Video: Sen. Mark Warner Says He’s Heard From “Virginians of every stripe” That “you need to stand up against this…unlawful activity…random firing, terrorizing of our workforce”

See below for video and a few highlights from Sen. Mark Warner’s weekly press availability.

• “Welcome to Day 53 of the reign of chaos…In 53 days, Donald Trump has traumatized literally millions of federal workers, demoralized them…Beyond the harms done to these workers’ lives…who’s ever going to want to come work for the federal government again?…This will have ramifications for as far as the eye can see.”
• “The president got hired because he said he was going to lower prices – WRONG. Prices are still going up, food prices in particular are going up, and you now have with these completely wrong-minded tariffs, price spikes that are going to go across the whole economy…”
• “Frankly, the Canadians pushing back I understand, they didn’t start this challenge, Donald Trump did – not America, Donald Trump. And for a guy that said…things would be great, well the stock market has erased all the gains since Trump’s election…the market believes we’re headed into a recession…Could you imagine…what Republicans would say if this as the record of 53 days of a Democratic president?“
• “And then to add insult to injury, we have the situation of our alliances being tattered…Trump has declared such disrespect for Canada…destroyed America’s reputation in Canada for the foreseeable future. We’ve seen our alliances like in Ukraine and all of NATO undermined. And that kind of on-and-off of aid, it’s reprehensible.”
• “So it’s been a pretty horrendous first 53 days…and don’t take my word for it, the public is seeing what we’ve already seen in Virginia and particularly in the DMV area where I imagine the president’s ratings are probably down in the low 30s or high 20s. Nationally, we’re seeing he’s already underwater, and I think probably as more Americans see the harm that’s done, they’ll say, we didn’t hire this guy for this, we didn’t hire this guy for unmitigated chaos.”
• “That brings us to the issue at hand and let me acknowledge on the front end that we’ve been presented with two pretty awful options – a government shutdown or what’s called a continuing resolution that will fund the government through September, but on very different terms than what had been agreed to earlier. On a government shutdown we know there’s a concern that you could have a Trump and Musk that would like a government shutdown and maybe never reopen the government or reopen only selective parts. On the continuing resolution, I will tell you one of the reasons I’m amazed that Republican Senators aren’t standing up, they had no participation in that…this was a MAGA group of far-right Republicans in the House who drove this and nobody else had input. Traditionally, even in divided government, both teams have a little bit of say. And this continuing resolution is just awful…it dramatically cuts back veteran services…The Continuing Resolution as well takes a gratuitous, mean-spirited shot at the District of Columbia…The CR in many ways would be an endorsement of the Trump/Musk agenda. So I am voting no on the continuing resolution, I’m voting no on the motion to proceed, I am voting no even if we get an amendment that gives us a 30-day unless we get the 30-day extension passed which would require 13 Republicans, I’m not sure we’re going to get that. Let me also quickly add that I understand, and we had quite a spirited Democratic caucus today, that there’ll be a number of Democratic senators that are voting yes. I understand that, I understand their concerns; I’m not going to criticize their decision. But what I have heard from Virginians of every stripe particularly our federal workforce, is you need to stand up against this in many ways unlawful activity, this random firing, terrorizing of our workforce which so far at least virtually every court has ruled against.”
• “…regardless of what happens tomorrow, this is going to continue to be a rocky period. And if Virginia and Americans don’t like this, they need to remember who’s responsible. I pride myself on not being a terribly partisan guy, but you know I have never seen a time when everything is controlled not by a traditional Republican Party but by Trump and his extremists. And we so desperately need Republicans in this Senate, we only need four to stand up – I don’t ask them to change parties, I just ask them to find the courage to vote for what they know is right and to not allow this…unconstitutional power grab to continue.”
• “I think it’s again unpreceded that the four senators in the region are going to vote no on this…one of the things that has driven me as much as anything is just how many federal workers, federal employee unions…businesses in the region – I was with a number of government contractors last night, they felt this CR was so bad that they all urged me to vote no.”
• “…I appeal to folks around the Commonwealth, I don’t care what political party you belong to, but we need to hear your voices. We particularly need to hear the voice voes of Republican local elected officials. I’d love to hear from folks in in Hampton Roads, elected officials…I say this to my business community friends, the idea if you simply keep your head low and maybe they won’t notice you, well how’s that worked out for the business community so far with these non-thought-through tariffs, where this guy in 53 days has managed to make mad our best business partners, pissed off all of our military allies and probably put America in a more isolated  position than anything post-World War II.”
• “…I don’t know why or how or what excuse the Administration has for not declaring these communities a disaster area in terms of Helene; we’re still uncertain…there is huge unease, this is rule by chaos. And the communities that are the hardest hit in Southwest Virginia, again areas where Trump overwhelmingly won, are being treated with disdain, disrespect, and if these funds don’t arrive, it’s one illegal, because Congress passed this, but two it reflects what Trump actually feels about a lot of these rural communities.”
•  “I’ve had a number of friends who have been flown back from Europe in the last last week or so, and they say the planes coming back from Europe are virtually empty, because tourists aren’t coming to America now – who wants to come to an America that bashes our longtime democratic allies and sides with Russia? I think businesses are not coming over because who wants to do business dealings here when there’s no certainty? So there may be a little less congestion at our international gateway airports, but I’m still very concerned about National.”
•  “Listen, I think this White House and Musk in particular has taken a chainsaw to our government. I think it’s been probably the most irresponsible actions I’ve seen by anybody in politics and frankly in business… I’m not sure Mr. Musk is even going to last at his companies anymore if you see Tesla stock going down much more. The fact that he’s not overseeing what he’s paid to oversee and instead is wreaking havoc in the government doesn’t bode well…”
• “I hear about Republican Congressman picking up the phone and trying to call the DOGE bros to say can you not hit my installation. To me, that sounds like graft and corruption in one form or another, it’s not the way America’s always operated. I guess then I shouldn’t be that surprised in light of the fact that Trump turned the White House into a Tesla shopping lot the same day that Musk committed another $100 million to Trump. I mean…when is this going to get folks who supported President Trump to say no mas, to say this is enough…”
•   “I talk to Governor Youngkin pretty regularly, we’ve not talked in a couple of weeks. We may have a disagreement about…the loss of these federal workers and contractors is huge to Virginia…I think the contractor community is terrified, but if they don’t raise their voice, if they simply stay silent and say well gosh, maybe we can just ride this out, that would be a recipe for disaster...”
•  “…with this kind of chainsaw taken to the Department of Education, I think they said they’re going to shut it all down overnight, who is going to actually say, well, I still want to go into teaching if I’m not sure my loan forgiveness program, which is a great recruitment tool into teaching, is actually going to be honored? Because they may not like the fact that I’m a history teacher or literature teacher, because I might not be teaching, they want to teach one side of history and not the whole history, good bad and ugly of our country…So I think this teacher shortage with these ill-thought-through policies, I fear will get worse…And what message does it send to kids or to the rest of the world that the United States of America has decided that education is not an important enough topic to be a cabinet-level office, you know it’s kind of wacky, we live in a knowledge-based economy…and instead you’ve got somebody on a political quest to get a headline to shut down a department they could have come in and reformed...”