murkowski-says-fear-of-retaliation-from-trump-administration-is-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/we-are-all-afraid-murkowski-says-fear-of-retaliation-from-trump-administration-is-real\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We are all afraid\u2019: Murkowski says fear of retaliation from Trump administration is \u2018real\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Sen. Lisa Murkowski said a fear of retaliation under President Donald Trump’s administration is rising to levels she’s not seen before, acknowledging this week that it is so pervasive that even the outspoken senator is “oftentimes very anxious” to speak up out of fear of recrimination.<\/p>\n

The Alaska senator, who has been among Trump\u2019s most prominent critics in the Republican Party, made the startling admission at a conference of nonprofit and tribal leaders in Anchorage on Monday. Addressing a question about how to respond to people who are afraid in the current political climate, Murkowski responded: \u201cWe are all afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite a statement,\u201d she continued after a long pause, in remarks first reported by the Anchorage Daily News<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019re in a time and place where \u2014 I don\u2019t know, I certainly have not \u2014 I have not been here before. And I\u2019ll tell you, I\u2019m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real. And that\u2019s not right. But that\u2019s what you\u2019ve asked me to do and so I\u2019m going to use my voice to the best of my ability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murkowski has repeatedly criticized Trump\u2019s policies amid overwhelming buy-in from her fellow party members. The Alaska senator openly rebuked the president<\/a> for \u201cwalking away from our allies\u201d as he increasingly aligned himself with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and publicly berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. She has also voiced strong opposition against the Department of Government Efficiency\u2019s mass firing wave and slash-and-burn efforts to cut down government agencies.<\/p>\n

The senator said this week that she has been \u201cjust trying to listen as carefully as I can to what is happening\u201d and trying to address the \u201cimpacts it is having on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

She did not explicitly mention Trump by name in a video of her remarks posted by the Alaska newspaper.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is as hard as anything I\u2019ve engaged in in the 20-plus years I have been in the Senate,\u201d Murkowski said, later recounting to the Anchorage Daily News anecdotes of people approaching her in tears to describe how they had been fired from their jobs with no notice or that they were afraid to speak up about the \u201cstatus of where we are\u201d out of fear of retaliation from their agency or employer.<\/p>\n

Murkowski last month said<\/a> she refused to \u201ccompromise my own integrity\u201d by remaining silent as Elon Musk\u2019s DOGE slashed through government agencies, ending longstanding federal programs and putting thousands of federal employees out of work.<\/p>\n

The longtime senator, who successfully beat a Trump-backed challenger in 2022, said last month that she would not be cowed into compliance despite threats of being primaried, even if Musk should pour millions into backing a possible challenger. Murkowski is not up for reelection until 2028.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sen. Lisa Murkowski said a fear of retaliation under President Donald Trump’s administration is rising to levels she’s not seen before, acknowledging this week that it is so pervasive that even the outspoken senator is “oftentimes very anxious” to speak up out of fear of recrimination. The Alaska senator, who has been among Trump\u2019s most […]<\/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-8328","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\/8328","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=8328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8328\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}