Thursday, July 31 — Virginia U.S. Senator Mark Warner today concluded a telephone press conference with an assertion that AI will be taking away so many entry level jobs in the coming period that one of the biggest issues facing the nation will be how to deal with this. It comes, he said, as in the wake of the mass layoffs of government workers and government contracts, “many of the jobs just won’t come back because of AI.”

     Warner said that the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, efforts at improving efficiency in the government has been “sloppy,” and that “jerking people around” has not saved taxpayers any money and in fact cost more, but added that a “smart DOGE” that would make government “more user friendly” makes sense.

    He spoke against the Trump administration efforts to “political interference” with universities, such as George Mason and UVA, and called for the release of all the Epstein files, urging Trump’s MAGA base to “keep up the pressure.” He assailed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s call for action against those who asserted pro-Trump Russian interference in the 2016 election, citing the five-volume bi-partisan intelligence report that was issued at the time that made a convincing case for the fact that Russia preferred Trump and did interfere in a major way in that election.

    Warner said he and Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine have collaborated in introducing four major pieces of legislation calling for ICE personnel to “take their masks off,” for new policies encouraging the conversion of vacated strip malls and other business buildings to low income housing as America is now 4.7 million units of housing short of the needed level, to roll back the “big beautiful bill’s” cuts to Medicaid impacting 17-18 million Americans, and to boost funding for suicide prevention programs. 

    On the housing issue, he noted that unhelpful regulations and other factors have caused the average age of Americans entering the housing market to reach 38 years, compared to being in the 20s just a decade ago.