Thom Tillis Knew What the GOP Refused to Hear
The GOP reconciliation bill is forcing independent-minded Republicans to make hard choices — like whether to stay in politics at all.
Swan song.
Photographer: Graeme Sloan/BloombergEarlier today, Republican Senator Thom Tillis became one of only three GOP senators to cast a vote against President Donald Trump’s budget bill. Ultimately, his vote was mostly symbolic — the measure passed on a 51-50 vote, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tiebreaker.
But the vote has already had consequences for the two-term lawmaker from North Carolina. On Sunday, he made the announcement that he would not be running for re-election in 2026. His decision came a day after he took to the Senate floor to declare that he couldn’t support the bill because “it would result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals and rural communities.”