Alaska U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski is once again calling out the Trump administration for its haphazard cuts that threaten a critical program that thousands of Alaskans rely on, while U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan has remained quiet.
Murkowski and fellow Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins joined 11 U.S. Senators from the Senate minority in calling on the U.S. Department of Health and Social Services to reverse the total elimination of the staff that oversees the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, known as LIHEAP.
LIHEAP provides states with federal funding to help low- and fixed-income households to pay for fuel and utility bills. In Alaska, the program provides nearly $21 million in assistance to low-income families and seniors. It serves more than 6 million households nationally, including for summertime cooling.
The coalition of senators said in a letter to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr. – who Murkowski voted to confirm – that the cuts would undermine the service and throw some $400 million in disbursements set for later this month into question.
“These terminations threaten to devastate a critical program dedicated to helping Americans afford their home energy bills,” said the letter. “We are concerned that the reported staff terminations will undermine the HHS’s ability to deliver this critical funding to low-income seniors and families. … As you know, our states are expecting HHS to release nearly $400 million in FY25 funding later this month. Any delay in providing this funding will set back efforts to provide summer cooling grants, weatherize low-income homes, and plan for the next winter heating season.”
It adds that the state-run programs that help people enroll in LIHEAP will be negatively affected by a slew of other cuts. As part of the latest cuts to federal spending at the Department of Health and Social Services, the Alaska Division of Public Health was notified this week that it won’t receive millions of dollars in grants that it was expecting.
Sullivan, who has taken a non-confrontational approach with the Trump administration, did not sign on to the letter. In response to a Washington Post story earlier this week about the split in approaches by Alaska’s senators, Sullivan’s office insisted that his approach, which has largely focused on appealing to Trump’s ego, is a more successful way to advocate for Alaska.
Murkowski has been critical of her colleagues’ differential approach to Trump, accusing them of being cowed by threats of political retribution.
“We’ve got to stop being so anxious and looking over our shoulders and saying, ‘Oh, my gosh, am I going to offend somebody and there’s going to be political retribution?’” Murkowski said. “This is the United States of America. Political retribution should not be something that even exists.”
During Trump’s first term, however, Sullivan was more willing to stand up to Trump. In response to a 2017 proposal to eliminate LIHEAP, Sullivan said the cuts “disproportionately target rural economies across our country, including in Alaska, and some don’t align with the commitments made by members of the Trump administration during their confirmation process and hearings.”
At the time, his staff also explicitly said he opposed cuts to the LIHEAP program.
The letter
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Bluesky.
