‘If this is how they respond to a senator with a question, imagine what they’re doing across the country,’ says Padilla
Padilla goes on:
If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, 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 farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers, throughout the LA community and throughout California and throughout the country. We will hold this administration accountable. We’ll have more to say in the coming days.
Key events
Newsom says use of National Guard for Ice raids ‘ends tomorrow at noon’
Judge rules Trump illegally called up National Guard and must return control of troops in LA to governor
Padilla calls Noem’s claim that he lunged at her ‘a lie’ in MSNBC interview
Israel has reportedly carried out strikes on Iran
CBS video of Padilla interrupting Noem with a question appears to undermine her claim that he lunged at her
House votes to pull $1.1bn in federal funding from NPR and PBS
Democratic National Committee chair blasts ‘sickening assault’
Kamala Harris decries ‘stunning abuse of power’
Elizabeth Warren says Trump administration ‘wants to shut down’ normal functions of government
Padilla urges people to protest peacefully ‘just like I was’
‘If this is how they respond to a senator with a question, imagine what they’re doing across the country,’ says Padilla
‘I began to ask a question’: statement from senator Alex Padilla
Video from Padilla’s staff shows senator was not resisting when forced to the ground and handcuffed by FBI
Noem doubles down on claim that Padilla didn’t identify himself and ‘lunged’ toward her
DHS claims Padilla ‘lunged’ toward Noem ‘without identifying himself’ – despite footage showing he identified himself
‘Manhandling’ of senator ‘a sickening disgrace’, says Jeffries
Removal of Padilla ‘outrageous, dictatorial and shameful’, says Newsom
Footage of senator’s forcible removal ‘sickened my stomach,’ says Schumer
Senator’s forced removal from press briefing was ‘abhorrent and outrageous’, says LA mayor
Senator Alex Padilla not currently detained after being forced to the ground and handcuffed, his office says
Noem claims she’s left voicemails for Gavin Newsom and he hasn’t returned her calls
California senator Alex Padilla forcibly removed from Noem press conference
Noem repeats Trump administration’s claims that protests are being ‘funded’ and have turned violent
Kristi Noem to give remarks on anti-Ice protests in Los Angeles
Trump’s birthday parade may be cancelled over thunderstorms – Times of London
Hegseth refuses to commit to obeying courts on marines in LA
Kilmar Ábrego García seeks sanctions against Trump administration in wrongful deportation case
Trump says he may soon hike auto tariffs in bid to get more US production
‘He does like me’ : Trump says of Musk as he praises Tesla
US immigration agency flies Predator drones over LA protests
Texas governor says more than 5,000 national guard troops deployed
Hegseth questioned whether Pentagon has plans for potential Greenland, Panama invasions
Sanctuary states testify on impact of Trump immigration policies
Trump says business leaders telling him mass deportations are taking good workers away
Key takeaways from Gavin Newsom this morning on Trump’s use of national guard in LA
Newsom calls Trump a ‘stone cold liar’ and says president didn’t speak to him about sending troops to LA
‘This isn’t an isolated incident’: Trump’s show of military force in LA was years in the making
‘Morale is not great’: troops and marines deeply troubled by LA deployment
US immigration officials raid California farms as Trump ramps up conflict
Marines to deploy on LA streets within two days with authority to detain civilians
At his news conference in the wake of a ruling in his favor in Newsom v Trump, Gavin Newsom laughed at Trump’s social media post that seemed to criticize his own administration’s immigration raids on farms. “This is what he does” Newsom said, “he creates a problem, and then he tries to be a hero in his own Marvel movie”.
Newsom says use of National Guard for Ice raids ‘ends tomorrow at noon’
Speaking to reporters after a federal judge in San Francisco ruled on Friday that Donald Trump acted illegally, by ordering the National Guard to Los Angeles, and the troops must be returned to state control, California’s governor Gavin Newsom said that the use of the guard to support immigration raids “end tomorrow at noon”.
The senior district judge, Charles Breyer, wrote in his order that he was granting a preliminary injunction.
“At this early stage of the proceedings, the Court must determine whether the President followed the congressionally mandated procedure for his actions” the judge wrote in his 36-page order. “He did not. His actions were illegal—both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. He must therefore return control of the California National Guard to the Governor of the State of California forthwith.”
Newsom also said that Trump is not a monarch, and that the nickname the president has been using for him, “Newscum”, was previously hurled at him in eighth grade.
He hinted that his phone conversation with Trump was in some ways “chilling” but declined to reveal any details.
The Secretary of state, Marco Rubio, issued this statement distancing the United States from the strikes on Iran by its close military ally, Israel:
Tonight, Israel took unilateral action against Iran. We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region. Israel advised us that they believe this action was necessary for its self-defense. President Trump and the Administration have taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with our regional partners. Let me be clear: Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel.
Judge rules Trump illegally called up National Guard and must return control of troops in LA to governor
In a ruling on Friday, Judge Charles Breyer temporarily barred Donald Trump from deploying National Guard troops in Los Angeles and ordered the National Guard to return to the control of California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, who sued Trump over the move. Breyer’s order in Newsom v. Trump will take effect at noon on Friday.
“At this early stage of the proceedings, the Court must determine whether the President followed the congressionally mandated procedure for his actions” the judge wrote in his 36-page order. “He did not. His actions were illegal—both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. He must therefore return control of the California National Guard to the Governor of the State of California forthwith.”
“Defendants are temporarily ENJOINED from deploying members of the California National Guard in Los Angeles”, the judge concluded. “Defendants are DIRECTED to return control of the California National Guard to Governor Newsom”.
The Trump administration immediately filed an appeal of the order.
The senior district judge, who was assigned by a random selection process to the case, is the younger brother of retired supreme court justice Stephen Breyer.
Charles Breyer is a former Watergate prosecutor, and a graduate of Harvard, who was first nominated to the federal bench by Bill Clinton in 1997.
Padilla calls Noem’s claim that he lunged at her ‘a lie’ in MSNBC interview
In an interview with MSNBC on Thursday evening, senator Alex Padilla accused homeland security secretary Kristi Noem of telling a ‘ridiculous’ lie by claiming that he ‘lunged’ at her before being forced out of a news conference and handcuffed by federal agents.
Padilla said that he had been in the Wilshire federal building in Los Angeles for a scheduled briefing when he heard that there was a news conference and said that he would like to listen in.
Then, he said, a few minutes into the deeply partisan remarks Noem read to start the event, he decided to object.
“I’m sitting in the back of the room, behind the cameras, behind the reporters, listening, listening”, Padilla said. “And at one point, it was just too much to take. Not the first, but the second attack on the political leadership of California, and this notion that Donald Trump and Kristi Noem have to come in and rescue the people of Los Angeles from Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass? It was too much. And so I spoke up.”
“I didn’t barge into the room” he added, rejecting Noem’s characterization of the incident. “The folks that were escorting me in the building walked me over. I didn’t even open the door. The door was opened for me. And I spent a few minutes in the back of the room just listening in until the rhetoric, the political rhetoric got to be too much to take. So I spoke up.”
As video of the incident shows, Padilla moved to the front of the room, but was no closer to Noem than several reporters when he interrupted to ask a question.
He also explained that after someone from Noem’s team realized that he was who he said he was, she agreed to meet with him after the news conference. And then, he said, he got to ask the question he was trying to ask in the press conference., which was about why the Trump administration claims it is going after violent criminals, but “we hear story after story after story of non-violent migrants who, many are working in very essential jobs for our economy, being rounded up.”
Israel has reportedly carried out strikes on Iran
Israel has carried out strikes in Iran, but without US involvement or US assistance, officials tell Reuters.
That report comes after Iran’s state-run Nour News said that explosions were heard northeast of Iran’s capital Tehran early on Friday.
The Israeli newspaper Haartez reports that the country’s defense minister said that following a preemptive Israeli strike against Iran, a missile and drone attack against Israel and its civilian population is expected in the immediate future.
A Times of Israel military correspondent reports on X that Israel’s military “confirms it has launched an aerial campaign against Iran’s nuclear program. Dozens of targets across Iran related to the nuclear program and other military facilities are being struck by the Israeli Air Force, it says.”
“The IDF says Iran has enough enriched uranium to build several bombs within days, and it needs to act against this ‘imminent threat.’ Sirens that sounded across Israel a short while ago were a preemptive warning issued by the IDF, ahead of a possible reaction by Iran.”
Hugo Lowell
A federal judge expressed skepticism on Thursday with the Trump administration’s arguments that the president has the power to federalize national guard troops and deploy them to suppress protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles.
The US district judge, Charles Breyer, said he intends to rule on California’s request for an injunction halting the deployment “very soon”, and that he was hopeful his ruling would come by the end of the day. He said he would also decide on whether the justice department could stay the order pending appeal.
The justice department argued at a roughly hourlong hearing that under the Title 10 statute invoked by Trump, the US president had the power to decide whether the protests had escalated and required the national guard to quell a “rebellion or a danger of rebellion”.
But Breyer said that the statute was not structured in a way that suggested Trump would have the power to be the sole determiner of whether such conditions had been met.
“If the president had complete discretion, why wouldn’t it say: ‘Whenever the president thought’ or ‘if the president agrees’ or ‘in the sole discretion of the president, he finds one, two and three’,” Breyer said to the justice department. “They don’t say any of that.”
Although the protests have generally been peaceful with the exceptions of pockets that turned violent, the justice department contended Trump’s absolute discretion meant his underlying basis for his decisions could not be reviewed by federal courts.
The judge appeared particularly incredulous at the notion there could be no judicial review. “If the president finds there to be a rebellion, then it is a rebellion,” Breyer said with his voice sharply rising in intonation. “How is that any different to what a monarchist does?”
CBS video of Padilla interrupting Noem with a question appears to undermine her claim that he lunged at her
In the hours since the senator Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, was forcibly removed from a press conference in Los Angeles for trying to ask the homeland security secretary Kristi Noem a question, Noem and her spokesperson have claimed repeatedly that Padilla had failed to identify himself and acted in a threatening manner.
“This man burst into the room, started lunging towards the podium, interrupting me and elevating his voice and was stopped, did not identify himself and was removed from the room,” Noem told Fox News on Thursday evening. “As soon as he identified himself, appropriate actions were taken.”
“People need to identify themselves before they start lunging at people at press conferences” the secretary told another reporter.
Her account of what happened was amplified in social-media posts from the homeland security spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, who maintained that Padilla “lunged toward Secretary Noem”, and from the department’s official X account, which used the same words.
Because the incident was so sudden, and most cameras were trained on Noem as she began the press conference with deeply partisan prepared remarks, much of the initial video that circulated online did not actually show where Padilla was standing in relation to Noem when he tried to interrupt with his question.
But one CBS News camera captured the exact moment that Padilla interrupted Noem, just after she had said that federal forces, including the military, deployed by the Trump administration to Los Angeles to aid in immigration sweeps “are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country, and what they have tried to insert into this city.”
Video from CBS News of the moment when Senator Alex Padilla interrupted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s news conference in Los Angeles on Thursday shows that he was not close to or lunging at her, and she continued with her prepared remarks pic.twitter.com/Poyal5bniG
— Robert Mackey (@RobertMackey) June 12, 2025
It was at this point in the CBS recording that Padilla could be heard beginning his question with the words: “Madame secretary, I want to know why you insist on exaggerating.” As Noem continued reading her remarks, without even pausing, the CBS camera panned to show Padilla, at some distance from her across the room.
Just three seconds into the incident, Padilla could be seen standing, with his left hand raised slightly in a rhetorical gesture, trying to continue with his question, as a security officer placed his hands on the senator’s chest and back and began pushing him away from the front of the room.
There is no visual evidence in the clip to suggest that Padilla was moving in Noem’s direction when he started speaking, or was ever within 10-15ft (3-3.5 metres) of her.
Noem’s decision to ignore the interruption and continue reading her remarks also did not look or sound like the behavior of someone who had been lunged at.
Democrats, including the senator Tina Smith of Minnesota, pointed out that video of the incident also made it plain that Noem’s second claim, that Padilla did not identify himself, was false. At the nine-second mark of the CBS clip, the senator can clearly be heard telling the officers pulling him from the room: “I am Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary.”
“Liars,” Smith replied on social media to a post from the official homeland security account that said that Padilla had not identified himself.
Katie Porter, the former Democratic representative from southern California, who is now running to be the next governor of the state, called the video of the senator Alex Padilla being forced out of a homeland security news conference in LA on Thursday “outrageous”.
Writing on Bluesky, she added:
Senator Padilla was tackled and restrained – and, as I understand it, later handcuffed – simply for asking questions of DHS Sec Noem at a public press conference.
He’s right to be asking questions! People across the political spectrum are very concerned about Trump’s illegal and politically motivated militarization of LA.
The senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, told CBS News on Thursday that video of her Democratic colleague from California, Alex Padilla, being forcibly removed from a press conference in Los Angeles as he tried to ask the homeland security secretary Kristi Noem a question, was “horrible”.
“It is shocking, at every level,” Murkowski added. “It’s not the America I know.”
Chris Stein
Members of the congressional Hispanic caucus said they paid visits to the offices of the Senate majority leader John Thune and the speaker of the House Mike Johnson after the handcuffing of the California senator Alex Padilla, but that neither of the Republican leaders were available to meet with them.
“Senator Padilla was there to express his opinion. Senator Padilla was there to ask questions. Senator Padilla was there because his office is also in that same building. That’s why senator Padilla was there,” said the Democratic representative Adriano Espaillat, the caucus’s chair. “I feel this amounts to an assault, a felony, and we want a full and complete investigation of this matter immediately.”
He tied the incident to Donald Trump’s hardline enforcement of immigration policy, which has been marked by aggressive waves of arrests by federal agents of people suspected of being in the country illegally.
“We are concerned that this is totally out of control. The weaponization of immigration has taken us to a place in America where we’ve never been before. So divided, so split, so violent and aggressive that obviously you saw those officers there, that detail there, whoever it was, very aggressive, while the senator attempted several times to say that he was a US senator, he identified himself,” Espaillat said.
“We will not let this go. We will continue to push forward. We are here to save America from a dictatorship.”
Chris Stein
I am in the Capitol, and just heard the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson defend the handcuffing of the California senator Alex Padilla.
“A sitting member of Congress should not act like that. It is beneath a member of the Congress, it is beneath a US senator,” he said, calling Padilla’s actions “wildly inappropriate”.
He added: “They’re supposed to lead by example. That is not a good example. We have to turn the temperature down in this country and not escalate it. The Democrat party is on the wrong side. They’re defending lawbreakers, and now they’re acting like lawbreakers themselves.”
Johnson accused Padilla of “charging a cabinet secretary at a press conference”.
Asked whether Padilla should be investigated, he replied: “It’s not my decision to make. I’m not in that chamber, but I do think that it merits immediate attention by my other colleagues over there … I think that that behavior, at a minimum, it rises to the level of a censure.”
As he spoke, Democratic lawmakers walking by heckled him, with one yelling: “That’s a lie!”
House votes to pull $1.1bn in federal funding from NPR and PBS
The House narrowly voted on Thursday to cut about $9.4bn in spending already approved by Congress as Donald Trump’s administration looks to follow through on work by the so-called “department of government efficiency” when it was overseen by Elon Musk, the Associated Press reports.
The package targets foreign aid programs and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides money for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, as well as thousands of public radio and television stations around the country. The vote was 214-212.
Republicans are characterizing the spending as wasteful and unnecessary, but Democrats say the rescissions are hurting the United States’s standing in the world and will lead to needless deaths.
“Cruelty is the point,” the Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, said of the proposed spending cuts.
The Trump administration is employing a tool rarely used in recent years that allows the president to transmit a request to Congress to cancel previously appropriated funds. That triggers a 45-day clock in which the funds are frozen pending congressional action. If Congress fails to act within that period, then the spending stands.
As NPR reports, the measure “would slash $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which allocates nearly all of the funds to local stations, for the next two fiscal years. By law, that money is supposed to be approved in advance as part of an effort to insulate public broadcasting from political influence over fleeting issues.”
The broadcaster notes that the representative Steve Scalise, the Republican majority leader, said last week that the legislation “codifies President Trump’s cuts to wasteful foreign aid initiatives within the State Department and USAID, as well as woke public broadcasting, including NPR and PBS, at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is a business the federal government shouldn’t even be in”.
“NPR and PBS are targeted here today precisely because they are so good at delivering the truth,” the representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat, countered. “Trump doesn’t want a country of engaged, informed Americans. He prefers those who salute on command.”
Cutting funding for NPR and PBS has been a goal of Republicans for decades. In a 2012 presidential election debate, the Republican nominee Mitt Romney said that he would cut the federal subsidy for PBS as a way to tackle the national debt, even though, as he said: “I like PBS, I love Big Bird.”
One result of the years of complaints from conservatives about federal spending on public broadcasting is that many Americans vastly overestimate how much of the federal budget goes to non-partisan, fact-based journalism and educational programming.
In a poll conducted for CNN in 2011, respondents were asked to estimate what share of the federal budget was spent on public broadcasting. The correct answer is that CPB gets about one one-hundredth of a percent (0.01%) of the federal budget.
According to the research done for CNN, just 27% of Americans knew that the money for PBS and NPR was less than 1% of government spending. Remarkably, 40% guessed that the share was between 1% and 5% and nearly a third of Americans said it was in excess of 5% . Seven percent of those surveyed guessed that more than half of the entire federal budget was spent on television and radio broadcasts.
At a hearing in Washington on Thursday, the representative Delia Ramirez, an Illinois Democrat, just screened video of the senator Alex Padilla’s staffer being prevented from filming as his boss was handcuffed by FBI agents.
After playing a section of the clip where Padilla’s staff member was told to stop filming, Ramirez said: “They don’t want you recording so you don’t see how they violate due process repeatedly. I want to make sure that you see that footage.”
Ramirez: They don’t want you recording so you don’t see how they violate due process repeatedly. This is a US Senator asking a question and in return, he is pulled, shoved down the floor, slammed to the ground pic.twitter.com/kJnbzSBv8V
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 12, 2025
“This is a United States senator asking a question of secretary Noem, and in return, he is pulled from the press conference, shoved down the floor slammed to the ground,” she added.
