Tuesday night’s speech to a joint session of Congress by President Donald Trump was characterized as “the worst State of the Union speech I’ve ever heard” by Virginia U.S. Senator Mark Warner, recording a statement from his car that was posted on social media in the hour after the address. He cited “no empathy” for the many federal workers who’ve lost their jobs.

U.S. Reps. Donald Beyer and Gerald Connolly of Northern Virginia were among a handful of federal lawmakers who boycotted the speech altogether, while others attended, spoke out, and walked out.

As Beyer put it in a town hall conference call Monday, “The State of the Union message is a hallowed tradition, but this president has shown a contempt for Congress, treating it like it doesn’t exist while thousands of lives are being destroyed.”

At that town hall, Beyer announced a resource fair that he is sponsoring along with all the jurisdictions of Northern Virginia, including the City of Falls Church, that will be held from noon to 5 p.m. this Saturday, March 8, at Wakefield High School, 1325 S. Dinwiddie St. in Arlington. It will provide unemployment assistance, mental health support, housing information, food aid, and information on federal workers’ rights. 

 In the call Monday Beyer added, “Trump says things that are simply not true, that are fabricated, he’s lied 10s of thousands of times, while firing people who are curing diseases, preventing natural disasters, fighting hunger and homelessness and who are our neighbors. Hundreds of thousands are dying of starvation in the third world,  cases of Ebola are rising, children born with AIDS are receiving none of the care that would be available, and polio and malaria cases are on the rise. This is unacceptable. I will not listen to that garbage. I would be disappointed watching Republicans stand up and cheer him,” Beyer intoned.

Beyer also left open the question of whether he will vote for a continuing resolution to keep the government operating after March 14, noting that Trump has illegally impounded funds that Congress has authorized.

“I have never known anyone who has less empathy, less love, for other human beings than this man,” Beyer said, also warning of the national security threat of “having a Russian puppet in the White House.” He said there are reports that a half-million tons of food are now idled in U.S. ports and farmers are “raiding holy hell” because they are not getting paid to provide the food required to feed starving millions.

But Beyer focused on ways to address the crisis, noting that over 100 lawsuits have been filed against what Trump and Elon Musk have been doing, with some significant wins against some funding freezes, access to personal information, the stripping of rights and more.

There is also an important election in Virginia this year, including for governor and all state representatives, he said. He urged people to tell their stories, noting that there is now a place to do that on his website.

Beyer said he will do everything he can to get Robert F. Kennedy fired from his Health and Human Services position, noting that he is one of the world’s foremost anti-vaxxers, and that he continues to spout debunked theories while ignoring well-established practices that are leaving the nation vulnerable to outbreaks of measles, the bird flu and many other diseases, making the nation unhealthier.

“Social security and Medicare are not entitlements,” he added. “They are programs that Americans have paid into their entire adult lives. “Medicaid is an essential program to help the less fortunate,” and Virginia alone is at risk now of having over 650,000 kicked off Medicaid.

Beyer assailed the attacks on transgender Americans, including the cutting off of services in Iowa this week. “The only requirement a person has to answer two is the question of whether or not they can do the job, nothing else,” he said.

Beyer said he is producing a new newsletter and is urging constituents to go on his website, or to YouTube or Blue Sky, and tell their stories of why their work is vital to humanity and democracy.

At the gala grand opening ribbon cutting of Virginia Tech’s new Innovation Campus in Alexandria last Friday, Senator Warner, as former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, unloaded on the Trump administration’s real and threatened cuts to the kind of cutting edge R&D programs such as those being carried out at the new campus.

Warner spoke before hundreds of state and regional officials, including Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Sen. Tim Kaine, gathered for the event. With all the kudos and congratulatory remarks about the new campus, Warner said he had to address “the elephant in the room,” the cutting by Trump of funds mandated by Congress for vital national security-related R&D. “No administration can take away what Congress has mandated, and I will stand with Virginia Tech students and everyone involved in our effort to compete with China.” 

He said national security now revolves around technology, and China is moving in that area as the U.S. did in the post-Sputnik era. “The race for AI and the energy to power it will decide who wins the 21st century,” he said.

Sen. Kaine followed Warner to note the importance of the proximity of the new Innovation Campus to the Pentagon, saying “our challenges from a defense perspective are to develop the talent, the technology and the cooperation and innovation that we need.” He said that America’s is a challenge “we cannot do on our own, but with cooperation that ranges from that between Virginia Tech and George Mason University in this ares, to the U.S. House and Senate, to our relations with NATO.

As for a brief interruption of the ceremonies by a group protesting the university’s ties to the defense industry, Sen. Warner remarked that the right of the demonstrators to express themselves is what distinguishes a democracy from an authoritarian regime, and is “the secret sauce of our success.”

The role of Virginia Tech’s presence on the fringe of Falls Church will be resumed when the new innovative building now under construction there, across the new Mustang Alley from Meridian High School is completed, and Virginia Tech Senior Vice President Lance Collins mentioned the Falls Church location’s future role in his remarks at the event.