Under the Dome: Tillis’ take on the Trump-Zelenskyy ‘disagreement’
Good morning and welcome to the Under the Dome newsletter. I’m Danielle Battaglia.
Sen. Thom Tillis has been consistently outspoken in supporting Ukraine since Russia attacked the country, and in expressing his view that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “a murderer.”
Which is why his silence was deafening after President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance dismissed Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy from the White House grounds Friday in the wake of an explosive argument that played out in front of live television cameras.
Zelenskyy visited Washington last week under the belief that the United States and Ukraine would sign a mineral agreement that The New York Times reported would create a fund for half of all future revenues made from Ukraine’s oil, natural gas and mining.
But the meeting erupted, with Trump and Vance telling Zelenskyy he should be more thankful to the United States. Both Trump and Vance raised their voices at Zelenskyy.
Monday marked the first time the Senate has been in session since the historic meeting, and Tillis broke his silence just hours before he was planning to vote on the Senate floor.
“Friends can and will have disagreements, and sometimes they can be heated,” Tillis wrote on social media.
But he added that the argument between the world leaders led Europe to step up its own support for Ukraine in fighting “so bravely” against Russia.
The United Kingdom confirmed an aid package for Ukraine following Zelenskyy’s meeting with Trump, as leaders from many European countries rallied around him.
The war between Russia and Ukraine has been going on since 2014, but Putin escalated it in 2022 when Russia invaded in an attempt to seize control of Ukraine. The war is considered the deadliest in Europe since World War II, killing both military personnel and civilians.
In the past, Tillis has not taken kindly to U.S. lawmakers verbally attacking Zelenskyy. In 2022, not long after the invasion, former Rep. Madison Cawthorn, a Republican from Western North Carolina, called Zelenskyy “a thug,” leading Tillis to find a primary challenger for Cawthorn.
Cawthorn was voted out after serving only one term in office.
And last week, Tillis took to the Senate floor to chastise Putin after Trump wrongly asserted that Ukraine started the war and called Zelenskyy a dictator.
“I just respectfully, I don’t think there’s any scenario where you could convince me Putin is anything less than a despot and a murderer,” Tillis told McClatchy last week.
He reiterated that in his statement Monday, saying, “Putin is a murderer who wants to see the decline of the United States.”
“This war can only end in two ways: either Russia takes all of Ukraine or we broker a peace settlement,” Tillis wrote. “President Trump and the United States will continue to push for a lasting peace to end the war, which should include moving forward on the mutually beneficial mineral rights deal that will increase the bond between our two nations.”
JUDGE RULES TRUMP CAN’T FIRE GOVERNMENT WATCHDOG FROM NC
President Donald Trump cannot fire a top government watchdog from North Carolina, a federal judge ruled Saturday.
In a 67-page order, Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote that Trump had illegally fired Hampton Dellinger, head of the Office of Special Counsel, without providing a valid reason.
Formed in 1978, the Office of Special Counsel is responsible for protecting whistleblowers in the federal government and enforcing the Hatch Act, which restricts political activity by government employees.
“It would be ironic, to say the least, and inimical to the ends furthered by the statute if the Special Counsel himself could be chilled in his work by fear of arbitrary or partisan removal,” Jackson wrote.
A North Carolina native, Dellinger previously served as legal counsel for Gov. Mike Easley and unsuccessfully ran in the 2008 Democratic primary for lieutenant governor.
Trump fired Dellinger, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, in a one-sentence email sent last month.
Dellinger quickly filed a lawsuit against Trump, noting that longstanding federal law prohibits the president from removing him unless for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
Jackson agreed, finding that the “curt” email from the White House “contained no reasons whatsoever.”
The Trump administration plans to appeal the ruling, setting the stage for the case to potentially reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
— Kyle Ingram
PACKED AGENDAS FOR HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEES
It’ll be another busy committee day at the General Assembly today, starting with committees kicking off the second and final week of budget presentations.
Then in the afternoon, all three House judiciary committees will meet simultaneously at 1 p.m. to take up a raft of legislation.
That includes a bill filed by House Majority Leader Brenden Jones last week named the “COOPER Accountability Act.”
The bill would give the N.C. Office of Recovery and Resiliency $217 million to finish rebuilding homes destroyed by hurricanes Matthew and Florence in 2016 and 2018. The bill would require the agency to submit monthly reports on its progress to lawmakers.
NCORR would also be required to provide an account of the total disaster relief funds it has received, and a detailed breakdown of its spending, to the state auditor’s office. The bill also would repeal the law that authorized NCORR to administer disaster relief and recovery funds received by the state, dissolving its “responsibility for future storms.”
A second committee will take up bipartisan bills to create new felony offenses for the possession of a firearm or weapon of mass death and destruction by a felon during the commission of a felony, and assaulting a law enforcement officer or law-enforcement agency’s animal by throwing or spraying water on them.
And the third panel will take up one bill to display the national motto “In God We Trust” above the daises of the House speaker and Senate president in each chamber; and another to implement “zero-based budgeting” for the state by the 2031-33 budget period.
— Avi Bajpai
GRIFFIN’S LATEST SUGGESTION IN BALLOT CHALLENGE
In court filings on Monday, Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin, who seeks to overturn his apparent loss in the November state Supreme Court race, suggested a new remedy for his challenge of over 65,000 ballots cast in the election.
Throughout Griffin’s monthslong legal battle, he has attempted to have courts throw out those tens of thousands of ballots, arguing that the State Board of Elections improperly allowed these voters to participate – even if the voters themselves did nothing wrong.
Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs leads Griffin by 734 votes following two recounts of the election, but a January order from the Republican-dominated state Supreme Court blocked the elections board from certifying her apparent victory while Griffin’s challenges play out.
Now, Griffin, a Republican, asks the Court of Appeals to require evidentiary hearings on most of the challenged ballots to determine if the voters were lawfully registered or not.
“The court’s order should be that, upon remand, the board is required to discount any unlawful votes and retabulate the election result accordingly,” Griffin’s attorney wrote.
Griffin’s lawyers have floated this possibility in previous hearings, but Monday’s filing was the clearest articulation of this potential remedy.
Specifically, Griffin says that all the voters he challenges for lacking a Social Security number or driver’s license number in the state’s registration database should have their eligibility checked.
However, Griffin argues that no such verification is needed to discount ballots cast by the other two categories of voters he challenges. Those are military and overseas voters who cast their ballot without showing an ID and the adult children of North Carolina residents overseas who have not resided in the state.
Those two categories of voters alone are more than enough to flip the election in Griffin’s favor — especially considering that he only challenges voters who didn’t show identification and who are registered in counties leaning heavily Democratic.
The Court of Appeals is expected to schedule arguments quickly in the case, though any decision it makes is likely to be appealed to the state Supreme Court.
— Kyle Ingram
Today’s newsletter was by Danielle Battaglia, Kyle Ingram and Avi Bajpai. Check your inbox tomorrow for more #ncpol.
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This story was originally published March 4, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
