Thom Tillis just stood on principle. Ted Budd? Don’t hold your breath. | Opinion

I’m choosing to believe Sen. Thom Tillis has decided not to run for re-election in 2026 because he wants to spend the next year and a half in office doing good for the poor and working-class. He won’t have to test the political winds before each decision.

I’m choosing to believe the North Carolina senator has chosen to avoid what would have been a tough political contest by giving into his better angels, something he’s been struggling with. Earlier this year, Tillis knew Pete Hegseth would be the least-qualified secretary of defense in the country’s history. Tillis gave into pressure from Republicans convinced loyalty to President Donald Trump is more important than loyalty to country and voted to confirm Hegseth.

I’m choosing to believe Tillis’s example will serve as a reminder that conservatism doesn’t have to lead to cruelty, doesn’t have to mean incompetence or power for power’s sake.

Tillis did something politically honorable. He stood up to Trump. Despite a reportedly intense call from the president Friday night, Tillis voted against an ugly bill he knows would hurt hundreds of thousands of vulnerable North Carolinians. Before the vote, Tillis made clear he could not stomach Medicaid cuts that would strip health care coverage from millions of Americans. The cuts in the Senate version of the bill are even more harmful than those that barely made it out of the House of Representatives just weeks ago.

By voting “no,” Tillis did something rare for a Republican during the Trump era. He stood up for the powerless, not the most powerful. Trump responded by angrily announcing he would punish Tillis for that independent streak, pledging to finance a Republican primary opponent. That led to the senator’s surprise announcement that this term would be his last.

Tillis said it was an easy choice between spending more time with his family or another six years in a gridlocked Senate where “leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species.“

That’s true enough. I just hope it means at least two more Republican senators, in addition to Tillis and Kentucky’s Rand Paul, will find the courage to vote against the bill and kill it before its Medicaid and other safety net cuts threaten the lives of vulnerable Americans. That nearly every Republican senator voted for a bill that will transfer wealth from the poor to the rich illustrates how far the party has walked away from its supposed core tenets. That’s especially true of Sen. Ted Budd, North Carolina’s other senator.

Budd knows, like Tillis knows, that Trump’s “big beautiful bill” will harm at least 600,000 North Carolinians directly, and many more indirectly.

Budd knows, like Tillis knows, most North Carolinians (correctly) believe that bill will hurt the average family while helping millionaires and billionaires.

Budd knows, like Tillis knows, that even as western North Carolina residents are trying to recover from the worst natural disaster in the state’s history, the Trump administration has been denying more federal aid and implementing crippling cuts to forecasting and Federal Emergency Management Administration services.

Through it all, Budd has continued choosing Trump over his constituents.

It has long seemed Tillis was struggling to keep his political soul, trying to find a way to not buck a party partially responsible for his success while remembering why all those years ago he entered the world of politics, likely because he wanted to help people and improve the country.

Budd has instead long seemed comfortable marching to the tune of Trump’s drum, even when that meant stomping on the people who sent him to Congress.

Budd once talked like a deficit hawk, yet he is voting for a bill that in addition to sacrificing the poor will add a few trillion dollars to an already-bloated national deficit.

This weekend has been clarifying. One of North Carolina’s senators was willing to give up power to stand firm on principle. He’s being forced out. The other showed power is his purpose. He sits snuggly in a Senate seat. Only North Carolina’s voters can uproot that dark political reality.

This story was originally published June 30, 2025 at 1:15 PM.