[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 101 (Thursday, June 12, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Page S3370]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              ALEX PADILLA

  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, 2 days from today, June 14, is Flag Day in 
the United States. It is the day every year where we celebrate the 
flag, but it is not the piece of cloth that we celebrate; we celebrate 
core American values. And the most core American value is the one that 
we take an oath of office to, the Constitution of the United States.
  The Constitution includes a Bill of Rights, and one of the most 
important pieces of the Bill of Rights is the First Amendment. It was 
drafted by Virginian James Madison, and it talks about the fact that 
there can't be laws or legal restrictions against the right of the 
people to peacefully assemble and petition government for redress of 
grievances.
  That right is not something we are allowed. That right is something 
we are guaranteed.
  My colleague and our friend Alex Padilla, born and raised in Los 
Angeles, loves his hometown--an MIT-educated, baseball-playing engineer 
who returned to his home, who served on the Los Angeles City Council 
and now serves in this body--has some very legitimate questions about 
why, in an unprecedented way, the National Guard and the U.S. Marines 
have been deployed into his city, over the objections of the mayor, 
over the objections of the Governor, in a historically unprecedented 
way and in a way such as to escalate tensions in his town rather than 
to reduce them.
  So he decided to go to a peaceful public assembly. It was a press 
conference. It wasn't a private meeting to which he was not allowed 
entrance. A press conference's purpose is to share information with the 
public.
  My colleague Alex Padilla, who goes to Wednesday prayer breakfast 
with me every week with a bipartisan group of colleagues, attended a 
public event so he could ask a question about why his hometown was 
being besieged by the Marines and National Guard over the objection of 
the mayor and the objection of the Governor.
  His question was a grievance. He doesn't agree with the policies of 
the administration. He is guaranteed in this document the right to 
petition government for redress of grievances as an American, which is 
what we are supposed to do.
  The Framers of the Constitution who put this in the First Amendment 
did it to protect the rights of Alex Padilla and all of us, but they 
did it for another reason. They did it because they believed it would 
help democracy work better, that democracy works better when people can 
speak freely. Democracy works better when people can profess their 
religion, when the press can operate freely. And democracy works better 
when people can gather peacefully and share their dissenting points of 
view. It makes our democracy work better.
  Make no mistake, the effort to manhandle our colleague to push him 
out of the room for asking an inconvenient question, to handcuff him, 
is an attempt to shut him up. It is an attempt to shut everybody up if 
you have a dissenting view from this administration. That is why the 
administration has deployed the military in an unprecedented way. They 
want to intimidate you.
  They want to make you decide that although you were granted this as a 
right, they want to make you afraid to exercise the right. As I 
conclude, I would just say this: On Flag Day, I would encourage 
Americans of all kinds, find a peaceful assembly on June 14--on Flag 
Day--and attend it and show that you are a brave and patriotic American 
that embraces the First Amendment to the Constitution, and you will not 
allow anyone to intimidate you.
  I was a missionary in Honduras in 1980 and 1981, and it was an 
authoritarian society. And no one was guaranteed the right to assemble 
or complain. You might do it and be OK one day; the next day you might 
be arrested; the next day you might be disappeared or even killed.
  That is not who we are. We need brave, patriotic Americans to stand 
up, just as Senator Padilla has done, and insist upon their right to 
peacefully assemble and present whatever critiques or complaints they 
have about policies that they find to be objectionable.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.

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