See below for video and highlights/transcript (as always, bolding added by me for emphasis of key points or things that jumped out at me) from Sen. Mark Warner’s weekly press availability. Lots to talk about these days, most of which is not good, that’s for sure…
- “We’re literally less than two weeks away from the beginning of the new fiscal year, and it appears that we are once again at an impasse. What is troubling at this point is that our Republican friends have put out a proposal, the Democrats put out a proposal, and we had the president of the United States basically saying, ‘Hey, we can pass this with only Republican votes.’ I know President Trump has amassed a lot of power, but the law still dictates, at least in the United States Senate, that you’ve got to get 60 votes. And there’s…only 53 Republicans. So, you cannot continue the government funding without support from Democrats, at least in the Senate. And at this moment in time, and we’ve seen this movie before, there’s not even any ongoing negotiations.”
- “Obviously, both sides will have to make compromises. What I believe is this is a time when we need to put an end to the devastating cuts in healthcare. We’ve already seen Medicaid cuts of a trillion dollars that will leave upwards of 400,000 Virginians without their health insurance. We’ve seen dramatic cuts to food nutrition programs in an unprecedented way. But what’s going to really hit home for Virginians is that any Virginian that buys their insurance through the Obamacare marketplace, if the tax subsidies for those purchases expire at the end of the year, we’re going to see an average couple, not poor, but average couple that might make $80,000 might have their insurance rates go up $800 a month if you’re a 60-year-old couple. That’s devastating. And that will affect not only those who are on Medicaid or buy through the marketplace, but all the rest of us who have private health insurance, if we’re taking literally 17 million Americans or 600,000 or 700,000 Virginians and cutting off all their health care and they show up at the emergency room, that is going to drive everybody’s health care costs up. I think some of my Republican friends understand that they over overreached, but we ought to settle that as part of the government funding going forward. Extend those those health care benefits, because Virginians are starting to get higher bills starting in October. So, it’s time for that negotiation. It’s time to avoid a shutdown, but it has to be reached at a compromise. There is, even in today’s environment, President Trump cannot dictate the government budget without a 60-vote margin. And at this point there’s been absolutely no discussions or conversations. And that’s not good for anyone. And particularly not good for those of us, those Virginians who are going to see their health care costs explode – literally they’ll start getting the bills next month. Let’s pray for cooler heads. I actually think the Democratic leadership ought to sit down with President Trump. They’ve not met with him the whole year, never happened like this before and see if we can get this resolved.”
- “We have seen this administration be just horrible to federal workers…One of the things that President Trump has done as well is undercut and undermine the federal unions that represent so many workers. And let me assure you, federal unions don’t negotiate pay and benefits. That is not something they have the ability to do. What they do do is try to protect federal workers from discrimination, from firings that were without cause. President Trump has taken those rights away by in effect stripping employees of those rights. I’ve introduced bipartisan legislation that would restore federal workers who’ve been in a union their right to stay in that union. Again, this not about paying benefits. This is about working conditions. It’s about making sure that you’re not discriminated against, you don’t have unlawful firings. And those rights again have been respected by every Republican president in the past, including President Trump in his first term.”
- “And finally, an issue that I’ve talked and shared with you many times. I’m going to go to the floor of the Senate this afternoon and lay out in huge detail what is happening to our intelligence community. You know, the men and women of our intelligence community, they are not partisan. They don’t get the attention that the members of our armed services get, but they are absolutely critical to the defense of our nation. And we are seeing, particularly driven by the director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, an undermining of the independence of our intelligence community. Our intelligence community, unless they can speak truth to power, their value is is frankly diminished. When we have the intelligence community corrupting their product to meet a political need, that’s what got us into the war in Iraq in the first place. And I don’t think we want that to happen again. We have seen intelligence professionals fired for not bending their knee. We’ve seen outside agitators that have no role in government, like Laura Loomer, push out you frankly Republican members of the community who are the head of the National Security Council…in the White House, push out the director of the National Security Agency, General Tim Hawke. We’ve seen this individual frankly restrict my ability and all senators ability to do oversight. And remember, there’s only 17 members of the intelligence committee. If we’re not doing our oversight, all the rest of the Senate doesn’t get to see the classified activities of the intelligence committee. And frankly, the vast majority of the intelligence committee’s headquarters are located in Virginia. It’s my job as oversight, but it’s also to see those constituents. Those rights have been restricted. And we are on an extraordinarily dangerous path and I am going to lay that out in some detail this afternoon, give a speech on it tomorrow. This has nothing to do with partisanship. It does have to do though with protecting the integrity of the intelligence work product. When it is corrupted, when people’s classifications are removed unfairly, when people who are undercover are exposed, not only are their lives ruined, but all of our country is made less safe. And I can tell you from our allies around the world, they are astounded by what is happening. And again, if they are not sharing with us, again, Americans are made less safe. So I hope I can draw attention to this. I hope I can get my Republican colleagues who quietly say to me every day, ‘Oh my gosh, Mark, you’re right. You’re right. You’re right’ to do more than talking quietly, but also state the obvious that if the intelligence community can’t tell the truth, then they’re not being able to do their job and our nation is made less safe.”
- “As you may know, for the last almost 10 years, I’ve had a series of bipartisan bills that have tried to put guardrails on social media. I think if we’d put guardrails on social media a dozen years ago or 10 years ago even, we could have prevented a lot of mental health illnesses. We might have prevented the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk. I agree with the Utah Governor Spencer Cox that this is toxic what’s happening. And we have seen a series of platforms – think about Twitter, where all restraints are being taken off. And if we think as awful as social media has been, it will be exponentially worse with AI, with deep fakes. And there seems to be from this administration absolutely no interest in even putting any guard rails on artificial intelligence tools, where you can’t even tell the difference between what’s real or what’s a deep fake driven technology. Counting on the platforms themselves to self police, I think is a fool’s gambit. And there were some efforts towards some level of safety but it’s been wiped away. Whether I’m optimistic that we can put some rules in place, we have not done anything. Congress has been an abject failure on putting any rules in place – and our kids have paid the price for that. I’ve still got legislation that would protect privacy, that would make sure that we could even look for example on using technology how to protect our kids in terms of new AI agents. I think there is could be broad bipartisan support on that. I do think as well, trying to restrict some access for younger children. I do think some of the bans that have taken place on schools, on use of phones during the day. But this is an epidemic. And as much as the social media or AI tech leaders say, oh yes, they want some rules and regulation, they’re for that in theory until you put words on the page. And how many more tragedies, not just with the assassination of Mr. Kirk, but where we see people, you know, I think driven to violence because of some of these social media sites, then it is it is a real challenge. I’m going to redouble my efforts. But so far, we have been…woefully unsuccessful at actually getting any. Matter of fact, we in the Senate even passed the Kids Online Safety Act last year. Wouldn’t have fixed everything. Was 93, I think, to 3. And the House refused to even take it up. That is irrational and malpractice. And we ought to at least start with the Kids Online Safety Act and get it passed again in the Senate and force the House to take it up. If the leadership in the House would take it up, it would pass overwhelmingly.”
- “Remember, our Republican friends were all for these Medicaid cuts, and then they said, “Oh, holy heck, we might get in trouble.’ So, let’s kick the can to the imposition is not until 2027 after the congressional elections.” That is cowardice. that is I think because they know it’s going to be a disaster. So a year extension I think would not be enough. But let’s, this goes through a negotiation. Again I go back to the the president’s own comments. He says ignore the Democrats. Don’t have to deal with them. I mean, I wish he had some understanding of how the legislative process works. It’s not pretty. It’s not perfect. But my god, we are still not in the place where we have a king instead of a president. Congress still has the power of the purse. And the idea that we’re going to punt this this debate or problem. I think the American public are tired of these punts. I think they are, no matter what they call that awful bill, no matter how many times they rename it, it is maybe the worst single piece of legislation that I’ve seen in my time in the Senate. And it’s going to do devastating harm. So, let’s not further that harm… Let’s not blow up the whole healthcare market. As imperfect as it is, this will be devastating to our economy. It’ll be devastating to Virginians. And I will assure you, it will shut down health care in much of rural Virginia. Augusta Health Systems has had at least the courage to acknowledge they’ve shut down three health rural health care clinics because of this awful bill and what’s coming. You know, there are health care systems in Virginia where hospitals are going to close. And I’ve been completely disappointed by some of the health care systems who are trying to hide their head, who come in and lobby me and say we need these extensions. We need this. And then in the case for example of Bon Secours won’t even acknowledge that their hospital in Franklin in southeast Virginia is on the probable cutting list. And you know if you continue to kowtow towards this administration of hoping to somehow keep your head low and be missed, that has been a losing strategy for every one of the institutions so far.”
- “I’ve not seen the full clip [of Jimmy Kimmel’s remarks that ostensibly led to him being suspended]. I read something and I’m not going to weigh in on what he said. I am going to say this. I mean, it was tragic the killing of Charlie Kirk. I never met Mr. Kirk, but I do know what I read about him was that he welcomed free speech and he invited all to debate with him. We’re seeing these actions now promulgated by the FCC chairman. We’ve seen President Trump sue the New York Times for $15 billion. We’ve seen universities and law firms. I believe in certain cases illegally having their funds removed if they don’t march in lockstep. This is a challenging challenging time. And you know, one of the things that’s made America different is free speech. So let me look at the the clip, but I’ve not seen…this appeared to be driven much by some of the network of stations who were part of the ABC network. but I fear this is, when you see again lawsuits taking on the New York Times at a $15 billion suit, this could be down a very dangerous dangerous path.”
- “It is remarkable to me that the Trump administration has targeted the five Northern Virginia districts, some of the best school divisions we’ve got in our state. And this is over a bathroom policy. Most of the other school divisions actually in Virginia are still adhering to that bathroom policy, because the fourth circuit, which has been reaffirmed, is kind of that is the standing law of the land in this area across Virginia. So going after our top school divisions I think is an attempt of politicization. Are you asking our school divisions to basically go against the fourth circuit ruling? And I think it’s a, once again, an example of trying trying to make an example for political purposes. And Senator Kaine and I and others, we’re going to continue to fight back. I don’t know how you can force a school division to go against an appellate court ruling, which is at least at this stage the law of the land for Virginia.”
UPDATE 8:30 pm – See below for Sen. Warner’s floor speech on intelligence, delivered this afternoon in the US Senate.
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