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Brave Senator or ‘Unhinged B**ch’?

Sen. Alex Padilla

David Crane/AP

By Evan McMorris-Santoro and Torrence Banks

June 13, 2025 06:01 AM

You didn’t see what you thought you saw in those videos of Sen. Alex Padilla, Republicans and the White House said in unison Thursday.

What the White House is saying: “The more and more the media plays it,” communications director Steven Cheung told NOTUS’ Jasmine Wright, “the more it shows him acting like an unhinged bitch.”

West Wings past may have gone into scramble mode if a clip of a U.S. senator being handcuffed by uniformed federal law enforcement in a federal building went viral and beyond. But Jasmine found it to be business as usual yesterday afternoon. “The unbotheredness was evident,” she notes.

This administration has its story, and they’re sticking to it. “Senator Padilla chose disrespectful political theatre,” the Department of Homeland Security posted on its official X account. Secretary Kristi Noem said she exchanged numbers with the Democrat (presumably after his hands were again free to reach his phone) and had a productive 15-minute conversation with him. “I wish he would’ve acted that way in the beginning rather than creating a scene,” she posted on X.

In the House? A shared GOP reality. “Play stupid games, get stupid prizes,” Rep. Rich McCormick told the NOTUS Hill team. Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that Padilla’s actions “rise to the level of censure.”

  • One Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden, told Axios that he lives in this reality, too. “I don’t think politics as theater is what our job is here,” he said, though he added, “I think that it’s never good when a senator or member of Congress gets roughed up by law enforcement.”

In the Senate, where Padilla works? Sen. Lisa Murkowski was the only Republican to condemn what happened to Padilla as of late Thursday.

Democrats are scared. “We need our own fucking security at this point to protect us from ICE agents, to protect us from executive branch officials,” a representative told NOTUS’ Oriana González for a story that captured what reality looks like to members of the opposition party in the hours after the Padilla video dropped.

Does Everyone Love Sanctuary Policy Now? “You go into a farm and you look at people — they’ve been there for 20, 25 years, and they’ve worked great, and the owner of the farm loves them and everything else, and then you’re supposed to throw them out,” Donald Trump said Thursday at the White House. “We’re going to have an order on that pretty soon, I think. We can’t do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels.”

Yes, that’s a backtrack. The administration has been conducting ICE raids at farms and in the leisure industry, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller was defending it all as recently as Wednesday night.

Just last week, a group of moderate Democrats voted with Republicans to pressure so-called sanctuary jurisdictions to end policies aimed at making undocumented people feel safe using government services. Some are still there. We asked Golden if the administration’s enforcement actions have made him more skeptical. “I don’t support sanctuary cities,” he said, “so, no.”

But the federal response to Los Angeles and images of mass deportations may be shifting some of the politics here. Republicans hyped a hearing Thursday meant to lambaste Democratic governors of states with sanctuary policies. But when things kicked off, the governors — Kathy Hochul, JB Pritzker and Tim Walz — turned it into a conversation about ICE dragnets currently being challenged in court.

Meanwhile… House Republicans Stop Worrying and Pass the DOGE Cuts They Didn’t Like: The House passed a White House rescission package cutting previously authorized funding from domestic programs like public broadcasting and foreign aid programs like PEPFAR.

Last week: “If they’re cutting things in regards to actual medical treatments, yeah, that is concerning,” Rep. David Joyce told us, embodying the kind of thing many moderates were saying about this bill.

Thursday: Joyce voted “yes” — embodying what many moderates did about it, NOTUS’ Riley Rogerson and Daniella Diaz report.

The Senate forecast: Moderates there don’t like the rescission package either, but it only takes 51 senators to pass this kind of bill. That means three Republicans could vote no and it would still pass with the help of tie-breaker JD Vance.

Everyone Loves a Parade (This Time): During Trump 1.0, a lot of people around the president pushed back against the idea of a military parade in Washington. “Another example of first term advisors being so different,” a Republican strategist tells NOTUS’ White House team.

A lot of people outside the president’s circle pushed back the first time around, too, like Mayor Muriel Bowser. This time, she’s said the parade is a bad idea but moved on. An administration official told NOTUS that Bowser’s team has been “easy to work with” and “accommodating.”

A big question mark: Will the weather be as accommodating?

Exclusive: Sen. Dick Durbin Pleads for Dreamers. The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Angelica Alfonso-Royals, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, pressuring the agency to resume processing DACA applications.

A federal appeals court in January struck down large parts of the program, but left it in place for current recipients. USCIS guidance issued after the ruling said the agency would continue to accept initial DACA requests, but would not process them. “We urge you to begin processing these DACA applications immediately,” Durbin’s letter, obtained by NOTUS’ Daniella Diaz, reads.

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