SAUNDERS: We need cooler heads in California — sooner rather than later
WASHINGTON
In a better world, U.S. senators don’t interrupt a Cabinet secretary’s news conference, and federal agents don’t lay hands on the senator, remove him from the room and handcuff him. But that’s what happened when Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., interrupted Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s presser in a Los Angeles federal building Thursday.
Let’s call this incident “How to crank up a brawl.” Or, my big fear: “How to spark a civil war.”
Afterward, Noem told Fox News, “The way that (Padilla) acted was completely inappropriate. It wasn’t becoming a U.S. senator or public official. Perhaps he wanted the scene.”
Talking to reporters after the incident, Padilla noted that he was not arrested or detained, but:
“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.”
I support President Donald Trump’s decision to enforce federal immigration law, but I wish Noem had intervened and let Padilla say his peace. Left to his own devices and free to shout questions over Noem, Padilla would have lost that round.
Americans don’t want this, but California Democrats do. Gov. Gavin Newsom has spent the week trying to egg on President Donald Trump with the inviting words, “Arrest me.”
During an interview on The New York Times podcast, “The Daily,” Newsom called President Donald Trump’s decision to send the National Guard into Los Angeles, against Newsom’s wishes, as a “brazen abuse of power.”
Newsom repeatedly presented himself as a champion of the “rule of law” — which ignores how America got to this moment.
You see, if Newsom truly believed in the rule of law, he would not have become an early booster of San Francisco’s and California’s sanctuary city laws pushed by Golden State Democrats, who could have been pushing for a favorable immigration bill when they controlled the White House, Senate and House.
The original sin here is the left’s support for a bogus sanctuary scheme that rewards public officials who choose to undermine laws they do not like. If elected officials can ignore laws they don’t like, what does that say to the public?
“SB 54 (CA Sanctuary Law) was passed in 2017. It hasn’t worked. It’s made things worse. Period,” child-abuse prosecutor Jonathan Hatami noted on X.
Creating a law that doesn’t allow “local law enforcement agencies to communicate and work with federal law enforcement agencies in order to actually make our communities safer is just misguided,” Hatami added. “It makes zero sense.“
According to InsiderAdvantage pollster Matt Towery, 59 percent of Americans support Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in California. And that’s because most Americans do believe in the “rule of law.” It’s not just a talking point.
Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.
