Firings Wrong, Murkowski Says

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Category: News

Created on Thursday, 20 February 2025 15:30

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By  Iris  Samuels

Anchorage Daily News

In a telephonic town hall Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said that the recent mass firing of probationary federal employees violated the law and lacked “respect and dignity” toward the workers who have lost their jobs, which in Alaska include dozens of scientists and park rangers, among others.

In a call that drew more than 1,000 Alaskans, Murkowski also said that President Donald Trump’s efforts to withhold federal funding that had already been approved by Congress “cannot be allowed to stand.”

“If we in Congress allow that, we effectively cede some of our authority,” she said.

We have to stand up,” said Murkowski. “The ‘we’ has to be more than just me. And this is where it becomes more of a challenge.”

Murkowski’s town hall drew a sharp contrast with one hosted by Alaska’s U.S. Rep. Nick Begich III on Monday. Begich, who has aligned himself closely with Trump, steered clear of criticizing any of Trump’s policies. When one caller appeared to question the Trump administration’s use of executive power, the call was dropped mid-sentence. In the Facebook comment section, many Alaskans expressed anger about the types of questions that Begich addressed — and those he didn’t.

Murkowski took a different approach.

“There’s not going to be any questions here tonight that I’m going to say are too hard to answer or we’re going to cut you off,” Murkowski said at the outset of her hour-long town hall, during which she took questions from Alaskans who expressed anger at the Trump administration’s moves to fire probationary federal employees and freeze federal funding, along with other topics.

Murkowski’s comments on Wednesday were among her sharpest rebukes of Trump since he was reelected in November. But even as she questioned his policies and their outcomes, she said that she was working to build productive relationships within the Trump administration, explaining in part her decision to vote in favor of confirming Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, which drew pushback from some Alaskans.

“I have to figure out how, as your representative here in Washington, D.C., how I can have a relationship with people in the Trump administration. I need to be able to have people answer my phone call, respond to my texts and help us out. I did that just this weekend with Secretary Kennedy,” she said.

Murkowski said her goal is to rely on relationships with members of the administration “to go back to the executive and say, ‘There is a way to accomplish what you are seeking, but you have to do it within the confines of the law.’”

“If that doesn’t happen, the place of next resort is the court,” said Murkowski.

“You’ve got the legal aspect of it, but you also have just the human side of it,” she said.

“If we feel that we have a bloat in our system or redundancy in our system, or inefficiency, we can address that, but you do it with respect and dignity towards people, and we are just not seeing that,” Murkowski added.

She enumerated potentially catastrophic impacts in Alaska of mass federal firings, including an inability to effectively fight wildland fires; a chilling effect on the state’s tourism industry; worsening of aviation safety; and increased demand for already-stressed social safety net programs.

“It makes me kind of feel like we’re going back to the summer of COVID, when our tourism just got brought to its knees,” she said. “If we don’t have the workers that we need, it could be a tough time for us.”

Murkowski said she had already worked to ensure that seasonal National Park Service employees and wildland firefighters could be hired, after the Trump administration had frozen all seasonal staffing. But she said even if those people could reapply for those jobs, they may not choose to do so.

“What I’m hearing is a real, legitimate, drop in morale. People are looking and having conversations and saying, ‘Why would I even want to go back?’” Murkowski said.

She also said that programs serving Alaska’s rural communities could be on Trump’s chopping block.

“When people are looking for efficiencies, sometimes they just look and say, ‘Well, there’s not a lot of people there and it costs a lot of money, so this can go.’ This is where you need a very strong and united delegation to defend the program, defend the purposes and defend the people,” Murkowski said.

But it was not immediately clear if the two other members of Alaska’s congressional delegation would provide a united front in questioning Trump’s policies.

Alaska’s other GOP U.S. senator, Dan Sullivan, has not spoken publicly on the impacts of the federal hiring and funding freeze on Alaska. In a social media post on Tuesday, he compared the firings to job losses in Alaska’s energy sector, which he blamed on the Obama and Biden administrations. (Employment in Alaska’s oil and gas sector peaked during President Barack Obama’s second term and declined during Trump’s first term.)

Through a spokesperson, Sullivan declined interview requests on the federal employee firings.

Asked in writing whether he thought the terminations will improve federal services in Alaska, Sullivan’s spokesperson Amanda Coyne said that Sullivan “is gathering more information on what federal positions in Alaska have been cut and how they impact local communities” and that Sullivan would not comment on whether he supported the cuts until he had that information.

Begich encouraged fired Alaskans to contact his office with a detailed description of their termination and the work they did before being terminated.

“It’s not about fighting the administration. It’s about making sure that we have the resources that we need in order to carry out the mission of the federal government in the state of Alaska,” Begich said in a brief interview Wednesday in Juneau. “I’m asking for folks, if they have been impacted or they’re concerned that they may be impacted, they need to reach out to our office with background and details so that we can reach out to the appropriate agency and have a detailed conversation about perhaps a grant program or a lending program or a particular position that may be important to the state.”

Murkowki during her town hall said it was “wild” that fired federal employees were expected to contact their members of Congress to seek recourse after “a termination process that was just wrong.”

In a presentation to the Alaska Municipal League on Wednesday, Begich said the U.S. has “no choice but to trim government” due to the nation’s federal debt. “Of course, it needs to be done in a thoughtful way. It needs to be done in a way that doesn’t impact our ability to receive core services,” he added.

Asked whether the Trump administration was taking a thoughtful approach to cutting the size of federal government, Begich said simply that “there’s a need to reduce spending immediately.”

“While I recognize in the short run, there’s going to be some challenges navigating through this, in the long run, this will be better for the nation,” he said.

Begich referred to Alaska as a “federal colony” and said the state needed to wean itself from federal funding, breaking from a longstanding tradition among members of Alaska’s federal delegation who have sought to maximize the state’s share of federal spending — which they have said is needed given the state’s vast size and expansive federal lands.

“We know that there’s a significant concentration risk associated with the amount of federal funding that the state receives. We rely on the federal government. We all know that, and we need to be less reliant on the federal government,” Begich told the gathering of municipal leaders.

Some local leaders urged Begich to push back against the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce.

“Please just keep this little mantra in mind: Let the FAA do their job so the NTSB doesn’t have to,” said Mark Springer, a Bethel City Council member, referring to the National Transportation Safety Board — which investigates plane crashes — and the Federal Aviation Administration, which has already seen employees, including at least one in Alaska, fired days after a deadly plane crash occurred in the state.

“We are hoping that you will be a champion for the FAA, for Alaska air safety, and as well as be a champion for NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the National Weather Service,” Springer said to Begich. “We depend on NOAA. We depend on the Geological Survey, the Alaska Volcano Observatory, all these agencies literally keep us alive.”

“With all the 20-somethings running around Washington, D.C., firing people, we hope that you will be able to stand up for our safety and for our lives,” Springer said. His comments were met with applause from other local government officials.

“I love the way you phrased it: Let’s invest in the FAA,” responded Begich, but he did not comment on the impacts of terminations that have already occurred, or Springer’s reference to inexperienced aides carrying out DOGE policies. Begich took to Twitter on Tuesday to attack critics of the inexperienced staff that Elon Musk had assembled to manage the task of shrinking the federal government.

Murkowski was more blunt about Musk and his impact on Alaska.

“It’s got to be just the height of irony that the world’s wealthiest person is one who is making the overall decisions about whether or not people in Anchorage, Alaska, have a job,” she said.

And reporter Sean Maguire contributed from Juneau.

Senator Critical

Of DOGE Firings

By Sentinel Staff

A number of Sitkans phoned in to the town hall Wednesday night, expressing their concerns over actions by the Trump administration.

One Sitkan said she appreciated Murkowski’s assertion that she will stand by and uphold the Constitution. 

“My question is ... what steps specifically (can you) take to do that to defend and uphold the Constitution in the crisis that we are in now. Time is of the essence. How can I as your constituent support you in taking some really bolder steps?”

Murkowski talked about her distinct role as a member of the legislative branch, which has such duties as confirming the President’s nominees through an advise and consent process and “manage the power of the purse,” along with other duties as assigned by the Constitution. The courts and the president have duties assigned by the Constitution.

“And so when we in any one of the branches, either overstep or in Congress’s case, cede our authorities ... if the President, for instance, should seek to withhold federal funding that has already been authorized and appropriated, that  violates the Budget Act,” Murkowski said. “ It violates the Impoundment Act, and and it cannot be allowed to stand. ... 

“What can we do about it? We have to stand up now, the ‘we’ have to be more than just me, and this is where it becomes more of a challenge but it requires speaking out, it requires saying ‘that violates the law, that violates the authorities of the executive.”

A constituent from Douglas told Murkowski she and others have been “stunned” to see DOGE undermining federal power by laying off or firing federal workers.

“How do we turn this around and what happens when members of Congress are dismissed from your offices by DOGE?” she asked.

Murkowski said she is questioning the means and methods of DOGE, and with some of the firings she’s seen violations of the Administrative Procedures Act, civil service laws that protect federal employees, “so that’s why you are seeing the number of lawsuits being filed as quickly as they are on behalf of federal employees.”

She said she has sent a letter to three departments the Interior Appropriations subcommittee has oversight over.

“I made clear to them that any realignment requires notice to us in Congress,” she said. “It’s a statutory time period that requires notice. So again, it’s not to say that there is no authority to remove or request a reduction in forces, but there is a way that you are required to approach it, and that approach is with notice and in compliance, again, with the civil service laws and with the protection that we have in place as it relates to our our employees and our federal employees, and you’ve got the legal aspect of it.”

But she said she is also concerned with the human side of the issue, which she has learned about through direct conversations, letters and emails.

“They have worked for years in federal service, done exemplary work, and in fact, so good that they are promoted,” Murkowski said. “But then in this new position, they’re considered a probationary employee, and now without anything, they get this abrupt termination that said ‘your performance didn’t meet sufficient standards.’ And so you are fired. You do not treat people in this manner who have been good public servants and now they leave with not only no no transition, but now a black mark on on their employment record.”

The federal government has ways to address any bloat, inefficiency or redundancy in the federal system, she said.

“We can address that but you do it with respect and dignity toward people, and we’re just not seeing that and that’s a shame.” 

She said,  “We have an obligation to the constitution, the oaths we swore to defend the constitution, but also our authorities and our rules in it,” she said. “So it requires speaking out and standing up and that requires again more than just one or two Republicans, it requires us as a Congress to do so.”