Letter to Sen. Mark Warner from Fairfax School Board Member Pat Hynes Urges Opposition to Trump’s Agenda

I hope you will consider hosting a rally on January 15 to save the Affordable Care Act. Like many others, I worked hard in 2009 for the idea that healthcare is a basic human right, and I celebrated that important win for all Americans. The Republican plan to pull that rug out from under millions of families is horrible to contemplate.

I hope you will oppose most, if not all, of the Trump cabinet as they come to the Senate for confirmation. I have kept up with the nominations and can honestly say not one nominee stands out as trustworthy and capable. They are a rogue’s gallery of self-dealers and ideologues. That Senate Republicans are rushing them through confirmation before their extensive ethical conflicts can be properly vetted, is alarming.

I am encouraged by Senator McCain’s willingness to hold hearings on the intelligence linking Russian hacking to our presidential election. I hope you will be as unrelenting in demanding a full accounting of that attack on our democracy, and all other risks to free and fair elections.

This letter could be pages and pages longer, with unsettling facts about each cabinet nominee, climate change, civil rights, middle class and labor concerns, public schools, and on and on. But you know all that. What you may not know is how much I am counting on you to defend the foundational values of this country over the next four years. Those values carried the day on November 8 – by three million votes. Be assured you are on the right side of history when you fight for us.

Thank you for your service. Please let me know how I can help.

Pat Hynes