For months, Gov. Jim Pillen has embraced President Donald Trump’s domestic policy agenda, making Nebraska a pioneer in the administration’s efforts to “Make America Healthy Again,” praising federal efforts to slash education grants and volunteering to turn over a state prison to serve as America’s latest immigration detention center.
As the Republican governor has taken up Trump’s causes at home, he has also become a frequent flyer to Washington, D.C., visiting the nation’s capital more times in the first five months of 2025 than he did all of last year, according to travel receipts obtained by the Journal Star through a public records request.
Since Jan. 1, Pillen has visited Washington at least nine times, according to the travel receipts and the governor’s social media posts. He also visited West Palm Beach, Florida — near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort — days before Trump was sworn in for his second term as president in January, according to the travel receipts.
Pillen flew to Washington four times last year, according to the receipts. He had taken his fourth flight of 2025 to D.C. by the end of April this year.
His taxpayer-funded flight and hotel expenses for trips to Washington and Florida this year have cost at least $5,026.80 — a sum that does not include expenses for visits to the White House that Pillen made in July and September, receipts from which were not furnished in response to the Journal Star’s public records request.
The governor has, at times, referenced his trips as he has publicly embraced Trump and his agenda, most notably when he announced last month that the state will empty a prison in McCook to make room for a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement jail.
At a news conference unveiling the plan, Pillen said he was “proud to make the announcement today and to be a part of President Trump’s team.”
“I’ve been to Washington, D.C., more times than I can remember since the first of the year,” he said then. “Developed relationships with numerous Cabinet members. We’re on the team.”
Pillen’s critics say his embrace of Trump’s agenda and the increasing frequency of his trips to Washington are political moves meant to bolster the reelection case of a governor who some expect will face a primary challenger next year — namely Charles Herbster, a close ally of Trump who finished second to Pillen in Nebraska’s 2022 Republican gubernatorial primary.
Defenders, meanwhile, say Pillen’s championing of Trump and his agenda can only help Nebraska.
“I think Gov. Pillen is trying to do the best job he can for Nebraska, and a big part of that is having a good relationship with the president, regardless of who that is,” said Perre Neilan, a longtime political strategist who once served as the executive director of the Nebraska Republican Party, who added: “Nothing good happens for California when Gavin Newsom is constantly criticizing the president.”
In an interview, Pillen himself made the same case.
He said he has been “selling Nebraska nonstop” on his trips to Washington and rejected the notion that his embrace of Trump’s agenda has been to curry the president’s personal political favor, pointing to meetings he had with members of former President Joe Biden’s Cabinet, including the former heads of the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Transportation and Department of Agriculture.
He recalled a phone call he had in the first months of his governorship with Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, who told Pillen he had an office in Washington and warned Pillen that Nebraska ranked far below Oklahoma in recapturing federal tax dollars.
“If you don’t show up, you don’t matter,” Pillen said. “And Nebraska is going to matter.”
At times during an interview earlier this month, he suggested his implementation of the administration’s agenda wasn’t tied to Trump or politics at all.
“Most everything that I am doing, I believed in long before I ever knew who Donald Trump was,” he said in the interview in his Capitol office, where, among items on display, is a copy of Trump’s 2024 photo book, titled “Save America.”
Pillen has varyingly leaned into and away from Trump and his administration as he has carried out portions of the president’s agenda in Nebraska this year.
When he asked the federal government in May to allow the state to bar recipients of federal food assistance from using the money to buy pop, Pillen cast the request as one meant to help “Make Nebraska Healthy Again” while downplaying its ties to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary who had invited states to seek the waivers weeks earlier.
Pillen said the move was prompted by a group of young Nebraskans who had told him “about how horrible the SNAP program was,” not Kennedy’s invitation.
When he announced his plan to turn the McCook prison into an ICE jail, he repeatedly invoked Trump, and members of Pillen’s Cabinet later told Democratic lawmakers that Pillen proactively volunteered to turn the facility over to the Department of Homeland Security.
In this month’s interview, Pillen said he did not remember how the process played out, but that he “did not call anybody.”
“I just can’t tell you exactly how that came about,” he said.
A spokeswoman for Pillen who sat in on the interview later said Pillen floated the idea in a meeting with the president in July after Trump had signaled support for more ICE detention facilities, and after Nebraska’s prison director highlighted the $10 million annual cost of operating the prison in an earlier cabinet meeting.
Still, the governor insisted that neither the SNAP soda ban nor the move to open an ICE jail were politically motivated.
“Those are things that I’ve been working on, I believed in forever as a private citizen,” he said. “I believe the same thing as governor. (It) has nothing to do with politics.”
Critics see it differently. Sen. Danielle Conrad, a Democrat from Lincoln, said Pillen’s plan to turn over the McCook prison despite overcrowding elsewhere in Nebraska’s prison system “makes no sense from a policy, legal or practical perspective.”
Instead, she said, Pillen’s interest is “currying favor with President Trump, because that’s his only path to victory in the forthcoming Republican primary.”
“Gov. Pillen knows that he’s unpopular and that he has failed to deliver on key campaign promises,” Conrad said. “But he knows that President Trump is still generally supported in Nebraska, so he’s desperate to secure his approval. He’s desperate to secure his endorsement. And he’ll do absolutely anything to do that.”
Pillen, who announced plans to seek reelection earlier this year, doesn’t yet face a primary opponent. But looming is Herbster, who Trump endorsed over Pillen in 2022 and who hasn’t ruled out another run for governor in 2026.
In this month’s interview, Pillen said he “would assume” that Trump will endorse his reelection bid as an incumbent Republican governor.
But he does not see it as his only path to victory.
“We won without it before,” he said.
Reach the writer at 402-473-7223 or awegley@journalstar.com. On Twitter @andrewwegley
Love
0
Funny
0
Wow
0
Sad
0
Angry
0
Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox!
Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter.
* I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Andrew Wegley
State government reporter
Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily!
Your notification has been saved.
There was a problem saving your notification.
{{description}}
Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
Followed notifications
Please log in to use this feature
Log In
Don’t have an account? Sign Up Today