Welcome back to Barf Bag.
This week, our fascist president deployed thousands of National Guard members and hundreds of Marines to Los Angeles, where residents protested ICE raids targeting the city’s Latino community. (These raids may or may not be happening because Stephen Miller recently got cucked.) When a Latino Senator interrupted the Homeland Security Secretary to ask about this, he was forcibly removed from the room and handcuffed.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem held a Thursday news conference at the FBI headquarters in Los Angeles, where she essentially claimed that troops were needed because the city was descending into anarchy. “We are not going away,” she said. “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.” So the military is occupying U.S. cities now?
Around this point, California Sen. Alex Padilla (D) entered the room and walked toward Noem. Agents immediately confronted him, at which point he said, “I am Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary.” The agents pushed him out of the room, tackled him to the ground, and put him in handcuffs. Padilla, we must note, is the first Latino elected to represent California in the Senate.
Noem continued speaking, pausing only for a few moments before resuming her authoritarian apologia. ICE Barbie stays cold as ice.
Here is footage that Padilla’s office shared with reporters:
FULL clip of agents throwing Sen. Alex Padilla to the ground and handcuffing him.Officers threw him and held him to the ground even while he is seen as not resisting.Footage from Sen. Padilla’s staff
— Prem Thakker ツ (@premthakker.bsky.social) 2025-06-12T18:55:39.604Z
The agents eventually released him, and Noem and Padilla spoke afterward. The Senator later told reporters that he was in the building for another meeting when he learned that Noem was also there and decided to confront her. He added: “If they’re willing to do this to a United States senator representing the state of California, just imagine how it’s going with their immigration enforcement on the streets when they show up at restaurants and are trying to detain a cook or outside a Home Depot trying to detain a day laborer.”
DHS claimed on Twitter that Secret Service thought Padilla was an attacker. (He was wearing a polo shirt that said “United States Senate” on the chest.) They added, without a hint of irony, that Padilla had engaged in “disrespectful political theater.” This is the same agency shitposting about deporting people and whose leader has made propaganda videos in front of immigrants kidnapped and sent to a high-security prison without so much as a court hearing.
DHS is arguing members of the Secret Service don't know who a U.S. Senator is, that he didn't identify himself (he does in the tape), lunged towards the Noem (not evident on the tape), and somehow all this necessitated him being hauled away, thrown to the ground and cuffed. x.com/DHSgov/statu…
— City Nolan (@ndhapple.bsky.social) 2025-06-12T19:12:05.225Z
Speaking to Fox News, Noem lied about what happened. “We were conducting a press conference to update everyone on the enforcement actions that are ongoing to bring people bring peace to the city of Los Angeles, and this man burst into the room, started lunging towards the podium, interrupting me and elevating his voice, and was stopped, did not identify himself, and was removed from the room.” She added on Twitter that Padilla “creat[ed] a scene.”
This chilling spectacle came two days before Saturday’s jingoistic military parade through Washington, D.C., which is nominally meant to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Army but is also being held on Trump’s 79th birthday. The $45 million parade will feature nearly 7,000 soldiers, plus 49 aircraft, 128 vehicles, 25 horses, a parachute demonstration, and a fireworks display. Trump threatened that people who planned to protest the event would be met with “heavy force.”
However, it appears the event could be interrupted by thunderstorms. Mother Nature, welcome to the Resistance.
You can find a “No Kings” march near you on Saturday.
Checking in on the latest news from an Elon Musk company:
“Tesla’s driverless ‘robotaxis’ could launch in Austin as soon as June 22. But a demo in Austin today showed a $TSLA, manually driven to test its Full Self-Driving system, failed to stop for a child-sized dummy at a school bus—and hit it.”@cbsaustin @velez_tx
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) 2025-06-13T11:28:31.792Z
- Speaking of Saturday’s No Kings protests, Walmart heiress Christy Walton took out a full-page ad in the New York Times promoting the demonstrations and now MAGA is calling for a boycott. [CBS News]
- A Health Department report about gender-affirming healthcare cites a retracted study. Plus, of the report’s 850 citations, only about half link to peer-reviewed research. [NOTUS]
- Musk is trying to make up to Trump after their public breakup. He reportedly spoke with Vice President JD Vance and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles on Friday, then deleted some of his tweets. On Monday, he called Trump to apologize. [CNN]
- Drag queens attended the Kennedy Center performance of Les Misérables where Trump was in the audience. Trump said in February that he would ban drag shows at the venue. [The Independent]
- Dr. Phil and a camera crew embedded with ICE during raids in Los Angeles this week, just like he did in Chicago a few months ago. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) recently had Dr. Phil on his podcast… [CNN]
- A judge denied Trump’s request to overturn a $5 million judgement he owes to E. Jean Carroll for defaming her over her allegations that he sexually abused her. [The Guardian]
- The White House is reportedly struggling to hire senior advisers to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Huh, did something happen? [NBC News]
- Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) claimed he was uninvited to a White House picnic after criticizing Trump’s dumb, deficit-increasing bill, prompting Trump to post on Truth Social that “of course” he’s invited. [NBC News]
- A Florida agency told The Orlando Sentinel to “cease and desist” its reporting on a charity run by First Lady Casey DeSantis, who is widely expected to run for governor. The agency’s top official is appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis. [Associated Press]
This has been your weekly Barf Bag, thanks for reading!
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