In a move that will surprise no one familiar with her track record, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski once again turned her back on the conservative movement — this time attacking President Trump and the wildly popular Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, for daring to take on the bloated federal bureaucracy.
At an April 14 gathering of Alaskan nonprofit leaders, Murkowski painted a grim picture — not of government overreach or fiscal irresponsibility, but of what she described as the “fear” gripping federal workers as Trump’s administration works to root out inefficiency, fraud, and waste in Washington.
“We are all afraid,” Murkowski told the audience, claiming that the Trump-backed reforms have created an atmosphere of “retaliation.” She admitted to feeling “anxious” about using her voice — ironic, given her long history of publicly breaking ranks with her party whenever it suits her political survival.
What’s really going on? The Trump Administration, with Elon Musk at the helm of DOGE, is finally doing what voters have demanded for decades: cutting red tape, holding unelected bureaucrats accountable, and reducing the size of a government that’s been living large on the backs of hardworking Americans.
But to Murkowski, that’s apparently a bridge too far.
She called the reforms “head-spinning,” and lamented that “none of us understand the half of it.” Translation? The swamp is finally being drained, and those who’ve grown comfortable in the system — including establishment Republicans like Murkowski — are scrambling to protect it.
Murkowski even went so far as to defend Medicaid from any serious reform, saying she opposes an $880 billion cut that would finally put the program on a path toward sustainability. While she claimed she’s not opposed to all reforms, she repeated the tired line that such reductions would be “devastating” to her state — as though accountability and cost-efficiency are foreign concepts in Alaska.
Perhaps most telling was her emotional appeal about federal employees losing their jobs. Murkowski recounted tearful encounters in airports and hallways, describing laid-off workers who were “in tears” after losing positions they thought were safe. But rather than ask why these positions were allowed to become so bloated and inefficient in the first place, she blamed Musk and Trump — the very leaders finally cleaning up the mess.
Murkowski didn’t stop there. She accused DOGE of “traumatizing people” and, in a bizarre twist, suggested Elon Musk might retaliate against her personally. “It may be that Elon Musk has decided he’s going to take the next billion dollars he makes off Starlink and put it directly against Lisa Murkowski,” she speculated.
Here’s the bottom line: Senator Murkowski isn’t standing up for her constituents — she’s standing up for entrenched federal workers and big government. At a time when Americans are demanding accountability, she’s defending inefficiency. At a time when conservatives are fighting to restore fiscal sanity, she’s whining about “retaliation.”
While Trump and Musk work to restore order and sanity to the federal system, Murkowski is once again showing whose side she’s really on — and it’s not the American taxpayer’s.
