Trump Lurches Us Toward a Police State

I felt sick watching California Senator Alex Padilla get battered by law enforcement on Thursday afternoon. Seeing cops tackling an unarmed brown man, forcing him to the ground and demanding he put his hands behind his back so they could cuff him. “If you’d let me put my hands behind my back,” he replied to the officers who were holding his arms. We’ve seen this before. If it happened on a city street, it almost certainly would not have ended as well for Padilla.

We are almost inured to these videos, mainly of unarmed Black and brown men being humiliated, forced to the ground and handcuffed, often in front of loved ones. This was in the federal building in Los Angeles in the view of the national media. That made it no easier to watch. It’s traumatic. I kept feeling like these thugs assaulting Padilla were determined to hurt him. Maybe they did; he didn’t say, when he spoke to the media.

“If this is how the DHS responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they are doing to farmworkers, cooks, day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country,” Padilla said in brief remarks to the media. He teared up as he talked about Trump’s victims.

In case you thought puppy killer Kristi Noem might feel remorse, the DHS secretary immediately went to Fox and lied. She said Padilla didn’t identify himself—he did—and he “burst in” and “lunged” at the podium. That brown brute! 

Spineless House Speaker Mike Johnson said Congress should “censure” Padilla for his uppity invasion of Miss Kristi’s space.

We all saw the video, liars.

“I’m Senator Alex Padilla,” he said. “I have questions for the secretary.” Her thugs quickly began grabbing him by his jacket and shoving him toward the door. “Because the fact of the matter is, she has a half dozen violent criminals on rotation,” Padilla said, referring to the mugshots of the same “criminal” immigrants the administration peddles. Then he cried, “Hands off!” Padilla stopped resisting; they shoved him to the floor anyway.

Noem is the criminal. Just before Padilla interrupted her, she warned: “We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.” Seeking to overturn duly elected leaders? Staging a California coup?

Remember, federal prosecutors indicted New Jersey Representative LaMonica McIver this week, after a scuffle at an ICE detention center where the only violent people came from law enforcement. Last month, a Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge was arrested at the courthouse and charged with interfering with immigration officials last month. Last Friday, David Huerta, president of the Service Employees International Union California, was arrested after he nonviolently protested an immigration raid in Los Angeles. This week, President Trump speculated about arresting California Governor Gavin Newsom (cowardly Mike Johnson said Newsom should merely be “tarred and feathered”). 

Padilla’s assault was captured on dramatic video, but so far it hasn’t quite mustered the outrage it should. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer did express his outrage, but merely called for an “investigation.” What should we investigate, Senator Schumer, whether the senator said “Mother, may I?” before asking his question, when we saw it all ourselves? (I’m trying to say it in a way Schumer will understand.) House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said, “Anyone who assaulted the Senator should be held accountable.” Glad he’s using the word “assault,” but all the assaulters are caught on camera. And what does “accountable” mean?

Padilla later told MSNBC that he was actually in the building for a meeting about the federal invasion of Los Angeles with federal authorities when he heard about Noem’s press conference. He said he was escorted to the room by FBI and Secret Service officials; he didn’t barge in. “Where I grew up, you know what happens if you defy law enforcement,” he said, so he complied. Padilla said he eventually met briefly with Noem, but she didn’t answer his questions. Or apologize. He urged Americans to join Saturday’s “No Kings” rally.

Again, Democratic leaders don’t seem to be meeting the moment, with a few exceptions, including Padilla. Governor Gavin Newsom has met the moment in the last few days, standing up to Trump firmly and eloquently, despite his lurch to the right on trans issues, his weird manosphere-courting podcast, and his calling Representative Chris Van Hollen’s trip to El Salvador to visit Kilmar Abrego Garcia “a distraction.” I hope Newsom would not say that today.

Newsom got a legal boost when federal Judge Charles Breyer ruled that Trump’s federalizing the National Guard in California was “illegal—both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution” and that Trump “must therefore return control of the California National Guard to the governor of the state of California forthwith.” The administration immediately appealed, and the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit stayed Breyer’s ruling while it reviews the case, keeping it from taking effect.

But Breyer used language that ought to encourage more Americans to turn out for Saturday’s “No Kings” rallies across the country. “That’s the difference between a Constitutional government and King George,” Breyer said, referring to the British king whose authoritarian rule sparked the American revolution. “It’s not that a leader can simply say something and it becomes it…. That’s not where we live.… This country was founded in response to a monarch.”

Even though Breyer’s ruling was temporarily stayed, his words are correct.