“Stupid on Stilts”: Republican Senator Rips Trump’s Slush Fund

Trump’s $1.776 billion slush fund has found yet another Republican critic.

Thom Tillis, who has represented North Carolina in the Senate for more than a decade, is retiring at the end of the year, and in recent months the Republican has become more outspoken about the leader of his own party.

In an interview with Spectrum News Wednesday, Tillis was asked what he thought of Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund, which was established last week as a result of a settlement between Trump and the IRS.

“I think it’s stupid on stilts,” Tillis said. “It will invariably put us in a position where your taxpayer dollars and my taxpayer dollars could potentially compensate someone who assaulted a police officer, admitted their guilt, got convicted, got pardoned, and now we’re going to pay them for that? That’s absurd. The American people are going to reject this out of hand.… When you take money from me to give to a purpose that I vehemently disagree with, that’s tyranny.”

"Stupid on stilts." Sen. Tillis rips into the new DOJ 'anti-weaponization' fund and calls it "tyranny."Full Interview: https://t.co/DQo2kNNqjK #ncpol pic.twitter.com/ll3lOvwb58— Reuben Jones (@ReubenJones1) May 21, 2026

"Stupid on stilts." Sen. Tillis rips into the new DOJ 'anti-weaponization' fund and calls it "tyranny."Full Interview: https://t.co/DQo2kNNqjK #ncpol pic.twitter.com/ll3lOvwb58

It’s a solid explanation of what’s wrong with the fund, which is expected to be doled out to Trump allies who claim they were unfairly targeted by past administrations. These allies include January 6 rioters and members of Trump-backed super PACs.

Donald K. Sherman, the president of the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, called the fund “one of the single most corrupt acts in American history” in a New York Times interview. Various applicants—including the leader of the Proud Boys, the Trump-obsessed founder of MyPillow, and a former Trump campaign official—are already trying to stick their hands in the honey pot.

House and Senate Democrats are looking to introduce legislation that would block the fund, or at the very least force votes on it. Similar to the issue of taxpayer money going to Trump’s ballroom or the Iran war, MAGA Republicans seem to realize the fund is unpopular, and don’t want to go on the record about whether they support it.

Tillis is a rare Republican unafraid to take a stand against Trump once in a while.

In June 2025, he voted against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act after expressing concerns over proposed cuts to Medicaid in his home state. Trump, unsurprisingly, threw a fit and threatened to endorse Tillis’s future primary challengers.

Since Tillis then decided to retire, Trump sort of got his wish. Trump has endorsed Republican Michael Whatley in the upcoming North Carolina Senate race. But Democrat Roy Cooper is a worthy opponent who is leading in recent polling.

DNC’s 2024 Autopsy Is Out—and It Completely Misses the Point

The Democratic National Committee has finally released its report on what went wrong in the 2024 election. It ignores everything that mattered.

The Democratic National Committee’s autopsy of the 2024 presidential election has finally reached the public—and it leaves a lot to be desired.

CNN published the report Thursday after months of the DNC refusing to release it, with Chair Ken Martin saying it would be a “distraction,” back in December. On Wednesday, Martin repeated that assessment, and added, “When I received the report late last year, it wasn’t ready for primetime—not even close—and because no source material was provided, it would have meant starting over. I could not in good faith put the DNC’s stamp of approval on the report that was produced.

“After last November’s massive Democratic wins, I didn’t want to create a distraction, but by not putting the report out, I ended up creating an even bigger distraction. For that, I sincerely apologize. For full transparency, I am releasing the report as we received it, in its entirety, unedited and unabridged. It does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards, but I am doing this because people need to be able to trust the Democratic Party and trust our word,” Martin said.

The report doesn’t examine many of the major criticisms of the Democratic Party’s 2024 campaign, from President Biden’s initial decision to run for reelection to the impact of Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, which the Biden administration failed to stop. Another glaring omission was the impact of Vice President Kamala Harris becoming the Democratic nominee for president late in 2024 without anything close to a primary or electoral process.

It also includes multiple errors—it cites Washington Governor Bob Ferguson as a candidate who supposedly did things right, only to point out later that he underperformed Harris at the polls. In other discrepancies, it has conflicting vote percentages written for North Carolina’s gubernatorial race and misspells the names of multiple Democratic politicians.

The solutions the report offers are minimal. One paragraph states, “Building to win requires new thinking, and building to last requires thinking about more than the next election. It requires finding the best way to connect with the right voters in the right places, and if 2024 has proven anything, there is enough money to do it all the right way.” But what that means doesn’t get much elaboration.

Martin seems to be right about the report’s flaws. But hiding it and not commissioning a new one—or at least not editing this one to a passable standard—is a scandal in itself. At a time when Republicans are polling at historic lows, Democrats need to capitalize and offer a better vision for the country. This isn’t it.

Read the full report here.

The Worst People You Know Are Applying to Trump’s Slush Fund

MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, and more.

The MAGA-verse is lining up for the Justice Department’s taxpayer-funded “anti-weaponization” payouts.

The DOJ launched its $1.8........

© New Republic