Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said "We are all afraid" on Monday, April 14, 2025, during a candid address to a group of nonprofit and tribal leaders.She was expressing the pervasive fear among Republicans in national office and Republican party officials that Donald Trump might retaliate against them for speaking out against his policies.
So just what is there for U.S. senators to fear?
You tell me.
In the late 1970s, I worked for a U.S. senator, a Democrat, Tom McIntyre of New Hampshire, who was a subcommittee chairman on the Senate Banking Committee.
He lost his job in the 1978 elections.
I went into the District of Columbia unemployment line. With no job lined up, I felt fear.
Sen. McIntyre was quickly scooped up by a law firm that worked for banking clients, making a multiple of his Senate pay.
Several months later, I found a job on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, working for Sen. John Culver of Iowa, a liberal who strongly supported unions in his time in the Senate.
When he lost in 1980 to Chuck Grassley, the man currently turning to dust in that Senate seat, I went into the unemployment line again, fearful again.
Culver went to work for a downtown Washington law firm that represented unions for a multiple of his Senate pay.
As it was then, it is more so now.