Governors' Wind Energy Coalition

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) spoke to Pro’s Anthony Adragna in an interview last week, where the Senate Energy chair said she isn’t worried about retribution from President Donald Trump after he tweeted he would endorse any challenger with “a pulse” who would try to unseat her. “I don’t know that he likes to hold a grudge or he just likes to tweet,” Murkowski said.

— Murkowski added that her Senate colleagues have been supportive. “I think you saw the public comments that many made, several of them in leadership, saying we got Lisa’s back. She’s got a right to speak her mind,” she said. “They may disagree with me, and that’s certainly their prerogative, their right. But I think they also respect the fact that if I feel called to speak in a direct way, that that is certainly mine to do.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) listens to testimony during a Senate hearing on Covid-19. | Photo by Toni L. Sandys-Pool/Getty Images

— Despite the tweet, Murkowski said she still expects the administration to sell leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as soon as this summer and to continue fighting to build the long-sought King Cove road after a court again blocked construction on the project. “These are policy initiatives that the administration embraced, not because they were led by Lisa Murkowski and we want to do a favor for Lisa,” she said. “They were things that they believe in.”

— The Alaska moderate also said she wants more to be done to help the struggling clean energy sector as Congress weighs its next economic recovery package. “This next package I view as more as ‘all right, how do we deal with the economic recovery?’ And so we need to be looking at jobs. We need to look at where we have lost those jobs and how we can work to regain or to breathe some light into these and we absolutely have opportunities when it comes to the clean energy space.”