[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 101 (Thursday, June 12, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3373-S3374]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              ALEX PADILLA

  Mr. COONS. Mr. President, having just viewed a video of my friend and 
colleague Senator Alex Padilla being manhandled, thrown to the ground, 
and handcuffed after identifying himself as Senator Alex Padilla and 
attempting to ask a question of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi 
Noem in Los Angeles, I am shaken, I am angry, and I am gravely 
concerned about our path forward in this body and our Nation.
  Democracy is a gift hard won and hard earned by the sacrifice of 
millions who have served, fought, and died, some in moments of tumult 
and challenge on the beaches of Normandy, on the fields of Gettysburg.
  From the very beginning of our Nation until this moment, millions of 
Americans have stepped forward and said: I will risk it all so that my 
children and those I do not know can live free lives. Knowing the 
burdens of tyranny, knowing what it meant to live under the heel of a 
King, our forefathers risked everything.

[[Page S3374]]

  In nations around the world that I have visited on your behalf as a 
Senator, people yearning for freedom and people recently free have come 
and spoken about how much the American example means to them.
  Earlier this year, I was at a global security conference, concerned 
about what was happening in our Nation, about our division in the 
dialogue, and I heard three young parliamentarians from other countries 
talk about how hard they were working.
  Part of our job as Senators is to ask hard questions. It is to pose 
challenges. It is to test the Cabinet of the President, to visit 
Federal facilities, to ask questions that are sometimes uncomfortable 
or unwelcome. Just this week, I was at three committee hearings and had 
three members of the Cabinet in front of me. Did they want to answer my 
questions? Probably not, but they did.
  If a Senator of the United States who identifies himself as a 
Senator--in at least the video I just saw--gets handled this way, gets 
thrown to the ground and handcuffed, what is happening to those who 
have no such title or voice? If this gentle and decent and caring man 
is treated this way, what is happening along the margins in the dark 
spaces in the places we cannot see?
  So I call on my Republican friends and colleagues to look hard at 
this moment and say: What comes next? What comes next? Are we to be at 
risk of arrest if we threaten to ask a question or deign to interrupt? 
Is our very service here as Senators hanging in the balance in this 
moment? As we all learn more of the facts of what happened in Los 
Angeles, the future of what will happen here in our country and in the 
world will wait on your answer.
  Was this an overresponse? Was this a misuse of force? Was this a 
disrespect of the very Senate itself? Is this a moment when, as our 
Founders who wrote the Federalist Papers dreamed, my colleagues in the 
Senate will show their loyalty to the role, to the check and balance, 
to the independence of the Senate, more than they will show their 
loyalty to their party and their President and demand an answer, an 
apology, and a different path forward? Or is this a moment when all of 
us will watch this video of our friend--a member of the Judiciary 
Committee, a representative, a Senator of Los Angeles and the State of 
California--being roughly mishandled and say: Huh, too bad. At least it 
wasn't me.
  If we answer this moment with silence, we will be damned, and our 
children and the world will say: They didn't really mean it.
  The members of my family who served in the U.S. military knew that 
signing on that line meant being willing to give everything, and I 
believe and have been told that they understood that service to be in 
service of freedom--not in service of any particular President or 
party, any particular State or moment, but in service of democracy.
  Democracy is a fragile flower, and around the world, people look to 
what we do to know what they should do. There are petty, tin-pot 
dictators, authoritarians, and strongmen around the world who will 
watch this video and be encouraged and think this is the way to silence 
their critics.
  I can't image a Member of this Chamber who knows Alex Padilla, who 
has had the blessing of sitting with him in moments when he is asked 
questions or engaged in discourse, who thinks of him as anything other 
than a reasoned, reasonable, mild-mannered Senator. But even if he were 
not, even if he were outspoken, loud, aggressive, annoying, the title 
``Senator'' and the role we have should entitle him to ask a question 
at a press conference. If the result is this mistreatment, heaven help 
us all, and heaven help our democracy.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Husted). The Senator from New Jersey.

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