Democrats have seemingly found their footing as they attempt to push back against president Donald Trump's overreach.
A video of Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) being tackled and handcuffed spread rapidly across social media Thursday after he interrupted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a news conference in Los Angeles, where protests have raged all week against the administration's crackdown on immigrants, reported NBC News.
"It capped a week when the Democratic Party seemed to finally find its voice, in ways big and small, to push back against the administration," the network reported. "From California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s questioning President Donald Trump’s acuity to Padilla’s move to interrupt Noem to mini-rebellions playing out at the nation’s capital, Democrats began to break the hold Trump usually has on the news cycle."
Democrats have struggled to agree on a coherent and unified message to oppose Trump and have instead squabbled about intra-party issues, but the past week has seen House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) announcing a flood-the-zone strategy that has been effectively picked up by others in his party.
“Voters have been looking for this, and the circumstances have arrived,” said Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh, "and while many people will say it should have happened sooner, given the series of events — this week alone — everyone had to step up. There was no choice.”
Nationwide "No Kings" protests planned for Saturday threaten to overshadow the president's long-sought military parade in Washington, D.C., and California Gov. Gavin Newsom has emerged as a leading critic with his strong pushback against Trump's moves in his state.
“[Trump] starts making up all these things he claimed he told me about, which honestly starts to disturb me on a different level," Newsom told the New York Times. “Maybe he actually believed he said those things and he’s not all there. I mean that."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) demanded a bipartisan investigation into the Padilla incident, which she said was indicative of a larger point about the administration's actions.
“Every day, DHS agents are throwing people to the ground while they are not resisting," Warren said. "Every day Donald Trump is making this nation look more and more like a fascist state. ... We all have to ask: How far will they go? How violent will they get?”
Padilla was defiant afterward and disputed administration claims that they did not know who he was, and video shows that he identified himself as a senator before he was taken to the ground and shackled.
“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 farmworkers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country,” Padilla told reporters. “We will hold this administration accountable.”