Trump’s ‘Bill’ just put the Senate in play for Democrats

On Sunday, Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, announced that he would not seek re-election. This came after numerous threats from President Donald Trump because of Tillis' opposition to the so-called "One Big, Beautiful" bill.

Trump had even floated the idea of endorsing a primary challenger against Tillis. But when The Independent caught up with Tillis, he seemed sanguine about the whole affair.

"I respect President Trump, I support the majority of his agenda, but I don't bow to anybody when the people of North Carolina are at risk and this bill puts them at risk," he told The Independent. Trump's decision to bash a senator from a state he won and Republicans need to keep could be seen as reckless. But it also jeopardised Republicans' chances of holding onto a Senate seat Tillis consistently won by narrow margins.

Tillis simply recognised a political truth: it's nearly impossible to take away an entitlement once it is embedded in federal law and people have benefited from it. Voters tend to punish the party they see as trying to take away a benefit, particularly something as intensely personal as health care.

Trump should have learned this in 2017 after he failed to pass a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, when the late Arizona Sen. John McCain delivered his dramatic thumbs down. But Trump's bulldozing style and demand for absolute fealty from Republicans means he might be jeopardising the future of the Republican majority in the Senate.

Democrats already had Tillis in their crosshairs after he had voted to confirm Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and he shepherded Kash Patel's confirmation for FBI director. With an open seat, they have an even greater opportunity.

A few months ago, Inside Washington listed North Carolina as the Senate seat most likely to flip. That prospect is much more likely with Tillis' departure.

But Tillis is not the only swing-state Republican who faces a bind because of the bill. Inside Washington listed Susan Collins' seat in Maine as the No. 3 Senate seat most likely to flip.

Collins faces a major challenge considering the bill caps the taxes on healthcare providers that states use to raise matching funds for Medicaid. As a result, Collins has put forward an amendment to increase the amount of money to shore up rural hospitals from $25 billion to $50 billion.

That will certainly anger fiscal conservatives, to say nothing of Trump, despite the fact that many of his most die-hard supporters live in areas that depend on rural hospitals. Collins seems poised to run for re-election, especially after she defied gravity and beat back a Democratic challenger in 2020.

But she faces a bind: if she votes yes on the bill, she will have hurt her most vulnerable voters after wringing her hands for weeks. If she opposes it, she will have crossed Trump. At age 72, choosing not to run next year is always a viable option.

Republicans have 53 seats at the moment. So two seats flipping will not lose them the majority. But they also face the prospect of a bloody primary between incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton in Texas, which could create an opening for a Democrat to win in the Lone Star State.

And just like how the passage of Obamacare and its ensuing aftermath led to Republicans winning Ted Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts, as well as Democratic-held seats in Arkansas, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the vote on this piece of legislation could easily put Republicans on the defensive in states previously considered safe like Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska.

A perfect example comes from recent Democratic history. When The Independent spoke with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic nominee for vice president, last month, he compared it to the election that sent him to Washington.

"I believe in most part, in 2006 that one of the reasons I got elected to Congress in a tough district was over Social Security," Walz told The Independent. Just the year before, George W. Bush had floated an idea to gradually replace Social Security with private retirements accounts.