Padilla arrest was a grave mistake by Kristi Noem
In Los Angeles, the Trump administration has been doing the right thing. Trump was right to call out the National Guard after protesters assaulted police, set their vehicles on fire, attacked unmanned Waymos and threatened to overwhelm local law enforcement. Trump is right in keeping his promise to make the removal of undocumented immigrants an overwhelming national priority.
But there is no way that arresting United States Senator Alex Padilla is in the same vein. Yeah, he was rude in interrupting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's disquisition on 'alien removal operations' in Los Angeles. But if rudeness were a crime, Donald Trump would have faced the electric chair long ago.
Every U.S. citizen has the right to question public officials about government actions, but United States Senators even more so. Their job, like all members of Congress, is literally to oversee and question the executive branch on behalf of the particular interests of their state or district. If a senator can't get a little frisky in raising questions, then nobody can.
That's dangerous.
The danger is not that one older guy gets roughly handled; Padilla's bruised arms and ego will recover. No, the danger is that peaceful protesters see that even staying within the bounds of the First Amendment gets you treated in exactly the same way as violent insurgents.
Once they see that, some, maybe many, will join the protesters who are already bent on vandalism and violence. Once that happens, there are not enough National Guardsmen to bring order back to our cities.
The fact that the Department of Homeland Security released an official statement falsely stating that Padilla didn't identify himself during his rude outburst only adds fuel to the fires of suspicion.
Some normally level-headed conservative leaders such as Erick Erickson are dismissing the mishandling of Padilla as a 'stunt intended to go this way,' as if the predictability of Trump administration overreactions makes them ok.
Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson condemned Padilla's actions as 'wildly inappropriate,' as if the Trump administration and Republicans were sitting around eating crudites before a fancy French meal at which everyone will mind their manners.
The mildest thing one could say about some of the Trump administration's actions is 'wildly inappropriate.' Accepting $400 million gifts from a foreign monarchy, appointing a quack as head of the Department of Health and Human Services and getting into Twitter brawls with former supporters are just some of the things Trump has done that might be called 'inappropriate.'
Democrats were quick to rush to condemn the actions of federal officers. ''This is the stuff of dictatorship,' said Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, according to The New York Times. That's a bit much.
Emperor Palpatine hasn't crushed the Senate. And Padilla was healthy and free enough afterward to address the assembled cameras.
What is true is that if a United States Senator can be treated this way while his staff films the abuse of power, the Trump administration is on the threshold of authoritarianism. As Padilla said in a video released after his arrest, regular Americans who have done nothing more than speak can expect to receive much worse treatment from law enforcement when cameras are not around or the scrum makes figuring out what happened harder to do. That, too, will fuel escalation by protesters.
The Trump administration, led by the president and Kristi Noem, need to step back. The treatment of Sen. Padilla will be a rallying cry and a recruiting tool for the rioters who threaten to get out of control.
It was a mistake for Noem to allow this to happen.
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