I have watched, several times, the tape showing U.S. Senator Alex Padilla being manhandled and handcuffed by members of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s security detail as he tried to ask her a question during a recent news conference. Each time I have been horrified to see how a sitting United States Senator was treated, when he had a perfect right—a duty, in fact—to ask a legitimate question on behalf of his constituents. He had planned to ask about the inhumane and illegal treatment of migrants that has either been done by or allowed by the Trump administration. that was a perfectly valid and important question. we all need to know the answer. But we aren’t allowed to because Padilla was thrown to the ground, cuffed, and removed from the room before he could ask.
Noem claimed after the news conference that Padilla had failed to identify himself, and that’s why he was treated this way. As if it would be all right to treat any person who wasn’t a U.S. Senator in such a disrespectful manner. But the Senator DID identify himself as Sen. Alex Padilla. I clearly heard him say so on the tape. Either her hearing is faulty of she’s lying.
“Is this still my country?” I ask when I watch such unconscionable acts on the part of one governmental official against another.
Unfortunately, this is not the only example lately of members of this administration behaving in an authoritarian manner. As i have watched scenes of the California national Guard in full combat gear entering the streets of Los Angeles—not at the direction of California’s governor as the law provides, but sent there under the questionable authority of President Trump—I have also found myself asking, “Is this still my country? the country that I love and have been so proud of all my life?”
As I write this article, the outcome of the California situation is unclear. A federal judge in San Francisco has shot down Trump’s commandeering of the state’s law enforcement agency, directing the Guard’s return to the control of California Governor Gavin Newsom. That order was immediately appealed by Trump, of course, and the appeals court has stayed the federal judge’s order, for now.
The case will presumably make its way up the legal chain to the U.S. Supreme Court, and there’s no telling what that Court will find—or simply make up—to support Trump’s California action. Any group of people who could find in the Constitution—or simply make up—a basis for Trump to have complete immunity from prosecution for any act he does as President can surely be on his side in this case too.
Multiple legal scholars, including the highly respected conservative Judge Michael Luttig, have pointed out that the U.S. Constitution contains no provision that can be interpreted as granting the President complete immunity. But so much for what the Constitution says. Or more importantly, what it doesn’t say.
I’m enough of an optimist (maybe a cockeyed one) to believe that we who are resisting Trump’s authoritarianism will win this war and our democracy will win out.
But for now, the battle is raging. Is this still our country?