Priorities
Senator Warner Talks Trump, Shutdown, and Democracy in Crisis
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American democracy is in retreat. Or as Senator Mark Warner told me last week, “There is a shock and awe component to this, as soon as you mount an opposition to one area, they take a shot somewhere else.”
He’s not wrong. The examples are becoming too numerous, too disparate, to isolate any one incident as the singular cause. Masked ICE raids. Military deployments in major cities. Corruption, the targeting of political opponents, media capitulation, attacks on academic freedom, even the destruction of the East Wing of the White House. The guardrails preventing these abuses are being hollowed out, overloaded, and dismantled in the ten short months since the president’s taken office.
“The conversations are much different now than they were even in the summer,” Warner told me, as alarm replaces disbelief among people who thought American institutions could survive their own dysfunction.
Meanwhile, all of this is unfolding under a government shutdown that has now entered into its 29th day, something Warner called “imminently resolvable” if the president were willing to actually negotiate. Instead, millions of Americans will lose food security, and 400,000 Virginians will see rising health-care premiums as Affordable Care Act subsidies expire.
But at its core, this isn’t really about political gridlock. It’s the symptom of a deeper anxiety, an unease that’s come to define American life in 2025, as democracy gives way to creeping authoritarianism. Something we spoke about extensively—the damage that’s already been done, and whether it can ever be undone.
Senator Warner, how are you?
[Laughing] Is that a polite question or a real question?
I think I’m trying to be polite while getting to the real.
Yeah, it’s pretty rough. Nothing in politics is normal at this point, right? Even beyond the government shutdown. Laws, norms, and barriers are broken every day. Like the slow-boiling frog, and I’m hugely concerned because I don’t know how some of this stuff gets put back together again with future administrations, Democrat or other.
From my perspective, it feels like we’re living through a generational moment. The list is exhaustive—masked ICE raids, National Guard deployments, blatant corruption, the targeting of political opponents. They’re even tearing down the East Wing of the White House.
The only piece of good news I’ve felt in the last 60 days is the fact that, unlike virtually every other institution, when the military leadership was brought to Quantico, they remained passive. I thought that was an incredibly important signal that they’re going to still value their loyalty to the Constitution. That’s really important.
I fear you’re starting to see with the number of military leaders that have been fired on the active-duty side and, frankly, I’ve seen it much more in the intelligence community—the NSA (National Security Agency) and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency). It’s troubling to understand.
How worried are you about the preservation of democracy right now? Because you brought up Quantico, but the president did stand up there and say “America is under invasion from within.” Which is chilling.
It is absolutely chilling. One of the most heartbreaking conclusions I’ve reached, as we’ve seen in the national security domain, people being fired for not changing an intelligence conclusion to meet the president’s needs, people undercover being exposed, and people being given loyalty tests inside of the IC [intelligence community].
I have a lot of Republican friends who I know love our country. I love our country. And they’ll say, you’re right Mark, you have your conscience. I don’t want to be their conscience. Neither party has a monopoly on truth, but you’ve got to work together.
I’ve been part of every bipartisan gang for the last ten years. But I don’t believe, at lest in the immediate future, that my Republican colleagues are going to stand up to Trump. So that means the political systems, normal guardrails, aren’t going to be where the pushback comes from.
For instance, if suddenly there is martial law, if troops are brought to 15 cities all at once, I don’t think the political guardrails are going to hold. I really think it’s going to have to be the leadership of civil society. Whether we’re talking about former military, law enforcement, business, or media—name the domain. They’re going to have to have a level of confidence that if they stand up, others will too.
I’ve had lots of conversations with extremely significant leaders in all these areas; there’s huge fear of retribution. I’ve talked to some of the biggest tech leaders in America. They’re all concerned about trying to do anything individually.
We are seeing some push back. But they [the administration] are overloading the system. There is a shock and awe component to this, as soon as you mount an opposition to one area, they take a shot somewhere else. The conversations are much different now than they were even in the summer.
I want to ask about the A word—authoritarianism. It’s really starting to become more present in our political lexicon. Do you believe we’re on that pathway and how should Virginians understand this?
That’s a great and fair question. I think we are, unfortunately, moving in that direction. And to a certain degree, the president’s not hiding it. One thing you ought to give Donald Trump credit for, he doesn’t hide his cards, right?
Seven million Americans just peacefully protested with American flags. I went to the one in Woodstock, then I saw a video of him [Trump] flying a fighter jet and pooping on the American people. It’s just kind of insane. I don’t want to go over the top in public, but when I’m having private conversations most people haven’t heard the whole litany. When they do hear, they kind of go “oh my god.”
I’ll give you an example, something I will mention but I can’t get into a whole lot of detail. There’s an effort going on by a number of data scientists, kind of in the bowels of government, who are afraid of the data being either manipulated or corrupted. Starting in the summer, they’ve been trying to get data out to locations in Europe so it can be kept safe.
They’re operating on a model that universities in Eastern Europe used to keep their knowledge safe during communism. That shows a level of fear from people. I’ve never heard of anything like that in my 25 years of politics.
I think Virginians feel it more because we’ve got such a large federal presence. And obviously, we need to get the government shutdown done.
How is this impacted by the government shutdown?
So many federal workers feel like they’ve been under assault since day one. They feel disrespected continuously, and there’s just an arbitrariness, particularly to Russ Vought’s actions at the OMB (Office of Management and Budget).
I don’t think there’s any solution set that can be reached by just Congressional Democrats and Republicans. The president has to be involved. Nothing will get done without the president’s active involvement, and the president’s going off for a week to Asia while the government is shut down.
Starting today in Virginia, all the notices go out on health care, and he’s just ignoring this. So again, its unprecedented. The president’s met with Volodymyr Zelenskyy [Ukrainian President] more than he’s met with Democratic leaders and Congress.
Senator, taking the shutdown in totality. Polling suggests that Americans are assigning blame to Congressional Republicans. How are they justifying their position? Because from the outside it seems like the only strategy, quite frankly, is just a strategy of cruelty. What are your Republican colleagues hoping to achieve from this?
They basically said, we did our job through the Continuing Resolution. And I accept that I’ve seen the same polls. Affordability was already the dominant issue of our time, but I think people, very soon, are basically going to say: “screw it, pox on both your houses.” This just needs to be resolved and I think it is imminently resolvable.
You can do a year on health-care credits and then have a plan to deal with reforms. If they can actually show there are huge abuses in the premium supports, I’ll look at reform. But there’s another thing that’s overriding this and making it more difficult—this is kind of in the weeds, but you shake hands, cut a deal, and pass a law and then you still have Russ Vought [OMB Director] picking and choosing which programs to fund. There’s just so little trust.
And again, that’s part of what’s amazed me. The fact they’re [Republicans] ceding all their power is unprecedented. You spend your whole life trying to become appropriations chair, why would you allow your position to be totally eviscerated?
Can I ask you a philosophical question, because you just articulated something that’s been on my mind. How have serious politicians made the moral choice to label one half of this country terrorists, radicals, communists, or whatever? Is it just about the acquisition of power, is that worth the moral compromise to support the direction this is leading?
I don’t have a good answer for that. I do know that they’re hugely uncomfortable; the president has never had this much power over his own party. But I’m also trying to be fair, because I don’t think I fully appreciated how distraught, angry, and frustrated a lot of Republicans were under President Biden.
That period was the height of cancel culture, political correctness, I’m trying as much as possible to put myself in the other guy’s shoes. I’m not saying that’s fair or that we should upend the Constitution or break laws as a result, but in retrospect, there were lots of mistakes made. I’m not going to discount the fervor of their feelings.
It is a bit of a baby-with-the bath water scenario. How do you ultimately see this ending?
The president’s riding high on the Gaza issue. He takes great pride, obviously, in being a deal-maker. I think if we could have a couple sessions with him this could get resolved. It’s not so terribly intractable.
The other thing beyond the immediacy of the shutdown that’s at play right now, which will be hugely disruptive, is the way AI is powering its way into the economy. The post-college, entry-level jobs are where the biggest transformation and disruption will happen. We’re already at nine-percent recent college-grad unemployment. I think that could go to 20 or 25 percent within the next 18 months.
All of those first jobs when you come out [of college] with a finance or accounting degree from University of Richmond or James Madison, those are the first ones on the chopping block. So you’ve got this combination of overall affordability, but there could also be dramatic dislocation. I’m not saying this as an AI doom guy because there might be new jobs created in five or ten years from now. But there’s going to be this gap. Mixed with all of this disruption within our political system, and that’s a witch’s brew that could be pretty game-changing.
Senator, I know we’re coming up on time, but I want to ask two more things: Axios reported on Monday that there’s a GSA (General Services Administration) contract pending for an ICE office in Richmond. Are you worried Virginia is going to be targeted next?
I don’t know enough about the ICE office in Richmond. You know, one of the stunning facts that hasn’t got much attention, but is kind of like a “holy heck” moment it used to take six to eight months to become trained as an ICE agent.
The new hiring program is just 47 days. And you might ask, what’s the magic of 47 days? Well, Trump’s the 47th president. That’s inside baseball, but jaw dropping.
The second question, as the Vice Chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, are you worried that as America turns inward and focuses resources on ICE and National Guard deployments that we’re losing focus on the very real threats from our adversaries abroad like Russia, China, and Iran?
Absolutely! And the best evidence of that is ICE now has a budget bigger than the FBI. Every FBI field office, including Richmond and Norfolk, anywhere between 25 and 45 percent of the agents working on counter-terrorism, espionage, cyber, and even child exploitation have all been taken off those cases and moved to immigration.
And we’re hearing from them that they want to get back to their cases. Instead, they’re picking up mom’s who are dropping their kids off at school or people going to work. Is that more important than making sure we keep our eyes focused on our adversaries, or even more serious, the potential threat from terrorists?
I think it’s a misallocation of resources.
Thank you for your time Senator, I hope to chat again soon.
Thank you. I appreciate the seriousness of your questions.
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