See below for video and a few highlights from Sen. Mark Warner’s weekly press availability, held earlier this afternoon. Just crazy, crazy (e.g., lawless, unconstitutional, reckless, destructive, dangerous) stuff Sen. Warner and his Democratic colleagues are dealing with right now. Surreal sh**.
- “The week frankly started on kind of a down note for me because I could only get one Republican senator – Senator McConnell – to stand with me and all of the Democratic colleagues to vote against Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. I pray that my feeling in terms of her lack of judgment or unwillingness to keep things secret will prove to be false. I hope she does well. But boy oh boy, to give an individual who seems to always side with our enemies’ views, who’s unable to call Edward Snowden a traitor, is more than a little bit chilling, now running all 18 of our intelligence community agencies. As Vice chairman of the committee, I’m going to keep a close watch on her and all of these appointees to make sure that our men and women in the IC are not undercut.”
- “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – CFPB. I was part of one of the authors of the Dodd-Frank bill that created this entity to make sure that consumers were not harmed by large financial institutions. This goes back to the 2008 financial crisis, where people were constantly being ripped off with little-found promises and mortgages. There’s a host of other areas in terms of late fees. The CFPB has done its job – over $20 billion has been returned to consumers. Well, what do you do with an agency like that that was approved by Congress? The new OMB director, Russell Vought, who was the author of the nefarious Project 2025 that called for elimination of most of the government, he’s come in without authority and basically told everybody at CFPB to work from home this week. Who knows what they’re doing in terms of disturbing, misusing, going into data that’s at the agency. This is all an effort to try to shut down the CFPB. We will litigate that just as we will litigate all of these issues. I wish that some my Republican colleagues would show some courage – it’s their consumers who are also being harmed by taking down this agency. But this one, it looks like we’ll have to fight in the courts.”
- “And then finally, I just finished voting no on Robert Kennedy Jr., against someone who brings his kind of out-of-the- mainstream views, particularly around vaccines, to our nation’s leading health care position. Certain things about Mr Kennedy I like – the focus on chronic illnesses, focus on healthy eating. But that is far more outweighed by the fact of his kind of anti- science approach on vaccines and medical research. Matter of fact, he told me he wanted to eliminate 2,200 positions at NIH. He couldn’t tell me which positions. But if we suddenly were to lose some of our top scientists from our premier laboratory, that would be devastating. And in a sign of what’s coming, the administration just within the last 48 hours cut out $4 billion from medical research. That will directly affect Virginia colleges and universities…This is not a way to keep Americans safe. This is not a way to make sure that we protect women’s reproductive healthare needs. This is not a way for America to continue to be the leader in research and development. By making these cuts, we are basically ceding the ground to China to take advantage. China is very very active in medical research, very active in genetic research. And this is both short-sighted from a health care standpoint, it’s also shortsighted from a national security standpoint.”
- “Those are just some of the activities of of the week. Trump continues to flood the zone with executive orders – some legal, many probably illegal. I was disappointed to see that the buyout offer, the judge removed the restraining order. And I just am deeply concerned for those federal employees who took that offer, when I can tell you there is no money in the budget past March 14th for any of those payments to be made. We’ll see if we get a budget, what happens. But I go back to Mr. Trump’s record, frankly his pitiful record in terms of his willingness to keep his promises or pay contractors. So I hope people will think long and hard before they take up an offer where you may not get paid out, but you may end up simply losing your job without any benefits at all.”
- “I wish the concerns that Tim Kaine and I raised repeatedly to our colleagues – don’t try to cram more flights into the busiest runway in America. I mean, National was set up for 15 million passengers; it’s got 25 million. and to have this tragedy come about, I’m not saying it was congestion per se, I want to wait for the NTSB, but we said please, let the FAA decide the flights going in, not Congress, not to simply make it easier for a congressman to fly home from National rather than Dulles…I am glad to see that at least for a while, helicopter traffic around National has been slowed….You’ve got a helicopter that it all transverses the Potomac, you’ve got these planes coming in at a huge rapid rate on the main runway, and that spells a recipe for disaster. Unfortunately, we saw that disaster and now 67 lives have been lost. So I’m going to wait for the full explanation from NTSB, I think they’re about this at a rapid pace, but I…wish my members of Congress would rethink the next time they try to cram more airplanes in and let the safety considerations let the FAA make these determinations. Final point I want to make is air traffic controllers – we’re about 10,800 air traffic controllers, we need about 13,000 roughly. If those air traffic controllers start taking this buyout offer, we’re up the creek, because it takes a year plus of training and then another year of training in a very busy tower like National to be certified. God forbid if we had a couple thousand air traffic controllers quit, air traffic in America would grind to a halt. And that again shows the shortsightedness, the lack of thought, when people who’ve never run an operation like the US government come in and willy-nilly put forward these kind of buyout offers without reflecting on what happens if people actually take the offer, this is not the same as Twitter, this is not the same as a tech company where you can plug in one coder for another, these are jobs that require enormous experience, enormous training…”
- “Mr. Musk is a very successful business person, I have no question about that. Matter of fact, I helped him more than a decade ago was he was trying to break into what was then an existing space monopoly with SpaceX and it’s done a great job. But here’s my concerns – we don’t know who these DOGE folks are. The few that we found out about, we found one was an avowed racist, we found another had been fired for leaking information. You’re letting them in to our databases and we don’t know whether it’s a read only or read and write, what kind of mischief can they play? We don’t even know their identities, that’s outrageous! On top of that, Mr. Musk, look at his comments over the years, he’s always been trashing the United States government, the European government – you never hear him trash the Chinese government. He talks fondly about the Chinese regime, the authoritarianism. Why? He’s got his biggest Tesla factory there. Why? He gets most of the batteries he puts in his Teslas from oftentimes near slave labor from from the Uyghur population. I’m very concerned as we get into these areas of conflict between the United States and China about this possible conflict of interest, or the idea for example now that the DOGE Bros are going into NASA. You know, SpaceX is both a client of NASA and also sometimes a competitor. What are they looking for? What is the information? Where is that information going to end up? Is it going to end up staying on classified government servers or is it going to end up somehow in a back office that could give Mr. Musk and his enterprises competitive advantages…”
- “There’s never been a group of special government employees when we don’t know most of their names, when we don’t know their security clearances. The kid who for a while was inside Treasury was 25 and had a secret classification, that is the lowest level of classification, you couldn’t look at virtually anything that I review with only secret…some of the information on those files, the highest classification in our government is required because it’s frankly in a sense the checkbook of the United States. You want to go after a program, fine, go after a program where it’s authorized, where somebody has to vet it. Getting this kind of personal level information is extraordinarily dangerous. And if word got out, you don’t think the Chinese and the Russians would pay whatever it takes to get access, because candidly some of our classified programs could be identified either by somebody maliciously or just being an ignorant fool and letting some of this information out.”
- “I’d say to those folks what I said before, you can always tell a scammer by the way they advertise – it’s always call now! offer expires at midnight! Well that was the exact tactics that the Trump Administration used. And you’re right, in 29 days funding runs out. And I’m going to be very curious to see whether my Republican colleagues who are marching in lockstep right now with Trump are going to be willing to put that money in the budget to make sure these folks get pay for another 6 months without doing [anything]…And on the same hand, we don’t know who these 75,000 are. What I worry if we are losing some of our most experienced people, it may cost twice as much to replace them, to train them train up. I thought this was ill conceived, ill executed and I’m afraid that a lot of employees may be left holding nothing but a pink slip at the end of the day.”
- “There was a lengthy process to rename the bases and candidly, I was very pleasantly surprised when the bases in Virginia were renamed that there seemed to be very little pushback. What appears to me is the defense secretary is trying to poke a hornet’s nest when folks are pretty satisfied with the the names that reflect another part of American history. I hope he will think twice in Virginia before he would go about renaming, and if he does, I’m sure Tim Kanie and Jennifer McClellan, Bobby Scott and hopefully the balance of the delegation will stand up and say you know we went through a process in Virginia, people for the most part I think felt heard and listened to. Why reopen this can of worms when people already have moved on?”
- “Clearly if the Trump Administration valued experience leadership, they wouldn’t have made a blanket buyout offer. And that executive training entity in Charlottesville, far enough away from DC yet close enough to be convenient for people to take the courses, to be surrounded by the history that University of Virginia and Charlottesville provide, that is the kind of penny-wise, pound-foolish approach this guy takes. You want your senior cadre of government officials to have leadership training; there’s not a major company in America that doesn’t provide that leadership training. To shut this down with no warning…will end up costing taxpayers more money, and frankly for people who were lined up to go and take the classes it’s downright cruel.”
- “I think the close to 10,000 [USAID] workers that have been furloughed or in the process of being laid off, I mean it’s beyond bizarre. I mean, I’ve had folks call saying they’re stranded in in Africa where the rest of the AID Mission had already left and they didn’t even have a ticket back. I mean, is that how the United States government treats people who are on the front line of trying to use American soft power. I think it’s reprehensible. But as your comment made, it’s not just the USAID folks directly it’s all the contractors. If you look at any of the world feeding programs, if you look at CARE, if you look at disaster relief, if you look at at folks trying to bring clean water to communities, these organizations which are often times recipients of the grants, they’re laying off people at numbers five and 10 times more than what AID is. I think this will have a huge hit in terms of America’s presence around the world. And it is being greeted, let me just tell you, we’ve got Chinese media, Russian media, Iranian media all applauding Trump getting rid of AID, because they know that’s the way America can burnish its reputation and earn friends around the world for pennies on the dollar. I can guarantee you China will be rushing in to try to provide this food and assistance and it will help them in their geopolitical positioning. But I think in terms of the region, I think the region will take a hit. It’ll be hard to measure which part is simply AID or nonprofits, which part are CFPB employees or other employees, but our economy is going to take a dramatic hit across the region. And we need leaders at the state level and the federal level and for that matter the local level to all step up and speak out. This idea if you keep your head low, maybe none of this is going to hurt you, that just is not going to be a successful formula.”
- “…so far those contractors I think have kept their head low, because Trump and Musk have not moved to DOD, but they’re moving there next. And I would simply say to them, you guys need to step up and speak out as you see in many cases what is going to be a waste of money. Because many of these functions are critical to our national security and firing experienced people and trying to rehire newbies or simply using technology to replace individuals at this stage I think will end up costing taxpayers money.”
- “I think having a workforce that looks like America makes sense to me…In Virginia, we’re about 40% people of color; if that big a piece of Virginia’s economy is not actively involved across all layers of the private sector and government, we’re not going to be as efficient. So if there were one-off programs that went too far, fine, let’s debate about those, but let’s not come in with a sledgehammer and destroy in the case of AID 70 years of work – 70 years. I mean…George Bush with PEPFAR had one of the most trusted international initiatives in modern history. Or coming into the CFPB and not even looking at the value of the 20 plus billion dollars that goes out to consumers, shutting that down without any government approval…neither one of these guys are kings. If Congress sets up a program, Congress has to unwind it. And it just flabbergasts me that none of my Republican colleagues have been willing, at least to this date, to step up and say that’s just a bridge too far. You know we’ve got this budget debate coming up – how do you do a deal with someone that can’t keep a promise or doesn’t observe contracts? I think it raises real questions about the value of having a contract with the federal government. I talked earlier about these cuts to research institutions, you know this formula on how much is overhead and how much is not, how much goes to research that’s not ad hoc, that was a set of negotiations. There was a contract signed. The idea that those contracts are simply being thrown out the window means, one, people may be hesitant to do advanced research; two, you’re going to see the whole system them tied up in lawsuits; and three, it sure as heck raises a lot of questions with me when you’ve got these young coders, they may be great coders, but they have no knowledge of most of the subjects and most the agencies are looking at going in and willy-nilly destroying and culling out programs. You want to highlight some bad programs, let’s have at it, if need be we’ll eliminate them. But shutting down whole functions of government is illegal and will end up costing the taxpayer money.”
- “So far, most all of the work of the Senate has been on these confirmations. And you know, I initially voted for a number of Mr. Trump’s nominees; as a former governor, I generally believe the president or governor ought to get their picks. I stopped that last week when so many of these outrageous actions, particularly by DOGE, counter to the law, without appropriate security clearances, where I said I’m just not going to vote for these folks if they’re not going to respect the law and the Constitution. I’m sure there’ll be areas where we could we work together, I’ve got a lot of bipartisan legislation… but these first few weeks have been, there’s been nothing on the floor of the Senate that’s been about lowering the price of eggs or the price of groceries, the reasons why Donald Trump was elected. What has been on the floor of the Senate is a lot of irresponsible, ill equipped Trump loyalists being put into positions of power, often times without regard to rule of law or for that for that matter enough appropriate concerns about our nation’s security.”
- “What I do have a problem with is an organization that’s returned over $20 billion to consumers because of fraud, because of ripoff scams, arbitrarily being shut down with no warning. I mean what happens if it’s the FBI next? What happens if it’s whatever, you know the Environmental Protection Agency, just because it’s in the political crosshairs of some of the very wealthy folks who make up the Trump Administration? This is not the way America ought to be governed...And I know there’s a lawsuit pending, but why are we spending this much time, money and effort when if President Trump has got ideas about reform of CFPB or any other entity, present it to the Congress, let us weigh in, let us figure out, if there’s a way to fix it or make it better, and then what we can try to come to agreement. What we can’t come to is by executive fiat and a stroke of a pen, this President dismantling wide swaths of government that had broad bipartisan support. That’s just not the way our Constitution and system works.”
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