A Big Dark Bill
What would you choose to end your career over?
For Thom Tillis, Senator of North Carolina, it was Trump’s big beautiful bill. For Tillis, this bill was a bridge too far. “So what do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding is not there anymore, guys?” After Trump called him to threaten him, Tillis announced that he would be retiring from his Senate seat in ’26. In his retirement announcement, Tillis said, “It’s become increasingly evident that leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species.” 663,000 in North Carolina corresponds to millions across the country who will lose health care coverage.
Said Tillis, “[T]he choice is between spending another six years navigating the political theatre and partisan gridlock in Washington or spending that time with the love of my life Susan, our two children, three beautiful grandchildren, and the rest of our extended family back home. It’s not a hard choice, and I will not be seeking re-election.” By the way, Tillis is 64 years old, which means in D.C. terms he should have had another 2 or 3 terms ahead of him.
Half-a-dozen Republican members of Congress had issues with the deficit-exploding aspects of the bill. They, however, capitulated when the bill came back to them from the Senate. Tillis’s example probably cut the other way, where they saw that opposition to the bill in Trump’s party would be a career-ender.
In American politics today, principle serves as a counterexample of what not to do.
The Big Dark Bill strips millions of healthcare in service of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. It expunges renewable energy incentives that were just passed a few years ago. It expands the deficit when firms are beginning to downgrade American debt and solvency. I hate the bill and see it as irresponsible and dehumanizing. It has something to despise for everyone. How does something like this pass?
Because no one wanted to stand in its way and get run over.
A number of years ago I was in Washington D.C. meeting with a group of prominent lobbyists. I asked them, “AI is going to upend the labor market in the coming years. Who in D.C. will do something about this problem?”
We went around the table. The first few people referenced thinktanks or industry trade groups or a couple members of Congress who had expressed interest in technology. The last person, who was the most venerable and respected person in the room said, “Andrew, the fact is you’re in the wrong town. No one in this town will do anything about the problem you’re describing. This is a town of followers, not leaders. The only way they might do something is if you were to bring a tidal wave crashing down on their heads.”
There was a lot of following last week and not a ton of leadership. Trump has been the equivalent of a tidal wave.
A friend in D.C. said something to me more recently; “Never have I seen so many people who are theoretically powerful cast themselves as powerless to do something when you talk to them. They’re all like, ‘well I’m just a junior member of Congress’ or ‘I’m just an operative.’ There’s a lot of passing the buck.”
Democrats reading this will gnash their teeth at the fecklessness and hypocrisy demonstrated by the Republican ranks over the passage of this destructive bill. Yet just over a year ago, the Democrats were falling over themselves defending Joe Biden’s continuing perspicacity and vitality, contributing mightily to the Republican control we see today. They cast out Dean Phillips rather than listen to what he was saying. Conformity and following-the-leader-no-matter-what are alive and well in both parties today. Who wants to be the person on the outside looking in? It won’t matter anyway. Just join the chorus, and if the chorus is in the wrong, you will keep your station within the group.
The purpose of the group is another matter entirely.
A bill like this passes in a nation where people don’t matter. A sane group of Independent legislators would have rejected it as too extreme. Millions will pay a price in the months to come. Who will they blame? Institutions are fraying right and left, and people believe the folks on their own side.
The water level is rising fast in American life. Another tidal wave is building.
In 18 months, Thom Tillis will head home to his family in North Carolina. His colleagues will warmly applaud his farewell speech while welcoming or bemoaning his replacement. They will silently congratulate themselves for not succumbing to principle. Who wants to go home? It didn’t make a difference anyway. His stand will recede into memory.
How to breed leadership in a system that rewards its opposite? By changing the system itself. It’s the only path out.
To see what Forward is doing in your state, click here. For my book on political incentives, click here. For my conversation with Zach taking your questions this week, click here. Hope that your Summer is going well! Don’t forget to put down your phone.
Andrew — this is a sobering but necessary post. Thank you for speaking out clearly about the devastating implications of this bill — morally, economically, and structurally. Millions of people will be harmed, and not by accident. It's hard to read this without feeling heartbreak and rising urgency.
I sent your office a message recently, and I’ll briefly echo it here:
We’ve seen this pattern before throughout history. When artificial scarcity is manufactured or perceived — whether of money, resources, dignity, or care — it breeds real suffering. Despair rises. Hope recedes. And in that vacuum, fear and anger are weaponized. This dynamic has given rise to authoritarian movements across time and place — from Nazi Germany to Pinochet’s Chile, from McCarthyism in the U.S. to more recent trends in Hungary, India, and beyond. The pattern is chillingly consistent: when people are pushed into survival mode, they become more susceptible to manipulation, scapegoating, and the erosion of democratic norms.
But history does not have to repeat itself.
Paradoxically, moments of collapse also carry the seeds of transformation.
When the damage becomes undeniable, we are forced to consider alternatives. To ask deeper questions. To go beyond surface-level reforms and reach for root causes — including our very economic assumptions.
And here’s where hope re-enters the conversation:
We live in an infinite, ever-expanding universe — not metaphorically, but scientifically. Every major branch of modern cosmology affirms this: space itself is expanding, energy and matter transform rather than disappear, and we are embedded in a reality that is dynamic, abundant, and interconnected at every level. The logic of scarcity is not a law of nature — it’s a design choice, one that can be changed.
Inspired by this truth, a group of us have been quietly building what we call The Unity Project — a growing initiative to unify and uplift people during these dark times. One of its key components is The Unity Economy — a practical new model that evolves universal basic income into a more holistic system of shared abundance, aligned with your long-standing advocacy for UBI.
If this resonates or if anyone wants to explore more, the door is open: http://UnityProject.One
In solidarity and service,
Brent Hunter
Chairman, The Unity Project
http://UnityProject.One