What was left on Sen. Thom Tillis’ (R-NC) to-do list after Republicans lost his North Carolina Senate seat Tuesday night? In the last minute of his CBS interview, the retiring senator made room for a fight with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. He called for a “reckoning” and pointed out that Congress had about 60 days left. He never named a single funding request Hegseth had held up.

Tillis was one of the 50 senators who voted to confirm Hegseth in January 2025. Vice President JD Vance broke the tie. Switch the senator’s yes to a no, and the vote is 49–51. Hegseth is not confirmed.

On CNN in October, Kaitlan Collins brought up Tillis’s description of that vote as the “biggest regret” of his career. “I stand by all that,” he told her. Regret is cheap after the fact. When it counted, he voted yes.

Former Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper beat Republican Michael Whatley, flipping a seat Republicans had held since 2015. Tillis had a point about why Republicans lost. He’d just put nearly $90 worth of gas in his pickup, his first fill-up in about two months. Then he asked what that bill looks like to somebody who fills up a couple of times a week. What did he want the White House to do about the price of gas? He left that part open.

“Republicans lost tonight. Democrats didn’t win most of these races. We lost them.” 

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He was willing to put the loss on his own party. He also told CBS he knew national themes wouldn’t play well in North Carolina. In the same answer, he said the SAVE Act “also lost by a 65–35 margin in Maine” recently. Maine voters rejected Question 1 by 64.19 percent to 35.81 percent in November 2025. It was a state measure that bundled photo ID with changes to absentee voting and ballot drop boxes.

What about North Carolina? I’m from there, and I led the Tillis campaign’s effort at UNC Chapel Hill in 2014. I haven’t been in contact with him, campaigned for him, or donated to him since.

A February poll paid for by Heritage Action found that 67 percent of likely North Carolina voters supported the SAVE America Act as described in the survey, with proof of citizenship to register and ID to vote in federal elections. Twenty percent opposed it.

On July 2, Tillis reportedly called the bill “dead,” citing the votes needed and the time it would take to put the rules in place. Two weeks later, he vowed to slow Senate business if the House sent over a reconciliation bill with another attempt to advance the provisions. He can make his case against the bill. Maine’s vote tells him little about what the people back home want.

In the clip CBS posted, watch the last minute. Margaret Brennan asks what Tillis wants to get done before he leaves office. He names defense funding and more resources for Ukraine as priorities. Then he gets to the part he apparently couldn’t leave without saying.

“But Pete Hegseth has a reckoning. He is one of the reasons why we don’t have the funding or guarantee for defense that we need. I think after the election, we need to determine whether or not he’s the best person to bring those needs to Congress if he wants something done before the end of this Congress, which is only 60 days away.”

Brennan had asked about unfinished business in Congress. When she posted his answer afterward, she read it as a warning to Hegseth about what was coming in the lame duck.

If Tillis has a spending deal Hegseth is standing in the way of, let’s hear it. Earlier in the same interview, he told Republicans to work with the president and Democrats and demonstrate that they can govern. He has about 60 days to take his own advice.