Video: Sen. Mark Warner Talks Border Security, Judges, Turks and Caicos Gun Case, Foreign Interference/Disinformation in Our Elections, etc.

See below for video of Sen. Mark Warner’s weekly press availability. Topics covered include:

• In Hampton Roads, “some of the progress that’s being made at Jefferson lab, which I think we will look back on is one of the greatest investments maybe even of this century in Virginia”
• “The complete botched rollout of the FAFSA that’s the federally assistant form for student aid…it begs a question why the federal government can’t do big IT projects on time on budget or roll them out efficiently and we’ve seen this movie before.”
• “The bipartisan border security bill: I’m the first to acknowledge there is a mess at the border, we need to take more action, we need to have a better asylum process, we need to no longer have what’s called Catch and Release, where people are coming across the border getting a court date potentially weeks, months or in some cases years later, that system just not working. And the irony is my Republican  Senators and…the Republican House said we need a tough border bill…matter of fact, they demanded that as part of the price to get Ukraine aid. Well it took a while, but a bipartisan bill was put together and then former President Trump said, well, we don’t to fix the border really because he’d rather use that as a political issue and I find that outrageous. I know our vote today probably won’t get Republican support, but I hope it will put people on the board on where they stand.”
• “We confirmed our 200th judge in Biden’s first three and a half years in office. My hope is that we will be able to get more…Trump has the current record of 235, I would hope we’d be able to exceed that by the end President Biden’s four years. And I think what we’ve tried to do and what I’m so proud of these judges is they look a lot more like America.”
• “…it may be a little bit of commentary on where we are in our country that it took Taylor Swift and her fans, the Swifties, to get as upset as they did to maybe bring this to the full kind of attention it merits, but this Ticket Master issue has been going on for years and I support what the FTC is doing.”
• Re: the Turks and Caicos case: “I think there is a question of how did someone get…through TSA screening with live ammunition, I think that’s a very real question. But I also have to say that the the government in Turks and Caicos, I think their policy is really to the extreme, and I’ve been working with senator from Oklahoma, Mark Wayne Mullen, who has been leading the effort to try to get these Americans back. The one thing I will say is that Turks and Caicos was very clear in their signage that, you know, no exceptions, you bring in unregistered ammunition or firearms you’re going to be arrested…and through the Caribbean, the level of gun violence has gone up dramatically. So I respect their country’s right to have tough gun laws. I wish in certain cases we had a little more reasonable approach at the federal level on things like assault weapons. But I think the idea that this individual [who] seemed to…just made a mistake would be suddenly caught 12 years in a jail in Turks and Caicos is way over the top, and I’m going to work with other Senators to do all we can to bring those bring those folks back.”
• Foreign interference and disinformation in our elections much of what he’s said in previous press availabilities and interviews (e.g., “we need the Facebooks, as long as they’re around the Tik Toks, the YouTubes, all of the social media platforms to be responsible, and unfortunately we’ve seen companies like Twitter that have walked away from any responsibility, they don’t even have their users adhere to the standards they say you’ve got to operate on…and the clock’s ticking.”