Lisa Murkowski says she’s considering quitting Republican Party because of Trump

Lisa Murkowski’s future in the Republican Party is now publicly in question as the Alaska senator says she is grappling with the reality that her party is set to nominate the twice-impeached former president who faces 91 criminal charges for the presidency.

Donald Trump’s continued control of the GOP and the dominance of his Maga faction is not sitting well with the centrist Republican who has broken with her party’s base several times in recent years, including in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump and the 2017 failed vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Ms Murkowski was interviewed by CNN’s Manu Raju on Capitol Hill and said that she wouldn’t be endorsing Mr Trump for president — as most other Republicans on Capitol Hill have already done — in 2024. She further added that she was “independently minded”, and was asked whether that meant she was considering dropping her party affiliation.

«I am navigating my way through some very interesting political times. Let’s just leave it at that,» she responded.

Her potential departure from the Republican Party could have a number of consequences, depending on whether she continued to caucus with the GOP in the Senate. Independents in the chamber can choose to caucus with one of the two major parties; Senators Angus King and Bernie Sanders, both officially unaffiliated with the Democratic Party, are members of the Democratic caucus in the upper chamber; so is Kyrsten Sinema, who left the Democratic Party in 2022.

Ms Murkowski would likely remain a viable candidate for office after dropping her party affiliation, something that couldn’t be said for Ms Sinema after her departure from the party.

Unlike her colleague from Arizona, Ms Murkowski hails from a state with a