Tillis steps up again

He's not going quietly into the night.

Senator Thom Tillis is stepping up again. He’s the first Republican Senator to call for Kristi Noem to go. Tillis says he has lost any confidence in her ability to perform her job as Secretary of Homeland Security. He also called Stephen Miller incompetent. His words were brutal.

Tillis isn’t running for re-election, which frees him up to be more critical of the Trump administration. He’s probably speaking for a lot of Republican Senators, though Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski is the only other one who has openly called for Noem to step down. Tillis insists that the killings in Minnesota need to be “adjudicated before we move on.” In other words, he’s demanding real answers.

But Tillis also looks at the situation with a political eye. He says that Noem and Miller have cost Republicans on immigration. He told reporters, “We should own the issue of border security and immigration, but they have destroyed that for Republicans… They have destroyed it through their incompetence.” Harsh.

Tillis doesn’t just bash Noem on immigration, though. He goes after her on FEMA. While he never mentions Helene relief, the implication is clearly there: “To give you some idea of how incompetent she is, she actually thought FEMA should be eliminated.” His statement might end up in the US Senate race in North Carolina if Noem is still on the job in November.

Trump has said that he still has confidence in Noem. He responded to Tillis’ criticism by calling him a loser. He says that what Tillis says doesn’t matter anymore since he decided not to run. That’s wishful thinking since Trump still needs support from Tillis in the Senate. Somebody in Trump’s orbit knows that Tillis is speaking for a lot of Senators who lack the courage to say what they think.

Tillis also blasted the administration over the threats to take Greenland. He called the approach “amateurish” and said he was “sick of stupid,” referring mainly to Stephen Miller. Tillis has emerged as the administration’s harshest Republican critic in Congress.

Tillis, though, is very careful with his words. He never criticizes Trump directly. He lays all of the blame on his advisors and cabinet members. He’s trying to protect his relationship with Trump. While he’s not gone so far as to lavish false praise like so many other sycophants and toadies, he’s not fooling anybody. Even Trump knows Tillis is pointing the finger at him.

Tillis may just be trying to keep lines of communication open with Trump, but he also may have an eye to the future. He’s leaving the Senate, but he sure doesn’t seem to be a guy who is leaving politics. At least he’s not going quietly. If “normie” Republicans can recapture their party, he could be positioning himself for some role. There’s a governor’s race in North Carolina in 2028, though it seems dubious that he could get through a primary. Who knows?

As I’ve said for years, Thom Tillis knows what’s right, but he often did what’s wrong. He voted against impeachment in 2021, even though he knew Trump was guilty. He voted to approve people like Noem and Hegseth who have shown gross incompetence because he thought getting on the wrong side of Trump would hurt his re-election chances. In the first Trump administration, he even voted against himself in an embarrassing move to prevent Trump from endorsing a potential primary challenger.

Now, Tillis is saying what’s right and trying to get his colleagues to stand up, too—or maybe just offering them cover. He knows that heavy-handed immigration enforcement is wrong and bad politics. He knows threatening our allies is bad policy and weakens US standing in the world. He knows the cabinet is full of clowns and has said so himself. He knew covering up the Epstein files was wrong and demanded their release. He defended Fed Chair Jerome Powell from Trump’s threats to fire him.

Good on him. Let’s hope he keeps it up.