7 GOP Senators Who Could Be On Donald Trump’s Naughty List

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump is making a naughty list and checking it twice.

That’s according to one Republican senator who likened the public pressure the president-elect is putting on members of Congress to confirm his Cabinet nominees next year to Santa Claus handing out lumps of coal to misbehaving children.

“Everybody toe the line, everybody line up,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said at a conference earlier this month, characterizing Trump’s approach. “We got you here, and if you want to survive you better be good. Don’t get on Santa’s naughty list here because we will primary you.”

Trump himself didn’t deny that he might seek retribution against Republican senators who oppose his top picks to lead federal agencies while speaking at a press conference in Florida.

“If they’re unreasonable, if they’re opposing somebody for political reasons or stupid reasons… I would say they probably would be primaried,” Trump said of GOP senators this month.

One Republican senator, Joni Erst of Iowa, learned this the hard way. After the Iraq War veteran and sexual assault survivor suggested she had concerns with Pete Hegseth, Trump’s expected nominee to lead the Department of Defense, who has been accused of sexual assault, Trump’s allies turned up the heat against Ernst, launching vicious criticism at her and calling for the senator to face a primary election challenge in 2026.

Her colleagues have since gotten the message, avoiding any hint of disapproval in their statements about Trump’s nominees and instead vowing to give them a fair hearing in the Senate next month. It doesn’t mean they’re all safe, a few controversial picks are sure to face contentious confirmation hearings. But GOP senators aren’t looking to draw Trump’s ire weeks before they actually have to cast a vote on his nominees on the Senate floor.

“Nobody needs to get on his naughty list because we’re pretty much invested in the same things he’s invested in,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a Trump ally, told HuffPost.

Still, other GOP senators could be in Trump’s crosshairs, in addition to Ernst, including Murkowski, Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Bill Cassidy (La.), Susan Collins (Maine), Todd Young (Ind.), Mike Rounds (S.D.) and John Curtin (Utah).

Lisa Murkowski

The Alaska senator is a rare phenomenon in today’s Republican Party: an independently-minded voice who isn’t afraid to call out Donald Trump. At a No Labels conference earlier this month, Murkowski called herself “more of a Ronald Reagan … Republican than I am a Trump Republican,” adding that she’d prefer being known as someone who seeks to “do right by this state and the people that I serve regardless of party.”

She doesn’t face reelection until 2028, and the last time she did, in 2022, she survived a Trump-backed challenger thanks to substantial support from independents in Alaska. She has expressed concerns with several of Trump’s nominees, including Hegseth and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been tapped to lead the Health and Human Services Department.

Susan Collins

Collins is another moderate Republican who has expressed concerns with some of Trump’s nominees. Like Murkowski, the Maine senator, she has been a critic of Trump and also voted to convict him over his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Asked by HuffPost if she worried about retribution from Trump or his allies, Collins, who is up for reelection in 2026, said she planned to vet Trump’s nominees like every other president before him.

“I’ve always approached the nominees, whether they’re Democratic or Republican presidents, in the same manner. I sit down with them and interview them, I look at the background check, I monitor or participate in the public hearing, and then I do what I think is right,” Collins said. “I’ve always given a lot of deference to the president’s choices, because I believe in general, the president should be able to assemble his own team, but I have voted against a few of them in the past, and we’ll see what happens.”

Mitch McConnell

The 82-year-old Kentucky Republican stepped down as Senate GOP leader in December after nearly two decades on the job, and he could be a wildcard during what is likely the last two years of his Senate career. Although he’s typically unwilling to criticize or even talk about Trump, he may feel differently now that he’s out of leadership and free of wider responsibility.

Earlier this month, McConnell fired a warning shot at RFK Jr. for working with a lawyer who sought to revoke approval of the lifesaving polio vaccine for children. The issue is a personal one for McConnell: He struggled with polio as a child.

“Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed ― they’re dangerous,” McConnell said. “Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.”

John Curtis

All eyes will be on Curtis, a low-profile House Republican from Utah who was elected in 2024 to replace retiring Sen. Mitt Romney in the upper chamber. Will he go the way of Romney, a vocal critic of Trump? Or will he keep his head down and fall in line with the MAGA contingent in Congress?

“I’m not a rubber stamp,” Curtis told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “I think me speaking my mind and being upfront makes the president a better president.”

“Anybody who wants to give me heat for doing my job, bring it on. This is my job. It’s my constitutional responsibility,” he added.

Curtis expressed concerns with Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI, and he has not yet backed Hegseth despite meeting with him earlier this month.

One early tell, at least on fiscal matters: Curtis last week voted along with other deeply conservative members of the House to reject a government funding bill that included a hike in the statutory borrowing limit, which Trump had demanded.

Mike Rounds

The amiable South Dakotan, who initially backed Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) over Trump in the 2024 GOP presidential race, has said that all of Trump’s nominees should get “the benefit of the doubt” while starting out ― comments that Trump’s transition touted in their favor.

But Rounds has also expressed concerns with RFK Jr. and his views on vaccines. “I want to know what his real concerns are and what he would want to do different. But I do not want to lose our vaccine programs,” he told reporters this month.

Asked by HuffPost if he was thinking about drawing a primary challenger ahead of his 2026 reelection campaign, Rounds downplayed the possibility and stressed he wanted to play a constructive role in building out Trump’s team.

“I have never had a time in which there weren’t suggestions of, you know, having primaries. Primaries are a part of the process,” Rounds said. “At this point, we’re just all part of the same team. And I think that’s what we’re going to focus on is keeping everybody on the same team and getting this stuff done. So it’s team building right now. It’s not a negative approach, it’s a positive approach.”

Todd Young

Young, a former U.S. Marine known for working across the aisle, won a second term in 2022 despite not having Trump’s endorsement after he said the former president bore responsibility for the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

In 2023, Young upped the ante and announced he wouldn’t support him in the 2024 presidential race. He’s been largely mum on Trump since then, but he’s had plenty of positive things to say about most of his nominees. Still, Young could be a senator to watch ― particularly on Hegseth’s expected nomination to lead the Pentagon.

When asked by CNN earlier this month about the allegations of sexual misconduct leveled against Hegseth, which the former Fox News host has denied, Young said he had a “fulsome” conversation with Hegseth that “covered everything on my mind,” but indicated he’s not ready to back him yet for the job.