“This ruling tonight is a huge win for California, but also an important win for the country and for the idea of civilian control over the military, and in particular, control by governors over their own national guards.”
View the full interview here.
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined MSNBC’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki to discuss the breaking news of the night including Israel’s preemptive airstrikes on Iran, the ruling returning the control of the National Guard back to California, and the Department of Homeland Security’s disgraceful misconduct towards Senator Alex Padilla.
On Israel’s strikes on Iran:
[…] We all need to wait and see just what kind of operation this is, how extensive it is. From the Israel side, it sounds like they’re intending to have this go on for a period of time, and on what basis, what intelligence supports, what Israel is claiming in terms of Iran in kind of a breakout mode towards the nuclear weapon. So, a lot of unanswered questions about this, certainly the potential for retaliation and escalation. I’m glad we’re getting our people out of harm’s way. And my thoughts go out to the people of Israel, who will be exposed to grave risk over the next several days.
[…]
I think it’s extremely unlikely that the negotiations continue at this point. So, I think Iran is very likely to call them off. Now I’m skeptical, frankly, of whether the Trump administration was going to reach a successful conclusion, because what they were talking about is much like the agreement that they backed out of. So, it was hard to see whether that was headed towards any success. But it does seem to me, reading between the lines of that Rubio statement that they wanted to continue to try, that is the Trump administration wanted to continue to try diplomacy, and at the same time, they didn’t want to be critical of Israel for taking this strike. And that kind of inconclusive and inherently contradictory statement, I think, demonstrates the tension between what they were hoping to achieve and what Israel found necessary to do.
On the court ruling returning control of the National Guard to California:
[…] I think the judge is on pretty solid ground in saying this is an unlawful action. Now whether the Court of Appeals will stay that pending their review, and whether that court will stay, the order pending the Supreme Court’s review, this is hugely consequential, because I think the governor and mayor of Los Angeles are right. I think they’re testing out their ability to essentially commandeer National Guards throughout the country and use them for their own purposes. One thing that got lost in the horrendous treatment of Alex Padilla today, was what Kristi Noem said at that press conference in saying that it was necessary to have these troops there to liberate the city from the socialists. That’s the kind of rhetoric the administration is using. That’s the kind of perspective they have, and the fact that they would abuse the military that way and justify it that way is unconscionable. So, this ruling tonight is a huge win for California, but also an important win for the country and for the idea of civilian control over the military, and in particular, control by governors over their own national guards.
On the disgraceful and disrespectful conduct of DHS towards Senator Padilla:
I think at a minimum, there needs to be an investigation into how they treated Alex Padilla. This takes place in the federal building. He’s escorted to this briefing. The door to the briefing is open. He tries to ask the secretary a question, and then we all saw what happened. He’s forcibly removed from the room. He’s brought down to the ground. He’s shackled with his face towards the ground, his arms behind his back. This is how they treat a senator trying to ask a question, trying to do their oversight. And I think Senator Padilla is exactly right. What does that mean for the farm worker they’re chasing through the fields right now, for the garment worker, or for anyone else, what kind of rights can we expect them to have? What kind of due process can we expect them to have if they’ll treat Alex Padilla the way they did. But as a friend of his, as a colleague of his, as one of a hundred who know him and love him and know what a wonderful, genuine, decent, humble, hard-working, brilliant person he is, to see someone treated like that, it just breaks your heart. And what it means for our country is seeing him handcuffed like that, to me, it’s kind of like seeing our country, our democracy, handcuffed behind its back. That, to me, is what the administration is doing, and we saw that in such vivid and gut-wrenching fashion today.
[…] This is how we’re protecting our homeland? We’re lawlessly commandeering National Guards. We’re tackling senators to the ground. We’re treating people who did the back-breaking work of putting food on our table through heat, through cold, who were harvesting those crops when it was a pandemic, and their lives were at stake. This is how we’re treating people United States of America. “This is not who we are,” to quote my wonderful former colleague, Elijah Cummings, “we are better than this.”
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