Free Republic

Sen. Thom Tillis on Sunday defended his bill to protect special counsel Robert Mueller and made clear the measure was to protect Mueller from being fired by President Trump in his investigation into whether the president or his campaign colluded with Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 White House race.

North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis is demanding the Department of Homeland Security hand over more H-2B worker visas before he allows Senate approval of a top homeland security official. President Donald Trump has appointed Lee Francis Cissna to serve as director of the DHS’s critical U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency. The agency is responsible for screening arrivals and immigrants to prevent jihad attacks and other terrorism. Cissna has been approved by the Senate committee, but he won’t get a Senate approval vote soon because Tillis asked the GOP’s leader to put a so-called “hold” on the nomination. Tillis...

Business advocates who want to import more foreign consumers and more foreign workers are developing plans to counter President Donald Trump’s popular call for a merit-based immigration reform. The emerging strategy is to pair offers of minor concessions to Americans and Trump with demands for giveaways to business, including a bigger supply of low-wage workers and welfare-funded consumers. The immigration “pairing” strategy is being pushed by the industry-backed Business Policy Council, in cooperation with GOP Sen. Thom Tillis. The strategy collides with Trump’s emphasis on raising Americans’ wages via “merit-based immigration,” which is also backed by a new productivity-boosting immigration...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) are pushing for an amendment to the Constitution to place term limits on lawmakers, arguing the move will help overhaul Washington. "The American people resoundingly agreed on Election Day, and President-elect Donald Trump has committed to putting government back to work for the American people," Cruz said in a statement on Tuesday. "It is well past time to put an end to the cronyism and deceit that has transformed Washington into a graveyard of good intentions.” Under an amendment the two GOP lawmakers filed on Tuesday, House members would be allowed...

Citing, among other things, Burr's Washingtonian impulses to raise the debt ceiling nine times, to call Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)'s stand against Obama Care a dumb idea, to fund President Obama's executive amnesty - Brannon made it clear that his opponent "is a Washington insider who is backed by special interest SuperPACs and Karl Rove."

(CNSNews.com) -- An illegal alien and known gang member who has been charged with first-degree murder in North Carolina was granted deferred deportation under President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA), despite having been placed in removal proceedings for drug charges in 2012, according to a press release from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). Emmanuel Jesus Rangel-Hernandez. (Police mugshot.) Emmanuel Jesus Rangel-Hernandez, 19, was charged in February with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of three people in Charlotte, N.C, including a 19-year-old former America’s Next Top Model...

Congressional Republicans are challenging several health regulations, with one senator suggesting restaurants shouldn't have to make their employees wash their hands after bathroom visits. Such restaurants would have to prominently disclose their decision, and then would probably would go out of business, said newly elected GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina. But they should have that choice, he said. Tillis raised the issue when speaking Monday to the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. Restaurant chains such as Starbucks should be able to skip obligatory hand-washing by workers, he said, "as long as they post a sign" and take other...

**SNIP** Putting his own spin on the election results that saw gains for conservative candidates throughout much of the nation, state NAACP President Rev. William Barber said Tillis' "narrow victory" was a repudiation of his policies, not a validation of them. Barber said there were widespread reports of voting problems – the State Board of Elections said the election ran rather smoothly – and the shortened early-voting period and the elimination of same-day registration affected thousands of North Carolina voters. "The magnitude of the problem may not be far from the margin of victory (for Tillis)," he said. The NAACP...

Salem Radio news coverage reports AP calls it for Tillis in NC.

Chuck Burton - AP Republican Senate candidate Thom Tillis, left, greeted a voter at a polling place in Charlotte Tuesday. Tillis, the N.C. House Speaker, is running against Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton) Store Republican Thom Tillis clinched a narrow victory over incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan in North Carolina’s bitter U.S. Senate race. With nearly 98 percent of precincts in, Tillis had 48.95 percent to Hagan’s 47.14 percent. Libertarian Sean Haugh fielded about 4 percent. Tillis, from Huntersville, held a 50,000-vote lead with some votes from Mecklenburg and other urban counties still out. But several new organizations declared...

Despite the New York Time's prediction that Tillis will lose, Pundit Press projects that Thom Tillis will be the next Senator of North Carolina! With 94% of the vote in, Tillis holds a 48,000 vote lead over Hagan. Hagan's problem is that Wake County and Cumberland County, two heavily populated and heavily pro-Hagan counties, are 100% in. Hagan simply cannot make up that margin. On top of that, pro-Tillis counties, such as Cleveland and Davidson are under-reporting thus far. Hagan may gain a few votes, but Tillis should win by 20,000 votes or more.

Hagan up 9 points...yes 9 points.....at almost 30% in. Unless that includes all the ghettos, this is scary.

North Carolina Democrats are taking to black churches today - and tomorrow for so called "Moral Monday" in an effort to drag Kay Hagan over the finish line before Republican Thom Tillis in North Carolina's Senate race. Hagan is a mere +1 in the current Real Clear Politics poll average, making the race too close to call. At churches across North Carolina, ministers took to pulpits Sunday morning with messages laced as thickly with pleas to turn out at the polls as they were with scripture. Led by the local NAACP, black churches have engaged in months of voter education...

Kay Hagan, long viewed as perhaps the Senate’s most endangered Democrat, is still hanging in there in the closing days of North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race. The latest Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey of Likely North Carolina Voters shows Hagan with 47% of the vote to Republican challenger Thom Tillis’ 46%. Three percent (3%) like another candidate in the race, and another three percent (3%) are still undecided.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Okay, what is voter shaming? In North Carolina they're having the same problem, the Democrats are. It's not as pronounced as Colorado because Kay Hagan hasn't begun the silly implosion. Actually she has. It just hasn't registered yet. I mean, this woman, stimulus money went to her family? Her family is wealthy. She's flip-flopped on all kinds of things. The incompetence that is finally on display that is the Democrat Party, is just not a surprise to me, but so many people are finally seeing it. They're reacting in ways that we would all hope. "The North...

In the contest for U.S. Senate in North Carolina, Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan, 43%, and her Republican challenger and state legislator Thom Tillis, 43%, are in a dead heat among North Carolina likely voters including those who are undecided yet leaning toward a candidate or have voted early. Six percent are undecided, and 6% of likely voters with a candidate preference say they might vote differently. Hagan and Tillis maintain their support among their respective party’s base. However, Tillis leads Hagan among independents likely to vote. A gender gap also exists. Hagan has a 10 point advantage among women likely...

SALISBURY, N.C. – Regardless of who wins, the North Carolina Senate race will go down as the most expensive, likely ugliest contest of the 2014 midterms, with more than $100 million spent and more than 90,000 ads – most of them attacks – aired across the state. Democrat Kay Hagan is fighting for a second term in the Senate. Six years ago, she famously beat Elizabeth Dole to steal the seat. Republicans are determined to win it back this year and have poured millions into the campaign of Thom Tillis, speaker of the North Carolina House. Until recently, Tillis remained...

Former Secretary of State of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged North Carolina Democrats on Saturday to work to re-elect Sen. Kay Hagan. Clinton headlined a rally in Charlotte with Hagan, who is locked in a tight re-election campaign against Republican challenger Thom Tillis. Before more than 1,000 people in a convention center ballroom, Clinton said the race will come down to turnout. And she asked Hagan's supporters to get voters to the polls on her behalf. "A race will often come down to who has more money, who is peddling more fear and who turns out. And there is nothing...

PPP's newest North Carolina poll finds a steady race, with Kay Hagan leading at 46% to 43% for Thom Tillis and 5% for Sean Haugh. This is the third month in a row that Hagan has held an advantage of either 3 or 4 points. In a two candidate race Hagan still leads Tillis 47/44, indicating that Haugh's potential 'spoiler effect' on the race is waning. Haugh's supporters only say their second choice would be Tillis by a 34/30 spread now, considerably closer than the difference was earlier in the campaign. Both candidates remain unpopular in the closing stretch of...

North Carolina Republican Senate candidate Thom Tillis is launching a new television ad Friday suggesting his opponent personally profited from the 2009 stimulus law. The 30-second spot notes that Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan’s husband co-owns a company that received nearly $390,000 in federal grants for energy projects and tax credits created by the stimulus. “She’s 96 percent for [Barack] Obama, 100 percent for herself,” says a narrator. The ad will air statewide and comes as the National Republican Senatorial Committee is investing $6.5 million more in the Tar Heel State. “Days after Kay Hagan took office, she pushed Obama’s stimulus...