Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, second from left, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska flank President Donald Trump as he meets with Senate Republicans on the GOP health care bill in June. (Alex Wong/Getty Images file photo) 
 
 Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine withstood withering criticism — including a rhetorical challenge to a duel and a threat from the White House — to set the stage for the dramatic last-minute health care vote early Friday morning. 
 
 In the end, though, it was Arizona Sen. John McCain — returning to Washington during treatment for brain cancer diagnosis — who got the spotlight. 
 
 Murkowksi and Collins were the “two other Republicans” McCain joined in a late-night stand against the rest of their party, according to one account in The Washington Post. 
 
 It was a familiar pattern that did not go unnoticed by at least one of their female colleagues. As Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer heaped praise on McCain, calling him, “a war hero,” who, “had courage and does the right thing,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar noticed the oversight. 
 
 “Can you also not forget the two women senators who were there from the beginning?” the Minnesota Democrat said. 
 
 Schumer got the hint: He commended both women at a press conference later Friday. “They were amazing,” he said. “Women are in so many instances stronger than men.” 
 
 Murkowski and Collins, both moderates, were frequent critics of the legislation's planned cuts to Medicaid and Planned Parenthood. They also called out their colleagues’ lack of transparency throughout the process. Their positions incited backlash and outright hostility from members of their own party. 
 
 Texas Rep. Blake Farenthold hinted that if they were men he would challenge them to a duel. 
 
 On a Texas radio show, the Republican congressman said that if one of the bill’s opponents had been a “guy from south Texas, I might ask him to step outside and settle this Aaron Burr-style.” (It was a reference to an 1804 duel in which Burr, the sitting vice president, killed Alexander Hamilton, the founding Treasury secretary.) 
 
 Collins got some retribution, inadvertently, when she was caught on a hot mic disparaging Farenthold’s appearance. The two later apologized to each other. 
 
 Meanwhile, President Donald Trump singled out Murkowski on Twitter on Wednesday, a day after her ‘no’ vote on a procedural motion to open debate on the GOP health care bill. 
 
 Senator @lisamurkowski of the Great State of Alaska really let the Republicans, and our country, down yesterday. Too bad! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017 
 
 Both Murkowski and fellow Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan said Thursday they each received a phone call from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke threatening repercussions for Alaska because of Murkowski’s vote. 
 
 Collins told CNN she had not heard from the White House about her vote. 
 
 The top Democrats on the Energy and Commerce and Natural Resources committees are asking the General Accountability Office to investigate Zinke’s actions — including the phone calls — to influence the health care debate. Democrats called his actions a part of “an apparent pattern and organized effort within the Trump Administration involving the use of federal resources to advance partisan legislation.” 
 
 Murkowski was unruffled. 
 
 In a move widely interpreted as a rebuke to the White House, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee she chairs, which oversees Zinke’s department, postponed a vote Thursday to nominate six Trump appointments, including three for the Interior Department. 
 
 Lisa Murkowski is the top authorizer AND the top appropriator for the Department of the Interior. — Niels Lesniewski (@nielslesniewski) July 27, 2017 
 
 A committee spokesperson told The Washington Times that the delay was “due to uncertainty of the Senate schedule.” 
 
 Lindsey McPherson, Bridget Bowman and Jeremy Dillon contributed to this report. ||||| The Republicans' hurried health-care push had two consistent critics since the very beginning: Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). Here's how they changed the outcome of the debate. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post) 
 
 Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) played his hand on the Senate Republicans’ health-care proposal for the maximum political effect. It’s always the case that it’s the people who are wavering at the last minute who end up getting all the attention: Undecided voters, new car buyers, bachelorettes on reality television shows. In politics, though, there’s special cultural role acclaim for those who, at the last minute, do the unexpected — often while those who did exactly what was expected get little fanfare. 
 
 This ends up yielding weird results. It’s not the politicians who’ve actively pushed for or against a measure for years, building relationships with activists and introducing legislation who get the credit for passage. It’s the guy who’s spent all that time indifferent about or hostile to the cause, who at the last minute flips his position. That’s the guy who makes the headlines. The others have to live with, you know, winning. 
 
 McCain’s vote early Friday morning against the measure had been telegraphed for about an hour beforehand, but his loud “No!” of opposition was still the crack that caused the wall to crumble. Political genius. The maverick is back. Etc. But that “no” came from atop 50 other votes of opposition, not all of them easy. Any one of those 50 votes vanishes and McCain isn’t the guy who killed Trumpcare, he’s just a guy who eventually changed his mind for no real reason. 
 
 In other words, those 50 people helped McCain be the political winner. Here are seven people in particular who he can thank for his victory lap this morning. 
 
 
 
 President Trump sits between Republican Sens. Susan Collins, left, and Lisa Murkowski as they discuss health care at the White House on June 27. (Susan Walsh/AP) 
 
 Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). It’s sort of amazing that Collins hasn’t gotten more attention for her role in opposing the health-care bill this week. She was one of two Republican senators who opposed the motion-to-proceed, the procedural vote that allowed the climactic vote on Friday morning to happen at all. She was one of the three votes against the Republican bill. 
 
 She also made headlines for bashing President Trump after a hearing when a live microphone caught her conversation with a colleague. The administration’s handling of the budget was just “incredibly irresponsible,” and she was “worried” about what might happen. She delivered bad headlines for Trump on three different days — yet somehow has escaped his Twitter wrath. 
 
 Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). Murkowski did not escape that wrath. 
 
 Senator @lisamurkowski of the Great State of Alaska really let the Republicans, and our country, down yesterday. Too bad! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017 
 
 She also didn’t escape a phone call from the secretary of the interior in which projects important to her state were tacitly threatened. (That’s according to her colleague from Alaska, who received a similar call. She told reporters on Thursday that she preferred not to use the word “threat.”) 
 
 Murkowski’s opposition was driven, among other things, by a desire to protect funding for Planned Parenthood, a commitment she made publicly in the state earlier this year. When McCain’s “no” became known on the floor of the Senate as voting loomed, Murkowski was swarmed by her colleagues, hoping to cajole her into flipping. As on the motion-to-proceed, which she also opposed, Murkowski didn’t budge. 
 
 Five red-state Democrats: Sens. Joe Manchin III (W. Va.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Jon Tester (Mont.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Joe Donnelly (Ind.). The chart above picks out notable Senate votes from the failure of the Republican health-care bill. 
 
 The black dots are the three Republicans who voted no. The large red dots are Republicans who, at one point or another, seemed like they might play the spoiler role that McCain embraced, including McCain’s colleague Jeff Flake. (Notice that Flake is much more conservative than McCain, by the estimate of VoteView. That certainly made a difference.) 
 
 The little red, yellow and blue dots are those senators who voted as expected. That includes blue-state Democrats or the two independents who voted against the measure, as their constituents would have wanted. But the large blue dots? Those votes were almost certainly harder. 
 
 Manchin’s home state of West Virginia backed Trump by a 42-point margin in 2017. By 42 points, West Virginia voters said they supported Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, and supported his policies and leadership, including, presumably, the health-care bill that Trump wanted to see passed. His colleague, Shelley Moore Capito (R), considered voting against the effort, but ultimately stuck with her party despite being about as moderate as Murkowski. 
 
 But at no point did Manchin appear to waver. Same with the other four. Their states backed Trump by an average of 23 points, but Heitkamp, Tester, McCaskill and Donnelly held firm. No on motion-to-proceed, no on the final bill. Had any of them indicated a willingness to jump ship, they’d have been embraced by the president and by Republicans in their home states (at least until reelection), but none did. 
 
 Granted, this was not a popular bill. There were a slew of reasons to oppose the measure, including the way it was drafted (which was much of the reason that McCain said no). 
 
 But if credit or blame is being disseminated, these seven senators deserve more of it than the senior senator from Arizona. In a 51-49 vote, every vote is the deciding vote, even the ones that were quietly there all along.
– Hillary Clinton appeared on NBC's Meet the Press with praise for her longtime colleague and political rival, the late Sen. John McCain—who "really understood in the marrow of his bones what it meant to be an American," she says, per the Hill. "He knew that the Senate couldn't work if we didn't work together. I think it was heartbreaking to him that—as he said in the speech he gave right before he voted against repealing the Affordable Care Act—that we need to cooperate. We need to learn how to trust each other again and do better to serve the people who elected us." For more around the Sunday dial, including Michael Cohen fallout and talk of possible impeachment: Unshakeable McCain: "And all of a sudden, he pointed to the two of us and said, 'You two are right.' And that’s when I knew he was going to vote no," says Sen. Susan Collins on CNN's State of the Union, about the moment when McCain sided with her and Sen. Lisa Murkowski on opposing the GOP repeal of ObamaCare, per CNN. "But once John McCain made up his mind about something, there was no shaking him. And I knew he would be there on the final vote."