Following his unexpected decision not to seek reelection in 2026, Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina criticized President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” in the hours that followed.
Tillis announced his retirement on Sunday after voting against a resolution to move forward with the spending bill on Saturday. He cited political division and a desire to spend more time with family as his reasons.
“Republicans are about to make a mistake on healthcare and betraying a promise” about Medicaid, he said on Sunday while speaking on the Senate floor, should the bill pass the upper chamber.
While I was in the Oval Office or the Cabinet room with Donald J. Trump, he made a commitment, and this measure in its current form will undoubtedly break that promise. According to Tillis, he stated, “We can go after waste, fraud and abuse” on any program. Now, the incompetents who are counseling him—I’m not referring to Dr. Oz here; I’m referring to the healthcare professionals in the White House—refuse to inform him that the directives meant to eradicate waste, fraud, and abuse abruptly do away with a government program known as the provider tax. We have transformed a legislative framework that has, unfortunately, been exploited and ought to be dismantled into inefficiency, fraud, and money laundering. Decipher the code. Consider how long it has been in that spot.
“I’m telling the president that you have been misinformed,” added Tillis. “You supporting the Senate mark will hurt people who are eligible and qualified for Medicaid.”
The workload is perfect for me. Other changes in this law are fantastic. “I am grateful to the leadership of the House for including them because they are necessary,” Tillis stated. What we’re doing, though, is based on an arbitrary deadline we’ve set for ourselves—July 4—which is nothing more than a date in the future. If we change the Medicaid bill after it reaches the House mark, we can take our time to do it correctly.
In order to understand the effects of the provider tax cuts on North Carolinians, the two-term senator claimed to have spoken with Republican state legislative specialists, Democrats faithful to Gov. Josh Stein, and an impartial group from the hospitals’ organization. He stated that the results indicated a $26 billion reduction in federal funding for Medicaid in the most optimistic scenario. Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, was reportedly shown the paper by Tillis.
“After three different attempts for them to discredit our estimates, the day before yesterday they admitted that we were right,” stated Tillis. “They can’t find a hole in my estimate.”
“So 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 is not there anymore, guys?” “Tillis said,” she spoke. Do you know when I last saw a promise backed out in the healthcare arena? I don’t think the president or anybody advising him is making him aware that this law would have the consequence of breaking a commitment. When someone remarked, “If you like your healthcare, you could keep it, if you like your doctor, you could keep it,” it was while I was thinking about my friends on the opposite side of the aisle. It turned out to be untrue.
From 2009 to 2010, then-President Obama often said, “If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it” when campaigning for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), sometimes called Obamacare. Keep seeing your doctor if you enjoy them. Tillis stated that his rise to the position of U.S. Senate and his status as the second Republican to hold that office in North Carolina since the Civil War were directly correlated with the package’s failings.
With Tillis’s resignation announcement in hand, Trump sounded the alarm and warned other “cost-cutting Republicans.”
Remember that being reelected is still necessary for all Republicans who are concerned about lowering costs—including me. Keep it under control! On Sunday night, Trump penned a letter. “We will make it all up, times 10, with GROWTH, more than ever before.”
Post-Senate address, Tillis said reporters that he had advised Trump he “probably needed to start looking for a replacement.”
To paraphrase Tillis, “I told him I want to help him,” Politico reports. “I hope that we get a good candidate that I can help and we can have a successful 2026.”
Speaking to reporters, the senator He’s “getting a lot of advice from people who have never governed and all they’ve done is written white papers.” He was critical of “people from an ivory tower driving him into a box canyon.”
“Leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species,” Tillis stated in his retirement announcement.
