One, Two, Step On My Shoe. Three, Four - Kick Down My Door

June 13, 2025

A Senator In Cuffs

What happened to Senator Alex Padilla this week should not be viewed as a gaffe or misunderstanding. It was a deliberate show of force. A sitting U.S. senator was calmly escorted into a federal building where he was scheduled to receive a classified DHS briefing. When he noticed Secretary Kristi Noem holding a press event just down the hall. And not just any press conference, one that featured no real press engagement and a lot of state-sanctioned theater. What he saw an opening to finally get answers to a series of formal requests DHS had been ignoring.

These official inquiries had been repeated, documented efforts to obtain clarity on who was being targeted in the immigration raids, how federal agents were coordinating with military personnel, and what safeguards, if any, were in place for civil liberties and due process. DHS ignored every one of them. This silence wasn't due to some bureaucratic backlog, it was casual, intentional and tactical.

It boxed Padilla and others trying to get answers out of the conversation entirely and pushed them into a corner. When Padilla finally exercised his right to hold the agency publically accountable, they treated him not as a public servant but as a trespasser. The act of silencing him wasn’t incidental, it is the logical endgame to their plot.

The facts are that Padilla identified himself. He was wearing Senate gear. He waited for the secretary to finish her remarks before stepping forward and saying, “I have a question.” What followed wasn’t dialogue. It was suppression. Secret Service and DHS agents shoved him to the ground and handcuffed him behind his back in a hallway.

He was released without charges after a quiet conversation with Noem, who up until that moment, had refused to acknowledge the senator's repeated attempts to get a substantive response about her department’s immigration raids and use of military personnel in Los Angeles.

The right’s response was giddy and enthusiastic. They called it a “FAFO moment,” mocked Padilla for “crashing” an event, and claimed he wasn’t recognized and thus posed a threat. On my local talk radio the tagline was “But has anyone asked how Kristi is? How is she doing through all of this, it must have been scary.” And the much more ominous, “I’m just glad he didn’t get killed. *wink*” followed by a endlessly looping laugh track.

But I want to circle back to the defense of ignorance. Like everything else about this regime, it rings hollow. Padilla was ten feet away, non-threatening, clearly identified, and standing in a federal building where he was supposed to be. The idea that DHS “didn’t know who he was” is either a lie or worse, it’s true, and that’s even more damning. Because if DHS and the Secret Service are this incapable of recognizing an elected official at a scheduled government briefing, they are too incompetent to be running immigration raids and domestic enforcement operations at this scale. Either way, it’s an indictment.

More revealing is the vacuum Padilla stepped into. He heard her spouting baseless and exaggerated propaganda. She was actively engaged in lying and drafting propaganda to control the narrative around the illegal an unconstitutional actions of the regime. The press corps didn’t challenge Noem’s exaggerations or ask hard questions about the mass detentions underway. The few reporters who were granted access stood silent while the Secretary peddled a violent, paranoid vision of California being “liberated” from “socialist mayors.”

Padilla saw what no one else seemed willing to confront: that the entire briefing was a propagandistic campaign stop masquerading as official business. If no one else was going to challenge it, it fell to whoever had the access and the nerve to try.

We have seen a lot of ‘stunts’. Booker comes to mind and anything Schumer does. I won’t tiptoe too much farther out on this limb at the risk of truely alienating those that still have heros on the blue side of the aisle. But in my opinion, this was not a stunt. It was a last resort. Padilla has been trying to get answers the formal way. He submitted written requests. He scheduled briefings. He waited. When all of that was ignored, he did the only thing left to do: he showed up and spoke plainly. And for that, they put him in cuffs.

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Liberation by Force

When Kristi Noem stood behind that podium and said the federal government was going to "liberate" Los Angeles from “the socialist” the implication wasn’t subtle. She was talking about an occupation. One carried out with federal agents, military personnel, armored vehicles, and the full power of DHS. And right on cue, the spectacle delivered: a senator from that very state thrown to the ground in cuffs for questioning it.

This was authoritarian in structure with cinematic execution. The language was chosen for its punch, the visuals curated for their symbolism. "Liberation" is a word used in wartime. It conjures images of occupied territories, enemies of the state, and righteous invasions. To apply it to an American city governed by elected officials is a propaganda move, meant to condition the public into accepting the idea that dissenting municipalities are enemy territory. That federal troops, raids, and mass detentions are not acceptable and necessary acts of patriotic rescue.

And unwittingly, into that script walks Senator Padilla. Calm, credentialed and asking for answers that have refused to come to him via official channels. The decision to throw him to the ground wasn't reactive. It was the completion of a narrative.

Here is the threat, they say. This is what defiance looks like. Not a man with questions, but a saboteur to be neutralized. One of those radical leftists socialist terrorist.

It’s the kind of optics that sells well on cable news chyrons and social media reels: disorder, punishment, and a spectacle of control. It also resonates with a longer-running fantasy that’s been floated by Trump and his allies for years: the idea of arresting high ranking dissident lawmakers and officials under vague charges of insubordination or lawlessness. Padilla in cuffs, even briefly, is symbolic, sure. But it’s also a trial balloon for a broader authoritarian desire to criminalize political opposition at the state level. At every level. They are no longer threatening to do it. They’re practicing.

What Noem and her allies understand is that force needs only the smallest of justifications. They don’t need lawyers, they just need a good camera angle, a few rehearsed buzzwords, and the acquiescence of an obedient or intimidated press. In this way they succeed time and time again in turning a constitutional breach into a moment of political triumph. The senator in handcuffs isn’t a misstep. He is a prop in a much larger play.

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Guardrails or Green Light?

California’s legal challenge to reclaim control over the National Guard marked a critical juncture in this saga. On June 12, 2025, Federal Judge Charles Breyer ruled that President Trump’s federalization of approximately 4,000 California National Guard troops and 700 active-duty Marines in Los Angeles was unconstitutional, violating both statutory procedure and the Tenth Amendment. His order required immediate return of control to Governor Gavin Newsom.

But that ruling was swept aside within hours. The Ninth Circuit issued an administrative stay, allowing the federal deployment to continue pending a hearing on June 17.

This back-and-forth exposes something deeper than legal ambiguity. It highlights an executive branch that doesn’t simply test the boundaries of power, it ignores them completely. This administration has repeatedly shown a willingness to disregard court rulings it doesn’t like, slow-walk compliance, or reframe judicial losses as wins through media spin. This is their operational mode. This ruling, like others before it, will likely end up being treated as advisory rather than binding. And in that kind of environment, even a courtroom victory for Newsom will be meaningless in practice.

This raises a more dangerous possibility: what happens if the court rules in Newsom’s favor and the White House simply refuses to comply? The Marines are already deployed. The Guard is already operating under federal command. Newsom could theoretically order a stand-down, but if the federal government tells troops to stay active, who do they obey? And what does the public see? A governor undermined by his own uniformed ranks, or a president daring the judiciary to stop him?

It’s a confrontation built for maximum confusion, and again, that is their goal. The appearance of chaos gives cover for escalation. If Newsom pushes back too hard, they can paint him as defiant, unstable, even criminal. If he doesn’t push back at all, they show that governors can be overruled by military fiat. Either way, the precedent is planted.

In the short term, this legal standoff will play out in courtrooms and press briefings. In the mid-term, it sets up a blueprint: test the limits, ignore the brakes, and dare anyone to stop them. That’s the shape of federal power now and it is not restrained by any law or reason, but driven by will, ego, and vengeance alone.

And this blueprint is not staying in California. According to new reports, the administration has drawn up plans to deploy more than 20,000 National Guard troops across multiple states to assist ICE operations. While Posse Comitatus technically prevents these troops from performing direct arrests, the optics and intent are clear: they will be the muscle behind detention, intelligence, and transport. The will be the boots on the ground to reinforce the illusion of order and reality of threat.

We are already seeing this tested in Texas, where Governor Abbott has preemptively deployed thousands of National Guard troops in advance of the “No Kings” protests. Similar escalations are expected in sanctuary jurisdictions throughout the Midwest and East Coast. What is happening in Los Angeles is not a one off. It is a dry run.

The following scenarios are easy to imagine: a federal order is issued, a governor resists, the Guard deploys anyway or Marines are sent in their stead, lawsuits are filed, and a familiar pattern emerges. Compliance delayed, chaos televised, and the balance of power further eroded. Whether or not the courts eventually rule against these actions will not matter. What matters is that the deployments happen, the cameras roll, and resistance gets framed as defiance.

This is the pivot point. If these deployments spread and settle in without meaningful pushback, then military involvement in domestic civil governance will cease to be a line that can’t be crossed. It will become the default move whether it is legal or not.

The question for every state isn’t whether this can happen to them. It should be how soon?

And what further muddies the waters is the willing cooperation of ideologically aligned governors. Those pig suckers who welcome these deployments not as intrusions, but as reinforcements. Republican-controlled states that already echo federal messaging will not resist this; instead they will amplify it. They will gladly hand over civil authority preemptively and allow the federal narrative to take root in their jurisdictions, lending legitimacy to what is, in effect, a federally directed security apparatus operating on U.S. soil. This is already unfolding in places like Texas and Florida. A kind of open coordination doesn’t complicates resistance in other states and fractures the public’s ability to tell who is actually in charge. That confusion is the point. It’s about power and most importantly it’s about making the concept of opposition unworkable, if not impossible.

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Honor Your Oath, Bitch

That’s what someone shouted; "Honor your oath, bitch!" as a line of Las Vegas PD officers marched past a crowd of protestors and onlookers in downtown Los Angeles. The words weren’t a threat. They weren’t physical. They weren’t even illegal. But they were defiant. And in today’s environment that is enough.

The entire column of officers turned, stormed the sidewalk, and arrested not only the person who shouted, but the bystanders who filmed it. Cell phone footage shows the takedown came with no warning or dispersal order. No one committed any criminal act, they just yelled a vulgar phrase at a badge. This was followed by an immediate brute response.

What crime was committed? None that holds up. Shouting a profanity at police, even a rude one, is not illegal. In fact, it’s protected speech under the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has ruled again and again, most notably in City of Houston v. Hill (1987) and Cohen v. California (1971), that offensive language, even directed at public officials, cannot be criminalized simply for being offensive. Calling a cop a bitch, an oath-breaker, a fucking pig faced coward-ass traitor, or worse, is not grounds for arrest. It may be disrespectful. It may be crude. But in a free society, those aren’t crimes. You and I may not agree with lumping all police officers into a stereotyped group of fascist dick suckers and we certainty don’t think people should be calling them that to their face, but it’s not. a. crime.

The arrests, then, weren’t legal. They were retaliatory. A show of dominance cloaked in fabricated charges like disorderly conduct or obstructing an officer or some other catch-all that sound serious but falls apart under scrutiny. Especially when you consider that the officers had already passed the heckler and were across the street when the phrase was shouted. There was no obstruction. No interference. There was no threat in any definition of the word. The protestor didn’t block, delay, or hinder anything. The only thing they did was speak. And then, the police had to reverse course to physically cross back over in order to create the pretext for enforcement. When cops are allowed to punish dissent without due process the message isn’t a legal one. It is a psychological one. “You talk back, you pay. You speak, you disappear.”

This kind of policing isn't about maintaining peace. It's about instilling fear. It's about training the public to stay quiet when confronted by authority. Even when that authority is violating its oath. The irony is self-evident: someone demands accountability with the words "honor your oath," and the response is mass detainment and an immediate dereliction of said oath.

But this is where we are now. Where yelling at government agents is framed as incitement, where filming a public official can get you zip-tied, and where the Constitution is suspended not by law but by habit and reflex. This is normalization in progress. They will be happening more and more without consequence and they will become the new baseline.

Free speech doesn’t require politeness and it doesn’t demand respect. Its entire purpose is to protect the unpopular, the inconvenient, and the confrontational. If the only speech allowed is the kind that flatters power, then we don’t have rights, we have rituals. But those rituals end the moment someone breaks character and says the quiet part out loud.

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The Costume of Authority

But, if we want to speak of things that are illegal: there is a rising trend far more dangerous than shouting at police. It is the impersonation of law enforcement. In Philadelphia, a man posing as an ICE officer drove an unmarked white van to a local auto repair shop. He wore a badge, claimed to be conducting an immigration raid, zip-tied a Latina woman working behind the counter, and stole over a thousand dollars from her. He repeated, over and over, that he was an immigration officer.

In another case, a man was photographed outside a strip mall wearing tactical gear and claiming to be affiliated with federal enforcement. Online communities quickly dissected the images, pointing out every inconsistency such as the fake patches, the surplus gear, the absence of any real agency affiliation, and his duct taped gun holster.

He was LARPing. But he was also casing.

This is what happens when federal authority is stripped of restraint and paraded as brute power. When ICE agents show up in unmarked vehicles, dressed like mercenaries, with no requirement to identify themselves or justify their presence, it creates cover for imposters to do the same.

The line between enforcement and vigilantism collapses. People no longer know who is real and those who exploit that confusion are already moving in. That confusion isn’t a consequence, it’s the whole plan. As all despot regimes do, this one thrives on ambiguity, where fear and performance merge into control. By allowing real enforcement to become indistinguishable from cosplay, they invite chaos they have no intention of resolving.

They want the public to doubt what’s legitimate and what’s staged, because that doubt erodes the very concept of legitimacy itself. If every badge could be fake, then no challenge to a badge feels safe. And paradoxically, that same fog increases the likelihood that someone eventually will challenge a real officer, misjudging the situation, acting on fear, or pushing back against perceived impersonation. That, in turn, provides the regime with a steady supply of "justified" crackdowns, reinforcing the need for more force, more presence, more power. It’s a feedback loop that burns legitimacy while feeding its replacement: control through spectacle. That social, legal and psychological paralysis is the goal.

These incidents are just the start. If real federal agents continue operating without oversight, without warrants, and without accountability, it won’t just be theft. Soon, it will be kidnappings, rape, and murder. And no one will take responsibility. No one will intervene. Because the aesthetic of authority has been normalized as sloppy, aggressive, and unaccountable. If someone breaks into your home tomorrow wearing body armor and yelling "ICE," who exactly are you supposed to call? The same system that has made it plausible?

This is where normalization leads: to state violence and untraceable violence committed in its image.

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Final Thoughts

Someone sent me an article the other day written by Anthony Christian, laying out a four-phase counteroffensive for how to win back the narrative and take back the country. It’s clear, aggressive, and unapologetic. It doesn’t ask for permission and it doesn’t wait for poll numbers. It demands that those with power actually use it not to moderate or model civility, but to confront the machinery that’s been steamrolling opposition in plain sight.

To be honest, it’s cogent, reasonable, and in theory it could work. But in practice? Let’s be real. The Democratic Party couldn’t find its spine with both hands and a flashlight. And that's me assuming that their heads are already up their asses. Every indication throughout this ordeal has shown us that they’re dead fish. They tweet a mean game, pose for a photo op or two, and then vanish into the halls of decorum. And if one of them does try to act out? They get cuffed on camera while right-wing pundits laugh it into a meme.

Christian’s blueprint assumes there’s a party left to do the building. But it won’t happen. Not with this crew. It’s easier to believe that 99% of them are complicit. Perhaps just playing opposition just enough to delay full public outrage. Hell, most of them have helped lay the groundwork for this mess in the first place. Bipartisan bills that expanded surveillance, militarized local police, normalized ICE raids, and handed blank checks to the defense industry. Think: the 2001 Patriot Act, the 2006 Secure Fence Act, the 2012 NDAA detention provisions, and countless DHS funding packages rubber-stamped without a fight. Three of those examples happened under Obama. Just saying.

The truth is, the entire American political spectrum floats in the upper right quadrant of the compass. We are a country that is already authoritarian and elite-aligned. Many of these people want the same outcomes Trump does. They just wear nicer suits and use better grammar. Their failure to take the most basic actions to stop the onslaught is the tell.

But I’m not here to tear Christian’s article down. It’s worth reading. It’s worth digesting. Because even if the official opposition won’t use it, perhaps someone can.

At the risk of sounding hopeful or delivering a call to action, both of which I am fiercely allergic to, there is a translation to be made. A version of this plan for the rest of us: bloggers, citizens, signal boosters, content creators, contrarians. Forget the Democrats. Forget the politicians. They’ve failed us, and they will not save us. If there’s any way out of this, it starts from the ground up. And everyone currently seated at the top has to go.

Now, of course, that’s lunacy. As if we could do better than the founding fathers, who managed to take the Magna Carta and turn it into the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. As if we could build something clean from this wreckage. But the problem isn’t the system. It’s the culture. It’s the people who let that system collapse while applauding its form. We didn’t lose the republic, we sold it out in increments, cheering all the while.

So read the article. Don’t wait for someone in a blue tie to do it for you. They had their chance and they blew it. If anything is done now it will be us.

But what would that actually look like? Here’s one possible distillation:

• Be the war room. If you run a blog, a feed, a podcast make your morning routine include a 3-point takedown of whatever gaslighting headline or propaganda drop just hit. Post it. Share it. Break the framing before it settles.

• Repeat the signal. Pick one message a day worth pushing. Make it loud, repeatable, and unsanitized. The more it loops, the more real it becomes. "They’re not enforcing safety. They’re enforcing silence." Or something like that.

• Clip and Counter. When the regime speaks, clip it. Stitch it. Counter it. Make it impossible to scroll past without hearing the rebuttal.

• Celebrate real dissent. Don’t argue with the empty suits. Amplify the few who break ranks. Turn boldness into currency. Make silence the thing to be embarrassed by.

• Start your own drop. You don’t need clearance. Make a private Signal thread, or a daily group message, or a folder of usable rebuttals. It doesn’t have to be professional, it just needs to be coordinated.

This is all possible. None of it requires permission. If there’s no functional opposition left in Congress, then the people will have to build one in the comment sections, in the newsletters and in the feeds they can’t quite control. It won’t save the country. But it might at least slow the wrecking ball or mark the exits while it swings.

That said, even this feels pretty far-fetched. Personally, I’m not in any position to coordinate a movement. I can barely keep this daily report consistent. I’m not opposed to being part of something more organized, and I do believe that some form of coordinated messaging is both necessary and overdue. But if you’ve read me for any length of time, you already know: I’m not particularly hopeful. I haven’t seen enough evidence to believe that 'fighting' what’s coming will do anything but burn out the few voices still calling it what it is.

I’m not interested in winning. I’m interested in remembering and recording. For me, it’s about putting the pieces somewhere safe so that, if we ever get the chance again, we know what was lost and how it was taken. That’s where my energy goes because that still feels real. It’s a fine line between action and performance and I’m already walking the tightrope every day. In the end, I don’t think we get a blueprint to rebuild.

In my opinion, we will just get a ledger of what failed, who helped it fail along with a map to the pile of ruins for some future civilization to sift through.