#thom tillis

[oneofthosecrazycatladies]

If you need a pick me up, here’s a song that some of Thom Tillis’ constituents wrote for him.

[jonostroveart]

Hangups

[porterdavis]

And that's how democracy dies...

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Andrew Mangan at Daily Kos:

In this year’s Senate elections, Democrats won over 2 million more votes than Republicans but still lost their majority. So much for democracy.  The Senate is famously biased toward the GOP, and with less ticket-splitting these days, that leaves Democrats with quite the hole to climb out of. But there is a ladder back to the majority, even if it’s a tall one. Democrats have performed well in the past two midterm elections, riding a blue wave to a net gain of 40 House seats in 2018 and flipping one Senate seat in 2022, a midterm they were expected to lose decisively. In 2018, Democrats lost four Senate seats while gaining two, but all the losses were in red states, like North Dakota (!) and Indiana (!!). In 2024, though, they saw their 51-seat majority slashed to 47 as the GOP claimed the chamber. But the 2026 midterms alone almost certainly won’t put them back in the Senate majority. There are only two good shots at pickups that year: Maine and North Carolina. 

[...] Nevertheless, holding all their seats and flipping four across these two elections would put Democrats back into the majority. But flip the White House in 2028 and they need only three.

The Democrats lost 4 seats this election (and frankly lucky to not lose any more) to put them down to 47 seats (including 2 Dem-caucusing I’s), and the effort to win back the Senate will likely be a two-cycle effort.

[tomorrowusa]

« For most Republicans in Congress, there’s no battle between conscience and supplication. They dropped to their knees years ago. There’s no tension between what they say and what they do. They praise Trump with their every word, including the conjunctions. »

— Frank Bruni at The New York Times.

Republicans on Capitol Hill have become Trump-Musk hos. Instead of acting like a co-equal branch of government to the White House they are MAGA-DOGE lickspittles.

On a similar note, former Republican Charlie Sykes compared congressional Republicans to "potted plants".

If you live in a district narrowly won by a GOP US House member in 2024, you have a disproportionate amount of influence at a critical time in our country's history. Start working now to defeat those Republicans who are giving Trump-Musk permission to destroy our future.

[onlytiktoks]

[gwydionmisha]

North Carolina GOP votes to censure Sen. Thom Tillis for straying from party platform

[letterstomyrepresentatives]

Bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia Home NOW

Dear Senator Tillis,

Right now — as you read this — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a legal U.S. resident and father to a disabled American child, is trapped inside one of the world’s most violent prisons because of your government’s unlawful actions. He is there because the Trump administration illegally deported him, in knowing violation of a U.S. court order protecting him. And now, your administration’s response is to shrug and say, "There’s nothing we can do."

That is not just false — it is cowardice.

The U.S. government grabbed this man off the street, disappeared him from his family, and knowingly sent him to a foreign prison where torture and death are routine. You don’t get to claim helplessness after you’re the one who pushed him off the cliff.

And let’s be clear: this was no accident. Government filings confirm that ICE knew of Mr. Garcia’s protected legal status when they deported him. They moved him up the deportation list because they could — because no one like you had the courage to stop them.

Now, your cowardice is killing him. And you are still doing nothing.

You are not powerless. You are afraid. Afraid of standing up to your party. Afraid of confronting the lawlessness you’ve tolerated. Afraid of risking your career to do the bare minimum: stop an innocent man from dying because of our government's misconduct.

I demand that you stop hiding and act — right now:

Publicly demand Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s immediate return.

Reject the obscene claim that the U.S. can deport someone illegally and then pretend there’s nothing to be done.

Cut off all U.S. payments to the Salvadoran government until he is returned.

Demand an immediate investigation into who allowed this atrocity.

Put your position, your career, your political future on the line to stop this — because a man’s life is worth more than your job.

If you are still waiting for the right time to find your backbone — it is now. If you fail to act today, you will not be remembered as a leader, but as a coward who let an innocent man rot in a foreign prison because you were too afraid to confront your own party’s abuses.

No more excuses. No more hiding. No more cowardice. The blood is already on your hands. What you do next will decide whether it stops there.

[floorcharts]

Who: Senator Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina)

X: https://x.com/SenThomTillis

When: February 2025

What: Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

Watch on C-SPAN

Read the Congressional Record

[gayfertilitygoddess]

If you live in North Carolina and feel like calling your senators, you can give feedback on Thom Tillis’s remarks about the Dubious Oligarchs Grabbing Everything.

Tl;dr: he accuses the democrats of trying to hold back progress, makes a vague reference to “having some guardrails,” claims the muskrat is actually an astute businessman and that running the us govt like one of the muskrat’s businesses is going to solve all of our problems.

Source: https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/volume-171/issue-24/senate-section/article/S750-1

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, this week has been interesting, as I have seen from some of my friends on the other side of the aisle, a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth and all the horrible things that are going to come before us. And it reminded me of a book that I used as a basis for management consulting training back in 1998. It was called ``Who Moved My Cheese.'' It is a story about two mice and two small people in a maze. The mice are named Sniff and Scurry, and the two little people are Hem and Haw. And it is only about a hundred-page book. But the premise of the book is the cheese was moved in the maze, and the challenge was to figure out where the food source was.

Well, Sniff and Scurry, the mice, actually did a pretty good job, fairly quickly, to kind of move where the cheese was and deal with the status quo. But Hem and Haw really had more challenges.

And I think we have some hemming and hawing going on here in Washington right now because they just don't understand business practices that we are trying to apply to government that have never been applied at scale before.

And I decided that I would give you an idea because a lot of people think that Elon Musk is off the chain and causing all kinds of havoc. I haven't seen that yet. As a matter of fact, if time allows, I am going to talk a little bit about the narrative this week over the payment system and all the detailed payment data that supposedly got out--which is patently untrue, contrary to what press reports have said.

But I thought I would start with the story of SpaceX. When Elon Musk decided to invest in and create SpaceX, he did something that has never been done before in this industry. He decided that instead of doing what the old players do--which is to be perfect, never launch a rocket until you are absolutely certain that that mission can be accomplished--he decided that you can learn from failure.

This is actually a social media post of one of his first launches where the booster failed to come back to Earth. His immediate response--whether it was either his instincts or really good communications people--his immediate response was a social media post that said: ``Great launch, unscheduled RUD''--R-U-D, which is rapid unscheduled disassembly.

So he was telling his shareholders and the people that have invested in SpaceX, that what happened, on its face, looked like a disaster. But, in fact, it was being willing to fail--provided that human life was not at risk--that being willing to fail was how you accelerate and you bypass everybody who has a partnership with the Federal Government. You get through all of that, and now you have the premiere launch platform, while all the other competitors have been working on it for years or decades, because he understands the concept that I understand in business, where I spent most of my life, that you learn from failure, if you know how to measure it and you are responsive and resilient.

Now, when I advised clients on enterprise transformation, we would push the envelope. We would pull back if we thought it was a market reputation risk or a center business risk.

So I believe that we need to do more of that, but we need to have guardrails, clearly.

Now there are just people that they just can't figure out where the cheese is. Now, if I just go back to the one area on payments, I have to admit, when I first heard about the payments information with read-only access being provided to someone who may be technically a government employee, but not a career government employee, it did give me concern.

So I had my staff dig into it. And since then, the administration has put out a fact sheet that anybody who is concerned about what is happening in the payments platform should look at it.

They are not looking at detailed payment data. What they are looking at is the way payments are processed to determine whether or not there is an opportunity to do it more efficiently, more cost effectively, and leave more money in the U.S. Treasury as a result--maybe more money that we can use to retire our debt. That seems like a reasonable thing to do.

People said they are getting top secret information and confidential information they shouldn't have.

I asked the specific question. I have been assured that if there is classified information, that the only ones who are going to see it are people that already have the appropriate clearances. And I have also been assured that there is no confidential information being passed.

So I would defy those in the press or maybe some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I am all about facts here. If I have established no reputation in the U.S. Senate, it is that I am tedious and I complete my due diligence.

I went to the administration. I asked these questions, and I believe we are dealing with a false narrative because people don't want to know where the cheese has been moved. They have got to get used to change.

I have been in the U.S. Senate for 10 years. I am sick of saying: Medicare has to get better. I am sick of saying: Medicaid has to get better. I am sick of saying: We are not getting people more healthy on Medicaid today. I am sick of hearing people say that on both sides of the aisles, folks.

So if we don't take some calculated risk, then we are going to be talking about the same sort of vexing issues 10 years from now.

And so I want to ask everybody to reject this narrative that we are going too fast, too soon, too many things on the line, and let's get to specific examples.

I have used the example that has dominated the press this week to determine most of what is being said is a red herring to take the President and, in this case, Elon Musk, off of the trail of trying to find efficiencies. You have facts to dispute that? Come to the Senate floor; I can learn from it. But stop creating a false narrative because you don't want to go through change because you want to continue to establish and follow the status quo, which is failing the American people and failing to fulfill promises that I have heard people make for the last decade.

Mr. President, I come here to say--I also shared a story. I had a friend of Greek ancestry call me this week and say: What is going on with Mr. Musk?

I will say, Mr. Musk has put out some social media posts that are incorrect. He actually is one of the reasons why we are having to complete this due diligence because he was talking about looking at payment data versus having professionals who--some of them are career personnel looking at source code to figure out how to make it better. He probably needs to tighten it up.

But my Greek friend told me--when I thought about all this stuff, I said: I think the President has enabled Mr. Musk and other people a lot like Icarus's father provided him with wings. They were made of wax and feathers. If you know mythology, the idea was for Icarus to fly and never go so low as to drown in the sea but never go so high as to have his wings melted, his feathers float away, and ultimately drown in the sea.

So to those who are looking at all of this in the way that I am, I want that sweet spot. I want those who are looking at government efficiencies to understand the rules. They need to understand confidentiality, national security, and when lives are on the line.

When we are talking about DOD, the intel community, the Foreign Service, you need adult supervision in the room to make absolutely certain we don't compromise or put those men or women in danger. But in the meantime, if we really want to force change, if we really want to fulfill the promises that we made to the American people when we took control of Washington, we have to get people comfortable with change.

We have to start fulfilling promises--some of the big promises that for the 10 years I have been here, I heard it every year, and we haven't made appreciable progress.

Look, the American people are patient. If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will present facts, not innuendo that could be politically motivated at best or just bad information at worst, then we can get through this, and we can do right by the American people as a result.

[starredforlife]

this guy sucks so fucking bad. nc followers of there are any of you please keep annoying his office. No one ever answers so I email.

[stardew-bajablast]

one of my senators finally responded to my emails asking them to call for a ceasefire in gaza

it’s exactly what you’d expect but it is a response at least, ig

anyway keep writing your representatives. especially in light of the ICJ’s ruling on the south africa case. write them, keep writing them, and then write them some more. flood their inboxes with demands for the US to stop aiding and abetting this genocide.

and that goes for queer rights and abortion access and climate change and police brutality and everything else

your representatives are supposed to work for you! you are their boss!!! if you think your representatives are doing a shitty job, LET THEM KNOW! harass them! and let them know you will continue to harass them until they stop supporting genocide

[redsnerdden]

SAG-AFTRA Applauds The NO FAKES Act Announcement

SAG-AFTRA Applauds The NO FAKES Act Announcement #SagAftraStrong #SagAftraStrike #Movies #Entertainment #Television #Politics

Yesterday, the U.S. Senator and Chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) announced a new bipartisan bill to protect voice and likeness of actors, performers, and individuals from AI-Generated Replicas, titled Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep…

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Gabriel Sherman at Vanity Fair:

In the past week, Donald Trump has signaled a desire to rule like a strongman rather than a president constrained by constitutional norms. Last Friday, Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, scolded democratic NATO allies and met with the leader of Germany’s extreme-right AfD party. On Saturday, Trump declared on social media: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” This Tuesday, Trump blamed Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the brutal war that was launched by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. “You should have never started it,” Trump falsely said of Zelenskyy, when in fact Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The US president then doubled down on the feud Wednesday, calling Zelenskyy a “dictator.” Democrats are in the minority in both the House and Senate, which means the federal courts and congressional Republicans are the only guardrails on Trump’s second term. So far the judicial system seems to be holding—though a Trump-packed Supreme Court is now destined to rule on all manner of alleged overreach in the coming months. (And it’s an open question as to whether Trump will actually abide by rulings that go against him.)

Republicans in Congress, however, have consistently folded—approving all of Trump’s Cabinet picks, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, with only a faint whiff of pushback on some of their boundary-scorching backgrounds. The confirmations predictably short-circuited many Democratic observers, but the rolling headlines of late have even some Republicans decrying the seeming erosion of checks and balances in recent weeks. “These are the heirs of the Greatest Generation, and they turned out to be the worst generation,” says Stuart Stevens, who served as a chief strategist on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and has since left the GOP, joining the anti-Trump Lincoln Project as a senior adviser. “It’s tempting to compare Republicans to Prussian aristocrats in 1930s Germany. But Prussian aristocrats were more responsible. They were dealing with civil unrest and the threat of a communist takeover. Republicans today have historically low unemployment, a record stock market. What’s their excuse?”

Political survival is one. Senate and House Republicans know Trump will orchestrate the running of a primary challenger backed by Elon Musk’s unlimited resources if a member defies him. But this is not the whole story of Republican subservience to the president. In private, Republicans talk about their fear that Trump might incite his MAGA followers to commit political violence against them if they don’t rubber-stamp his actions. “They’re scared shitless about death threats and Gestapo-like stuff,” a former member of Trump’s first administration tells me. According to one source with direct knowledge of the events, North Carolina senator Thom Tillis told people that the FBI warned him about “credible death threats” when he was considering voting against Pete Hegseth’s nomination for defense secretary. Tillis ultimately provided the crucial 50th vote to confirm the former Fox & Friends host to lead the Pentagon. [...]

From the moment Trump descended his golden escalator in June 2015 to announce his first run for president, he injected menace into his political rhetoric. On the campaign trail he talked about wanting to punch protesters in the face. During his first term, he praised Montana’s then representative Greg Gianforte for physically attacking Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs in 2017. “Any guy that can do a body slam, he is my type!” Trump said. (Gianforte later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault and received a six-month deferred jail sentence.) When protests erupted after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd in 2020, Trump called protesters “thugs” and said: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” The phrase echoed a remark made in the 1960s by a Miami police chief associated with stoking racial tensions in the city (Trump claimed he wasn’t aware of its origins). In a September 2020 debate against Joe Biden, Trump refused to condemn white supremacist violence and told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”

January 6 further catalyzed GOP fear of Trump-inspired violence. Romney told his biographer, McKay Coppins, that an undercurrent of anxiety thwarted Republican efforts to formally punish Trump for his role in inciting the riot. “One Republican congressman confided to Romney that he wanted to vote for Trump’s second impeachment, but chose not to out of fear for his family’s safety,” Coppins wrote in his book. “When one senator, a member of leadership, said he was leaning toward voting to convict, the others urged him to reconsider. You can’t do that, Romney recalled someone saying. Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children. The senator eventually decided they were right.” Former Wyoming representative and prominent anti-Trump Republican Liz Cheney told CNN that House GOP members confided to her that they were “afraid for their own security—afraid, in some instances, for their lives.” Representative Jason Crow of Colorado told NBC News after January 6: “I had a lot of conversations with my Republican colleagues last night, and a couple of them broke down in tears—saying that they are afraid for their lives if they vote for this impeachment.”

Republican Peter Meijer, then a Michigan representative, told Atlantic writer Tim Alberta in 2021 that one colleague seemed to nearly have a nervous breakdown over fears of being harmed by MAGA supporters if he were to vote to certify the 2020 election results: “He asked his new colleague if he was okay,” Alberta reported. “The member responded that he was not; that no matter his belief in the legitimacy of the election, he could no longer vote to certify the results, because he feared for his family’s safety. ‘Remember, this wasn’t a hypothetical. You were casting that vote after seeing with your own two eyes what some of these people are capable of,’ Meijer says. ‘If they’re willing to come after you inside the US Capitol, what will they do when you’re at home with your kids?’” Trump’s mass pardoning of January 6 participants has recentered those events in Republican minds of late.

Gabriel Sherman wrote a solid column in Vanity Fair on how the threat of political violence from far-right MAGA cultists serve to keep Republicans onside in enacting the dangerous Trump agenda.

See Also:

NCRM: Cowardice’: GOP Faces Backlash After Report Suggests Death Threat May Have Swayed Vote

[tomorrowusa]

Among many other things, Donald Trump is the poster boy for historical illiteracy. Also, his ability to make deals does not match what his ghostwritten books claim about him.

Donald Trump’s appeasement of Vladimir Putin makes Neville Chamberlain look like a principled, courageous realist. At least Chamberlain was trying to prevent a major European war, whereas Trump is acting in the middle of one. [ ... ] The next step Trump proposes is in effect a new “Yalta” (referring to the February 1945 US-Soviet-UK summit in the Crimean resort of Yalta, which has become synonymous with superpowers deciding the fate of European countries over their heads). [ ... ] For a few weeks after Trump’s election we had a faint hope that when it came to Ukraine his administration would follow its proclaimed motto of “peace through strength”, understanding that strength is the only language Putin comprehends. Now we see that Trump not only bullies his country’s friends but sucks up to his country’s enemies.

What Trump is doing with Ukraine is not at all "peace through strength". When you kiss up to Vladimir Putin, the greatest threat to the US, it's more like "peace through capitulation". And appeasement never brings lasting peace because aggressors know they can always gain more by being increasingly aggressive.

This so-called strongman is actually a weak man when it comes to confronting the hostile authoritarians of this world. In just one day, he has made four large, unnecessary and damaging concessions. First, he has not just initiated exploratory talks with Putin via an intermediary, which would be defensible, but personally given the Russian dictator fulsome and sycophantic recognition as a world leader. “We both reflected on the Great History of our Nations,” he reported of their long phone call, in a social media post. They discussed “the great benefit that we will someday have in working together. But first, as we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine.” Imagine if in 1941, instead of entering the war against Nazi Germany on the side of Britain and other allied European nations, the president of the United States had rung up Hitler, reflected on “the Great History of our Nations”, and then talked about jointly ending “the War with Germany/Britain”.

Trump is no strongman, he's just a lying and demented ignoramus with a big mouth. Before "The Apprentice" his only success was successfully declaring bankruptcy for his string of failed businesses. Though conning banks into thinking he was a better credit risk than he actually was might be a win of sorts. But the latter has given Trump the idea that he can bluster his way through international relations the way he's blustered his way through bad casino construction deals.

There’s one huge difference between Europe at the time of the original Munich and Yalta, and Europe now. Today’s Europe is rich, free, democratic and a closely integrated community of partners and allies. Yes, as recent polling by the European Council on Foreign Relations again demonstrates, it’s also divided and confused about the best way forward for Ukraine. But with a sufficiently determined coalition of willing and capable countries, definitely including Britain, Europe can still enable Ukraine to stabilise the frontline, hold up economically and eventually get to negotiate from strength, not weakness. That’s why this weekend’s Munich security conference must be the beginning of a European riposte to Trump’s Munich.

DW's Stephanie Höppner reminds us of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918.

"I'm not a big fan of sweeping historic analogies," says Guido Hausmann, a professor of East and Southeast European history at the University of Regensburg, Germany. "But what I see now," as Hausmann, who is specialized on Russia, the Soviet Union and Ukraine, told DW, "East and Central European nations have often been the plunder of treaties drawn up by major powers… but the US, as far as I can see, is entirely oblivious to this fateful tradition." [ ... ] Historian Hausmann doesn't believe people from Eastern and Central Europe have forgotten how often their fate has been decided for them by others in the past when it comes to political decision making. "Of course it's humiliating for Ukraine to be ignored, at least for the moment," he said. But he also pointed to a pivotal historical precedent for Ukraine, one that occurred during negotiations over the 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, in what is now Belarus. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was negotiated and signed by the so-called Central Powers — the German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires — and Soviet Russia. It ended World War I on the eastern front and redistributed large parts of Eastern Europe.  "Ukrainian politicians traveled to Brest-Litovsk and said 'nobody is going to talk about our territory, about us, if we aren't there to talk for ourselves,'" Hausmann said. Ukraine was nothing more than an object to be traded away until it managed to achieve agency throughout the course of talks and became its own political actor, Hausmann explains. Looking at the situation now he says, "political momentum and the opportunity it can provide means Ukraine still has a chance."

While the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk became largely moot after the World War I armistice, it did establish a 107 year old precedent for Ukraine being at the table in talks that pertain to it.

As for internal US politics, Ukraine seems to be the only issue where Trump is getting pushback from key Republicans on Capitol Hill. On the floor of the US Senate, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said this about Vladimir Putin: "[T]his man is a cancer and the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime."

There are enough anti-Putin Republicans in both chambers of Congress who will vote with Democrats on Ukraine. And if Trump signs an actual treaty with Russia, it would require a two-thirds vote in the Senate to ratify it. There's no way an anti-Ukraine treaty would get 67 votes – or even 51 votes.

In short, there can be no agreement on Ukraine without Ukrainians themselves.

[kkelenca]

Strategically fill this with garbage. If there’s one this tumblr is good at, it’s our ability to organize to fuck shit up.

Hello everyone, the US Senate is conducting a survey to get the opinions of people on issues such as a ceasefire in Palestine, America funding Israel’s weapons, and the TikTok ban. Please share and take the survey, let your voices be heard. (Non Americans can participate )