California Senator Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a press conference given by Secretary of Homeland Security on Thursday, and eventually tackled to the ground and handcuffed by — there’s no other way to say it — government thugs. So. That’s where we’re at.
Noem was at the Los Angeles FBI headquarters to offer further blatantly fascist justifications for the absurd ICE raids and ongoing military occupation of an American city. Padilla’s crime was to try and shout questions at the secretary about that occupation. Videos posted to X show him then being pushed out of the room, and then slammed to the ground. Noem was unruffled.
“We are not going away,” she said. “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.” This is insane, unhinged rhetoric, and as some pointed out on Bluesky, an outright admission that the military on the ground in California because the federal government dislikes a state government’s supposed ideology.
It is easy, in this slide into authoritarianism, to see pivot points, red lines crossed, new levels of lawlessness, around every corner. This week, though, has cranked that dial far into the red: A Trump hate-speech in front of raucous, cheering, carefully selected troops; an oncoming military parade fit for Pyongyang along with presidential threats against anyone who dares protest it; and those National Guard members and Marines descending into Los Angeles to “quell” supposedly riotous protests as the propaganda machines at the right’s disposal spin up a galaxy of AI slop that will convince millions of the country’s second-largest city’s imminent collapse into dystopian lawlessness.
Amidst all that, there is a US Senator, manhandled out the door of a press conference given by the government he is a part of, his arm violently twisted behind his back while on the ground so the most consistently terrified people in the country can put him in handcuffs. The questions are almost a cliche by now — if they can do this to a Senator, if they can send Marines there, and so on. “How much is too much” has been in the air for months, but it’s clear there is no bottom here.
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