Video: Sen. Mark Warner Urges Speaker Mike Johnson to Stand Up to “small group of MAGA type, far right” on Funding the Government, Stopping Putin From Winning in Ukraine, etc.

Sen. Mark Warner’s media availability this afternoon covered a lot of ground. See below for video and highlights, including:

• “First, we continue to see the residual rollout of effects coming from the Supreme Court’s overturning Roe v Wade, where we continue to see cutbacks on women’s access to reproductive rights all across the country. The most recent example is the Alabama Supreme Court…prohibiting IVF as a methodology for people to grow their families. I know this only adheres at this point to Alabama, but literally thousands of people who spent time, money, effort, planning to try to grow a family through safe IVF techniques are now in doubt whether they’re going to be able to to have that right maintained. And what could happen in Alabama could happen across the nation, unfortunately. That’s why my Democratic colleagues and I said, let’s make sure this right to this medical procedure is enshrined in law. We’ve seen from former President Trump to Republican candidates all rushing to say, oh, no, we want to protect IVF. Well, we put forward a bill this week and unfortunately, that bill was objected to. And again, I think it’s more than a bit of hypocrisy that a Republican Party that claims that it is pro-life doesn’t seem to be pro-family in terms of women being able to have access to the IVF techniques
  that I think, frankly, all of us know some family that has used these tools to, frankly, have children to grow their family. And I think we have to do all we can to protect women’s access to reproductive health care. IVF is part of that. And unfortunately, this is a trend since the Dobbs decision. If you care about women’s health care, if it doesn’t concern you, it should.
  And those of us who stand firmly with women, their family, their doctors in making these health care decisions, we’ll do all we can to protect IVF on a national level, but also protect women’s health care rights, which I’m glad to say, at least in Virginia, has been maintained by the Democratic General Assembly.”
• “Second matter, and that is a topic that if it feels like this is a rerun of a bad TV show in terms of the threats around  government shutdowns, you’re right, it is. It’s crazy that we are once again on the precipice of another government shutdown. It could come as early is as tomorrow night at least, or about half of the government. It does appear that we will do one more short-term continuing resolution for about half the government until next week. The bills should be then printed over the weekend and then the subsequent portions of the government. The really hard challenges around the border security, around Defense Department will be taken up by March 22nd. I frankly think it’s inexcusable that it’s taking this long. This is not a Democrat Republican problem. Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats, House Democrats, frankly, the majority of House Republicans know we ought to be operating on a budget. We’re literally five or six months, almost six months into our fiscal year. Any other business that operated on that this way would be out of business at this point. And there is no state in the country that is hurt more by these delays in having a predictable federal budget than Virginia – whether it is our federal workers who have to be in question of whether they can go to work; I think about the air traffic controllers who have to go to work oftentimes without pay if we have a government shutdown. Government contractors, we have a ton of them in Virginia. Government workers will at least get paid back after the government reopens,  Contractors don’t. So incredibly important projects that have been worked on, they come to a halt and you may not even get that back pay. We do a lot of ship repair in Virginia. if you finish a ship repair, you can’t start on a new ship that may be coming to that dry dock and causing huge delays because those additional funds are only put in the next two year budget. So this is a story, again, that people should be rightfully upset at. And the notion that a small group of MAGA type, far right – I’m not even sure Republicans are the right name for many more  – are constantly threatening shutdowns is ludicrous. And my hope and prayer is that the Speaker will stand up to this group.…he can’t pass anything in the House anyway. He’s got to have Democratic votes. Let’s do it in a bipartisan way. Let’s get this this budget battle behind us. The Senate has done its job. The House needs to do its job. This is not a partizan issue at this point. This is a group of extremists really holding the whole country’s fiscal matters hostage.”
• “And unfortunately, that brings me to my last issue. I’m thinking at a presentation this morning, I’m 15 years approximately into this job at this point. I can’t think of an issue that is of more importance currently and for the future of our nation and for the future of protection of democracies here and abroad than continuing to support Ukraine in its brave battle against Putin’s vicious Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Senate has done its job. We need to stand by our Ukrainian allies who have been  remarkable at fighting back Russian aggression. If we don’t get the additional funding for Ukraine in a short order, Putin will win. As chairman of the Intelligence Committee, I know that. And it will have such huge  consequences for people. People should be concerned about this because we could see American soldiers in harm’s way in honoring our NATO’s obligations to the Baltic states or Poland or other NATO nations, that Russia will turn its gaze from Ukraine to those other nations as Putin tries to recreate the old world around the Soviet Union. We need to stand up and get it done. This is, again, a case where it’s not Democrat versus Republican. It is a group of far-right isolationists bending the knee to former President Trump that have prevented this bill
  coming to the floor of the House. It will get 300 votes in the House of Representatives. That small group should not be able to preclude America from doing its duty because, candidly, I said this before if we don’t do this, no country should trust us again in terms of future commitments. And what will that mean literally for decades to come?…And what I’d say to Mike Johnson is, I hope you can look yourself in the mirror – not just today, but a year from now, two years from now, five years from now. If you prevent this bill from being voted on the floor of the House and the will of the House being acted, I think you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. You will be the person that will go down in history as having lost Ukraine. You will be the person that will go down in history as having allowed Vladimir Putin and his authoritarian, brutal regime to be victorious. You will go down as someone that also about abets President Xi and China and the Supreme Leader in Iran and those who are authoritarian, dictatorial regimes everywhere. Because if we don’t stand as we promised we would with the Ukrainians, dictators around the world will rejoice. And I’ve only met the Speaker once. He seems like a good man. I just hope he does what is I hope would be in his heart…And he has seemed to have said this many times to people privately. He knows how important that this is. But the time for words has passed. People are literally dying on the battlefield because our inability to get these critical arms to our Ukrainian allies. I hope he realizes what’s at stake.”