Lisa Murkowski’s Strategy on Trump Budget Bill Is Already Backfiring

It looks like Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski is getting exactly what she voted for, even though it’s not what she wanted.

Murkowski was the crucial vote Tuesday in passing Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” through the Senate. But right after the vote, she said she’d backed the measure in the hopes that the legislation could be amended after it was returned to the House. But Republican leadership in the other chamber seems content passing the bill as is.

“My hope is that the House is gonna look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet,” Murkowski told reporters after the vote. But more haggling over changes doesn’t seem to be on the agenda for House Speaker Mike Johnson.

The Louisiana Republican admitted that the Senate had strayed a “little further than many of us would have preferred” from the original bill that had passed in the House but that he would continue to work to pass the bill as it had returned, according to Punchbowl News.

“My objective and my responsibility is to get that bill over the line. So we will do everything possible to do that,” Johnson said.

The behemoth budget bill passed through the Senate only after Murkowski had acquired a stack of carve-outs for her state. “Do I like this bill? No. But I tried to take care of Alaska’s interests,” Murkowski defiantly told NBC News.

In settling for a bill she doesn’t like at all, Murkowski has just signed onto adding trillions to the national deficit and gutting social programs such as SNAP and Medicaid while extending tax breaks for the rich.

Trump officials got a lesson in the Streisand effect—whereby attempts to suppress information only circulate it further—as their outrage over ICEBlock, a free iPhone app that monitors the activity of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, propelled the app to the top of Apple’s App Store on Tuesday.

On Monday, CNN published an article about ICEBlock, which anonymously crowdsources information about ICE agent sightings in order to create an “early warning system,” according to the app’s developer, Joshua Aaron. Users have turned to ICEBlock as fear grips communities where federal immigration enforcement has ramped up operations in recent months, often led by agents conducting arrests and raids in masks and plain clothes.

In a Monday night Fox News appearance, Attorney General Pam Bondi chastised CNN for its reporting and lashed out against Aaron, saying, “He’s giving a message to criminals where our federal officers are, and he cannot do that, and we are looking at it, we are looking at him, and he better watch out, because that is not protected speech, that is threatening the lives of our law enforcement officers throughout this country.”

The app also drew condemnations from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, ICE acting Director Todd Lyons, and Trump border czar Tom Homan.

By Tuesday morning, ICEBlock had rocketed to the top of the App Store charts, becoming the #1 free app in the marketplace’s social networking category. It remains in that top social networking slot as of this writing on Tuesday afternoon, and it also appears to have more than tripled its user base: While the CNN story published Monday stated that the app had more than 20,000 users, Aaron on Tuesday afternoon posted that it now boasts over 70,000.

Thanking the app’s users, Aaron wrote, “I am so incredibly grateful that this little idea has become so popular. All I wanted to do was help protect people and #resist this downward spiral to authoritarianism.”

In a week dominated by Trump’s budget bill, Democrats can take some solace in a legal victory over Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and DOGE.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose of Rhode Island issued an injunction that blocks RFK Jr. from moving on with his plan to eliminate crucial agencies and fire 10,000 employees at the Department of Health and Human Services. The injunction was on behalf of 19 Democratic states that challenged the HHS secretary’s initial layoffs and his planned restructuring of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the Center for Tobacco Products, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, and the Office of Head Start. The injunction also blocks the Trump administration from issuing further layoffs at the department.

“The Executive Branch does not have the authority to order, organize, or implement wholesale changes to the structure and function of the agencies created by Congress,” DuBose wrote. Her injunction comes just one day before those 10,000 employees were set to be fired. Some have already been rehired.

Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska on Tuesday supplied the deciding vote for Senate Republicans to pass Trump’s signature budget bill. After doing so, she registered concerns about the disastrous piece of legislation, even while defending her vote.

The bill, if also passed in the House, would increase the deficit while delivering tax cuts to the rich and historic cuts to social programs such as Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Murkowski, a last-minute holdout, caved after being presented with handouts to make the bill slightly less ruinous for Alaskans—such as one temporarily waiving provisions requiring Alaska to pay for a portion of SNAP benefits.

The decision process, Murkowski told reporters after the vote, had been “agonizing,” and she “struggled mightily with the impact on the most vulnerable in this country, when you look to Medicaid and SNAP.”

She also expressed hope that the House would alter the bill she voted for, saying she wants the House to “look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet.”

Why did she vote for it, then? “Kill it, and the provisions that are going to be very helpful for economic development in my state would no longer be available,” Murkowski replied, pointing directly to the handouts.

In an interview with NBC’s Ryan Nobles, Murkowski addressed suggestions that she’d accepted a “bailout,” saying, “When people suggest that federal dollars go to one of our fifty states in a quote, ‘bailout,’ I find that offensive. I advocated for my state’s interests.”

“Do I like this bill? No,” Murkowski said, lamenting that, “in many parts of the country, there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill.”

But, she continued, “When I saw the direction that this is going, you can either say, ‘I don’t like it,’ and not try to help my state, or you can roll up your sleeves, and do so.”

The senator now faces intense criticism, including from Democratic Representative Jim McGovern who, during a House Rules Committee meeting, asked if Murkowski really hopes it’s improved in the house, “Why the hell did you vote for this bill? It doesn’t make any sense.”

McGovern called Murkowski’s vote “a dereliction of [her] duty as a United States senator,” as the bill is “a middle finger to millions of Americans.”

“If this is Republicans’ top legislative priority in this Congress, it tells us everything about where your values lie,” McGovern added. “And it’s not with working families, not with struggling communities, but with megacorporations, billionaires, and Donald Trump.”

Murkowski today is perhaps best rebutted by the words of Murkowski eight years ago, when she held fast as Senate Republicans dangled deals before her in hopes of getting her to help repeal Obamacare: “Let’s just say that they do something that’s so Alaska-specific just to quote, ‘get me,’” she told reporters at the time. “Then you have a nationwide system that doesn’t work. That then comes crashing down and Alaska’s not able to kind of keep it together on its own.”

Step right up: For a limited time, you, too, could smell like Donald Trump.

The president’s latest business venture is a pair of colognes that retail for $249 per 3.3-ounce bottle. The scent is called “Victory 47-45” for men and women, a nod to his dual election wins. The fragrance comes in a small container inscribed with Trump’s thick signature, and is topped by a gold statuette of a man in a business suit that doesn’t resemble the president but is, presumably, supposed to.

“Trump Fragrances are here. They’re called ‘Victory 45-47’ because they’re all about Winning, Strength, and Success—For men and women,” Trump posted on Truth Social Monday evening, announcing their arrival. “Get yourself a bottle, and don’t forget to get one for your loved ones too.”

“Enjoy, have fun, and keep winning!” the president wrote.

Neither of the listings for the cologne paint a picture of what it actually smells like, though both allege that they capture “strength” and “confidence.”

But Victory 47-45 is not the only scent advertised on the website. The president has also featured two other bottles that have supposedly sold out: one that is, curiously, also called “Victory,” though it appears to come in different packaging and one titled “COLOGNE: TRUMP FOR MEN” that arrives in a box emblazoned “Fight, fight, fight”—a reference to the assassination attempt on him in Butler, Pennsylvania, last year.

Early reviews of the scents don’t bode well. Descriptions of the scent on perfume rating site Fragrantica say the men’s version of Victory 47-45 has outdoorsy top notes mixed with cardamom, middle notes of geranium, and woody base notes of amberwood. Overall, it received a rating of 1.66 out of five with 436 votes. One reviewer said it made them feel “nauseous,” while another said it was “way, way, way” overpriced with “very poor longevity and projection.”

It “legit smells like something you could get at Ross for $26,” the second reviewer wrote, noting that the cologne resembles a mixture of more popular perfumes, but worse. “There just really isn’t any reason to own this unless Trump is your God.”

The women’s version didn’t get better ratings, receiving a score of 1.45 out of five with 250 votes. The scent is supposed to smell citrusy, built on a base of vanilla with strawberry middle notes, though one reviewer said it smelled more like “Don’s Diaper.”

Others were aghast at the “cheap” design of the bottle itself, with one user writing that it was “utterly appalling” that Trump remained atop the women’s scent, apparently lacking the “decency to put his third trophy wife on top.”

The company behind the operation, 45Footwear LLC, has a likeness partnership with CIC Ventures LLC, the same organization through which Trump has made millions off of his other tacky grifts, including his remarkably ugly $499 gold sneakers, an assortment of Trump-branded watches (that start at $499 and top out around $899), and a collection of $60-a-pop God Bless the USA Bibles. CIC Ventures LLC and CIC Digital LLC, which managed Trump’s Marvel-inspired NFT trading card project, were both fully owned by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust as of late last year.

Despite promises on the products’ respective websites that they are the only “official” locations to buy products “offered” by Trump, the Trump perfume website FAQ insists that the LLC is “not owned, managed or controlled” by Trump, the Trump Organization, or CIC. The no-refund website also stresses that Trump has no influence on the fragrances, and that the initiative “is not political and has nothing to do with any political campaign.”