See below for video and a few highlights from Sen. Mark Warner’s weekly press availability yesterday. I’ve added bolding, as usual, for emphasis of key points that jumped out at me. And as always, thanks to Sen. Warner for doing these; they’re very helpful!
- “…a very good week for Democrats in Virginia… the remarkable wins by Abigail Spanberger and all the way down the ticket, the pickup of 13 seats in the State House. This was clearly a rejection of Donald Trump. It was her focus on affordability. And I think the current Republican administration in Richmond and all the Republican candidates tied themselves so closely to Trump that there was no way they could avoid the voters’ wrath. You know, one of the things that’s pretty interesting as somebody who’s been doing this for a while, you know, people will say, ‘well, that was, you know, Democrats won or Spanberger won because of Northern Virginia.’ You actually could take Northern Virginia out of the difference and Democrats still won the governorship. And that is I think a remarkable achievement. I was particularly happy as somebody who my mantra for my 20 plus years in this has been you got to let folks in rural communities have the same hope as folks in more urban communities. And the gains that Democrats made and Spanberger made in jurisdiction after jurisdiction in Southside and Southwest, the fact that Democrats now have a delegate west of Roanoke. I think her message in focusing on basics and not going to the extremes and focusing on affordability really resonates and it is something that is so terribly important.”
- “And that brings me to the the next topic which of course is the shutdown. And you know, the truth of the matter is Donald Trump told the truth yesterday, not something he often does, when he acknowledged that the shutdown hurt Republicans. This is a Republican shutdown. They control the the presidency, the Senate, the House. And the remarkable thing is we’ve been saying, ‘let’s get the government open.’ I know people are hurting. I heard that as I met with voters all across the weekend, but they also are terrified by the affordability cliff that’s coming with health care as people see the new rates. They’re terrified if they’re the one out of eight Virginiaians who get food assistance and the downright cruelty of this administration. They could have put a full plan in place, but instead they are hedging and hesitating on how much they’re going to reimburse, which just adds more nervousness to Virginians. The fact that Trump’s…chaotic tariff policies were even questioned by the very conservative Supreme Court. Because remember…Donald Trump tariffs are taxes. As the Supreme Court said, they are adding $2,400 a year in additional cost to an average American family.”
- “So, I do hope my Republican friends got the message: Americans, Virginians want us focused on affordability. That means avoiding the health care cliff. It means getting people the food assistance. It means having a predictable economic policy that doesn’t raise taxes through tariffs. It also means getting the government open. And we’re waiting to hear from Leader Thune what his intentions are. Remember, they control the schedule on what we vote on, when we vote on. I know there’s discussions back and forth. But one of the things that’s also problematic is there’s such lack of trust whether, you know, even if you get the government and when we get the government reopened, which I hope will be shortly, you know, how do you make sure the this administration adheres to a deal? That’s why later today I’m leading a a bill with a number of my Democratic colleagues, including all of the senators from Maryland and Virginia, to say it would be illegal for a president – any president – to RIF people or fire people during a shutdown. You know, since early October the administration has sent out about 4,000 RIF notices, reduction in force notices. Thank goodness the courts have…stymied that. But we know that Russell Vought, the director of OMB’s key policy is to terrorize and traumatize the federal workforce by trying to do illegal RIFs during this shutdown. It’s just wrong. My legislation that I’m introducing today would prohibit that on a going-forward basis. A lot of Republicans have said, you know, we don’t think people ought to be RIF’ed during shutdowns. We’ll see if they’re willing to put their name on that kind of legislation.”
- “One last issue that something I’ve been working on a long time that I’m also introduced this week with Josh Hawley, so broadly bipartisan, that looks at the coming AI revolution. I mean AI can bring benefits to communities, but there is also a dark underbelly to this…technology as we’ve seen with so many technological innovations. We’re already seeing Amazon, for example, lay off 14,000 people, Microsoft 8,000. Other large entities have indicated that AI could reduce half of their workforce. We don’t collect any data on that at this point. So my bill with Josh Hawley would say companies need to report to the BLS when it gets reopened and the Labor Department what kind of jobs are being lost by AI. And just quickly what we are also including on this, and this is where I think AI will have the most disruption in the short term, is the fact that particularly those elimination of those starter jobs coming out of college. Most of the large banks and and accounting firms and consulting firms have all told me they are literally cutting their internships and first year hires in half. We already have 9% unemployment of recent college graduates. I think that number could go to 25% literally within the next year or so. And how we look at that job dislocation, particularly for families who’ve stretched their finances to send their kid to college if there are no jobs coming out of college, could have huge economic disruption. So we’re trying to measure that as well. And one of the things I’ll have more to say about is I think we really need to challenge the AI community and the AI tech companies that they need to chip in and help develop how we retrain folks for these AI related jobs. I may accept the fact that over a long period of time, AI will create a whole host of new jobs, but there’s no one – the most ardent AI advocate – hasn’t acknowledged there could be, you know, five to seven years of dislocation. And if we’re suddenly looking at 25%, 30%, 35% of college graduates not being able to get a job, coming out with great deal of student debt, the economic chaos that we’ve already got will be hugely accelerated. So, I’m sure I won’t get many questions on that, but I wanted to talk about that issue because, trust me, within the next year or so AI job dislocation is going to be one of the premier issues in our country.”
- “Speaker Johnson has been the height of irresponsibility now giving what, seven weeks of paid vacation to House members? They’re not here in town. It is insulting to our federal workers. The fact that President Trump went around, you know, took two international trips, is insulting to the federal workers. In terms of the discussion between the bipartisan gang, I am not part of that gang…This is the first one I’ve not been part of, because I just don’t know whether our Republican senators will ever stand up to Trump. Now, after Tuesday, maybe they will. But they are talking about a continuing resolution that would involve getting the government open and getting a vote on healthcare and also moving some of the appropriations bills so that there’s not an ability for this administration to arbitrarily cut back on say SNAP benefits or WIC benefits…But the fact that the Speaker has kept the House out of session, I wish I could take him around to folks in Northern Virginia and some of the voters and let him explain to people who’ve gone without a paycheck for six or seven weeks and who are now dipping into their savings or remortgaging their home why he ought to get on a paid vacation because Congress is getting paid. I’m not taking my salary. I’m dedicating it, donating at all to the federal employee relief fund. But it is the height of irresponsibility.”
- “Listen to Donald Trump. He said, you know, the American public blames Republicans for this shutdown…I think the American people, not just in Virginia, but New Jersey, New York, California, Georgia – there was a statewide election in Georgia, Democrats won that, they hadn’t won in 30 years. Donald Trump, get the message. Sit down with us. Let’s work this out. It could be worked out in a couple of hours and get the government open. Get folks back their healthcare. And don’t allow folks in Virginia to go hungry. Because as you also may know, our food banks are already so overstressed that when people can’t use their use their food stamps and they’re going hungry, their only last resort is the food banks and they’re going to get crushed.”
- “The Constitution is clear: you’re supposed to do redistricting every 10 years. Remember who started this? Wasn’t started by Democrats. It was started by Donald Trump and a bunch of folks in Texas to say, ‘let’s try to cook the books.’ They know the American people are turning against his policies and they’re trying to frankly cheat the system by redistricting. And then you saw in California where overwhelmingly, I think it was a 27-point margin, voters said, ‘no, we don’t want this cooking the books on redistricting.’ I think what Virginia Democrats did – and I want to give a big shout out again to both Leader Surovell in the Senate and Speaker Scott. They’re saying Virginians ought to have a chance to weigh in on this if this is happening all around. Remember in North Carolina they did this without any voter approval. In Virginia, if the legislature moves forward, Virginians will have a chance to weigh in on whether they want this to happen or not. But let’s not pretend that this was somehow, you know, popped into the political debate out of thin air. This popped into the political debate because Donald Trump knew his policies were sticking it to Americans and they’re trying to cook the books for the 2026 election. If Texas and these other states would back off, I think there’d be no support in in Virginia for redistricting. They’ve already taken that first step and we’ll see how it plays through the legislature and with the new governor. But again, I just remind people in Virginia, voters will have a chance and have a say on whether they want this to happen or not.”
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