Democrats make a mark in their rowdy pushback to Trump

All week, officials in the Trump administration hailed the images of protests against their deportation campaign in Los Angeles, saying their opponents were playing right into their hands.

But on Thursday, the administration was put on the defensive.

A video of Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., forced to the ground and handcuffed after he interrupted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a news conference in Los Angeles on Thursday, immediately ricocheted across social media platforms and cable news, shifting the narrative to warnings about overreach by the White House.

It capped a week when the Democratic Party seemed to finally find its voice, in ways big and small, to push back against the administration. From California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s questioning President Donald Trump’s acuity to Padilla’s move to interrupt Noem to mini-rebellions playing out at the nation’s capital, Democrats began to break the hold Trump usually has on the news cycle.

It comes after months of Democratic intraparty squabbling over how to move forward after a bitter loss in the presidential election. In that time, Democrats have been unable to come up with coherent, unified messaging to rebut Trump and instead have been mired in fighting about issues like whether activist David Hogg should remain part of the Democratic National Committee and who was to blame for Joe Biden’s refusal to walk away from the Democratic presidential nomination earlier amid concerns of his mental decline.

Last week, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told NBC News he was employing a flood-the-zone strategy with messaging and urging other members to do the same.

And this week, the DNC voted overwhelmingly to hold a new election for Hogg’s vice chair post, prompting him to quickly announce he would walk away from the position.

A strategist said the resistance to Trump was a necessity after the events in Los Angeles, which Democrats say are overreach by the administration.

“Voters have been looking for this, and the circumstances have arrived,” said Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic strategist. “And while many people will say it should have happened sooner, given the series of events — this week alone — everyone had to step up. There was no choice.”

Nationwide protests planned for Saturday also threaten to overshadow Trump’s upcoming military parade in Washington.

On Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., demanded a bipartisan investigation into the Padilla incident as Democratic senators took turns sounding off about what they called overbearing tactics by the Trump administration that undermined democracy. When House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., stood before cameras in the Capitol to call Padilla’s actions “wildly inappropriate,” shouting could be heard interrupting him: “That’s a lie!”

At a hearing Thursday of the House Oversight Committee, where three Democratic governors of so-called sanctuary states were hauled before the panel, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul got salty at one point with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.

“You stated that you’re a proud registered Democrat?” Greene asked.

“Yes, I did,” Hochul shot back. “Is that illegal now, too, in your country?”

At another point in the hearing, Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., interrupted and repeatedly asked whether Republicans would subpoena Noem. He irritated committee chair James Comer, R-Ky. to the point that Comer snapped: “Just shut up!”

That all followed relentless pushback from Newsom since last week. Newsom went on his own messaging campaign to rebut a barrage of insults that Trump and his deputy chief of staff and key immigration official Stephen Miller have fired at him and his California.

Trump federalized the National Guard and deployed Marines to California after protests broke out in response to arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The White House repeatedly pointed to burning cars and protesters’ throwing rocks as the impetus for sending troops to the state, with Trump proclaiming that if he had he not, Los Angeles would be “burning to the ground.”

Most of the protests, however, have taken place only in a few blocks downtown. The Los Angeles police chief said this week that the force was equipped and experienced enough to handle the events in the city on its own and did not ask for assistance from the National Guard.

Democrats have pointed to Trump’s deployments as a vast overreach of presidential powers and an attempt to militarize blue cities.

Amid the upheaval, Newsom delivered remarks this week saying Trump was trying to install an authoritarian regime. He has taken to podcasts and sat for countless news interviews while he and his office regularly rebut Trump administration statements on X.

On Thursday, he went further, raising concerns about Trump’s mental acuity.

In an interview on The New York Times’ podcast “The Daily,” Newsom charged that Trump “starts making up all these things he claimed he told me about, which honestly starts to disturb me on a different level.” He was referring to Trump’s comments that he had a phone call Monday with Newsom that Newsom said did not happen.

“Maybe he actually believed he said those things and he’s not all there. I mean that,” Newsom added.

White House spokesman Steven Cheung shot back in a statement: “The attacks on President Trump are rich, coming from Gavin Newsom, who in this past election tried to gaslight and lied to the American public about Joe Biden’s decline. Gavin Newsom will never be president, even as he tries to peddle these lies.”

Noem and others in the administration said they did not know who Padilla was during the news conference and thought a stranger was lunging at her as she spoke. Noem contended that Padilla did not identify himself, but video showed otherwise.

“I am Sen. Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary,” Padilla called out, interrupting Noem. Padilla was forcibly removed from the room, and video showed him being forced onto his stomach and cuffed.

“If this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they’re doing to farmworkers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country,” Padilla told reporters. “We will hold this administration accountable.”

From the Senate floor, Warren tried to make a larger point about the incident.

“Every day, DHS agents are throwing people to the ground while they are not resisting,” Warren said. “Every day Donald Trump is making this nation look more and more like a fascist state. … We all have to ask: How far will they go? How violent will they get?”