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Washington erupted at the site of Sen. Alex Padilla of California being forcibly removed and pinned to the floor during a press conference with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Almost immediately, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer denounced the apprehension of Padilla during a speech on the Senate floor.
“I just saw something that sickened my stomach, the manhandling of a United States Senator,” Schumer said. “We need immediate answers to what the hell went on.”
Padilla arrived at Noem’s press conference to confront her about the Trump administration’s “increasingly extreme” actions on immigration.
Los Angeles has seen unrest over the last week after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched a series of raids on the nation’s second-largest city, which has a large Latino and immigrant population.
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President Donald Trump sent in the National Guard despite the governor not giving permission to do so.
Padilla’s apprehension came as the House of Representatives was voting. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, a Democrat of Texas, could barely speak to The Independent because she was saddened by it.
“I’ve been saying this for months now, Donald Trump wants to be a dictator, and this is the latest escalation in what has been a very, very concerning series of events in recent weeks,” Rep. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona told The Independent.
Almost immediately afterward, members of the House Democratic Caucus marched to Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s office, where they passed by House Speaker Mike Johnson and heckled him as Johnson held a gaggle with reporters.
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Johnson, for his par,t assailed Democrats’ behavior.
“The Democrat Party is on the wrong side,” Johnson told reporters. “They’re defending lawbreakers and now they’re acting like lawbreakers themselves.”
Afterward, as Johnson made his way to his office, Rep. Madeleine Dean, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, had a private exchange with the speaker, where Johnson supposedly told her that he is talking to Trump.
“I said, ‘What’s going on in LA? That’s so incendiary,” she told reporters. “What’s the message that the president sent on day one when he pardoned everybody who attacked this Capitol and would have killed any one of us?”
But as the White House prepared to host lawmakers for the annual congressional picnic — typically a setting for inter-branch comity — administration officials reacted to the images of Padilla being taken to his knees by federal agents with nothing short of glee. Communications Director Steven Cheung took to X to describe the California senator as “a complete lunatic” who’d suffered a “freak out.”
One White House official slammed his behavior as “attention-seeking” and “embarrassing” while suggesting that Democrats who speak up in Padilla’s defense will be showing themselves to be more concerned about their own privilege as elected officials than about the officers who are being harmed by violent rioters.
Another said that the president had been delighted by the scene because it made Padilla look weak and emotional.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took to X to condemn the senator as well, writing that he“should be ashamed of his childish behavior” and accusing him of having “crashed the middle of an official press conference being held by a cabinet secretary” and “recklessly lunging” towards Noem while refusing to leave the room as directed by law enforcement officers.
A person familiar with internal deliberations within the president’s inner circle who asked not to be identified out of concern for retaliation said the administration sees no political downside to the images of law enforcement putting their hands on Democratic lawmakers because a significant portion of Trump’s most fervent supporters have spent years calling for prominent members of that party to be arrested and prosecuted.
Earlier this week, Trump suggested that his “border czar,” Tom Homan, should arrest California Gov. Gavin Newsom. He has also called for Padilla’s partner in the Senate, Adam Schiff, to be arrested for treason when Schiff served as a congressman.
In the hours afterward, plenty of Democratic Senators, including Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey, took to the Senate floor to defend their colleague.
The incident with Padilla is just the latest flash point as the Trump administration continues to ramp up its efforts to conduct mass deportations of undocumented immigrants in the United States. It also coincides with his planned military parade.
