The men who rush are perceived as dangerous.
In America, where men of color have a long weapon description of how they look and justify the use of movement, this is especially true for dark men who charge at white women.
So, when Sen. Alex Padilla suspended the press conference on Thursday, when Homeland Security Secretary Christie Noem said, “People need to identify themselves before they start charging,” it’s not intentionally loaded words and it’s hard to believe that the result was loaded.
For those who don’t watch Fox or other right-wing media, we’ll explain how Noem’s explanation unfolded. Padilla, the Trump version of the story, has got what he deserves. He arrests him at an uninvited press conference, and says they pushed the road towards the stage and couldn’t identify themselves.
Ask my inbox.
“These are what your article was supposed to say,” one of my column fans wrote about the incident. “‘Senator Alex Padilla, dressed like a truck driver and acting like a potential attacker or a mental case, began screaming as he plunged into a press conference being held by high-class members of the cabinet.”
Another reader has more concisely stated the dog’s whistly racism.
“There’s no Juan above the law,” the reader said.
We’ll explain whether Padilla has rushed, and how dangerous the rush is. But the bigger problem is the alternative reality that the Trump administration is building up fear and building support for military repression. The question is not that Padilla believes he is a threat, but that America has deviated from the chaos induced by immigrants that only the military can suppress, and that Trump needs the king’s power to lead the army to rescue.
So it doesn’t really matter whether Padilla has rushed. As the video shows, it is clear that he is not near Noem and had no intention of causing harm.
“It was very dishonest to Christy Noem to claim he had charged at her,” Joan Donovan told me. She is a disinformation expert at Boston University and an assistant professor of journalism.
“The Trump administration is spitting its saliva into the major conflict that will allow the military to get involved in the Old Town,” she said. “They seem to make these people seem in governable without this kind of major intervention and excessive force.”
Padilla, the son of a Mexican immigrant, is known to be an equal man. My colleague Gustavo Arerano describes him as “goody two shoes.”
But these are not equal days. Padilla said he was in the federal building on Thursday for a briefing with the general as he had been trying to get answers for weeks on how deportation was being handled.
That briefing was delayed by Noem’s press conference, so he was escorted by federal authorities who knew exactly who they were escorting, and Padilla went to listen to Noem in the hopes of getting information.
Padilla said she was tired of hearing what she said about criminals and invasions, and tried to ask questions as she walked past the walls of television cameras. In the video I watched, multiple federal agents (looking like Homeland Security and the FBI) block his way and then start pushing him back. Padilla seems to continue moving forward, but is overwhelmed and shoved into the hallway. It’s here that he took him to the ground and cuffed.
It’s difficult to see a charge there. And, if any, it was at least from at least 10 feet away from Noem. Ed Obayashi, an expert in using the Force, said in these circumstances, law enforcement officers are expected to use judgements about what danger is.
“They were trying to keep him away,” Obayashi said. “They were trying to do what they could under the circumstances to prevent him from approaching.”
However, he added that from what can be seen in the video, it did not appear that Padilla had shown the “intention” to cause harm, and that he was really far away. Distance makes a difference when determining whether a charge is a threat.
“It seems he’s not going to hurry,” Obayashi said.
So they did work to do it, even if a bit enthusiastic, to be fair to officials who might have initially dealt with US senators and to be fair to the officers who might not.
But Noem knows well. It’s hard to imagine that she didn’t recognize Padilla, a ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship and Border Safety.
And if she had not done so, her confidant and her close advisor, Cory Lewandowsky, certainly did. Padilla told the New York Times that he was in detention in the hallway when Corey Lewandowsky ran down the hall and began screaming, “Let him go! Let him go!”
And of course, Padilla was screaming that she was a senator, forcing her to deny the charge.
“I wasn’t charging at her or anyone. Yes, I identified myself,” he said on CNN.
Of course, Noem may have said something at this point to ease the situation. She could have asked Padilla to go back to the room to answer his questions. Padilla said the two met after the press conference and spoke for about 15 minutes. That is, Noem knew his intentions when he later accused him of being a “slash.”
So, what was treated as an unfortunate encounter was instead intentionally upgraded for propaganda purposes. Shortly after Noem’s statement, a White House spokesman posted to X that Padilla “recklessly rushed towards the podium,” conscience that he consolidated the story to the right-wing conscience.
For weeks, the Trump administration has been stepping up its war with opposition. US lawmaker Lamonica McQuiver (DN.J.) was charged by a large ju trial after a brawl outside a New Jersey ice detention center a few weeks before Padilla was handcuffed. Newark Mayor Las Baraka was arrested in the same case, but the charges were later dropped.
In April, Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested in her own court after being accused of helping immigrants avoid ice officers by allowing them to leave the public door.
And just before the Padilla incident, Noem claimed that federal agents would remain in Los Angeles despite protests that had hundreds of people quoted or arrested. By Friday, Marines had been deployed in Los Angeles, but they didn’t make clear whether their guns included a live round or under what circumstances they would fire.
“We are staying here to free the city from socialists and burdensome leadership from what this governor and this mayor placed in this country and what they tried to insert into the city,” Noem said just before Padilla’s interruption.
Freeing American cities. With the army.
A whimsical opposition. With fear.
A survey last fall by PRRI found that 26% of Republicans said “progress in this country requires that the president has the power to limit the impact of the opposing side and the group.”
They also found “strong overlap between Christian nationalists and Americans who hold authoritarian views.”
“If that’s what Trump, Christy Noem and Pete Hegses keep arresting Democrat representatives, that’s authoritarian,” Donovan said. “They’re people that represent normal people and if they can’t do that because they’re so stuck on false accusations and launch charges, we don’t live in democracy.”
Padilla may have lost his trademark coolly at that press conference, but Noem did not.
She knew exactly what she was saying and why. Padilla asks questions is a threat to Trump.
Padilla’s charges pose a threat to society, and only Trump can stop it.
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