The economic downturn resulting from the United States’ war in Iran could last months, or potentially years, U.S. Sen. Mark Warner said Thursday at a campaign stop in Fredericksburg.
It would be one thing if just gas prices were up, he told the Free Press after a veterans’ roundtable event at The Griffin on Charles, but so are the costs of diesel, fertilizer and other products.
Warner, Virginia’s senior senator who is seeking a fourth term this year, said he keeps thinking even his Republican peers will eventually get fed up with President Donald Trump’s military tactics. But that hasn’t happened.
“There have been so many times when I thought, ‘OK, this will be the breaking point,’” he said.
Those comments followed a wide-ranging discussion of current military action and veterans topics Warner conducted with Democratic Party mates U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, Rep. Eugene Vindman and Del. Stacey Carroll, as well as Fredericksburg-area veterans.
The first subject Warner brought up was the Veterans Affairs Health Care Center in Spotsylvania County. And, as he and Kaine have expressed before, he said he is concerned that, after a year in operation, the clinic still isn’t fully staffed.
However, the lawmaker added, “It’s as world-class as anything around. We know that there are hiring issues, and any new facility takes a while.”
While opening a regional operation is always a challenge, Warner said, it’s been “exacerbated by the Trump administration’s war on federal employees writ large, but, specifically, their war on the VA.”
Around the time the facility opened last year, Trump, billionaire Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency conducted mass firings and implemented a hiring freeze in the Department of Veterans Affairs.
On another topic, Kaine, Virginia’s junior U.S. senator, criticized the administration’s decision to change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War, and he said that agency is really just engaging in “cosplay.”
“Congress hasn’t changed the name of the Defense Department for the War Department,” he said. “We haven’t introduced a bill to change the name. They’re walking around like they’re at some ‘Star Trek’ convention, with a title that they don’t deserve but that sadly tells you what you need to know about the motivations.”
Warner also noted that his colleague has filed war powers resolutions that would’ve prevented Trump from starting military action in Iran and other places without congressional authorization.
But, he said, Kaine wasn’t simply being partisan. Kaine’s first war powers resolution was about military force then-President Barack Obama was undertaking.
Perhaps the most serious accusation against the Trump administration Thursday, though, came from Moe Petway, president of the Spotsylvania branch of the NAACP, who was in the audience at the event.
He mentioned a recent New York Times story that said Pete Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary, prevented the promotion of Black military officers, a move that Hegseth supporters insist wasn’t race-based.
Petway, however, implored the elected officials on the Warner panel to speak up and call Hegseth out.
“So I’m asking you guys, who are our representatives, to stand up for veterans and say you can’t treat a specific group of people like that,” he said.
Warner agreed with Petway’s assessment and added that he thinks Hegseth also has targeted women in the military.
The New York Times story said the secretary also blocked the promotion of female officers.
Warner has already claimed the Democratic nomination for his seat, as no other candidates qualified for a potential primary. A few potential intraparty opponents had been identified, including Spotsylvania County School Board member Lorita Daniels.
Daniels, however, announced on Facebook on March 31 that she was suspending her campaign.
Who Warner will face in November remains unclear. The Republican Party of Virginia announced Tuesday that three candidates — Bert Mizusawa, Kim Farington and David Williams — qualified for an Aug. 4 primary.
A fourth candidate, Chuck Smith, has a pending lawsuit that may result in his qualifying for the ballot later, the announcement said.
The general election is Nov. 3.
