Senator Lisa Murkowski was listing all the ways that President Trump’s efforts to slash the federal government had harmed Alaska, from the funding freezes on programs the state depends on to the layoffs of federal workers who live there, when she delivered something of an understatement.
“It’s a challenging time right now,” she recently told a crowd at a state infrastructure conference here in the state’s largest city. “I could use nice words about it — but I don’t.”
At a time when the Republican Congress has grown increasingly deferential to Mr. Trump, Ms. Murkowski has veered in the opposite direction from her party, using sharp words and her vote on the Senate floor to push back on him and his administration time and again.
She opposed the confirmations of Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, and Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director. She has voted repeatedly to block Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs on most U.S. trading partners. She has publicly lamented Republicans’ obeisance to Mr. Trump as he tramples on legislative prerogatives, saying that it is “time for Congress to reassert itself.” She said Mr. Trump’s Oval Office dressing-down of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine left her “sick to my stomach,” and recently called his decision to end deportation protections for Afghan refugees “a historic betrayal.”
And she has been frank about the dilemma faced by Republicans like her who are dismayed about the president’s policies and pronouncements but worried that speaking out about them could bring death threats or worse.
“We are all afraid,” she told constituents in April, adding: “I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”
Now, as Senate Republicans take up sprawling legislation carrying Mr. Trump’s domestic agenda, Ms. Murkowski is poised to become one of the most influential voices demanding changes to her party’s signature bill.
She has already indicated that there are at least two major provisions in the measure that she does not support: adding stringent new work requirements to Medicaid, and the termination of clean energy tax credits established under the Biden administration, a repeal that Speaker Mike Johnson accelerated to help win the support of conservatives to muscle the legislation through the House.
“There are provisions in there that are very, very, very challenging, if not impossible, for us to implement,” Ms. Murkowski said of the work requirements the day after the House passed its bill.
Senate Republicans have a relatively small majority, with three votes to spare. And a number of other G.O.P. senators have publicly aired qualms with the bill’s provisions dealing with Medicaid, including Josh Hawley of Missouri and Susan Collins of Maine. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have agitated for even deeper cuts to the program and others like it, warning that the bill as passed by the House would balloon federal deficits to unacceptable levels.
But when the Club for Growth, the anti-tax group, unveiled an ad campaign last week pressing the Senate to pass the bill, they targeted a single Republican who they said must act to avoid a looming tax hike.
“It’s in Lisa Murkowski’s hands to stop it by extending and expanding Trump’s tax cuts,” says the ad, which is running in both Alaska and Washington. “Tell Murkowski: Don’t block Trump’s agenda.”
Mr. Trump has made it clear that he does not appreciate Ms. Murkowski’s dissent, including her among a group of Republican senators he called “unbelievably disloyal.”
Ms. Murkowski, who at 68 is serving her fourth full term in the Senate, has never been easily cowed by the prevailing political winds in her party. She was first appointed to the Senate in 2002 by her father, Senator Frank Murkowski, who had served there for two decades before resigning to become governor of Alaska. And she has held on to the seat through a period of remarkable political upheaval inside the G.O.P., maintaining a centrist bent and an independent streak along the way.
In 2010, after she was defeated in her Republican primary and lost the support of party leaders in Washington, she won re-election in a write-in campaign.
Most recently, she defeated a Trump-backed rival in 2022 to keep her seat, overcoming a conservative backlash against her independent streak and her vote to convict Mr. Trump in his impeachment trial for incitement of insurrection after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Now, Ms. Murkowski has another, more urgent reason to be outspoken. Alaska relies more heavily on federal funding and programs than perhaps any other in the country, with roughly 37 percent of the state’s annual budget coming from the federal government, according to the Foraker Group, a nonpartisan group that serves Alaska’s nonprofit and tribal organizations.
She has said that it is not uncommon lately for her constituents — many of them simply address her as “Lisa,” an informality running back to when Alaskans referred to the late Senator Ted Stevens as “Uncle Ted” — to approach her in tears.
“I do feel like I’m shouldering the concerns from many Alaskans that have stopped me, that have shared their worries — whether it’s reduction in forces, cuts to grants, impacts that we’re seeing from some of the abrupt activities here in Washington, D.C.,” Ms. Murkowski, who declined to be interviewed for this story, said recently on Alaska Public Radio.
Already the reverberations from Washington have shaken the Last Frontier State. Millions of dollars in federal grants for public health initiatives and infrastructure projects were frozen or canceled. Firings and forced resignations have swept National Weather Service employees in the state and the National Marine Fisheries Service, responsible for managing the nation’s seafood harvest.
The behemoth, sprawling nature of the state also means that many everyday services typically provided by local governments — like emergency and utility services — are provided by nonprofits, which rely heavily on federal funds.
“There’s a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear and — I think some would say by design — a lot of confusion,” said Laurie Wolf, the president of the Foraker Group. “There is no single source of information about what funding is in place or not in place, or frozen or under review. There’s no source of information, so all we have is, one by one by one, people telling us what’s happening.”
Two laws passed during the Biden administration, a sweeping climate law and the bipartisan infrastructure law, which Ms. Murkowski helped write and called “one of the most consequential legislative efforts I’ve worked on,” delivered Alaska billions of dollars of federal money. Under the infrastructure bill, Alaska received the most funding per capita in the country — a total of more than $8 billion.
Almost immediately after Mr. Trump began his second term, his administration moved to freeze or cancel those funds.
“We’re having a crazy moment right now, where we’re going from a once-in-a-lifetime infrastructure and infusion of money to resources to a change in policy where it’s all uncertainty,” said Ben Mallott, the president of the Alaska Federation of Natives, the state’s largest statewide Native organization.
That has turned Ms. Murkowski into a one-woman lobbyist.
“It has to be multifaceted, because everything and everybody is different,” she said recently at another event in Anchorage. “I have been collecting a lot of new phone numbers to send texts to very busy people.”
She has texted Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration planned to fire thousands of workers; called Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, to express her opposition to the White House’s proposal to eliminate Head Start; and pressed Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, on plans to gut AmeriCorps.
She recounted the time she texted Mr. Lutnick, a former New York-based financier, about concerns among Alaska’s fishermen that mass layoffs at NOAA would upend their halibut and sablefish harvests.
“Now for him, that’s nothing but gobbledygook. So I sent a second text saying, ‘Have you ever had black cod at a fancy restaurant when it’s soaked in miso? It’s really good. This is what I’m talking about,’” Ms. Murkowski said, referring to the dish made famous by Nobu Matsuhisa. “He responded instantly after I said that.”
Her biggest fight may be yet to come. Ms. Murkowski has said she worries that major cuts to Medicaid could be “devastating” to her state, where close to 40 percent of Alaskan children receive coverage through the program. A report commissioned by the state government last year found that 24 percent of the state’s adults receive services through Medicaid — up from 11 percent a decade ago, primarily because of the expansion of the program spurred by the Affordable Care Act.
At issue are the work requirements that House Republicans approved for the program to scale back its cost, which would begin at the end of 2026, a timeline Ms. Murkowski has said may be difficult for Alaska to adopt.
“In Alaska, it’s just a little bit different: if you’re out in a rural area where you don’t have the opportunity for jobs, unless you are to move into the city, or you’re the full-time caregiver for someone in your family,” she said. “These are considerations that I think need to be taken into account. Having some level of flexibility that is directed by states, as opposed to a national level.”
The Alaska Legislature voted in May to urge the state’s congressional delegation to oppose cuts to Medicaid.
Ms. Murkowski, by her own account, has encouraged her constituents to “continue to raise your voice.”
Referring to a series of demonstrations that Alaskans have held to protest cuts to federal programs, Ms. Murkowski said, “I’m not running from that.”
“I’m saying, ‘Good, continue to speak up,’” she said on a local radio show. “Because as soon as Alaskans stop speaking up, it’s going to let your lawmakers know that, I guess we’re just OK with things. And as I’ve listened to Alaskans, I don’t think Alaskans are saying things are OK.”
Catie Edmondson covers Congress for The Times.
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