Economy

The 10 richest U.S. billionaires increased their collective net worth by $365 billion over the past year. It would take a median worker more than 726,000 years to earn that amount. If those gains were taxed as regular income, they would owe $135 billion in federal taxes.

Advocates and North Carolinians are calling on representatives, including Senator Thom Tillis, who previously voted to roll back big bank regulations, to center the needs of their constituents over billionaires. 

The resolution, backed by all present Democrats and three Republicans — Rand Paul (Ky.), Susan Collins (Maine), and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) — failed in a 49-49 tie vote in the GOP-controlled Senate. It sought to end the national emergency Trump declared to justify his broad tariff regime. Despite his past support for narrower efforts to rein in Trump’s tariff authority, Tillis declined to join this latest push.

The 18 senators who signed the letter warned that without swift intervention, the tariffs could cause lasting harm to North Carolina’s economy.

Voicing support for the tariffs while it was politically advantageous for him in gaining Trump’s favor and then flipping his script when they went wrong, as predicted–without naming the party responsible–is weak. While Tillis bounces back and forth, desperately trying to balance the extremism of his party’s primary voters with the moderate general electorate of North Carolina, his constituents suffer.