Alex Padilla

Floor Speech

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Mr. BOOKER. I am grateful for the recognition.

I know we have been talking here for quite some time about an incident that is unprecedented--I would imagine in generations here-- that a U.S. Senator, today, in a Federal building, going to ask questions to a Federal official in the executive, is forcibly handled, identifies himself as a U.S. Senator, and is pulled out of the room. Doors close, and as we saw from another camera, he is forcibly driven to his knees and thrown upon his face with his arms wrenched behind him and handcuffed. It is such a breach to have one of our Members of this body treated in such a way for, as one of the officials from the Department of Homeland Security says, for being ``disrespectful and performative.'' Well, if that is a reason for people to be thrown on the ground, forcibly handcuffed, most of this body would have had that experience.

This is something far more serious when we see that overstep of power. I have seen this with LaMonica McIver, doing her oversight authority, being caught up in a storm of officials going to arrest a mayor who then the judge said clearly was wrongfully arrested.

We have seen this in the overstepping of the bounds of propriety. But this act of violence against a Member of this body demands a response.

We have seen what happens when government abuses their power, when they engage in violent actions against their citizenry. Indeed, we have seen this in its extreme cases, time and time again, throughout our history, unfortunately, in the labor movement, in the suffrage movement, in the civil rights movement.

We know that when State officials in Alabama met John Lewis and marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were met with such violence that the intention there was to suppress our freedoms.

We are in a time now where we are seeing protests planned all across the United States of America, with hundreds of protests coming this weekend. As Alex Padilla, himself, has asked: If they can do this to a U.S. Senator, what does that say to the average American who wants to exercise their constitutionally protected rights to protest, to petition their government, to speak up?

More than this, Alex Padilla, in this body, has come in a very unusual way. He is the son of Mexican immigrants--a short-order cook and a woman who cleaned homes. In this environment, where we have seen our immigration enforcement officials not going after criminals or gang members or people that are somehow threatening us but going to separate families, taking away a mother from her children, taking away people dropping off their kids at school, going to work sites or places like Home Depot where people stand looking for work, going after agricultural workers--this is a moment where we see good-faith people peacefully protesting and having the courage to stand up to the most powerful person in the world, the President of the United States.

Yet, again, we see an example where that President is willing to abuse their authority in an act that is ensured to be an attempt at intimidation.

If Alex Padilla, a U.S. Senator, can be dragged from a room in a Federal building for asking questions, thrown upon the ground and handcuffed, what does it say to the traditions in our Nation that are one of the reasons why we are all here?

Because our government does have its limits--it is not unchecked power. The President is not the King. Insulting him is not a crime.

Look, I have been disappointed, as I have seen in joint statements and I have seen this in State of the Union Addresses, behavior from people that I don't find justifiable within the Chamber. I remember when a South Carolina Congressman heckled the President of the United States. I heard it in one of Trump's addresses--people yelling things at the President.

Is that, in a democracy, sufficient provocation to arrest Senators or Congress people who are ``disrespectful,'' as Alex Padilla was accused of being, as if that is a justification to be thrown upon the ground and violently handcuffed?

We have certain exalted ideals and principles in a democracy. In fact, fundamental to our democracy, written in our founding documents, over 200 years old, was this ideal of certain inalienable rights of the people. Our Bill of Rights enshrines--before even the ratification of our Constitution by States, it was demanded that we have a Bill of Rights that guarantees certain principles before a government. Our design of our government was to provide checks and balances because of how much our Founders feared excesses and abuses of power.

These are constitutional principles now that, today, in the most dramatic of fashion, are under attack. We, as a Nation, have elevated the ideals of the ability of American citizens to speak truth to power, to protest, to stand peacefully and forcibly in defiance of abuses of power.

And, today, in this body of 100, we have seen one of our Members, the son of Mexican immigrants, the son of a short-order cook and a woman who cleaned houses in the most noble of fashions--who invested themselves in our common dream, who invested themselves in our ideals, who raised an extraordinary young man who has lived his life in service of others, starting in Los Angeles, starting as a city councilperson in that very city, a graduate of MIT--face an indignity and an assault and violence that should not be tolerated on anybody in this body.

That is an executive overreach by the President of the United States, and it is happening within a pattern of conduct--a mayor in Newark arrested, rebuked by a judge that the authorities of the executive were overstepped; LaMonica McIver, a Congresswoman, brought up on charges as she was caught in a storm of officials rushing to arrest--wrongfully arrest--that mayor, who is now suing for that wrongful arrest.

We see, time and time again, a pattern being created of an executive overstepping its authority and, in this case, using violence against an American citizen who also happens to be a Member of this body, a U.S. Senator.

I have strong, strong concerns about the fear and intimidation that this President seeks to create in our society--the fear and intimidation of a President that seems to equate defiance, dissent, and protests with somehow being unpatriotic or being un-American.

Well, leader after leader in our history says that when there is injustice, when there are abuses of power, when there is a Federal Government overstepping its bounds, it is incumbent upon the citizenry of the United States of America not to be complicit, not to be silent, not to do anything.

In this Nation, we bring strong voices that know that the true checks of the power of the executive are not just the judicial branch and the Congress. The true checks on abuses of power will always be the power of the people. I believe that our Founders spoke to this. I believe that there are extraordinary words from our past, and I would like to read some of them:

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

This is a quote that so guided our Framers--that the President of the United States is not a King. The great difficulty lies in this: ``You must first enable the government to'' stand for justice.

In Federalist No. 51, James Madison talked about the urgency of the people to check the power of the executive.

Here is Jefferson: The abuse of power is not a new thing. It is the consequence of power evidence.

Jefferson was suggesting the urgency for us as a citizenry to be vigilant against the abuses of power. As I said already, the words of Jefferson:

When the government fears the people, there is liberty.

When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.

Donald Trump seems to want to make protesters afraid of him, dissenters afraid of him, those who disagree with him afraid of him. He seems to want to have law firms come to heel because of threats to their financial well-being. He wants to make universities come to heel because of their fears of losing Federal grants. These are signs not of a healthy democracy but one under assault.

Another quote:

Emergencies have always been the pretext upon which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

A President that tries to precipitate a crisis or make people believe that there is a crisis in Los Angeles--one that cannot be handled by the local police, the city police, the county police--and in the farce of some serious emergency, sends in Federal troops. This is a President that is abusing our traditions and, as we saw today, a President whose administration, in my lifetime, took the first violent action against a Member of this body who was standing up to ask questions.

I quote George Washington:

[I]f Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent, we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.

That is how important our first President thought of as the ability for the people of this Country to stand up and speak truth to power. The right to free speech, the right to petition your government, the right to assemble--these are vaunted, sacred principles in this country.

And, today, if those principles are stripped from a U.S. Senator in their own State, in a Federal building; if a U.S. Senator cannot exercise their right of speech, their right to question their government, the right to provide checks and balances--even after they identified themselves, they are forcibly removed from a room in that Federal building, forced to kneel, and then thrown upon their face, then having their arms wrenched behind their back and handcuffed. As Alex Padilla said: If they are doing that to me, just imagine what they are doing to laborers and farmworkers and others who do not have the stature of this office.

What will this body do? This is the test before us right now. What will this body do? Where are the voices of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle?

True tests of leadership are not easy. To stand in a storm, to stand for principle against politics, to stand for patriotism against partisanship, to stand up for what is right--that is what this moment calls.

For us to normalize what we saw today, normalize a U.S. Senator being violently grabbed and handcuffed with no charges filed, if we say nothing now, our silence is complicity in that behavior by the executive. It is an erosion of our democracy, of our principles.

I heard the authors of this book, ``How Democracies Die,'' speak with fear and worry about our current state of affairs in America. One of the signs they pointed to about a democracy in peril was violence. But it wasn't violence of a political sectarian nature. Yes, that is part of it. But the worst type of violence that shows the erosion of a democracy is when the state itself uses violence unjustly against its citizens.

That was the horror of Donald Trump pardoning people who beat police officers in this building. The horror to me was not the Presidential pardon power; the horror to me was that the very people who beat into submission police officers in order to unjustly install a President, in order to prevent the peaceful transfer of power--that very same President was saying: Hey, it is all right. I am going to call you patriots and absolve you of your convictions by a jury of your peers. Some of you who even pled guilty to your crimes, I am going to say that is all forgiven.

The danger in that is a President saying: If you commit violent acts to my benefit--in this case, to unjustly install me in my position-- then that is OK.

It is encouraging violence within our society that erodes our democracy as a whole.

This is the crisis we are in. This is a moment that is a test of this body. This is a crossroads in this body.

A Member of this body in a Federal building, trying to ask questions to a Federal official after identifying themselves, faced violence from his government that tried to silence him as he tried to ask a question.

This has precipitated for us a greater question: Are we a vibrant democracy that protects our fundamental rights, that checks power from abuse, that demands that no one is above the law, whether it be any American citizen and especially those who serve in public office? What will our democracy be tomorrow? Will we normalize this kind of violence, this kind of attack on a Member of this body by the administration for the sin that they themselves have said is just disrespectful behavior--asking a question at a press conference?

This is a day of great challenge and great trial. This is a test of this body. How will we respond in this moment? Will this body simply allow the administration to continue in this manner this pattern and practice that they are establishing where the rights of American citizens to speak truth, to protest, to speak up, to call out, to question, to be in dissent--are those sacrosanct principles or will we allow them to be violated even when it is a Member of our own body?

At the end of the Declaration of Independence, these brave men who saw the abuses of power of a King; those revolutionaries who gave birth to this great democracy; those imperfect geniuses who grappled with the great ideals of their time, that set up a nation not ruled by Kings and Queens, not a theocracy where there is some divine right of someone to rule over us, decided to vest the power in this Nation with the people and created a government organized around the principle of the suspicion of concentrations of power and created three branches of government to provide checks and balances and then gave to the people of the United States of America certain fundamental rights--the First Amendment to our Constitution, enshrining those rights--those rights that have allowed generation after generation to use them to make our Nation more perfect, to speak up to the wrongs and the ills of government, to challenge leaders who had gotten corrupt and had gone wrong; generation after generation standing on the principles of our Constitution.

And here we are in 2025 where those ideals are being tested, where that Constitution is being strained, where a Member of this body speaking up and asking questions at a time of trial in his community is not met with answers to his questions but is met with violence. That is wrong.

But when wrongs continue--or, as our Founders called them, usurpations of our inalienable rights--when those go unchecked, when such actions go unanswered, it paves a road toward tyranny, and in our day and age, they are signs of our weakening commitment to democracy.

Our Founders knew something so well, and as they pledged themselves to break with a King, to break with a central powerful person, to break through a world where you must go before the dear leader and bow in submission, where the vicissitudes and the whims of an individual leader wreak havoc with the community--those people who broke with that course of human events and established this Nation knew one thing for sure: that if we were to make this Nation work, we had to make an unusual commitment to each other. They ended that Declaration of Independence with that commitment--we must mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

There is no honor in what happened to one of our Members today when he was taken violently and driven to his knees. There is no honor in what happened today when an American standing up to ask questions to a person in authority was met with violence. There is no honor in what happened today when a Member of our body was thrown into handcuffs. There is no honor in that.

But where we can show honor, where we can honor our traditions, is not being silent in the face of something going wrong. The truth of the matter is, our Nation has seen wrongs before, but the way we dealt with them was by having others stand up and call them out to help us to correct course.

When those marchers were met with violence at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, that was not the end of the story. The end of the story happened days later when they made it over that bridge; when they got to their destination; when they presented their grievances to their government; when this body itself, hearing from the people, passed new laws and legislation to protect the people and their rights--in this case, their voting rights.

Bad things happen. Mistakes are made. Power seeks more power. Our country is not bereft of demagoguery or hate or powerful people who want to suppress dissent, people who equate opposition with being un- American. We have seen that all. But so far, we have seen people in those times having the courage to stand up and stand against it, who have called it out to demand redress, to fight for justice.

This is a moment that demands that tradition. This is a moment that demands not just people on one side of the political aisle, not just one party, it demands us coming together and pledging a deeper, more sacred honor--that we will defend this democracy, that we will uphold the Constitution and stand together united against anyone--especially using violence--who tries to suppress the fundamental rights of another American, especially a senior U.S. Senator from the great State of California.

(Mr. CURTIS assumed the Chair.)

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