Rather than lying about the devastating damages that Trump’s “big beautiful bill” will do to Medicaid, Republican senators have stopped bidding for reelection.
Tom Tillis (R-NC) will win an elevator at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC on June 30, 2025.
(Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Tom Tillis, a former speaker for the North Carolina House Speaker since 2015, said: A modest, responsible Republican The US Senate faced challenges. The Trump White House had pressured Congress to enact a dangerous agenda included in what the president called “.Big beautiful bill. ” (That was the case with the bill. Approved Before the Senate on Tuesday after Vice President JD Vance defeated the Thai vote 50-50. ) Tillis knew about the bill’s Medicaid cuts I’ll do it “We’ll get tens of thousands of dollars of lost funds for North Carolina, including hospitals and rural communities.” But he also knew that by saying this out loud and defiant Trump could lead to a toxic magazine backlash.
Tillis had two options. He lied and managed to stay on the good side of Trump.
Or he could tell the truth and spark Trump’s rage.
Tillis chose the truth, and it was his end. With Republicans whose dissent is no longer acceptable, the North Carolians have ended his political career.
Tillis is not a weakly willed election dilettant. He was a political operative for decades. And he remains one of the Senate’s most savvy and experienced Republicans. So, his story tells us everything we need to know about the evolution of the grand old party, just as we are nothing more than a rubber stamp of Trump and Trumpism.
Tillis didn’t simply have a moral and practical argument to remake the “big beautiful bill” to protect Medicaid. He tried to caveat Using a closed captain’s presentation at a Republican Luncheon last week, fellow Republican senators have written about the dangers posed by the bill currently written to detail how Medicaid cuts will destroy the Red State and suggest that Congressional GOP support in 2026 could “cost the majority of both homes.”
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It was an accurate portrayal of the bill’s human and political costs. However, when he asked fellow Republicans to choose between his constituents and political reality happiness over Trump’s ego trip, Tillis found that he essentially found no Taker.
Without a team of Republicans ready to stand up for a better bill and negotiate with Trump, Tillis found himself isolated. The president has found a target for his political revenge. “A lot of people have wanted to run the primary against ‘Senator’ Tom Tillis,” Trump said. announcement On social media. “I will be meeting them over the next few weeks to find people who will adequately represent the greats of North Carolina and, importantly, the United States.”
North Carolina is the swing state that developed the Democratic voting pattern in a recent statewide contest for governors, attorney generals and other posts. But that Republican foundation is more extreme than Trump, with major GOP voters in the state supporting several recently Most far-right candidate Domestic. Tillis took the threat seriously. He knew he would rarely survive the major challenges Trump supported, so he decided to jump before the inevitable push.
Within hours of Trump’s major threats, Tillis, who had expressed his dissatisfaction with the chaotic nature of Trump’s second term, announced that he would not seek a third term. “Over the past few years, it has become increasingly clear that leaders willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming endangered species,” Tillis said. I said On Sunday he added that he had no interest in spending “6 years at political theatres on Washington’s partisan gridlock.”
It’s a subtle way he says he’s not ready to bow to the Republican president who rules the party as a cult of personality.
Realizing that he himself is one of the rarest breeds, a Republican senator, can speak his mind, Tillis goes to the Senate floor, It has been declared“It is inevitable that this bill, in its current form, will betray Donald J. Trump’s promises. [when he met with Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee]. He said, “We can receive waste, fraud and abuse in any program.” Depicting Trump as a White House aide at best, Tillis suggested that White House health professionals refused to tell the president that a version of the “big beautiful bill” that drives the Senate on a rushing schedule would “harm those who are eligible for Medicaid and qualified.”
“So what do I tell 663,000? [North Carolina] People in two or three years when President Trump pushes them away from Medicaid and breaks their promises because the funds aren’t there anymore? “Tillis asked, “The people of the White House, those who advise the president, have not told him that the effectiveness of this bill is to break the promise.”
Tillis was right. And it’s safe to say that many of his Republican colleagues were aware of that reality. But they were more prepared to break their promises and “harm those who are eligible and qualified for Medicaid” than to cross Trump. And they vote accordingly. In the end, only Tillis, Rand Paul (R-KY) and Susan Collins (R-ME) joined Senate Democrats by voting “no” on the bill.
In doing so, Republicans confirmed the assessment of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who calls Trump’s big bill “the worst law in modern American history.” Sanders after Tillis announced he was quitting. I said“I don’t really agree with NC Sen. Tom Tillis, but he’ll right about this. Trump’s Republicans don’t allow independent thinking. Republicans today are cults.
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