(Daily Signal)—In the wake of North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis’ decision not to seek reelection in 2026, the GOP is holding out for a hero who can defend the Republican majority in the purple state.
Rep. Mark Harris, R-N.C., told The Daily Signal Tuesday that a winning candidate in the Tarheel State must be honest and pro-Trump.
“I think they just need to have the quality of being genuine. Telling people the facts, letting people understand what’s going on, making sure that they recognize that we believe in President [Donald] Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda. And that wins in North Carolina,” he said.
Tillis, who has been willing to work occasionally with Democrats and criticize fellow Republicans, announced June 29 he would not seek reelection next year after he voted against a motion to proceed with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which passed anyway.
His main concerns were over the bill’s restructuring of Medicaid, which he thinks could lead to excessive coverage losses. Shortly after Tillis’ “no” vote, Trump threatened to recruit and support a GOP primary challenger against him.
Republicans Need to Lean Into Trump’s ‘America First’ Agenda If They’re Going to Keep the Senate, Says @RepMarkHarrisNC
After Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., announced that he would not seek a third term, Congressional Republicans have been weighing in on who should replace him. Rep.… pic.twitter.com/CYP8e7RuuA
— The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) July 16, 2025
In Harris’ view, the proof of a pro-Trump candidate’s appeal in North Carolina can be found in the president’s year-after-year success there.
“[Trump’s] won every time he’s run in that state, and I have no doubt that he’s going to play a major role,” Harris said of Trump.
He noted that Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, who served as co-chairman of the Republican National Committee during the 2024 election and is now a Fox News show host, might be the right fit for North Carolina.
“You’ve heard conversation about the possibility of his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, possibly running. I don’t know if that will be what ends up happening, but I will say there is a great love in North Carolina for Donald Trump, because he says what he means, and he means what he says. And I think we just need a candidate for U.S. Senate that’s going to do that same thing,” said Harris.
Trump has expressed some openness to the idea of his daughter-in-law, who currently resides in Florida, running for office in her home state.
“Somebody who would really be great is Lara,” the president said shortly after Tillis’ announcement of his retirement plans. “She grew up there, but they live in Florida … . She did fantastically running the RNC … . I mean, that would always be my first choice, but she doesn’t live there now. But she’s there all the time.”
?BREAKING: President Trump urges Lara Trump to run for Senate in North Carolina to replace Thom Tillis:
“Somebody that would really be great is Lara. She’s a great person, Lara Trump. That would always be my first choice.”
pic.twitter.com/68PGa02f1W— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 1, 2025
Trump added, “I don’t know who the candidates are going to be. I think you’re going to have one of the congressmen step up.”
Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., who represents most of the state’s coastline area, told The Daily Signal he had some sympathy for Tillis.
“I think Sen. Tillis, his heart was in the right place. He and I agree on many, many issues. I think he had probably just pulled the plug, and it was time for him,” said Murphy.
North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis is OUT. Who’s Next?
At the height of the fight over the Big Beautiful Bill, Sen. Thom TIllis, R-Nc, announced that he would not seek reelection.
North Carolina, known for being a relatively purple state, will need a Republican senatorial… pic.twitter.com/CZSOHhO80t
— The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) July 16, 2025
In Murphy’s view, the ideal candidate would possess bipartisan instincts, while also backing conservative priorities.
“We need to have a Republican that can beat the presumed nominee of the Democrat Party, Roy Cooper, who’s the former governor,” he said. “Someone who understands how to navigate in a bipartisan manner. But in a conservative, bipartisan manner so that we keep the Senate and we can actually do things that are good for the country.”
Tillis’ office did not respond to a request for comment on his preferred successor.
On Sunday, he also wouldn’t state definitively to reporters whether he would back anyone for the seat.
“Dependent upon whether or not President Trump endorses somebody, it could be an open primary,” he said. “He could close it out and the party could get behind it, I suspect that’s what they do. I just really hope he has some discernment because obviously Mark Robinson was a bad pick.”
Then-Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson ran for governor in 2024, but his candidacy was derailed by allegations that he made embarrassing and extremist comments in an online pornographic chat room under the username of “minisoldr.”
Thanks for the retirement wishes, Mr. President, looking forward to working with you for a successful 2026. Word to the wise, let’s avoid minisoldr. https://t.co/r703B8fEys
— Senator Thom Tillis (@SenThomTillis) June 29, 2025
“Thanks for the retirement wishes, Mr. President, looking forward to working with you for a successful 2026,” wrote Tillis shortly after dropping out of the race in June. “Word to the wise, let’s avoid minisoldr.”
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.