“When a U.S. Senator goes to demand questions about the lawfulness or lawlessness of these actions, to see him tackled to the ground, brought to the ground. What is becoming of our democracy? Are there no limits to what this administration will do? “
Watch his full remarks HERE. Download remarks HERE.
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) delivered remarks on the Senate floor calling out the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) disgraceful misconduct towards United States Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.). Schiff called out DHS’ disgusting behavior after Senator Padilla attempted to question DHS Secretary Kristi Noem for the Trump administration’s indiscriminate raids throughout California.
Read the transcript of his remarks as delivered below:
I just watched footage of our colleague, my California colleague, Senator Alex Padilla, being forcibly removed from a briefing by the Secretary of Homeland Security’s staff. He went there to observe and to ask questions.
And I watched with horror on this video, seeing these agents grab my colleague, my fellow Senator from California, grab him, push him out of the hearing as he was identifying himself as a U.S. Senator, bringing him into a hallway, bringing him down to the ground, bringing his arms behind his back.
I saw this happen to my colleague. I am shocked by how far we have descended in the first 140 days of this administration where we have a President calling out the military over the objection of a governor to try to intimidate and interfere with law enforcement in California, calling out the Marines to try to inflame tensions in our city. And now this latest act, when a U.S. Senator goes to demand questions about the lawfulness or lawlessness of these actions, to see him tackled to the ground, brought to the ground. What is becoming of our democracy? Are there no limits to what this administration will do?
Is there no line they will not cross. We see lawlessness after lawlessness. We see threats to judges of impeachment and of physical harm. We see arrests of members of Congress. And now this. All of us have lived as part of a generation since World War II that was used to seeing our freedoms ever expanding. We saw walls coming down. We saw new democracies being born. We came to think that somehow this was inevitable, like the laws of nature, that it was the moral arc of the universe always bending towards justice, only to see that it was not bending towards justice. And to see this now at home, to see in the United States of America, the executive use force like this against a member of a co-equal branch of government to see that it has come to this already, and not a peep yet from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. No, whisper of dissent yet. I hope that changes. The founders separated the powers between the Executive and the Legislative and the Judiciary, because they wanted to set ambition against ambition, ambition of one institution against another to protect all of our freedom. But that requires that we go beyond our partisan affiliations. And when something is wrong, dead wrong, when something is a threat to our democracy, that we call it out regardless of party.
And this is wrong. This is wrong. We ask, “How do you lose a democracy? How does one lose a democracy?” This is how you lose a democracy, actions like today. But even more importantly than what has just happened is what will happen in the next 24 hours. Will this be roundly condemned? Will this be roundly condemned or somehow will we just fall down some partisan line again and see another leap towards autocracy in this country?
Alex Padilla is one of the most decent people I know. One of the most dedicated public servants I know, someone of just the greatest character. We all know him well in this institution. He embodies public service. He never forgot where he came from. He came from very humble origins, and he never forgot where he came from. And the beauty of this country is you could come from a very humble origin, and you could end up here.
When I first got here, Jon Tester, a farmer from Montana and a Senator from Montana, told me about a conversation he had with John D. Rockefeller when he got here. And he said Rockefeller told him, “You and I came from very different places, but we both ended up here.” It’s the beauty of America that Alex Padilla could end up here by dint of his brilliance and his integrity and his compassion, and all of that is at risk. All that is at risk right now if we let the abusive handling of this good man and so many other good men and women around the country, if we let this go without our firmest opposition, without our strongest pushback, without our strongest defense of our democracy.
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