‘russ Vought’s Gonna Meet His Match’: What Murkowski’s Potential Promotion Means For The White House

As President Donald Trump loses one of the biggest GOP critics of his administration with Sen. Susan Collins’ defeat, he’s gaining an increasingly powerful Republican antagonist who could pose a bigger liability for his agenda.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski is next in line to become the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee in early January, when Democrats retake control of the House and Senate and Collins, the current chair, leaves office.

And while the 69-year-old Alaskan would not wield the gavel, the senator has already vowed to “get back to governing in the middle” and is expected to work with both parties to rein in Trump’s moves to wrest spending power away from Congress.

That could include siding with Democrats in continuing to block White House budget director Russ Vought’s efforts to put political appointees in charge of approving grants and preventing Trump from executing another mass cancellation of federal dollars next fall — two Trump administration actions Murkowski has denounced.

“Russ Vought’s gonna meet his match,” said former Republican Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, who chaired the House Appropriations Committee for part of Trump’s first term.

“She believes in the process, the power of the purse, and I think she’s going to be a power to be reckoned with. Not that Susan wasn’t. But I’m hugely admiring of Murkowski’s outspokenness,” Frelinghuysen added in an interview. “She’s had quite a lot of opinions on the administration breaking the law.”

Anything Murkowski does to challenge the administration is likely to invite ire from Trump as she weighs whether to run for reelection in 2028, when she will almost certainly face a Republican challenger the president endorses. Trump has already backed a GOP challenger to Murkowski once before, in 2021, while calling the incumbent senator “bad for Alaska.”

Murkowski's office did not make her available for an interview, nor did the White House or the Office of Management and Budget comment on how they would expect to work with Murkowski in her new role.

But if Murkowski stays true to the record she has forged in recent years as a senior appropriator, she could be a valuable partner for Democrats, who are currently anticipating at least a four-seat majority in the Senate. They could pick up two more once votes are fully counted in Mississippi as well as in Murkowski’s own state.

Following Republicans’ staggering electoral losses, a centrist like Murkowski stands to gain more influence on Capitol Hill as a voice more aligned with voters than the cohort of defeated incumbents about to exit Washington.

“She's bigger than the appropriations process, which is great,” Frelinghuysen said. “She's going to be a voice that people are going to be listening to, especially after this election.”

The top Republican slot on the Senate Appropriations Committee is Murkowski’s if she wants it, thanks to the deference to seniority observed by both parties when picking committee leaders. And while she has not said definitively she will step into the role, she told a local Alaska radio station after the election last week that Collins’ loss “is going to put me in a position of higher leadership” on the panel.

The position could help her reelection prospects, should she choose to run for another six years in 2028.

As the current chair of the panel that funds the Interior Department and the EPA, Murkowski has focused mostly on public lands and environmental issues. But she will have the option next year to take her party’s top seat on the defense spending subcommittee, which will be made vacant by Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell’s retirement.

As one of the top four appropriators in Congress, she also would have a stronger hand to protect programs for rural communities and Native Alaskans, bolster defense investment in her state and influence environmental policies that affect the Alaska’s lucrative oil-and-gas industry.

Citing the benefits of public broadcasting in Alaska, Murkowski voted against Trump’s request last year to claw back more than $9 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which was then force to dissolve.

She also accused the president of breaking the law in using the “pocket rescissions” maneuver to unilaterally cancel federal cash, and worked to block Vought’s plan to put political appointees in charge of approving federal grants.

Collins took the same stance on all of those issues. But Murkowski has also been much bolder than her colleague from Maine in bucking Trump and the Republican establishment, including by saying publicly that Vought “disrespects” Congress and has eroded trust on Capitol Hill.

Murkowski cast the lone Senate Republican vote last summer against the party-line bill to fund Trump’s immigration enforcement agencies. She was the only GOP senator to support a committee vote to block the president from diverting $1.4 billion for relocating the FBI headquarters. She was also the sole Republican to join more than 150 congressional Democrats in demanding Vought give back pay to federal workers he furloughed during last year’s government shutdown.

Last month Trump said on social media that Murkowski is "Republicans' Worst Senator, by far” and “a DISGRACE to Alaska and our Country” — a broadside that came after the senator endorsed the Democratic candidate who ended up winning the Alaska gubernatorial contest.

Those kinds of knocks have only reinforced Murkowski’s tendency to speak her mind regardless of the potential blowback, said Bill Hoagland, a former top Senate Budget aide who worked with Murkowski when she was a new senator in the early 2000s. He pointed to Murkowski’s successful write-in campaign in 2010 to hold her Senate seat after losing the Republican primary to a Tea Party candidate.

“She’s a survivor,” Hoagland said.

Murkowski has found ways to make inroads with the Trump administration, despite having a sometimes contentious relationship with the president. She is not afraid to ask for help from his top advisers, including Stephen Miller, who has just been tapped as White House chief of staff.

Last year the senator approached Miller to express gratitude for administration policies that boosted energy production in Alaska — though she also warned the top Trump ally not to hamper those efforts by firing droves of federal workers.

Murkowski said in the local news interview last week that she wants to make real legislative headway over the next two years, rather than spend the entirety of the upcoming Congress slamming the president.

“I hope that the Democrats don’t mess this up,” she said. “I hope that they don’t look at this and say, ‘the next two years … it’s gonna be daily retribution directed at Donald Trump.’”

Murkowski would be working atop the Senate funding panel next year alongside incoming Chair Patty Murray, who is also known for her steely resolve. Jim Dyer, who spent more than 30 years on Capitol Hill as a top GOP appropriations aide, said Murkowski would make “an effective partner” for the Washington Democrat.

“By temperament and by personality, she's a strong woman,” he said. “And I think that's the way she'll want to do business.”