Politics

The Republican Who’s Blocking Trump on Two Fronts

By Mike Harper · April 16, 2026

Senator Thom Tillis is retiring at the end of the year. He says that’s given him his filter back.

The North Carolina Republican has become one of the more unexpected figures in Washington this week — a member of Trump’s own party openly defying the White House on the Federal Reserve while also demanding the president apologize for his attacks on Pope Leo XIV. In an interview with NBC News, Tillis laid out both positions plainly and without apparent concern for the political consequences.

On the Fed: Tillis holds a critical vote on the Senate Banking Committee, and he is using it. He called Kevin Warsh “a perfect candidate” — Trump’s nominee to replace Fed Chair Jerome Powell — while simultaneously refusing to advance his nomination until the Justice Department ends its criminal probe into Powell. The math is simple: without Tillis, Warsh cannot clear the committee. “The moment DOJ announces there’s not sufficient evidence to continue an investigation, I will vote for Kevin Warsh simultaneously with the conclusion of that statement coming out of the DOJ, and not a day before.”

Trump tried to dismiss Tillis Wednesday, telling Fox Business the senator had “quit” — apparently referring to his retirement announcement. Tillis, who remains an active senator with full voting rights until January, pushed back sharply, saying he doesn’t want to “reward bad behavior” by the Justice Department. He accused someone at DOJ of opening the Powell investigation to “garner favor” with the White House — not because of any actual wrongdoing.

On the Pope: Tillis is Catholic. And Trump’s Truth Social attacks on Pope Leo XIV — calling the first American-born pontiff “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” — landed differently for him than for most of his colleagues. “To say soft on crime or soft on the border, that’s what you say to an opponent in the next election,” Tillis told NBC. “Not to the pope of the Catholic Church.” He added that he believes apology “is an underused art in politics. When you’re wrong, you’re wrong.”

Trump’s White House has not responded to the apology request. The president was asked about the Pope controversy Monday and said: “There’s nothing to apologize for. He’s wrong.”

What Tillis represents here is something rarer than it appears. Not a Republican who has broken with Trump on policy — but one who has broken with him on conduct, on two separate fronts in the same week, and appears entirely unbothered by the fallout. With 264 days left in his Senate tenure, as he himself noted, he appears to have made peace with saying what he thinks.