Amid a lack of information from the administration of President Donald Trump, Alaska U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has reached out directly to Trump’s chief of staff to describe the negative impacts of federal job cuts in Alaska.
“What we are doing, is we are raising these very specific one-by-one issues, as high up as we can get within the chain,” said Murkowski, a Republican who has been outspoken in her opposition to the Trump administration’s moves to fire probationary federal employees en masse.
In Alaska, dozens of employees in the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service lost their jobs last month, raising alarm among Alaskans who rely on them, including tourism industry officials. Last week, an unknown number of employees in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were fired, including meteorologists, scientists and law enforcement officers.
In an interview on Saturday, Murkowski said the workforce cuts could hamper the operations of two NOAA ships that operate in Alaska waters, because at least half the crew members are probationary employees.
Probationary employees, who lack some of the workplace protections afforded to most of the federal workforce, are those in their first few months of federal employment, or those who were recently promoted to a different agency position.
NOAA Ship Oscar Dyson, currently on its way to Kodiak after completing repairs in Seattle, is expected to conduct fishery survey operations this summer. Murkowski said she learned last week that half the ship’s crew were probationary employees — and if they were fired, it was possible the vessel would not be able to conduct surveys as scheduled.
“This is a really important one, because it helps them evaluate the stock assessment and the catch allocation. If you don’t have a solid stock assessment, then what you’re going to do is you’re going to err on the side of caution, which is, you lower your catch limits. And so that’s not good for fishermen,” said Murkowski.
Murkowski said she brought up her concerns over the ship’s operations with Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, after Wiles told Republican senators they could contact her with questions on cuts enacted by the Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, which is headed by billionaire Elon Musk.
“She came to a lunch this week and said, ‘If you’re having problems unlocking things or trying to make headway, put it on my desk,’” Murkowski said. “Because sometimes the decisions that are being made — in terms of these terminations — the secretaries themselves are not fully even read in, which is concerning.”
Murkowski said she hasn’t heard back yet after contacting Wiles.
Keeley Belva, a spokesperson for NOAA marine and aviation operations, said in a statement Monday that “if all goes as planned, (the Oscar Dyson) should be able to resume the field season schedule.”
Then, Murkowski said she found out on Saturday that the NOAA Ship Fairweather, which is scheduled to conduct mapping operations in Alaska in the coming months, could also be affected by federal workforce cuts, because 60% of its crew were probationary employees.
“So it means you’re trying to figure out who you can use for crew, and can you put one full boat in the water, not two?” Murkowski said.
Belva, with NOAA, said the Fairweather is currently completing some scheduled winter repairs in its Ketchikan homeport.
Murkowski said that a planned celebration by the Fairweather crew in Ketchikan was canceled this weekend after all but one shore-side NOAA employee in Ketchikan lost their jobs.
“Your ships alone don’t do the work. It’s the crew, and it’s not only the crew on the vessel. It’s the crew supporting the vessel,” said Murkowski. “When we are communicating this backup, it’s important that they hear the value of some on the support side.”
Amid a lack of information from federal agencies (NOAA spokespeople declined to comment on the extent of job cuts in Alaska), members of Congress have turned to crowdsourcing to learn where cuts are happening. That also means it is up to them and their offices to determine which impacts are urgent enough to bring up before Wiles and other members of the Trump administration.
“It’s important that as delegation members, we be listening directly to our constituents and then doing what we can,” Murkowski said.
“We’re unfortunately doing this bit by bit, but trying to prioritize in ways that are going to make a meaningful difference, but it’s been hard,” she said.
As chair of the Indian Affairs Committee, Murkowski has been compiling a list of impacts on tribes and other Alaska Native and Native American groups and people. She also said she is working on a list of impacts on veterans, and crowdsourcing information through calls with the Alaska Municipal League and the Foraker Group, which represents Alaska nonprofits.
The goal is to bring the information “to the agency, to the secretary, to wherever it is, whoever we can get to help turn this around,” she said.
“Are we seeing anything lifting? Yeah, bit by bit. Not fast enough for me. Not fast enough for those that are being impacted. But it’s happening,” she said.
‘Good and honorable work’
Among those fired last week was a NOAA law enforcement officer based in Kodiak. The officer, who asked that his name not be used, was one of just four people charged with ensuring that federal laws governing fishing were upheld in vast swaths of Alaska waters, including the Bering Sea. Two of them lost their jobs on Thursday.
Prior to joining NOAA, he served in the Coast Guard for two decades. He’d been told that law enforcement officials would be exempt from the workforce cuts, so he was caught off-guard.
Cutting two out of four Kodiak-based NOAA enforcement officers could mean an end to most enforcement operations in the Bering Sea, he said.
“There’s no way to effectively manage fisheries like that,” he said.
The officer said he is planning to appeal his termination and seek help from Alaska’s congressional delegation. Unless he gets his job back this month, he said he would likely leave Kodiak and return to the East Coast, where he is from.
“There’s not enough jobs to pay enough money to afford the cost of living here,” he said. “If I can’t get reinstated, I’m going to have to go back somewhere I know that I can get a job.”
Murkowski said Alaska is “disproportionately” impacted by the job cuts because the number of federal employees per capita in Alaska is greater than most other states. She said she supports efforts to eliminate redundancy and inefficiency in the federal government, but she also acknowledged many of the federal employees who lost their jobs had been doing “good and honorable work that we need.”
During a visit to the Juneau National Weather Service office last year, Murkowski said she asked if they had enough staff.
“Everybody just kind of snorted, like, ‘Oh, we only wish,’” she said. “When you recognize the territory that they’ve got to cover here in Alaska, the role that they play in keeping people safe, whether from weather in aviation or on the seas, we rely on these men and women in such a significant way for life safety. And we’re short.”
‘Speak louder’
Murkowski said that though the Trump administration has the authority to shrink the federal workforce, actions undertaken by the administration are not lawful, including the mass termination of probationary employees.
“I think we in Congress need to speak louder about just following the law,” she said.
“You can be a 100% supporter of President Trump and still stand up for the role of the Senate and the role of the Congress, and I believe we have a responsibility to do that,” she added, echoing her message from a town hall last month, when she first said that Congress should take a stand in opposing some actions by the Trump administration.
She said there is “a small group” of members of Congress who are vocal in their opposition to certain Trump actions.
That group does not appear to include the two other members of Alaska’s congressional delegation. Both U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan and U.S. Rep. Nick Begich III have said they are gathering information about the federal workforce cuts, but have not publicly said they oppose the terminations.
Begich declined an interview request on Monday. In a statement, spokesperson Silver Prout said that his office is “currently in the process of reviewing each constituent case that has been brought to our attention as requested by the Congressman.”
Prout did not respond when asked whether Begich believed that any of the terminated federal employees should be reinstated.
Sullivan wrote in a social media post on Feb. 18 that he was “working diligently to gather more information on what federal positions in Alaska have been cut and how they impact local communities.” A spokesperson did not respond Monday when asked how many positions Sullivan had learned were cut in Alaska since that statement was made.
“He and his team are continuing to get as much detail on these employee reductions as possible,” said spokesperson Amanda Coyne, adding that Sullivan “continues to fight against eliminating positions that undermine the safety and economy of Alaska.”
Murkowski was also more willing than Sullivan and Begich to criticize Trump over his recent treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. After a televised argument between Trump and Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, Murkowski called the conversation between the leaders “tense” and “shocking.”
“I know foreign policy is not for the faint of heart, but right now, I am sick to my stomach as the administration appears to be walking away from our allies and embracing (Russia’s President Vladimir) Putin, a threat to democracy and U.S. values around the world,” Murkowski wrote in a social media post.
Meanwhile, Sullivan and Begich blamed Zelenskyy for arguing with Trump.
Sullivan, who during the Biden presidency was a vocal supporter of Ukraine, said in a written statement that the Oval Office meeting “was a missed opportunity for the people of Ukraine.”
“After the meeting, President Trump left the door open to continue to work with Zelensky on a peace agreement. I am hopeful that will happen,” Sullivan said.
Begich said in a statement that Zelenskyy “failed at diplomacy” and “denied his people a chance to end this conflict and begin to rebuild.”