In The News

After wrapping up a six-day swing through the state at a roundtable with kids at a Richmond YMCA day camp, Sen. Tim Kaine said Friday that his road trip brought unexpected bad news: yet another federally funded health insurance program that’s stinting Virginians. This one is Medicare Advantage, the managed care plans for older Americans. Kaine said it was distressing to learn of problems with Medicare Advantage in the wake of cuts to Medicaid, the coverage that mainly covers children in low-inco...Continue Reading

PENNINGTON GAP – Virginia U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine used a Southwest Virginia hospital Thursday to highlight concerns about the Trump administration’s impact on health care and food assistance in the region. Kaine spent day three of a four-day tour across the state to get public input on impacts from the administration’s “big beautiful” budget reconciliation bill that passed Congress before the U.S. House’s July 4 recess. After touring Lee County Community Hospital with Ballad Health administrators an...Continue Reading

FRONT ROYAL -- U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., toured a frozen fruit producer in Warren County on Wednesday where he raised concerns about tariffs, food costs and SNAP cuts. Kaine stopped at Nature’s Touch Frozen Foods where he talked with company leadership about the products and the producer’s role in providing healthier food to consumers. Kaine also promoted the Supporting all Healthy Options when Purchasing Produce Act, or SHOPP, which seeks to amend the Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Progra...Continue Reading

WINCHESTER — With federal funding cuts taking chunks of money away from many nonprofits’ annual operating budgets, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) visited Winchester Wednesday morning to hear first-hand accounts of how this is affecting the community. “I really want to hear from you all so that we can prioritize our work [in Washington],” Kaine told 16 representatives from nonprofit agencies across the region at the outset of Wednesday’s gathering on the Our Health campus on North Cameron Street. Sp...Continue Reading

Senate Democrats are reviving a push to terminate President Donald Trump's energy emergency as they blame the White House for rising electricity prices. Democrats lost an effort earlier this year to pass a joint resolution against the president's emergency declaration, which allows the government to bypass environmental review to ramp energy production, a move they say favors fossil fuels over renewables. Now Democrats think might be able to get some Republicans on board. "The economic effects b...Continue Reading

A panel of mayors, city managers, and nonprofit leaders shed light on concerns surrounding the Trump administration's federal funding cuts at a roundtable hosted by Sen. Tim Kaine Monday. Leaders at the roundtable included representatives from Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Isle of Wight County, Franklin, Suffolk, and Portsmouth. Kaine's appearance in Chesapeake comes days after a federal jobs report that highlighted a slower-than-expected growth of 73,000 jobs for the month of July. Monday, city and ...Continue Reading

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) will force votes in the coming weeks meant to compel the Trump administration to answer questions about human rights conditions in six countries to which it deported migrants who are not citizens of those countries. Kaine filed the resolutions Thursday under the Foreign Assistance Act, a 1961 law that allows a single senator to force votes to require the State Department to produce reports on human rights, even though Republicans control the Senate. It’s the latest ef...Continue Reading

Federal immigration agents would be required to show their faces and be clearly identifiable when making arrests under a soon-to-be-introduced bill from Virginia Democratic Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine. Why it matters: The proposal, shared exclusively with Axios Richmond, is partly in response to recent incidents in Chesterfield and Charlottesville, where media outlets have reported masked ICE officers in plainclothes detaining people. Driving the news: Under the legislation, any law enforcem...Continue Reading

U.S. Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrate of Virginia, delivered a speech on the Senate floor on July 16 denouncing cuts to federal funding of faith-based organizations that play critical roles in refugee resettlement and international humanitarian aid. The Rescissions Act of 2025, pushed by both President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans, proposes $9.4 billion in cuts to previously appropriated federal funding, $800 million of which supports faith-based organizations like Catholic Relief Se...Continue Reading

Virginia’s U.S. senators last month urged ICE to resume processing DACA applications following an appeals court decision. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine with other Democrats in the U.S. Senate in a letter urged U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to resume processing applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program following a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in June in Texas. Currently, more than 100,000 initial DACA applications are pending with USCIS, according to a...Continue Reading

Serving the community since 1997, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Southwest Virginia supports families with after school care, academic support, and character development. Melanie Shanks said as a single parent, it’s crucial. “My little boy loves being here and meeting new kids and he’s gotten so much better in his grades because they have special tutoring,” said Shanks. But now, the Boys & Girls Clubs is concerned about losing federal funding. The Trump Administration has not given states the...Continue Reading

Hundreds of State Department employees are facing unemployment after the Trump administration's reorganization plans led to the dismissal of over 1,300 workers, including more than 1,000 civil servants and over 200 foreign service officers. Senator Tim Kaine criticized the administration's approach, stating that some employees had heard rumors of potential cuts, but Congress was not given a formal plan or the opportunity to vote on the layoffs. Kaine said this is a 'willy nilly' effort to get ri...Continue Reading

When Republicans won control of Washington in November, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) asked his staff to compile a list of the procedural ways he could try to rein in a president determined to stretch the bounds of executive power. Just six months in, Kaine — a longtime advocate of reclaiming Congress’ Article I authority — has checked off pretty much the entire “motley list” his staff put together. This year alone, Kaine has triggered votes on five privileged resolutions and co-sponsored a sixth on Mi...Continue Reading

U.S. Senators Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine are demanding the Trump Administration release $108 million in federal funding earmarked for Virginia’s K-12 schools, accusing the administration of deliberately withholding money that Congress approved to support teacher training, after-school programs, mental health resources and more. The Trump administration has accused states and schools of using federal education grants earmarked for immigrants’ children and low-income students to help fund “a rad...Continue Reading

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., filed a series of amendments Monday to the Republican-led budget package moving through Congress, arguing the legislation would slash essential services and disproportionately benefit the wealthy.  A member of the Senate Budget Committee, Kaine said his amendments are designed to blunt some of what he called the proposal’s “worst of the worst” provisions. “We should be focused on growing and supporting the middle-class, not passing Donald Trump and congressional Repub...Continue Reading

Several days after President Donald Trump ordered an attack on three of Iran’s nuclear sites, and with debate still raging over how effective those strikes actually were, Democrats are finding a rare moment of unity. Not over whether Trump should have done it in the first place—most think no, some think yes, and others have stayed quiet. Instead, they’re rallying around the notion that Trump has usurped Congress’s authority to declare war.  Clearly, the party’s sudden zeal for congressional war ...Continue Reading

Virginia’s U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner criticized the U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear sites without congressional authorization, while Gov. Glenn Youngkin supported President Donald Trump’s actions. Democrats in Virginia’s congressional delegation faulted the president for acting without congressional backing or consultation, while Republicans supported the U.S. effort to neutralize Iran’s nuclear threat. Kaine, who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Foreign Relation...Continue Reading

As tensions escalate between Iran and Israel, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine is working to ensure the United States isn’t drawn into another war without congressional approval. The Virginia Democrat has introduced a War Powers Resolution aimed at preventing the president from unilaterally launching military action against Iran. Under the resolution, Congress would be required to debate and vote before the U.S. could enter the conflict. “We have about 40,000 troops in the region. And Iran has made plain...Continue Reading

Accomack County Supervisors are considering drafting a letter to federal legislators to 'make every attempt necessary" to restore lifeguard services at Assateague Island National Seashore, as beachgoers raise safety concerns heading into the peak of summer. With local officials now looking for federal government assistance, WBOC spoke with U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) about what can be done to restore funding for seasonal lifeguards. “We’re writing the FY26 budget, and [we're] in the ...Continue Reading

On Wednesday, President Trump said he hadn't decided yet if the U.S. will strike Iran's nuclear facilities. But Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said a war with Iran would be disastrous. Kaine introduced a resolution that would require Trump to seek congressional approval before U.S. troops could engage in military conflict with Iran. "A third war in the Middle East in this century would be a horrible, horrible mistake," Kaine said, "and it's going to put U.S. service members at risk and al...Continue Reading