From The New York Times, this is The Interview.

I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro.

Lisa Murkowski is one of the best-known senators in the country, which is strange if you think about it.

She's from Alaska, a state that has only about 740,000 people living in it.

She's not a bomb thrower who constantly seeks the spotlight.

Though she did recently go viral for being recorded at an event saying of Trump's second

term, we are all afraid.

Murkowski's name recognition rests on her defense of and positioning in the middle.

As the country and the Congress has become more polarized and the Senate so evenly divided for so long,

she's found herself frequently courted by both her fellow Republicans and Democrats for her vote. And the

public, too, is also interested in which way she'll swing on any given issue. In her new memoir

called Far From Home, Senator Murkowski explores her own political journey, which she says began when

she was a PTA mom in Alaska. She became a national figure when her father appointed

her to take over his Senate seat when he was elected governor in 2002. Decades later, she's still

here and acknowledged in our candid and wide-ranging interview that she's lonely in the Senate

and sad about the state of political discourse in her party and the country.

We talked twice over the course of a week, first as the Trump-Musk Alliance was falling apart,

and later as the protests in Los Angeles were escalating.

We began, however, by talking about her book and negotiations over Trump's so-called big, beautiful bill.

Here's my conversation with Senator Lisa Murkowski.

Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you.

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