House Republicans held a conference call, which was described as “tense,” on Saturday with the House sergeant at arms and U.S. Capitol Police to discuss their concerns, multiple sources familiar with the call told ABC News. Several Republicans said on the one-hour call that they feel unsafe in their home districts and want more protection, sources said.
Video footage posted to Padilla’s account on X, formerly Twitter, showed the senator identifying himself, but he appeared to do so after he began approaching the podium and was blocked by agents.
“I am Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary,” Padilla said before agents pushed him into a hallway, where FBI agents forced him to the ground and placed him in handcuffs. The senator was released shortly after.
In an interview with Fox News, [Bimbo #2] Noem said Padilla “did not identify himself and was removed from the room.”
“This man burst into the room, started lunging toward the podium, interrupting me and elevating his voice and was stopped,” [Bimbo #2] Noem said. “Did not identify himself and was removed from the room. So as soon as he identified himself, you know, appropriate actions were taken.”
“I had a conversation with the senator after this,” she continued. “We sat down for 10 to 15 minutes and talked about the fact that nobody knew who he was. He didn’t say who he was until he already had been lunging forward, and people were trying to detain him for quite a period of time.”
[Bimbo #2] added, “He was never arrested. Nobody knew who he was when he came into the room creating a scene.”
Padilla said in a video posted on his social media channels: “I introduced myself. ‘I’m Senator Alex Padilla, and I have a question.’ And it took all of a second for multiple agents to forcibly remove me from the room, to pin me on the ground and handcuff me.”
https://www.newsweek.com/did-senator-alex-padilla-id-himself-kristi-noem-guards-wrestled-2085009
A federal judge ruled that Donald Trump acted illegally when he commandeered the California national guard and ordered thousands of troops to Los Angeles amid protests over immigration raids. The troops return to the control of California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, at noon on Friday.
House Republicans worked through the night to advance a massive piece of legislation that might, if enacted, carry out the largest upward transfer of wealth in American history.
That is not a side effect of the legislation but its central purpose. The “Big, Beautiful Bill” would pair huge cuts to food assistance and health insurance for low-income Americans with even larger tax cuts for affluent ones.
Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, warned that the bill’s passage, by a 215-214 margin, would mark the moment the Republicans ensured the loss of their majority in the midterm elections. That may be so. But the Republicans have not pursued this bill for political reasons. They are employing a majority they suspect is temporary to enact deep changes to the social compact.
The top Democrat in the House took a swipe at Alina [“Bimbo #4”] Habba, the acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, after she announced plans to charge a sitting member of Congress with assault.
Habba has held high-profile roles but had no prior prosecutorial experience and limited federal court experience prior to her appointment as interim U.S. attorney in March. On Monday, she sparked fierce backlash for charging Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) with assault during a congressional visit to a federal immigration detention center in Newark.
But House Minority Hakeem Jeffries gave a more blunt assessment of Trump’s acting attorney.
“Alina [“Bimbo #4”] Habba is a partisan hack and Trump lackey who will never be confirmed as a United States Attorney,” he chided on X on Tuesday evening.
That post came hours after he and other House Democratic leaders said in a shared statement that the charge was “extreme, morally bankrupt and lacks any basis in law or fact.”
In a rare bipartisan effort to defend its institutional authority, Congress is quietly resisting President Donald Trump’s attempt to assert control over the Library of Congress — a move that experts say threatens the separation of powers and the integrity of the legislative branch’s premier research body.
Pushing back on Trump’s designation of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as acting librarian, lawmakers said Tuesday that control of the institution remains with its top career official, Robert R. Newlen. Newlen told staff at the library that he is the acting head, according to an email obtained by The Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/05/13/trump-library-of-congress-power-struggle
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is under close scrutiny as Republican lawmakers criticize his handling of sensitive military information in a group chat with other administration officials that inadvertently included a journalist.
Republican lawmakers have stopped short of calling on Hegseth to resign, but they’re warning that his decision to share sensitive details about a pending military strike against Houthi rebels in Yemen over Signal, a commercial app, is a clear “strike” against him.
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And they’re wondering about Hegseth’s response to reporters’ questions, specifically his adamant denial that “nobody’s texting war plans” after a National Security Council spokesperson had confirmed the chat group’s reported texts appeared to be “authentic.”
“The worst part of it is Hegseth saying himself, ‘This didn’t really happen.’ Why don’t you just admit it?” one Republican senator remarked.
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And while White House press secretary [Bimbo #1] Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday sought to draw a distinction between “war plans” and “attack plans” in criticizing The Atlantic’s reporting …
Now, for those who think that firebombing Tesla dealerships is a better tactic than nonviolent protests, I would remind you of the world-changing work of Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. And I would also tell you about the work of Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth and her colleagues. To Chenoweth’s surprise — shock, actually — she discovered that over time, nonviolent protests are far more successful than violent ones.
Between 1900 and 2006, she says, campaigns of nonviolent civil resistance were twice as successful as violent campaigns. She also came up with the so-called 3.5% rule: No government can withstand a challenge from around 3.5% of its population without accommodating the movement.
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To hit the magic percentage, about 11 million Americans would have to rise up. In 2017, nearly half a million people protested Trump at the Women’s March in Washington. Around the United States, between 3.2 million and 5.2 million people joined in, which amounts to between 1% and 1.6% of the population.
I could be wrong, but it seems to me that twice as many Americans are now upset enough to take to the streets.
The goal is not to overthrow the government. The goal is to awaken the small-d democratic instincts of a Republican-dominated Congress that has actively ceded its power to Trump. And the only way they’ll snap to is if they begin to fear for their jobs.
Column: Americans aren’t waiting for the Democratic Party to take on Trump – Los Angeles Times
