Fourth of July giddiness is sweeping through the States, with the parades and fireworks and cookouts in full preparation for Friday’s jamboree.
On Capitol Hill, however, the beleaguered Republican senators spent an interminable weekend and then a long day’s journey into Monday night trying to secure a passage for the Independence Day gift their leader has made it clear that he wants: the safe passage of his One Big Beautiful Bill through the Senate and House, and on his pristine desk for signing.
Already, president Donald Trump has been confronted with a Republican holdout, a day of cut-and-paste legislative amendments and, more worryingly, a volley of incoming arrows fired by his former bestie during those snowy, halcyon days when he first returned to office: the lesser-spotted Elon Musk.
The billionaire took to X, his social media platform, on Monday to once again castigate the Republican Party for supporting what he describes as “the insane spending of this Bill”, which he said will increase the US national debt by $5 trillion.
READ MORE
On Monday afternoon, he said that any Congress member who votes for it “should hang their head in shame” and offered a stark warning that he will throw his billions into the future election campaigns they face.
“And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”
President Trump might well be added to the number of Tesla customers experiencing buyer’s regret. The world’s richest man, meanwhile, may be beginning to regret buying his way into Trump’s election campaign and on to those rally stages where he could experience a sensation that money cannot buy: mass adoration.
But Musk’s threat will deepen the intrigue into what has now been identified as one of the most riveting battles of next year’s midterms, with North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis at once renouncing the Bill over the weekend and announcing his intention to not seek re-election.
Tillis, in his statement, noted his pride in his hardscrabble rise from a trailer-home childhood in Florida to a steady ascent through the corporate world via community college. His entry into politics began when, having moved to Cornelius in North Carolina through his company, he began to campaign for a bike trail.
Now, in what may go down as the most famous turn of his decade in Washington, he found himself as the lone, absolute holdout to the budget Bill on which president Trump’s second-term fiscal policy is predicated, arguing against the legislation in two fiery speeches as the Senate slogged through the weekend and into Monday trying to cobble together enough votes to get the thing through.
The Republican administration has vowed that if and when the passing of the One, Big, Beautiful Bill comes into law, it will not harm the quality of life of deserving Medicaid recipients.
Tillis told the Senate floor that his early experience as a state legislator during the stormy years after the financial crash had taught him to read the small print. He sought the opinion of the state Republicans, North Carolina governor Josh Stein and the bipartisan Hospital Association and asked them to prepare an estimate. The returns convinced him that the Bill, in its current guise, represents “a massive mistake”.
“Republicans are about to make a mistake on healthcare and betray a promise. It is inescapable that this Bill in its current form will betray the very promise that Donald J Trump made in the Oval Office or in the Cabinet Room when I was there ... when he said we can go after waste, fraud and abuse on any programmes.
“I believe that it is going to be a massive mistake and sooner or later you gotta help the president understand that he is getting a lot of advice from people who have never governed and all they have done is written white papers. And it is very different to talk about the perfect versus implement the practical.”
Trump responded to this rebellion predictably, taking to Truth Social on Saturday to warn that several people had spoken to him about running against Tillis in next year’s election for the Senate seat. But a day later, Tillis dropped the bombshell that he had decided not to seek re-election anyway. The decision gives him the freedom to say and vote as he chooses without fear of a presidential backlash.
The announcement sets the state up for a crowded Republican primary contest for the Senate seat Tillis will vacate in 2025, with Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, among the names immediately associated with the candidacy.
It also offers the Democrats a glimmer of hope. Of the 33 Senate seats to be contested during the November 2026 midterms, North Carolina offers the party one of the strongest chances of regaining a crucial seat.
At Monday’s White House press conference, press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that the administration’s position is a flat rejection of Tillis’s analysis of the Bill.
“He is just wrong,” she said emphatically.
“And the president and the vast majority of Republicans who are supportive of this legislation are right. This Bill protects Medicaid as I laid out for you for those who truly deserve this programme – the needy, pregnant women, children, sick Americans who physically cannot work and what it does is, it ensures that able-bodied Americans who can work 20 hours a week are actually doing so and that will therefore strengthen and protect those benefits for Americans who actually need it as [it is] cutting out the waste, fraud and abuse – as well as getting 1.4 million illegal aliens off the programme. We are confident this Bill is going to be back at the White House for the Fourth of July.”
The Republicans have a volatile majority in the Senate, with 53 seats. The Democrats have 47 – including the support of two independents, Angus King and Bernie Sanders. Tillis and his Republican colleague Rand Paul are resolutely against. Even with the cast vote of vice-president JD Vance available in the case of a tie, Senate majority leader John Thune still needs to assuage the concerns of a handful of his colleagues, with Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) making protest noises throughout Monday.
“Every hour this Bill hangs out there it gets more unpopular,” said Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy on Monday afternoon.
“This is the most immoral and illogical Bill I think I have ever voted on – you are talking about throwing 17 million Americans off healthcare in order to do what – to give another $250,000 tax cut to the very wealthy. They don’t appear to have the votes yet. I think they are making adjustments on the fly, trying to cobble together the votes.”
As Monday tipped towards midnight, they were still shuffling around the blue-carpeted floors of the chamber. Deep down, there was a sense that all of this was delaying the inevitable: that sooner or later, even the holdouts will get back in line.
“It will pass,” promised Oklahoma’s Markwayne Mullin on Monday night.
“We’re gonna go right up here until the very end. This is president Trump’s agenda. It may not be pretty. We may not get every Republican vote. But we will deliver and put this back to the House. They’ll pass it and put it on the president’s desk.”
They better, or there will be fireworks.
