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thom tillis
The Tragedy of Thom Tillis
Tillis squandered a unique opportunity to protect the nation from Pete Hegseth. The country is now paying the price for his cowardice.
Jul 15, 2025
The incompetence of U.S. President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense is painfully obvious. Former Fox & Friends weekend host Pete Hegseth was never qualified for the job.
Belatedly, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.)—who became the key vote to confirm the nominee—now admits it.
Tillis squandered a unique opportunity to protect the nation from Hegseth. The country is now paying the price for his cowardice.
Tillis’ Reversal
In a phone call with Trump just before Christmas, Tillis promised to support all of Trump’s cabinet picks. But he developed strong reservations about Pete Hegseth—strong enough to participate in a secret effort to kill the nomination. Serious issues about character, statements about barring women in combat, and allegations of sexual misconduct dogged Hegseth. He had none of the qualifications necessary to run the defense department of more than 2 million military and civilian personnel.
Other Republicans—including Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)—had similar concerns. And to confirm Hegseth, Trump could afford to lose only three Republican senators. Ernst, a former combat veteran who had survived a sexual assault, capitulated to pressure from Trump’s supporters who threatened a primary challenge in her upcoming reelection. The other three—Murkowski, Collins, and McConnell—held firm.
That left Tillis. After weeks of coordinating with fellow senators to oppose the nomination, he caved. As with Ernst, the threat of a Trump-endorsed primary challenger lurked. But Tillis attributed his earlier resistance to “vetting” and said that he decided to support Hegseth after conducting “due diligence.”
Even so, his abrupt, 11th-hour reversal from “no” to “yes” surprised Murkowski and Collins. And it positioned Vice President JD Vance to cast a tie-breaking vote that put Hegseth in charge at the Pentagon by one of the narrowest margins of any defense secretary in modern history: 51 to 50.
Hegseth’s Scandals
Before long, Hegseth’s incompetence revealed itself.
In his first major overseas appearance on February 12, he “made a rookie mistake,” according to Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Hegseth told NATO and Ukrainian ministers that a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders was “an unrealistic objective” and ruled out NATO membership for Kyiv. Hegseth’s comments gave away Ukraine’s negotiating leverage before cease-fire negotiations with Russia had even begun.
“I don’t know who wrote the speech,” Wicker continued. “[I]t is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool.”
Then came the “Signalgate” scandal. Hegseth was on a group chat from March 13-15 that inadvertently included the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. The chat detailed sensitive information describing the United States’ imminent attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Shortly after that scandal became public came Signalgate II. The New York Times reported that Hegseth himself had shared detailed information about the forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer.
According to the Times, “Mr. Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, is not a Defense Department employee, but she has traveled with him overseas and drawn criticism for accompanying her husband to sensitive meetings with foreign leaders.”
“Mr. Hegseth’s brother Phil and Tim Parlatore, who continues to serve as his personal lawyer, both have jobs in the Pentagon, but it is not clear why either would need to know about upcoming military strikes aimed at the Houthis in Yemen.”
There’s more. Recently, the public learned that Hegseth paused U.S. weapons shipments to Ukraine without informing Trump. A week later, Trump resumed the shipments.
Tillis’s Lamentations
At long last, Tillis finally found his spine—but only after announcing that he would not seek reelection in 2026. In a July 9 interview on CNN, he admitted the truth about Hegseth: “With the passing of time, I think it’s clear he’s out of his depth as a manager of a large, complex organization.”
As for Hegseth’s unilateral pause on weapons to Ukraine without informing Trump, Tillis said, “That’s just amateurish. That’s from somebody who doesn’t understand large organization dynamics.”
Would Tillis vote to confirm Hegseth today? “Now, I have the information of him being a manager, and I don’t think his probationary period has been very positive.”
In the same interview, Tillis also commented on his affirmative vote for another Trump cabinet member whose incompetence is likewise becoming clear and deadly: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“Quite honestly, the main reason I supported Kennedy was because [Sen.] Bill Cassidy [R-La.] thought that we should see how it plays out,” Tillis said.
That cabinet pick is not playing out very well either. Just ask Sen. Cassidy.
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GOP Still Lacks Votes to Pass Budget Bill 'Because It's a Moral Monstrosity,' Says Senate Democrat
"We have been debating amendments for 21 hours and we are still going because through 12 hours of debate and 21 hours of amendment votes, Republicans still don't have 50 votes for their bill," said Sen. Chris Murphy.
Jul 01, 2025
Even after an all-night session of amendment votes and wrangling behind closed doors, Senate Republicans still did not have enough support to pass their reconciliation package as of Tuesday morning, leaving party leaders scrambling to placate GOP holdovers who are purportedly nervous about the legislation's unprecedented cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) argued in a social media post that the reason for the GOP's inability to quickly rally its own members around the legislation is straightforward: "Because it's a moral monstrosity."
"We have been debating amendments for 21 hours and we are still going because through 12 hours of debate and 21 hours of amendment votes, Republicans still don't have 50 votes for their bill," Murphy wrote at roughly 5:30 am ET, as the marathon "vote-a-rama" continued with no end in sight.
With Democrats unanimously opposed to the bill, Senate Republicans can only afford to lose three GOP votes if they are to send the measure back to the House for final approval. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) have said they will vote against the bill in its current form, and Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) are undecided. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) also suggested he's on the fence.
Republican leaders have been working to bring Murkowski into the yes column with a proposal that would temporarily exempt Alaska and other states from the bill's massive cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, ripped the proposal as "absurd" and said it would reward the states with the highest SNAP error rates.
"Insanity reigns," Klobuchar wrote on social media.
Senate Republicans' margins became more difficult after Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) announced his opposition to the legislation over the weekend, pointing to the Senate version's devastating cuts to Medicaid.
"What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding's not there anymore?" Tillis asked in a floor speech on Sunday, citing an estimate of the number of people in North Carolina who could lose health insurance under the Republican bill.
Throughout the country, nearly 12 million people would lose coverage under the Senate reconciliation bill, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
"Kicking millions off healthcare, blowing up the national debt by trillions, and devastating generational economic harms—all being written into law on the fly," Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said early Tuesday morning after hours of debate and amendment votes.
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'Idiotic': GOP Senator Proposes Cutting Funds for States That Bar Trump From Ballot
Sen. Thom Tillis' bill also states that the Supreme Court "shall have sole jurisdiction to decide" cases involving the Constitution's insurrection clause.
Dec 20, 2023
Republican U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis announced late Tuesday that he plans to introduce legislation to slash federal funding for states whose lawmakers or judges disqualify presidential candidates from the ballot, as Colorado's Supreme Court did with former President Donald Trump in a landmark ruling.
Tillis (N.C.) said in a statement following the decision that "regardless of whether you support or oppose former President Donald Trump, it is outrageous to see left-wing activists make a mockery of our political system by scheming with partisan state officials and pressuring judges to remove him from the ballot."
"American voters, not partisan activists, should decide who we elect as our president," he added.
Tillis' legislation, titled the Constitutional Election Integrity Act, would prevent federal funds from being used to "administer any election for federal office in a state that has in effect a law or policy to prohibit a candidate for the office of president who is otherwise eligible from appearing on the ballot for such office using Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution."
The bill also states that the U.S. Supreme Court—which is likely to hear the Trump campaign's appeal of the Colorado ruling in the coming weeks—"shall have sole jurisdiction to decide" matters related to Section 3, which is known as the insurrection clause. The clause bars those who have "engaged in insurrection" from holding office.
Aaron Fritschner, deputy chief of staff for Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), called Tillis' bill "an idiotic response" to the Colorado Supreme Court's decision.
"If the Supreme Court overturns CO this will be unnecessary, if they uphold it will be unconstitutional," Fritschner wrote on social media.
Following Tuesday's ruling, Trump's presidential campaign expressed "full confidence" that the U.S. Supreme Court—which consists of three Trump-appointed justices—will "quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these un-American lawsuits."
Legal efforts to bar Trump from the 2024 ballot under the insurrection clause are currently underway in more than a dozen states across the U.S.
In recent weeks, judges in Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire have ruled that Trump—who is currently facing more than 90 criminal charges, including several stemming from his incitement of the January 6, 2021 attack—can stay on the states' presidential primary ballots despite what even some conservative scholars say is a clear legal case for disqualification under the 14th Amendment.
A majority of Colorado's high court agreed with that position, ruling Tuesday that Trump's actions in the lead-up to the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol constituted engagement in insurrection and were therefore disqualifying under the 14th Amendment.
"We do not reach these conclusions lightly," the decision reads. "We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach."
The ruling is stayed until January 4, 2024, the day before the deadline to certify Colorado's presidential primary ballot.
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