Our political class is playing with fire.
It is more out of concern as a citizen than as a subject of legal analysis that I’m assessing the incident in California today, in which that state’s obstreperous Democratic senator, Alex Padilla, was manhandled and temporarily detained by federal agents when he crashed an event at which Trump Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was speaking. (See our James Lynch’s report.)
But okay, let’s do some legal analysis.
To begin with, people are on edge. There have been violent attacks on ICE personnel who work at Secretary Noem’s direction, so it was reasonable for agents providing security at a Noem press availability — in Southern California, ground zero of the mayhem — to worry about the potential that she could be forcibly attacked. Nor should we forget that there were two assassination attempts on now-President Trump in the last year (both before the election).
The media-Democrat complex is promoting the storyline that Trump is an authoritarian who is bent on destroying American democracy. Obviously, nothing could please them more than executive branch agents getting rough with a Democratic senator — especially after a Democratic mayor was arrested in Newark a few weeks ago after a physical altercation with immigration agents, a Democratic congresswoman has now been indicted in connection with the same incident, and California’s Democratic governor has seemed to be pleading to be arrested this week as he positions himself for a 2028 White House run by assuming the mantle of Trump’s archnemesis.
Nevertheless, it’s not Trump or Noem who forcibly restrained Senator Padilla, wrestled him to the floor, and cuffed him. It was federal law enforcement agents who were functioning as a security detail. I have no idea what security precautions were taken in connection with Noem’s appearance — e.g., were people required to pass through security and/or present identification before getting access to the room? I do know that the videos thus far available provide scant reason to believe the agents knew Padilla was a U.S. senator. The fact that, in the heat of the moment, he announced himself as a senator is irrelevant; security agents never take such proclamations at face value — and would not do so here, under circumstances in which Padilla sure wasn’t acting like a senator (more on that in a moment).
In a fraught atmosphere, the agents had to make a snap decision about whether Padilla might be rushing the podium to do harm. He did not stand down when they directed him to do so. Naturally, they reacted by treating him as a threat. You can say they were too heavy-handed; imagine the reaction, though, if they’d given him more leeway, he turned out not to be a U.S. senator, and he hurt somebody. Instead of “heavy-handed,” we’d be asking how the hell the agents could have let an assailant get so close to the top official they were supposed to be protecting.
Given that Padilla was neither harmed nor charged with a crime once things got sorted out, and that he ended up getting a private meeting with Noem afterwards, I am not going to criticize the agents. They’re just trying to protect a government official, the antithesis of undermining democratic governance.
Padilla’s claims that he was doing oversight are absurd. Members of Congress, including senators, do not carry the legislature around with them wherever they go. Oversight is done on Capitol Hill unless a committee or congressional leadership has commissioned a fact-finding field trip. And when Congress wants to do such a field trip in a federal office building, they have to coordinate with the executive agencies in charge of the facility.
Padilla was not conducting oversight. He was crashing a speech by an executive branch official. He knew members of the press would be present and were apt to be sympathetic to the Democrats’ sanctuary policies. He was trying to disrupt the event, embarrass Noem, and draw attention to himself.
Regardless of what he claims, Padilla was not formally functioning as a member of Congress. Hence, he was subject to the same restrictions that would be imposed on any other citizen. No one would have been permitted by the agents to disrupt Noem’s speech or rush the podium. Anyone else would have been forcibly escorted from the room, detained at least temporarily, and potentially charged with assault depending on how serious the physical actions were. Indeed, we can safely assume that, as a member of the privileged political class, Padilla was treated better than the average rabble-rouser would have been once his identity was confirmed.
Remember that one of the most egregious things President Trump did in connection with the Capitol riot was to encourage a throng to march on Capitol Hill. That was an outrageous thing to do — even if Trump sincerely wanted his supporters to protest peacefully — because Trump was the head of the executive branch. His duty was to respect the independence and functions of the legislative branch, not encourage people to make it more difficult for Congress to convene. Well, similarly, Padilla as a senator was obliged to respect executive authority and functions.
Noem was speaking at the Wilshire Federal Building in West Los Angeles. That is executive branch turf — a field office for the FBI, the State Department, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the General Services Administration, and other federal agencies. It is not a congressional facility. Senator Padilla had no more right than you or I to enter that building and make a scene while a high executive official was conducting a press briefing.
Imagine for a moment that a committee on which Senator Padilla sits was conducting an actual oversight hearing on Capitol Hill and that in the middle of the hearing, Secretary Noem or one of her subordinate agents — on no authority other than the fact that anyone can enter the Capitol and watch public hearings — barged in and demanded that Padilla and his colleagues answer the Homeland Security Department’s questions about what they were doing and why. No one would say Noem was an executive law enforcement official conducting a legitimate investigation. We would say she was obstructing congressional proceedings and flouting separation of powers principles. Democrats and the media would demand that she be prosecuted.
To be clear, I am not calling for Padilla’s prosecution. Nor am I saying that he had no right to attend Noem’s briefing in the federal building. I’m saying that he had no more right than anyone else. The video I’ve seen indicates that Noem was making a speech (I assume briefing the press) when Padilla bulled in and demanded to put questions to her. He had no legitimate authority to do that. Furthermore, unlike the media and the broad public, whom Noem was addressing, Padilla has power, as a member of Congress, to ask Noem questions under oath during actual oversight hearings. He is thus the last person who ought to interrupt her and provoke the security personnel at a press conference in a federal office building.
So that’s the legal reality. Padilla pulled a disruptive stunt. The agents probably didn’t know who he was and were under no obligation to accept that he was a senator on nothing more than his say-so. He made a scene, and they had reason to be concerned that it could get violent, so they removed and temporarily detained him. He wasn’t hurt, he wasn’t charged, and he apparently got a chance to ask Noem questions in a private setting, even though she was under no duty to give him that opportunity. This kerfuffle should be no harm, no foul . . . except, of course, that this was a performative exercise in which Padilla wanted to provoke a reaction so he, backed by a chorus of Democrats and their note-takers, could hammer their “Trump is a dictator” narrative.
Our political class is playing with fire. Trump is agitating Democrats because he senses, with good reason, that doing so is politically beneficial: They can always be relied on to advocate on behalf of lawlessness, which diminishes them in the eyes of Americans who want the laws enforced and the streets peaceful — and who well remember how authoritarian Democrats were while recently in power. For their part, Democrats are appealing to a progressive base that, while not representative of public attitudes, wields outsize influence in the Democratic Party. That base believes America should not have borders, champions mass illegal immigration, and practices divisive grievance politics. Rabidly opposing Trump, being a hero to that faction of the party, is the route to political stardom — Governor Newsom believes it will carry him to the party’s presidential nomination, and Padilla no doubt figures he is the matinee idol du jour.
This dynamic has ignited violence in the streets, including forcible attacks on police and public officials. The police — and now, military personnel because the police, by their own admission, were overwhelmed — have to be on high alert for potential attacks. Democrats refuse to condemn the political violence of the radical left, and Trump mass-pardons rioters in his base, including those who attacked police. One side or the other is constantly eroding the American norm that we settle disputes, no matter how passionate, though democratic means, not violence.
Every day there are altercations. And on Saturday, the left is urging millions of anti-Trump demonstrators to pour into the streets of over 2,000 cities, towns, and neighborhoods across the country to agitate against Trump’s policies — in particular, enforcement of immigration laws that were democratically enacted and are broadly supported (the desire that they be enforced is a big part of why Trump was elected).
This can’t end well. The hard left, to whose tune Democrats dance, believes violence helps their political project. People who make scenes and use force in hopes of provoking a forcible response will nearly always have such hopes fulfilled. Today’s Padilla episode is a small snapshot of a far greater peril.