I’m sure we’ve all seen the video of Sen. Alex Padilla being taken out of Kristi Noem’s press conference and being handcuffed in the hallway. Noem’s response is that she didn't know who Padilla was, which is either a confirmation of her gross incompetence or a lie, almost certainly the latter since there’s video of him clearly identifying himself as he’s dragged out of the room.
I watched some MSNBC with my old man last night, and Barbara Boxer was on to discuss the Padilla arrest. Boxer is the one who retired at a reasonable age, in case you can’t distinguish her from the late Dianne Feinstein. Anyway, Boxer said she had written a note to Thune and Schumer about how awful Padilla’s arrest was.
Good for her. She’s 84 and full of fight. But the issue that the first few months of the Trump Administration has made it a key part of their mission to ignore Congress and the courts. They’ve been very effective in ignoring Congressional oversight, aided by Republican cowards. But if by some odd coincidence a Republican managed to summon the courage to challenge Noem or Trump, they would learn the truth of the aphorism of another authoritarian, Mao, who said that the nail that sticks out will be pounded down. I sincerely doubt they’d be treated any better than Sen. Padilla was yesterday.
In addition to being a huge liar, Noem was an early adopter of misuse of the National Guard, sending South Dakota National Guard troops to the Texas border to protect us against brown people whose last name could be Padilla. This strategy is good for a short-term hit on Fox News, but it’s questionable when we’re talking about the long-term occupation of cities where the troops are clearly unwelcome. That goes double for the Marines.
The 4,000 California National Guard troops and 700 US Marines sent to Los Angeles in response to the ongoing anti-immigration raid protests are reportedly suffering from low morale, according to members of the veterans community, amid allegations of a chaotic initial deployment and widespread concerns of the military being drafted into domestic law enforcement.
“Among all that I spoke with, the feeling was that the Marines are being used as political pawns, and it strains the perception that Marines are apolitical,” Marine Corps veteran Janessa Goldbeck, who runs the Vet Voice Foundation, told The Guardian. “Some were concerned that the Marines were being set up for failure. The overall perception was that the situation was nowhere at the level where Marines were necessary.”
“The sentiment across the board right now is that deploying military force against our own communities isn’t the kind of national security we signed up for,” added Sarah Streyder of the Secure Families Initiative in an interview with the outlet.
The Noem / Trump strategy of making it look like California is being overrun by mobs is a strategy that they’re running on enemy territory with unfriendly media. Trump is finally getting a clue that deporting every undocumented immigrant is going to kill agriculture, construction and food service. By any reasonable standard, the California battle of the war on immigration isn’t going well, but Noem will lie about it until she gets new marching orders from Trump, Stephen Miller or whoever the hell is running things in DC.
