In one of the last Senate hearings before Kristi Noem was dismissed as homeland security secretary, some of the strongest criticism came not from Democrats but from a Republican ally of Donald Trump. Thom Tillis, the senior senator from North Carolina, branded her leadership a “disaster” in a 10-minute rebuke.
Tillis has become known in recent months for giving such treatment to people and policies he dislikes, after achieving a rare freedom for a Republican: not worrying about what the president thinks. He broke with Trump on his flagship spending bill in 2025, Trump threatened to back a primary challenger, and Tillis quickly announced he would not seek re-election.
Since then, he has acted as the Senate GOP’s internal critic. “When I disagree, I disagree. Now I just have fewer constraints on the wordsmithing I have to do before I say something,” he said. He called for Noem’s resignation after immigration agents killed two US citizens in Minneapolis, and has criticised senior White House aide Stephen Miller. He also continues to block the nomination of Kevin Warsh to lead the Federal Reserve, objecting to the justice department’s investigation of current chair Jerome Powell.
Tillis insists his aim is to help Trump, not the opposition. “I decided, by just making the decision not to run for re-election, I can speak truth to a president that I hope goes down in history as the most successful Republican president in the history of this country,” he said on the Senate floor. He warned that the president was receiving “bad advice” that “won’t age well”.
A former management consultant who worked for IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers, Tillis got his first taste of politics advocating for a bicycle path in the Charlotte suburbs. He served on his town’s board of commissioners, then won election to the state house of representatives in 2006.
