Sen. Dan Sullivan enthusiastically embraced President Trump and many of his policies during his annual address to the Alaska Legislature on Thursday.
It was a strikingly different scene from just two days before, when his fellow Republican Senate colleague, Lisa Murkowski, spoke to lawmakers. Unlike the at times somber and critical address from Murkowski, Sullivan’s was a celebration.
There were plenty of applause lines, and even some props.
Sullivan held up a handout he provided to legislators and the press a year ago about various Biden administration policies and actions restricting development in Alaska. And then, he ripped it in half.
“I hope our kids and our grandkids, for their sake, never have to undertake and go through this kind of assault on our state of Alaska ever again,” he said, spurring a bipartisan round of applause.
Then he held up another document: an executive order Trump signed on his first day in office aimed at, according to its title, “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential.”
“Alaska has never seen such a positive signal directly from a U.S. president that we should pursue our vision of a state that seeks private sector wealth and job creation with a federal government that is a partner in opportunity, not a hostile opponent,” he said, inspiring another round of applause.
He even broke some news, saying the Interior secretary had recently signed an order implementing the priorities Trump’s order laid out. The implications of the new order were not immediately clear, but it seemed to be largely a reiteration of Trump’s earlier directive.
Sullivan faced some Trump detractors on his way into the state House chamber. Demonstrators lined the hallways as Sullivan arrived holding up signs saying “defend the constitution” and “stop Trump and Musk.”
Juneauite Taylor Beard, an organizer with the group Juneau For Democracy, held a sign calling Sullivan a coward.
“Alaska stands to really be decimated by losing funding, and he is doing nothing to stop that,” she said.
Sullivan told lawmakers he’s heard a lot from constituents about Elon Musk’s government-shrinking efforts under the auspices of the Department of Government Efficiency. He endorsed Trump’s goal of slashing government spending, saying the U.S.’s $36 trillion national debt threatens future generations.
Sullivan didn’t exactly endorse Trump and Musk’s methods. But to the degree Sullivan drew any contrast with the president at all, it was subtle.
“Do I like every decision that they're making? No. But these are difficult decisions,” he said. “Job losses are always difficult on families and communities, especially in tight-knit states like ours, and they need to be done humanely and not randomly.”
But even after that, he returned to Trump’s executive order. He told lawmakers that fired federal workers and organizations with frozen federal funds should fill out a form with some details, including how their projects and programs help accomplish the goals of Trump’s order.
“If there's a decision that you're seeing that's being made — and we're trying to track all of them — that impacts safety in Alaska or impacts our economy, we have been going to them, saying, ‘Look at that [executive order]. You can't do that. You need to reverse it,”’ he said, adding that he’s had “some success” in rolling back planned cuts.
Sullivan took a variety of hard questions from sometimes hostile lawmakers. Sen. Forrest Dunbar, D-Anchorage, asked him whether he’d oppose cuts to Medicaid. Sullivan said he recognized the program’s importance to Alaskans and said Trump had vowed to support Medicaid and Medicare, though he stopped short of promising to oppose any cuts.
Rep. Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage, called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” and asked how Sullivan would address what Gray described as whiplash-inducing shifts in foreign policy. Sullivan replied that Russian leaders, including Putin, had been “brutal and expansionist” but applauded Trump’s efforts to negotiate with Putin to seek a ceasefire in Ukraine.
“It can be distasteful, I agree with you, with regard to Putin,” Sullivan told Gray. “But you know, if you look at Ronald Reagan, you know, he spoke with the Russian Soviet Union leaders at a certain point. So what the President and his team are doing right now, and they're putting an enormous amount of effort into it, is trying to bring both sides together to stop the war and stop the killing.”
Like Murkowski, Sullivan rejected the idea that Trump’s moves to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members in apparent violation of a court order represented a constitutional crisis. He equivocated, saying Biden had ignored a Supreme Court order on student loans. Legal experts dispute the comparison.
Sullivan did draw some distance between himself and Trump, who recently called for the U.S. district judge who issued the ruling to be impeached.
Sullivan said impeachments of federal judges are typically for corruption, not rulings the government disagrees with. He said it’d be a “big step,” though he stopped short of saying it shouldn’t happen.
“My view is that administrations should follow the law, and if they don't like court rulings, they should appeal them,” he said at a news conference after the speech.
But asked what he’d do if Trump were to defy the U.S. Supreme Court, Sullivan offered no specifics.
