Tillis Plays Chicken with the Trump Train, Jeopardizes Republican Senate Majority

North Carolina’s senior Senator has clearly never heard the adage about choosing hills to die on, and is foolishly creating the key ingredients for losing control of the Senate next fall.

In February, I shared an early preview of the 2026 midterm elections designed to give readers a glimpse into historical midterm dynamics and the specific race that will be front and center over the next 18 months. Since I wrote that piece, Texas legend Ken Paxton has already jumped into the fray against John Cornyn, who curiously has had his worst voting years when President Trump has been in the White House. I believe Paxton will oust Cornyn and go on to win the Senate seat outright next November.

Lots of people have their full hope for the Trump administration tied to holding or expanding the U.S. House majority. Of course, Trump supporters want Republicans to hold the chamber, or better yet, create a majority strong enough to pass meaningful legislation in line with the President’s agenda; however, since 1934, the President’s party has only gained seats in 3 of 23 midterms, with an average loss of 27 seats per midterm. Political science, as well as the corruption of the 2020 Census, makes Republican victory especially tedious next fall.

The silver lining in the forecast is the near certainty that the GOP will retain the Senate majority, if not expand it. Unlike the House, not every Senate seat must be defended in midterms. Senate contests rotate in three batches due to the six-year terms held by U.S. Senators. See the 2026 slate below:

2026 U.S. Senate races

While the purpose of this particular piece isn’t to relitigate past races, Republicans should hold a minimum of 57 Senate seats considering only ripped off races from 2022 and 2024 (Laxalt, Hovde, Rogers, Brown, and likely Lake). Getting to the bottom of 2020 would reveal an even higher count, including people like Michigan’s John James, who has already moved on to the U.S. House, as Republicans in the U.S. Senate.

Grievances aside, today’s GOP Senate majority effectively sits at 53-47, with phony independents Angus King and Bernie Sanders voting in lockstep with Democrats. There are five GOP pickups on the map, with this order of likelihood (easiest to hardest):

· Georgia

· Michigan

· New Hampshire

· Virginia

· New Jersey

With most GOP Senate seats up for grabs assigned to solid red states, there are just two that give me concern, and they are Maine and North Carolina. I used to reject the thinking that Susan Collins is the only Republican capable of winning in Maine, which is used to justify keeping her and her mercurial, often petty, voting patterns around come primary time, but alas after all these years, she is the only Republican member of the entire Congress from New England. In this instance, I understand the art of politics as it relates to the instinctual responses of gut conviction.

The second seat belongs to Thom Tillis, who managed to rally his support for Trump’s Cabinet choices but has now fallen on his sword by opposing Ed Martin as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, a role in which he (Martin) has served in on interim status since January. Tillis already has shaky standing with the America First, Trump-loving base of the GOP due to his swamp-supporting positions:

· Tillis is among the most ardent Republican supporters of Ukraine, and has tied negotiations for American border security to Ukraine aid

· He has one of the weakest track records on immigration, has opposed many of President Trump’s highly popular immigration proposals, and deviates severely from the views of his constituents, who gave Trump North Carolina’s electoral votes three elections in a row.

Tillis spiked Martin, who has now been moved over to roles within the Department of Justice, over Martin’s actions in defense of January 6 defendants, whose plight has now been ended thanks to Trump’s executive actions. Tillis had this to say about the dust up:

“I have no tolerance for anybody that entered the building on Jan. 6, and that’s probably where most of the friction was.”

I’m not sure if Tillis got the memo, but J6 justice is more about the defense of rights and due process than it is about the technicalities of who went where and who was invited into the building by whom. Not only did the federal government entrap its own citizens into said violations, they denied countless defendants guilty of nothing worse than misdemeanor offenses their Constitutional rights to reasonable bail and a fair and speedy trial. I wish that Tillis had the same absolute convictions about those entering our country illegally and pillaging what our country has to offer.

Now, on to the politics. Tillis first ran for the U.S. Senate in 2014, a Republican landslide year with Obama in his sixth year as president, and won by a measly 1.6%. In 2020, Tillis faced Cal Cunningham, fresh off a sex scandal, and won by 1.8% (admittedly in a slopfest of an election that saw Trump squeak by in North Carolina by 1.3%).