It’s understandable that the headlines about the news conference Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem held in Los Angeles on Thursday are focused on Secret Service agents manhandling Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., and throwing him to the ground after he attempted to ask Noem a question. The images of Padilla — the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s panel on immigration, citizenship and border safety and one of two senators representing the most populous state in the country — being treated as if he were a violent threat to the tough-talking secretary are jarring.
And, yet, what’s even more significant than authorities detaining a U.S. senator for asking a Cabinet secretary a question at a news conference is Noem’s ominous remark immediately prior to Padilla’s interruption.
“We are not going away,” she warned. “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.”
“I’m Sen. Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary. Because the fact of the matter is …” the senator said before being violently detained. “Hands off!”
‘I have questions for the secretary,’ the senator said.
Trump administration officials frequently take their lead from their boss — who mouths off so recklessly and constantly that his most outlandish statements are often dismissed as thought bubbles or negotiating bravado or deliberate trolling meant to incite the opposition into hysteria.
So what should we make of Noem’s statement — the one that prompted Sen. Padilla to demand specifics (just before he was detained by the feds)?
“I have questions for the secretary,” the senator said.
I do, too.
When she says “we” are going to “liberate” Los Angeles from the “socialists” and the “burdensome leadership” of the governor and the mayor, is she merely talking about continuing with ICE’s sadistic, haphazard raids in which undocumented immigrants with no criminal records, including women and children, and even legal immigrants and U.S. citizens have been ensnared in the name of protecting the homeland from a fictitious foreign invasion of terrorists and hardened gang members? Or is the secretary speaking more literally and indicating the Trump administration intends to remove — or otherwise render moot — democratically elected state and local officials who oppose the federal government’s brutal incursion into their jurisdictions?
It’s a question that every Republican in office should be compelled to answer.
In an alternate timeline, one might assume that members of the party of limited government and states’ rights would have strong opinions — and maybe even a little dissent — on such a drastic proposition. But that would assume America’s ruling party consists of patriotic Americans who meant it when they took an oath to defend the Constitution. What we have, though, are true believer sycophants who would happily bestow Dear Leader Trump with dictatorial powers and go-along-to-get-along careerists terrified of a MAGA-funded primary opponent. House Speaker Mike Johnson set the tone, when, almost immediately, he called for the Senate to censure Padilla. “I think there needs to be a message sent by the body as a whole that that is not what we’re going to do, that’s not what we’re going to act [sic],” the speaker told reporters. We’d be fools to reflexively conclude the Trump administration hasn’t at least considered the idea of a federal takeover. Noem, who called Los Angeles “a city of criminals” earlier this week, may not have been directed by the president to suggest that the federal government intends to overturn the will of millions of voters and relieve Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass of their duties. But as I wrote less than two months ago, in the second Trump administration, “President Donald Trump and his chief advisers are conducting themselves as though they have the right to do anything to anyone in the name of national security, with no factual justification necessary.” So while it is entirely possible that Noem was just mouthing off, we’d be fools to reflexively conclude the Trump administration hasn’t at least considered the idea of a federal takeover — a “liberation” — of an American city and state they seem to consider illegitimately ruled by their democratically elected officials.
Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and opinion columnist for MS NOW, often covering free speech, civil liberties and extremism. He was previously the senior opinion editor for The Daily Beast and a politics columnist for Business Insider. 
