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ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., used a remote media availability with Virginia reporters Wednesday to attack Republican spending priorities, singling out $1 billion he said GOP leaders are trying to attach to an immigration funding package to pay for President Donald Trump's planned White House ballroom.
Warner said Republicans are seeking $72 billion in additional funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection through the budget reconciliation process, which would let the bill pass with 51 votes instead of 60. He said the Senate would begin a "vote-a-rama" — a marathon session of amendment votes — Wednesday night or Thursday, and that he would offer several amendments.
"There's a billion dollars for President Trump's vanity project, his ballroom," Warner said, arguing the money would be better spent easing costs for families facing gasoline prices near $5 a gallon. He said the project had been "supposed to be paid for entirely by private donations."
Warner said an initial draft of the bill stripped the ballroom money after it failed a procedural test, and that Republicans were "scrambling" to restore it. Some Republicans, he said, had begun to object.
Framing the figure in Virginia terms, Warner said $1 billion could cover a year of rent for 46,000 Virginians, or roughly a quarter of the health care costs of state residents he said lost coverage through Medicaid cuts, or about two-thirds of the cost for those who lost Affordable Care Act tax credits, or a couple of years of food for residents cut from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The estimates are Warner's; his office did not release underlying calculations.
Trump Mobile
Warner, who founded the company that became the wireless carrier Nextel before entering politics, said he had written to the chief executive of Trump Mobile — whom he identified as Patrick O'Brien — seeking answers about the venture marketed under the president's family name.
He said the company collected $100 deposits from about 500,000 people and is only now preparing to ship phones. He disputed its "made in America" marketing, saying the devices would be assembled domestically but contain parts from China, as he said most phones do.
"This is one more example of the Trump family enriching themselves at the cost of Americans," Warner said, calling the product a "scam" and a "knockoff" and saying its rate plans and quality remained unclear.
IRS settlement
Warner also pointed to what he described as a $1.776 billion payout to Trump from the settlement of a $10 billion lawsuit the president had filed against the IRS. Warner said the Justice Department settled a suit he characterized as meritless, creating what he called a "slush fund" Trump could use to "pay off whoever he wants," including people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
"I was here on January 6th," said Warner, who said the agreement also amounted to a "get out of jail free card" shielding Trump, his family and affiliated companies from future tax enforcement. The characterization is the senator's; the terms he described could not be confirmed in the materials provided.
Iran, elections, and Arlington House
Taking reporter questions, Warner returned to the war in Iran, now in roughly its 83rd day, which he said had killed 14 U.S. service members and driven up energy and food costs. He praised Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., for advancing a War Powers resolution that cleared a procedural Senate vote, and said a House vote could follow this week or after the Memorial Day recess.
Asked about pausing the federal gas tax, Warner said the best relief would be ending the war and that he would consider an excess-profits tax on oil companies posting record earnings. He cautioned that gas tax holidays are "easy to pause" but "harder to unpause," citing road needs in southwest Virginia along Interstates 81 and 460.
Warner said he would support an expected executive order from Gov. Abigail Spanberger setting guidance for how election workers respond to federal agents at polling places, and warned against any move to send troops or ICE agents to the polls. "This is 2026 in America," he said. "We're not in Russia or China."
He also defended a letter he and other Virginia Democrats signed over the removal of National Park Service educational materials at Arlington House addressing Robert E. Lee and slavery, calling efforts to "whitewash" history "outrageous" ahead of the nation's 250th anniversary. He said there was no factual dispute that Lee broke an oath to the Constitution when Virginia left the Union and that slavery was a central cause of the Civil War.
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