House Speaker Mike Johnson rightly stated that Sen. Alex Padilla's thuggy behavior, lunging into the personal space of Homeland Secuity Secretary Kristi Noem as she was trying to give a speech in Los Angeles, was well worth congressional censure.

But that's not how the left saw it. The Los Angeles Times ran an op-ed by a leftwing lawyer-activist with this headline:

Trump’s war on Latinos reaches a new low in abuse of Sen. Alex Padilla

Rep. Ilhan Omar called the apprehension of the hulking apparent attacker on a slight woman giving a speech "lawless" and demanded an investigation. Housse Oversight Democrats called it "shocking" and demanded that Noem be investigated with questioning, not Padilla.

It's such garbage, all of it. There's not a doubt as to what had happened based on all the cell phone videos posted online:

Here are some of the tapes:

Senator Alex Padilla of California is on Social Media claiming he was assaulted for simply asking a question.

What really happened:
Senator Padilla ignored Secret Service commands, rushed into a live press event without ID, started ranting, and triggered a Secret Service… pic.twitter.com/Y0z7Hj6QXf

— Jere_Memez (@Jere_Memez) June 12, 2025

Notice how Democrats don’t show this longer video that clearly shows Alex Padilla getting violent with federal agents?

This man committed a crime that J6ers got thrown in prison for years for pic.twitter.com/vFUKYIkzDV

— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) June 12, 2025

This one's even longer..https://t.co/20FPgpuZd1

— EyeGal (@eyes4paws) June 12, 2025

Okay here's video of the start of the Padilla Clown Show. You can't see him but you can hear him shouting over her, and I don't think he was identifying himself to anyone until after they started trying to stop his clown showpic.twitter.com/5HTBwAnTQC

— FilmLadd (@FilmLadd) June 12, 2025

Alternate angle. The freak was approaching the stage. Did not ID himself. You don't do that to someone who is an assassination target of cartels, crazies and terrorists.pic.twitter.com/1FQlrriSin

— FilmLadd (@FilmLadd) June 12, 2025

Simply for asking a question? The Chavista-built thug strolled into the press conference uninvited even though it was supposed to be for the press, not him, wearing a heavy blue jacket without his Senate pin on it, which easily could have concealed a gun, and then started shouting in an agitated way instead of waiting to ask the questions as the press did, and then rushed towards the podium.

Not surprisingly, the Secret Service and other lawmen tackled him, escorted him out of the room and put the cuffs on, not knowing who the heck he was. He shouted he was a senator at one point, but any would-be assassin could do that, too if just shouting such a thing could force lawmen to back away. To their credit, they didn't, trussing him up instead so he couldn't be a danger to anyone.

Act like a pig, get trussed like a pig, works the same for people or livestock.

To say the least, it was strange behavior.

Which raises questions as to why he did it. He's never been involved in behavior like this before, at least not in public. And when other Democrats pull foolish stunts like this, they don't get the slew of defenses from other Democrats and the mainstream press that this one did.

So something kind of stinks about the incident. 

What is known is that Padilla is not a noisy guy prone to stunt-making and grandstanding. 

What's also known is that he's a member of what's known as the Valley Latino machine, a political mafia of the San Fernando Valley, whose godfather, or Big Guy, is political kingmaker and real estate baron James Acevedo.

He's not even embarrassed to hear it called a machine and its successes are significant: Acevedo's machine has produced politicians such as Padilla, former Rep. Tony Cardenas, and former city councilman Ricardo Alarcon, who was once a force to be reckoned with in Los Angeles, until he was knocked out by a public corruption scandal involving voter fraud. His minions were also involved in the relatively recent racist scandal on L.A.'s city council, where they were secretly recorded disparaging blacks and cynically discussing how to cut them down a peg in terms of city power. Padilla's always been a yes-man, not a trailblazer, despite his claims to many "historic firsts."

So why he disrupted and lunged at Noem is worth wondering about, given his political alliances. 

Did someone ask him to do it as a favor? Why did he go off half-cocked like a thug literally lunging at the Homeland Security secretary even though he knew the rules including how not to behave like a thug in a public setting?

The Los Angeles Times reported that his former colleague from the same political machine, Tony Cardenas, turned up in Washington in the last few days, despite being supposedly retired from politics since December 2024.

Could that have been to give Alex instructions from his Big Guy back in L.A.? The two are so close they were actually roommates in Washington when they were both politicians there.

One wonders.

The machine has been pretty battered by Trump which might be where this comes from.

It's speculative at this point, but Trump has defunded NGOs and public-private partnerships, which could easily have battered Acevedo's pocketbook or pocketbook prospects, given that that's what he and his wife and sons do together when they are not engaged in politics, via a group called Grapevine Development, which does big public real estate projects paid for by government contracts such as low-income housing. Could Trump and DOGE yanking funds have battered the Acevedo empire?

Meanwhile, the Orange County Register notes that Acevedo's (and Padilla's) home base community in the San Fernando Valley, which is brimming with illegals, is under heavy pressure from Homeland Security, apprehending illegals and sending them home. That's the machine's political and voter base. It would affect them worse than it would affect other places.

A week after amped-up immigration sweeps began in earnest in L.A., the widely seen incident at U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem’s press conference at the Federal Building in Westwood on Thursday was rippling into Padilla’s own L.A. hometown. The only thing overshadowing it, perhaps, was fear of ICE raids.

This is Padilla country, the place he often touts as the starting point to his journey to the U.S. Senate, and now ultimately at the forefront of the region’s clash with the Trump Administration over its immigration raids in the region.

The Register reported that local shopkeepers around Van Nuys reported a dropoff in business owing to fear of ICE raids. The place is so brimmed up with illegal immigrants the place is a ghost town for business now. That has got to cut into the tax base as well as campaign funds, and must produce angry residents. No people, no economy; it's like a COVID lockdown and locals are going to be angry.

According to the Register:

Like many L.A. County cities, where immigrants have made livings cooking, serving, gardening, building, retailing, cleaning, many in Padilla’s hometown are staying home. An enterprising spirit has been replaced with fear of being detained, or worse.

Cindy said her business has seen an abrupt dip in sales as the raids grip L.A. She ran through some of the numbers over the last couple of weeks: Six cancellations, two reduced orders. In a festive season she relies on, customers have turned away.

“The vendors are just not working that much,” she lamented. Those vendors are also her customers. So when they stay home, out of fear, they cut back. And then there’s the customers who are downsizing because they don’t want to make too much of spectacle – to be too noticed, she said, adding she’s been told this directly by her clients.

“Everybody’s gone,” said Reynoso, concerned about the lack of business at the small shop in recent days since the ICE sweeps began.

The Register reports that they responded by waving the flag of the country they don't want to be sent back to:

After hearing about Padilla and a reported ICE arrest nearby, Clarissa Sacedo, her cousins and a neighbor ventured out to the corner of Osborne Street and Lauren Canyon Boulevard.

Waving a Mexican flag, they marched at the intersection, attracting drivers and others who would listen that “we belong here,” not ICE. Honks of support echoed.

The final thing that must be threatening Padilla and his political godfather is the stepped-up effort to clean up voter rolls of ineligible voters in California, largely through lawsuits but likely through federal action, too.

Padilla used to be California's secretary of state, responsible for counting the ballots. His home district probably has more illegals than citizens and it's likely that many of them vote because he made it easy for them to vote. The state went downhill on counting its ballots on Padilla's watch.

Residents of the Valley have told me they've gotten many ballots arriving at their homes, some duplicates and some from phantom voters they have never heard of. Machine member Alarcon was ousted from Los Angeles power over voting issues, too, so it may be second nature to this machine to win elections, as they say, by any means necessary. 

So now that ICE is conducting raids, the entire Acevedo empire may be crumbling, owing to not having enough citizens to vote, donate to them, or serve as padders of congressional districts. Their NGO cash may be evaporating, their padded congressional seating could be shriveling and their potential voters, whether they are legal, illegal, or futurely legal, are disappearing.

That's a threat to them and what they have "built" for themselves in the Valley. So now they are pulling out all stops, including Padilla's desperate stunt that thus far, hasn't been in character for him. They are also rallying their media allies.

How intriguing it would be if some reporter would ask Padilla if Acevedo or Cardenas put him up to this stunt, or asked Cardenas what he might have had to do with why it happened. It looks fishy, and it tells us the political machine must be in big trouble if they would stoop to this idiocy. It might be all they have now.

Image: Screen shot from X video.