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ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., used a remote availability with Virginia reporters Thursday to press a broad set of concerns, from the strain of long military deployments on Hampton Roads families to the cost of new data centers on the state's water and power, while warning that a critical foreign surveillance program could lapse.
Warner opened by criticizing the $70 billion in new immigration enforcement funding signed into law this week, saying it came on top of more than $140 billion already directed to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. He said ICE now has a larger budget than the FBI but argued that most Americans want limits on how it operates.
"What we want ICE to operate is under the same rules that our state police and our local police operate," Warner said, calling for agents to identify themselves and stop wearing masks.
He tied the spending to cuts elsewhere, saying 33,000 Virginians have lost health insurance under changes to the Affordable Care Act and that 300,000 more could lose coverage after Medicaid reductions take effect later this year. He said 13 rural Virginia hospitals have warned they may close.
Much of Warner's update focused on Virginia. He described a Monday meeting in Hampton Roads with military families whose relatives served aboard the carrier Gerald R. Ford or its strike group, which he said had been deployed longer than any since the Vietnam War.
Warner said a planned six-month deployment that stretched toward 12 months left spouses scrambling for child care and missing major family events. He said one spouse feared losing her job after arriving half an hour late when her child care ran out.
"If a deployment goes beyond what was expected, there needs to be some grace offered to these families," he said, adding that he has contacted the Defense Department about work-schedule flexibility and is pushing for changes to Tricare as fewer providers accept it. He said as many as a third of active-duty service members are food insecure.
Warner said Virginia could become a national model for connecting military families and veterans to local, state, federal and nonprofit services, and that better retention would keep more veterans in the state's workforce.
Asked about Virginia's stalled budget and the rapid growth of data centers, Warner, a former governor, declined to weigh in on specifics but said the facilities should "pay their fair share." He called for no increases to utility bills for residents, disclosure of water use, and adequate setbacks so neighborhoods are not unduly affected. He noted that communities across Virginia have already rejected projects and said he favors minimum federal standards while leaving siting decisions to localities.
Warner also announced legislation to strengthen the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which he said the Trump administration has weakened by cutting more than a third of its staff. He pointed to the public release of Anthropic's "Mythos" artificial intelligence model, saying a version of the tool was able to penetrate classified and private systems, and warned that the nature of warfare is changing as adversaries gain such capabilities.
On a separate national security matter, Warner said responsibility for any lapse in Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a foreign surveillance program due for renewal, would rest with President Donald Trump. He blamed the impasse on Trump's pick of Bill Pulte to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, arguing the nominee lacks the national security experience the law requires. Warner said he would support a short extension if Trump allowed a Senate-confirmed career official to serve in the interim.
Warner closed by criticizing the administration's handling of the conflict with Iran, which he called a "war of choice," and warned that gas prices, hovering around $4.20 a gallon, could climb after July 4. He said higher fuel costs would ripple into groceries, airfare and other goods, and noted inflation topped 4% last quarter.
