“We are not going away,” she warned. “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.”
“I’m Sen. Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary. Because the fact of the matter is …” the senator said before being violently detained. “Hands off!”
Trump administration officials frequently take their lead from their boss — who mouths off so recklessly and constantly that his most outlandish statements are often dismissed as thought bubbles or negotiating bravado or deliberate trolling meant to incite the opposition into hysteria.
So what should we make of Noem’s statement — the one that prompted Sen. Padilla to demand specifics (just before he was detained by the feds)?
“I have questions for the secretary,” the senator said.
I do, too.
When she says “we” are going to “liberate” Los Angeles from the “socialists” and the “burdensome leadership” of the governor and the mayor, is she merely talking about continuing with ICE’s sadistic, haphazard raids in which undocumented immigrants with no criminal records, including women and children, and even legal immigrants and U.S. citizens have been ensnared in the name of protecting the homeland from a fictitious foreign invasion of terrorists and hardened gang members? Or is the secretary speaking more literally and indicating the Trump administration intends to remove — or otherwise render moot — democratically elected state and local officials who oppose the federal government’s brutal incursion into their jurisdictions?
It’s a question that every Republican in office should be compelled to answer.
When the Secretary of Homeland Security announces that federal forces will remain in an American city until they “liberate” it from its democratically elected officials—you know, democracy, that annoying thing where people actually get to choose their own leaders—then sits by watching as her security detail violently throws to the ground and handcuffs a sitting US Senator who dares to ask a question, we’ve officially entered the “are you fucking kidding me” phase of American fascism….
Read that again. The Secretary of Homeland Security just announced that federal military forces will remain in an American city until they can remove—”liberate” the city from—its democratically elected governor and mayor. Because apparently when Californians vote, they’re just asking for “liberation” from their terrible, terrible choices? This isn’t hyperbole or interpretation. She literally said the quiet part out loud: we’re staying until we can overthrow the people you elected.
This breaks every constitutional principle about federalism, democratic governance, and the separation of powers. The Posse Comitatus Act specifically prohibits using federal military forces for domestic law enforcement. The Constitution reserves to states the right to govern themselves. And nowhere in American law or tradition does the federal executive branch have the power to “liberate” cities from their own elected leadership.
