The domestic situation in America continues to spiral out of control, Robert Bridge writes.
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In recent days, global attention has been focused on the explosive events in the Middle East and Ukraine, and that helps people to forget about the domestic situation in America that continues to spiral out of control.
Evidence that the American people are slowly starting to awaken from a deep stupor known as ‘the American Dream’ began in earnest on June 12 as Democratic Senator for California Alex Padilla stormed a speaking event by the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and was quickly arrested by federal agents.
Padilla cut off Noem as she was delivering a statement in the Los Angeles FBI headquarters regarding the Trump administration’s response to the protests in that city against the DHS and its immigration-enforcement campaign.
Padilla was abruptly ejected from the room, forced to the ground by police officers and placed in handcuffs during the rapidly unfolding situation.
The incident came amid a particularly hostile atmosphere in Los Angeles, which had been hammered with protests against President Donald Trump’s highly divisive federal immigration ICE raids. While the senator was not arrested, his ejection from the hall by security guards follows the arrests of other public officials, who the administration has accused of interfering with its enforcement of immigration laws.
“I was there peacefully,” Padilla said in his first public comments shortly following the incident. “At one point I had a question, and so I began to ask a question. I was almost immediately forcibly removed from the room. I was forced to the ground, and I was handcuffed.”
He continued: “If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, 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 out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country.”
Noem said the U.S. Secret Service “thought he was an attacker and officers acted appropriately.”
The shocking display of brute force against the Democrat provoked California Governor Gavin Newsom to call the Trump Administration “tyrannical” and this remark came after the Governor shared an image of the “California Republic” state flag, a move many interpreted as a thinly veiled warning for Washington to back off.
It gets better. On the same day as Padilla’s ejection from the conference, the United States witnessed a series of late-night legal actions, when a federal judge first ruled that President Trump had unlawfully federalized the California National Guard. He was ordered its return back to state control, saying he had violated the U.S. Constitution. Just hours later, the ruling was overturned by another federal judge in defense of Trump’s actions.
Newsom had said he planned to return the 4,000-members of the Guard to their regular duties protecting the border, working on wildfire prevention or getting back to their day jobs. Instead, they continued to perform their duties under the command of the U.S. commander-in-chief, squaring off against protesters in downtown Los Angeles.
On the basis of the order, Trump then signaled a willingness to expand the use of federalization orders to additional National Guards, as well as the possible deployment of U.S. Marines to other beleaguered urban areas. This announcement was greeted with unsurprising anger by numerous Democratic Governors.
This unsettling set of circumstances was followed by the U.S. Marines being deployed to Los Angeles where they temporarily detained a civilian. It was the first known detention by active-duty troops deployed there by Trump. The Democrats continued to voice their heated objections against the use of active-duty U.S. military forces being used in a policing role.
Finally, on June 14th in Minnesota the majority leader of the State House was assassinated along with her husband by a former appointee of the governor. Earlier that morning, Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were shot in their home in nearby Champlin and hospitalized without life-threatening injuries. Police responding to the attack on the Hoffmans checked on the Hortmans’ home, where 57-year-old Vance Luther Boelter opened fired at them. The shooter managed to escape the crime scene on foot, thus sparking the most extensive manhunt in Minnesota history.
In the suspect’s car was found a crudely drafted political manifesto, as well as an assortment of material pertaining to the “No Kings” protests that swept hundreds of cities across the nation, suggesting a political connection between the murders and the movement. Governor Tim Walz called the shooting “an act of targeted political violence”. Inside Boelter’s vehicle was a hit list of nearly 70 people, including abortion rights advocates, Democratic politicians, and abortion providers. Incidentally, the assassinated legislator had recently been the deciding vote in abolishing state funding for healthcare for illegal immigrants; this is notable given the anti-ICE element of the current protests.
However one may wish to interpret these events – as random, unfortunate scenarios that are par for course in any vibrant democracy, or something far more disturbing and dangerous – it is clear that the United States of America appears to be more on the political knife edge than at any time in its recent history. Whether the tensions will explode like a tinderbox with the least bit of disturbance remains to be seen. Until then, the Democrats and Republicans need to call a political time out and resolve their well-known differences in a calm and methodical manner before the street decides to take matters into its own dirty hands. It goes without saying that the last thing that any country needs – and perhaps least of all the United States, which has more firearms per capita than any other country in the world – is a full-blown civil war to sort out deeply entrenched problems.
