In year-end interview, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner says DC region hit hardest by Trump policies in 2025
Reflecting on 2025, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said he and his office helped tens of thousands of people across the state with individual requests, while criticizing cuts at federal agencies and the law enforcement surge in D.C.
In a wide-ranging, year-end interview with WTOP, he said his office assisted with 16,000 requests, ranging from passports to lost Social Security checks.
“We had about $18 million that was rightfully Virginians’ (put) back into their pockets,” Warner said. “That was good. That doesn’t get a lot of attention, all of the case work that happens year in and year out.”
Warner said his office also assisted victims of Hurricane Helene in Southwest Virginia. He praised the opening of new VA Hospitals in Spotsylvania and Hampton Roads, projects he said were about 10 years in the making.
“It was great to see them open,” he said. “Shouldn’t have taken that long, but it was also a little bit frustrating with the administration’s cutbacks on the VA that we can’t now fill the hospital with VA workers, because who wants to work for the VA if you’re going to be constantly threatened and fired?”
Virginia is close to becoming one of the first states to have full broadband coverage everywhere, including in all the rural areas, Warner said.
Reelection intentions
The three-term senator has previously announced his plan to run for reelection next fall.
Despite Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger’s victory in Virginia this year, Warner said, “it’s hard to predict politics these days. I’m going into next year ready to ask and make the case for Virginians to hire me one last time.”
Nationally, Warner criticized the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, cuts at federal agencies. Federal workers and contractors lost thousands of jobs in Northern Virginia, he said, “a smart DOGE would have made sense. But this kind of ‘break things first and try and pick up the pieces later,’ I think it’s caused some permanent damage to our workforce.”
Among problems he plans to tackle in the future, Warner said housing and child care costs are too high and “health care is an issue that we really have to revisit in a much more comprehensive way.”
The Democratic senator is critical of conditions at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities in Chantilly and Farmville and said while President Donald Trump “rightfully said we need to fix the border, I don’t think that meant having masked ICE agents running around, picking up moms as they drop off kids at day care, or picking up dads as they go to work.”
“It’s been a really hard year for the region, for Virginia,” Warner said. “In particular, the region, the DMV, we’ve probably felt the biggest brunt of the Trump actions. I think obviously, by all the elections in the region, this is not what we want.”