At least one Republican senator is willing to criticize Elon Musk’s cuts to the federal government as part of his Department of Government Efficiency.
Senator Lisa Murkowski called out the tech oligarch in a press conference on Tuesday in Juneau, Alaska, the capital of the state she represents. She criticized the mass firing of federal employees and freezing of federal funding in an address to the Alaska legislature the same day.
“These terminations are indiscriminate, and many, we’re now learning, are unlawful. And they’re being made regardless of performance and with little understanding of the function and the value of each position,” Murkowski said to the legislature. “So at any human level, they’re traumatizing people, and they’re leaving holes in our communities.”
She told reporters at the press conference that she knows her willingness to criticize Musk will likely come with consequences.
“It may be that Elon Musk has decided he’s going to take the next billion dollars that he makes off of Starlink and put it directly against Lisa Murkowski,” the senator said to reporters. “And you know what? That may happen. But I’m not giving up one minute, one opportunity, to try to stand up for Alaskans.”
Murkowski has a theory about why her fellow Republicans aren’t willing to criticize Musk or the Trump administration, even as their constituents grow angry over lost federal jobs and looming cuts to social services like Social Security and Medicaid.
“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. “That’s why you’ve got everybody just like, zip-lip, not saying a word, because they’re afraid they’re going to be taken down, they’re going to be primaried.”
Murkowski isn’t up for reelection until 2028, and defeated a Trump-supported primary challenge in 2022, so she has breathing room that other Republicans don’t have. But Musk is the world’s richest man, having donated more than $250 million to help Trump get elected, and his well-funded America PAC already has plans for the midterms to push out the politicians he doesn’t like. Still, his GOP support isn’t ironclad, and as Murkowski shows, cracks are beginning to form.
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