I had a chance to chat with Sen. Tim Kaine yesterday afternoon. See below for audio, as well as a very lightly edited transcript of our conversation (other than a bit of chit-chat at the beginning, which I’ve skipped.) As you can see, we covered a wide range of topics, although the main purpose of the call was to discuss Sen. Kaine’s effort to stop Trump’s bogus “energy emergency” (read more about that here) and to push back against Trump’s war on affordable, American-made (particularly solar and wind) energy. In addition, Sen. Kaine talked about:
- His “five-point plan” – “courts, Congress, states, elections, activism” to fight Trump
- The crucial importance of Virginia’s 2025 elections for governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General and the entire House of Delegates. According to Sen. Kaine, “if you really want to do something, make sure the Virginia elections come out well in November 2025.”
- The likelihood of “MLK March on Washington stuff” and other forms of non-violent, peaceful protest coming soon, “to demonstrate the popular revulsion at Trump,” particularly as people really start feeling the adverse impacts of Trump’s policies/actions.
- How Senate Republicans are not “preserving [the filibuster ] to protect themselves against Democrats, they’re preserving it to protect Congressional Republicans against Trump.” Kaine adds that “there will come a moment where Donald Trump will turn to them and say I didn’t get what I wanted. I didn’t get what I wanted on the budget, I didn’t get what I wanted on border security or on the debt ceiling, you’ve gotta eliminate the filibuster so I can get what I want. And that is going to be internal to Congress, a major crisis but a really important battle.”
- Trump’s disastrous foreign policy, including on Ukraine/Russia, China, tariffs and threats against allies like Canada, etc.
- How when he goes to Mass in Richmond or whatever, people want to talk to him about what they’re experiencing – their anxiety, fear, anger, etc. According to Sen. Kaine: “I do kind of feel like I need to be a therapist in every meeting I walk into. And when am I going to get time to get the therapy I need?”
- How he thinks he made the right decision to run for reelection in 2024. According to Sen. Kaine, “what I realized after the dust all settled is that if Kamala had won, I would have felt pretty comfortable if I had retired and I was exiting the Senate in January 2025. But when she lost, I realized it would have been the worst time to be leaving.”
- How “we celebrate 250 years as a democracy in 2026 and I want to be able to celebrate it, not mourn it; I want it to be an anniversary, not a wake. And that’s my motivation.”
- An explanation as to why he voted for some of Trump’s Cabinet picks – “is there any way we can beat this person or is there no way we can beat this person?”; “how bad are they?” “Who might be the alternative?”; the need to work with the Cabinet agencies as part of constituent work for Virginians; etc.
- How the governor of Virginia SHOULD BE fighting strongly for Virginia against ANY president, whether of their own party or another party, to defend the Commonwealth’s people and interests. But Youngkin’s clearly not doing that. According to Sen. Kaine: “When I was governor if anything happened in Washington I didn’t like, I’d pick up the phone and I’d call Jim Webb and John Warner and say hey, what the heck? And it didn’t make a difference whether it was George Bush or Barack Obama was President, you’re not moving an aircraft carrier to Jacksonville Florida!”
And much, much more. See below, and thanks again to Sen. Kaine for his time and (as always) very thoughtful responses to questions.
Sen. Tim Kaine: “How are you doing?”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “Hanging in here. I mean what else can you do, right?”
Sen. Kaine: “Yeah, in some ways Anne says it’s easier for me because I have things I can do and a lot of folks who are just on the receiving end of all this abuse, who don’t have the natural thing to do, it’s even even more debilitating and frustrating. So…I get the way you’re feeling. I sure hear that from a lot of people.”
…You were you were a Department of Energy employee, right?”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “So I know that segues into what you want to talk about. I worked at the US Energy Information Administration for 17 years, so I’m well aware of what our energy situation is, I still follow it very closely. And you’re you’re absolutely right about what you’re saying here – I mean, there’s no energy emergency…”
Sen. Kaine: “I asked Janine to set this up because I said…Lowell is the energy guy, I’m not really an energy guy…so I asked her to set this up so I could kind of go in the weeds and explain to you what we’re doing and why.”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “Appreciate it.”
Sen. Kaine: “And I’ll just jump in and then I’d love to answer questions that you have. It is a little bit of a combined effort between Martin Heinrich, who is…kind of…the Senate Democratic energy guru who’s now the key Democrat on the committee. And then I have been kind of the guy on article one, article two powers, and not in favor of the President stepping all over Congress…On day one, the President issued this energy emergency declaration. And I remember reading it and there was a line in it and this is essentially a quote, it’s probably almost exact, he said the policies of the previous administration have driven the nation into into an emergency. And I was like, really? Really? So there’s sort of three points to this, and I’ll tell you the three points and then what is the mechanism we’re using to challenge it. The first point is there’s no emergency and the declaration is a sham. Last year we produced more oil than any year in American history. Last year we produced more natural gas than any year in American history. And the best part of last year is that more than 90% of power that came on to the grid last year was renewable. We’re accelerating renewables because of the IRA the and the infrastructure bill. So where’s the emergency? We’re also at an energy surplus in that we now produce more than we consume; that’s been the case since 2019 and that surplus has been growing annually. And we’ve been able to use that surplus for some other important purposes, like helping nations wean away from overreliance on Putin and petro-dictators.
So OK, the president declares that an energy emergency and then the first thing he starts to do is undo energy projects – so things that have relied on the tax credits and the Inflation Reduction Act. Governor Youngkin has announced a series of economic development deals that really relied on those dollars in in the six months or year those are sort of up in the air with a question mark by them now. We got a huge grant that we advocated for the Port of Virginia to electrify all their crane operations. That grant is up in the air right now. The offshore wind, if you read there was a great … article the other day about Dominion’s offshore wind that’s sort of got an asterisk or question mark by it now. And yesterday the Department of Energy laid off the grant department that has been doing the grants, suggesting that those will dry up – grants for electric vehicle recharging stations pursuant to the infrastructure bill…those are drying up. So there’s no energy emergency except for the emergency that Donald Trump is creating by undoing energy projects which are both killing jobs but also will have the natural effect of causing prices to go up, because if demand is going up and you’re taking supply offline and shrinking projects, you’re going to hurt people’s pocketbook.
So what’s it about? Well, it’s pretty clear what it’s about is Trump made a promise to big oil execs…you invest in me and you will get a cut back on all these environmental protections. And one of the attendees at that dinner said Donald Trump said you’ll get it on day one. Well they got it on day one. And what did they get? They got this emergency order that carved back on NEPA, the Clean Water Act…the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act and a whole series of other acts. And it even suggested, its first suggestion was federal agencies should be more aggressive in using eminent domain to take people’s property for energy production siting and transmission. The real game in this emergency order is at the very end, you’re reading it and it’s saying we need to do more energy production. But at the end of the order it defines energy production specifically excluding wind…oil, gas…nuclear…and hydro is included, but wind and solar are specifically excluded. So this is a big giveaway to big oil, and all of these environmental laws that Congress passed that are good laws as you point out – Clean Water Act has helped Richmond rebound by cleaning up the James River and that’s been part of our renaissance. So we know these regulations, even if they’re not always exactly perfect, they’ve generally been very laudatory and helpful both to the environment and to the economy.
So there is an unusual provision in federal law that allows even one Senator to file a challenge to a president’s declaration of an emergency. And we are using that. It’s very little used, because usually presidents who do it, it’s like Donald Trump declared a national emergency after Covid, but it *was* a national emergency! Biden continued…So you usually don’t have to grapple with the sham emergency. But if we let Trump get away with declaring a sham emergency and then doing a lot of damage to our environmental laws, he’ll do it again and again and again. So Martin and I have filed it, it is ripened for consideration, it bypasses the committee, we get a floor vote, we’ve locked in that the floor vote will occur sometime between now and next Friday – it is likely to occur early next week – there will be six hours of debate about the emergency declaration, three hours for each side (I don’t expect the Republicans will use all theirs; the Dems we will use ours to drive these points – it’s a sham emergency, Trump is hurting American energy and it’s a giveaway to big oil). And we’ll drive those repetitively, those of us who take the floor. What is our expectation? I don’t think the Republicans are yet sufficiently backboned to stand up against Trump six weeks after inauguration, although they are seeing projects get canceled in their state, they’re seeing job losses and they’ll see energy prices going up. But we have the ability to lay the record that, hey, look, Donald Trump’s own kind of self-created emergency is killing jobs and raising prices. We make that argument, say no Republicans are not enough go along with us, we get the opportunity to come back and reinstitute the challenge every six months. So maybe we’ll win, although Trump would veto it, but if we don’t win we come back six months from now when energy prices have gone up and jobs have been lost because of these policies, and we explain that with the hey I told you so this is going to happen.
So there there are a few things where the minority can go on offense. This is one of those things. I have done a pretty thorough study of parts of either Senate procedure or statutary law that allow even one Senator to challenge action and get a guaranteed vote on the floor. And this is my first use of one of these mechanisms. But I’m going to be doing a lot more of it.
And then the last thing to say is it it fits into the the broader category of what I’m calling the kind of the five-point plan which is, it’s Congress, courts, states, elections and activism…or let me say courts, Congress, states, elections, activism because the court battles started on Inauguration Day. We at least had the benefit of having Project 2025, so we had some understanding what was coming. We coordinated very carefully lawsuits to be filed and we have been filing lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit with the network of of lawyers and others we’ve been working with. Our batting average is good, not perfect…Trump loses one and says they’re going to appeal, so these things have a way of working up in the system. But we are very very vigorous. I led efforts yesterday to get 28 Senators on board with a a case filed against Trump’s illegal sacking of the Inspector General. So we’re doing more and more and we’re going to keep doing them every day in Congress. We’ve got leverage on this budget battle that’s coming up. We’ve got leverage on the debt ceiling battle that’s coming up. When we have felt that there was even a scintilla of a chance that we could get Republicans to consider voting against Cabinet nominees we’ve gone after them. We were able to get a vote against Kennedy, a vote against Tulsi, three votes against Hegseth. We haven’t defeated anybody yet but when we can dent somebody, we do.
And the third one is activism at the state level. And you know, we don’t have a governor yet willing to speak up about how Trump is hurting Virginia. Hopefully that will start. I saw that Governor Youngkin today said there was be some kind of a package for affected federal employees.”
Blue Virginia (Lowell) “Yeah, Rachel Maddow was mocking him – did you see that last night?”
Sen. Kaine: “I did…But I give Don Scott credit in the absence of the governor willing to shine a spotlight on how this is hurting Virginia, the General Assembly is putting together a a team to kind of gather the data and that’s important because they can share with us and we can put it in floor speeches and and use to create a legislative record here.
Fourth is obviously elections. The Virginia elections are going to be the most watched elections in America in 2025 and just like 2017, the Virginia election was not only important about Virginia, but it sent a national message that we’re revolted by Trump policies.
And then the last is activism. And we see that building up – you know protests, sure USAID employees, but protests in state capitals. And I think you’re going to see that build and grow, because the degree of disquiet about what Trump’s doing… I mean I did a roundtable with workers and farmers in northwestern Virginia last Friday, and all of them – all of them – no federal employees all of them are engaged in USDA programs to help farmers succeed, all of them know tariffs will cream them, all of them know mass deportations will hollow out their workforce. The ag sector tends to be in the redder parts of America, but they’re terrified about Trump and that awareness is growing.
So anyway, again, knowing that you’re the energy guy, this is a quirky little thing that I’m doing, but I thought you in particular would appreciate the quirks of it. And so that’s why I wanted to just call and kind of walk it through with you.”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “I appreciate it. I mean, it’s part of [Trump’s] assault on fact and reason and science and everything. I mean, it’s not just an energy – he just makes up reality and it’s very disturbing…”
Sen. Kaine: “Yeah, Ukraine invaded Russia, right?”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “Right, I mean that’s the latest one and that’s just insane. But I mean, I feel like this gets at the pace. You were talking about maybe we’ll revisit this in 6 months or whatever, but do we even have six months? The pace he’s going is so frenetic and disturbing in his institution of apparently what he’s aiming for is an authoritarian, maybe even like a dictatorship basically.”
Sen. Kaine: “Yeah, kind of an Orban situation.”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “Yeah, well some people have compared it to Orban; it could be something like that or it could be worse in some ways or better in some ways. I don’t know. But it feels worse at this point. I mean the types of things he’s doing. But do we have months? I mean, I don’t know if you saw this I posted – you said you read Blue Virginia every day –
Sen. Kaine: “I do”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “Well that’s great. I mean, because I just posted on Don Beyer – he had a town hall with the Del Ray Citizens Association and he was talking about that we’re getting close to where we need Civil Disobedience a la – this is almost a direct quote – a la Nelson Mandela and Gandhi. I mean do you feel like that’s where we’re headed at this point or can we just…”
Sen. Kaine: “Yeah, I think of more of the MLK, you know MLK March on Washington stuff. And I would suspect that you’re going to start to see that. And you know it would probably be timed around something important. But I think the combination of people distressed by, wait, you said you were going to bring my prices down and now you’re talking about Greenland and egg prices are going up…so whether it’s people who feel like he hasn’t met his promises, federal workers that have been sacked, kids in cancer trials that are being carved back because of NIH funding cuts, there’s going to be such a broad coalition, the moment may come around the Republican reconciliation program which is to slash Medicaid, to do tax breaks for the wealthy. We saw that generated tremendous activism in the summer of 2017. That might be the moment. And it’s going to come a lot faster than the summer. You know, you’re probably following the news today, the two Republican Houses are trying to figure out what their Reconciliation timing and strategy is. But we know the outcome: slash programs for everyday people to give tax breaks to the wealthiest. I think that might be the the moment that would generate the intense citizen activism. But I think that moment is coming soon. I don’t think it’s six months from now, I think it’s coming soon.”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “I mean, we don’t have six months right? I mean, if we just let this go for six months and there’s no really serious pushback. I know we have the courts=, but if Trump says I’m not going to obey the courts, I think he’s building to that too.”
Sen. Kaine: “I do too. I mean today he apparently his lawyers appeared in a case involving USAID where they were told no, we issued a court order, you’ve got to turn back on the funding. And at least the representation is they said we’re still not going to do it. So that that crisis is coming. There will be another crisis that will come soon…in the Senate. And this is my prediction, the Senate Republicans really want to maintain the current filibuster cloture rule because they want Democrats to be able to stop Trump’s nuttiness that they feel guilty about but they won’t speak up against.
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “That’s interesting, I was wondering why…”
Sen. Kaine: “Yeah, John Thune has already given a couple of speeches since becoming Majority Leader, saying we are going to preserve the filibuster, we’re going to preserve that. They’re not preserving it to protect themselves against Democrats, they’re preserving it to protect Congressional Republicans against Trump. They know what he’s doing, a lot of what he wants to do, is wrong, and they would like Democrats to have the ability to continue to block it. But there will come a moment where Donald Trump will turn to them and say I didn’t get what I wanted. I didn’t get what I wanted on the budget, I didn’t get what I wanted on border security or on the debt ceiling, you’ve gotta eliminate the filibuster so I can get what I want. And that is going to be internal to Congress, a major crisis but a really important battle. And so we’ve got to fight on all of these fronts.
You know, I’m like you, you sometimes comment in your writings in Blue Virginia when somebody says oh it’s all over we’ve lost, you always say no, you can’t assume that yet, without sugar coating or whitewashing stuff, you always tell people not to give in to like a complete despair about where we are. And you won’t be surprised that I’m even more upbeat than you.”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “Well, you’re an optimist. My father was an optimist, my mother was a pessimist, I would say I am a realist. I mean, I like facts, I like data and I like information. And I like to analyze that and figure out what actually is true and what makes sense to do. I don’t think we should get too optimistic about what’s going on and just assume things will work out. No. We make it work out. We’re the ones who make – you know that expression…the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice? No, *we* bend it – it doesn’t just bend on its own. We’re the ones, so we have to take action, right, I agree with that. But yeah, so Beyer seems to be going towards more Mandela and Gandhi, which I guess is more like strikes and…just basically don’t go to work or whatever and shut the country down. But you don’t sound like you’re there yet.”
Sen. Kaine: “No I’m not. But know MLK did stuff like that too, you know the bus boycotts. And it wasn’t just peaceful protest on the Washington Mall, I mean it was direct action against police that were fire hosing you or against department stores that wouldn’t let you sit there. So figuring out what is the…right point to demonstrate the popular revulsion at Trump. Again, I think the opportunity around this budget, you know slashing Medicaid for low-income kids, moms and seniors and nursing homes to give tax breaks to the rich, that might be the opportunity. But when I get asked in Virginia…it’s nice to be in Virginia frankly because I get to say if you really want to do something, make sure the Virginia elections come out well in November 2025. We want to do stuff before then, but you know that the Virginia results get over interpreted by everybody because we’re the only game in town…”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “And that gets at that Democrats have to be fired up….if Democrats are fired up they’ll turn out to vote. That’s what happened in 2017; 2009, Democrat were asleep and Creigh Deeds lost by 17 points. When you ran, I mean we had Hurricane Katrina hit and then Bush’s approval rating plummeted…so that’s going to affect things too…but I can’t do anything about Trump’s approval rating other than, you know, making the case against Trump…that’s all I can do.
…and then on foreign policy, what do we do about that? Trump is literally changing American values as we speak, to we support dictators and war criminals…I mean, what can you do vis-a-vis the budget or reconciliation or whatever?”
Sen. Kaine: “I mean…so a couple of things that Trump is doing that are disastrous, and I agree with you, is one he’s going back to what he did in term one, which is alienating allies, cozying up to adversaries…even imposing tariffs on Canada under a national security waiver – wait, they’re an ally! The national security waiver was designed to go against an adversary. So he continually gets it flipped where I’m going to alienate allies and cozy up to adversaries. And this latest thing about Ukraine being the aggressor in the war is just, you know, he’s sucking up to Vladimir Putin and willing to alienate the entire West to do so. The other thing that Trump’s doing is wrong is what’s going on in the negotiations…in Saudi Arabia about the Ukraine war – have a negotiation that includes Russia but not Ukraine. Remember that Trump negotiated the end of the Afghan war with the Taliban but would not allow the Afghan government at the table. How did that work out?”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “Yeah, that didn’t work out very well.”
Sen. Kaine: “Yeah, and it’s not going to work out any better you know keeping Ukraine at arms length in the peace negotiation. And then he’s going to be viewed as the guy that lost Europe, he’s going to be the biggest loser in the history of American foreign policy.”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “And then China’s sitting there and Taiwan’s got to be like oh sh**, you know, because right now if I were Xi I’d be looking at this and saying they’re not going to stop us if we go after Taiwan.”
Sen. Kaine: “And we do see China, Russia and Iran celebrating Trump’s actions, you know cutting off USAID funding – that’s great, you know, please retreat America! Iran and Russia celebrate a little more like pat themselves on the back and high five. China’s a little more cagey, but they rush investments into the areas when America retreats.”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “Well China has the money to do it. I mean Russia’s what, [10%] of our economy, whatever it is? It’s tiny. China’s a huge economy and they have the money to, they’ve run huge trade surpluses, they have plenty of currency of hard currency to use. But I don’t know what we can do about this exactly. I’m watching this and it’s very distressing…I’m worried about Ukraine…if this continues they’re going to lose, and that’s horrifying to me, I’m a huge Ukraine supporter. So anyway, I don’t know, I mean obviously you can’t solve all these problems, but this is just the stuff that’s going on day in day out. I mean, do you feel like you’ve got a fire hose on you pretty much constantly?”
Sen. Kaine: “Yeah, I mean I do. And you know like if I go to church in Richmond now, the time I’m in church after Mass is longer than the time during Mass because it’s like it’s like a confessional. My church is pretty heavily a refugee church, it’s a lot of Congolese refugees family. So everybody’s in a household where there’s probably some mixed immigration status, citizen permanent resident, refugee, undocumented – everybody’s worried. A lot of federal workers in my church…a lot of Northern Virginia federal workers during Covid relocated to Richmond, bought houses, [remote] work made that possible. Now you know are they forced to go back, do they lose their job completely? So it is a very intense time. And yeah I do kind of feel like I need to be a therapist in every meeting I walk into. And when am I going to get time to get the therapy I need?…Be a therapist in every meeting I walk into.”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “Are you glad you ran for reelection?”
Sen. Kaine: “I really am.”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “I mean, now that this is all happening? You didn’t see this?”
Sen. Kaine: “No, I’ll tell you exactly. You know it was hard to decide to do it. And I realized, you know we won handily – nine points, Kamala won by six without doing a single event in Virginia, Walz didn’t into a single event in Virginia, Trump and JD Vance both campaigned in Virginia; we won handily. But what I realized after the dust all settled is that if Kamala had won, I would have felt pretty comfortable if I had retired and I was exiting the Senate in January 2025. But when she lost, I realized it would have been the worst time to be leaving. The Senate is quirky, so you’ve got to be here a while before you realize oh wait a minute, I can use this privileged motion to challenge the president’s executive order and seize the floor…it would have been the wrong time to leave…”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “I’m very glad you did. I just said that a little snarkily but I’m serious though, this is crazy, and…Don Beyer said you guys aren’t getting much sleep, he said he isn’t and his colleagues in the House aren’t, so I presume you’re not getting a lot. I mean it’s just got to be stressful so I can see where you’re like oh s*it, what did I do, I could have gotten out of here? But you’re not that type of guy…and I’m glad you’re not.”
Sen. Kaine: “I mean you know my feeling too is we celebrate 250 years as a democracy in 2026 and I want to be able to celebrate it, not mourn it; I want it to be an anniversary, not a wake. And that’s my motivation.”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “That’s a good way to look at it. I mean that’s true, it’s coming up pretty soon. I haven’t really been thinking about that too much but you’re right. I mean I was alive and you were too for the 200th, and now we’re going to see the 250th, what’s it going to bring? We don’t know what’s it going to bring.”
Sen. Kaine: “What’s it going to bring?”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “But I guess one of the things was I wanted to ask you about the confirmation votes…The main thing is how Democrats resist this Administration. And there’s a lot of agitation online certainly and I think it’s not just online; I’ve seen polling, Democrats are not happy. their approval rating of Congress is very…it’s bad…But…so you guys voted for several of Trump’s Cabinet picks, including like Rubio got 99 to zero. And now you see like, let’s take Rubio, look at what he’s doing right now. And I’m looking at this and I’m like, how the hell did he win 99 to nothing – the guy’s horrendous. He’s over there in Saudi Arabia…he’s just caving to Trump whatever Trump wants him to do.”
Sen. Kaine: “So here’s the answer to this one. And I’ll give you my thought process; I don’t want to answer for anybody else. So let me just tell you the way I look at this. When I’m going into any Cabinet or major agency head, my thought is, is there any way we can beat this person or is there no way we can beat this person? So that’s the initial fork. If there’s any way we can beat the person, if it’s a 5% chance, I go all-in against them. I don’t think there’s been anybody who’s been tougher on any Cabinet nominee than I was on Hegseth at the DOD hearing, I think. And so I thought I might be able to get somebody. And I was tough on Vought and I was tough on RFK. And if I think there’s a chance even if it turns out I’m wrong later, I go all out on it and vote against them…I sometimes vote yes, I sometimes vote no, and that’s what I did in the first Trump Administration. What are factors that I use? You know, how bad are they? Who might be the alternative? If it wasn’t Marco Rubio, they were talking about Rick Grenell who was a Trump Administration guy who would have been an absolute disaster. But the other thing that’s a real factor for me, Mark would probably say the same, he may not say it quite this way – a third of my staff all they do is constituent service. So the big agencies – DOD, DHS, State for passports, Postal Service, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the VA, the IRS – we’re on the phone with those agencies every day on behalf of Virginians who want a tax refund or their VA benefit hasn’t been ruled on yet. And when we call the Congressional liaison office for the VA, I’m calling about Joe Smith from Chesapeake and their claim, they know whether I voted for them or not. Now, it would be nice to assume that they’re going to treat every constituency all exactly the same and of course they should, of course they should – I try to when people call my office. But I found over the course of doing this now for 12 years that you get better customer service for the Virginian who need these agencies every day if you have some level of cooperation with that agency. And a confirmation vote for somebody who is going to get confirmed, 100% they’re going to get confirmed, they don’t need your vote, they’re going to get confirmed anyway, but it does help you advocate for Virginia sometimes if you have not been hostile to them.”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “Right but does it also normalize someone like a Kristi Noem or whoever it is, that you know, hey she got a bunch of Democratic votes, you know…”
Sen. Kaine: “It could. You and I know about Kristi Noem, she’s not the one making immigration policy, it’s Stephen Miller. She is an implemente not a creator of the policy – that’s White House policy from Stephen Miller. But like the DHS that you might not think this, but DHS is one of tied with the VA for the agency we do the most work with, because every time somebody you know oh man I’m going abroad on a trip next week and I forgot I got to get my passport. Or I got pickpocketed and how do I get home. Or my mother wants to come over for my daughter’s wedding from India, we got to get a visa for her. And then all the deportation and other issues which are huge. DHS is one of the most frequent flyers in terms of communicating with them to help Virginians.”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “I do think there’s a disconnect…I think that a lot of the grassroots activists don’t understand why, they see Democrats voting for these horrible Trump picks or going to his inauguration or whatever it is and they feel like it’s normalizing him, we’re not really fighting back seriously, we said he’s an existential threat and then it’s like wait you voted to confirm this one and that one. And it’s hard. I get it and I follow this stuff very closely, but for just someone who casually observes American politics, it’s like wait a minute…”
Sen. Kaine: “Look, if you ask people, the everyday person what does a US senator do? We we go to committee meetings and we vote on the floor of the Senate. The thought that a third of my staff does nothing but constituent service for 8 1/2 million Virginians, that’s not what people think about when they think about a Senate, that’s one of the most important things we do.”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “Right, I’m just saying people are angry, upset, worried, a lot of things out there and they want to see their Democratic representatives feel like they’re really fighting, shutting down the Senate, slowing it down to a crawl like McConnell probably would have done…that type of thing. I’m sure you’re aware of this, but that’s sort of I’m noticing this…I know social media isn’t real life, I mean it is real people, but I know it’s not maybe representative exactly, but you see the polling too, people aren’t thrilled, I mean the Democratic approval is the lowest right now…for the Democratic…Congress people, it’s very low.”
Sen. Kaine: “You know…and on that, I mean I guess that is true nationally, but I understand Virginia not 49 other states. And we just had a good November in Virginia following a good November last year in Virginia, and I think we’re going to have a good November in 2025 in Virginia. So there are some things about national politics that do make me scratch my head. The longer I do it, the more I think I understand one place and I’m mystified by everybody else. But anyway, now, the effect on Virginia is as dramatic maybe more dramatic than any other place.”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “Because of the federal workforce and retirees and contractors. I mean, you always hear 140,000 federal employees, but you’ve got more than that of retirees I believe, and then I don’t know how many contractors there are, I haven’t seen a good number on that…”
Sen. Kaine: “And then the families.”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “And then the businesses that rely on…so all of that it’s probably hundreds and hundreds of thousands if not millions that are affected…it’s huge.”
Sen. Kaine: “I mean, if you just go veterans, one out of nine Virginians is a veteran. And that’s not one out of nine adults, that’s just one out of nine Virginians is a veteran. So then you add active duty guard, military, contractor, DOD civilian, federal civilian, their families who rely on them…you’re talking one out of three probably.”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “Right, and what percent of the economy does this account for or directly or maybe second order effect?”
Sen. Kaine: “I’ve seen that number and my memory might be playing a trick on me but I think it’s about 40%.”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “And Youngkin’s…Rachel Maddow was…mocking him, but yeah, he hasn’t been fighting for Virginia. If you were Governor right now, you’d be fighting for Virginia. If Bob McDonnell would have probably back in the day.”
Sen. Kaine: “No, when I was governor if anything happened in Washington I didn’t like, I’d pick up the phone and I’d call Jim Webb and John Warner and say hey, what the heck? And it didn’t make a difference whether it was George Bush or Barack Obama was President, you’re not moving an aircraft carrier to Jacksonville Florida…And they they wanted me to call them on that…Warner would go to bat against the Republican president, Webb would go to bat against the Democratic president. They’re going to go to bat for Virginia. And the governor would make that call instantaneously. I’ll give you an example and then I got to go. When the first kind of funding cut stuff started to come through, of course Trump’s not telling the Senate I’m going to do this. And so how do we get the information about it? We get it because people start calling our office. The first people that call are usually the governor calling the Senate, hey the Medicaid portal is turned off, nobody can register for Medicaid. One of my colleagues, Jeff Merkley, got that call from the governor of Oregon, the Medicaid portal is turned off. He spread the word among among colleagues. I asked my staffer, call down to DMAS in Richmond and ask if the Medicaid portal has been turned off because I don’t know, maybe it’s just some states not all, or maybe it was a glitch in Oregon. My staffer Samantha calls DMAS, is the Medicaid portal turned off? Well, we’ll have to check and get back to you; they wouldn’t confirm…Governor Youngkin’s opening salvo was yeah these funding things are paused but it’s not going to affect any individual benefits. Later they had to come back and correct that, no the Medicaid portal had been turned off. But the point is, everybody else was getting the fire alarm call from the governor right away, our Medicaid portal is turned off. Mark and I couldn’t even get a confirmation of that.”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “Yeah that’s really wild. I mean, that’s what the Founding Fathers believed that each state would fiercely defend its prerogatives, that each body of the the legislature would defend…And if that breaks down, I don’t know, all know bet are off…”
Sen. Kaine: “And the vote will be next week so we’ll see how it goes.”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “Yeah I’ll keep an eye on it, definitely.”
Sen. Kaine: “Okay, thanks man.”
Blue Virginia (Lowell): “Thanks a lot, take care.”
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