fellow republicans

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Rev. Emanuel Cleaver III wants a second civil rights movement in response to President Trump and his fellow Republicans who are redrawing congressional district boundaries to increase their power in Washington.

In Missouri, the GOP’s effort comes at the expense of Cleaver’s father, Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II, and many of his Kansas City constituents, who fear a national redistricting scramble will reverse gains Black Americans won two generations ago and will leave them without effective representation on Capitol Hill.

“If we, the people of faith, do not step up, we are going to go back even further,” the younger Cleaver told the St. James Church congregation on a recent Sunday, drawing affirmations of “amen” in the sanctuary where his father, also a minister, launched his first congressional bid in 2004.

Trump and fellow Republicans admit their partisan intent, emboldened by a Supreme Court that has allowed gerrymandering based on voters’ party leanings. Democratic-run California has proposed its own redraw to mitigate GOP gains elsewhere.

Yet new maps in Texas and Missouri — drafted in unusual mid-decade redistricting efforts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections — are meant to enable Republican victories by manipulating how districts are drawn.

Civil rights advocates, leaders and affected voters say that amounts to race-based gerrymandering, something the Supreme Court has blocked when it finds minority communities are effectively prevented from electing representatives of their choice.

“It’s almost like a redistricting civil war,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson, whose organization is suing to block the Texas and Missouri plans.

‘Packing and cracking’

In redistricting lingo, it’s called “packing and cracking.” Those maneuvers are at the heart of Trump’s push for friendlier GOP districts as he tries to avoid reprising 2018, when midterms yielded a House Democratic majority that stymied his agenda and impeached him twice.

Because nonwhite voters lean Democratic and white voters tilt Republican, concentrating certain minorities into fewer districts — packing — can reduce the number of minority Democrats in a legislative body. By spreading geographically concentrated minority voters across many districts — cracking — it can diminish their power in choosing lawmakers.

The elder Cleaver, seeking an 11th term, said the Trump-driven plans foster an atmosphere of intimidation and division, and he and fellow Kansas City residents fear the city could lose federal investments in infrastructure, police and other services.

“We will be cut short,” said Meredith Shellner, a retired nurse who predicted losses in education and healthcare access. “I just think it’s not going to be good for anybody.”

Missouri’s U.S. House delegation has six white Republicans and two Black Democrats. The new map, which could still require voter approval if a referendum petition is successful, sets the GOP up for a 7-1 advantage.

Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe says the new map better represents Missouri’s conservative values. And sponsoring state Rep. Dirk Deaton says it divides fewer counties and municipalities than the current districts.

“This is a superior map,” the Republican legislator said.

Cleaver’s current 5th District is not majority Black but includes much of Kansas City’s Black population. New lines carve Black neighborhoods into multiple districts. The new 5th District reaches well beyond the city and would make it harder for the 80-year-old Cleaver or any other Democrat to win in 2026.

In Texas, Abbott insists no racism is involved

A new Texas map, which Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law, is designed to send five more Republicans to Washington, widening his party’s 25-13 advantage to a 30-8 one.

The old map had 22 districts where a majority of voters identified as white only. Seven were Latino-majority and nine were coalition districts, meaning no racial or ethnic group had a majority. By redistributing voters, the new map has 24 white-majority districts, eight Latino-majority districts, two Black-majority districts and four coalition districts.

Abbott insists new boundaries will produce more Latino representatives. But they’ll likely reduce the number of Black lawmakers by scrambling coalition districts that currently send Black Democrats to Washington.

Democratic Rep. Al Green was drawn out of his district and plans to move to seek another term. On the House floor, the Black lawmaker called GOP gerrymandering another chapter in a “sinful history” of Texas making it harder for nonwhites to vote or for their votes to matter.

Green said it would hollow out the Voting Rights Act of 1965 “if Texas prevails with these maps and can remove five people simply because a president says those five belong to me.”

The NAACP has asked a federal court to block the Texas plan. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act broadly prohibits districts and other election laws that limit minority representation.

The NAACP’s Johnson suggested Republicans are playing word games.

“Was this done for partisan reasons? Was it done for race? Or is partisanship the vehicle to cloak your racial animus and the outcomes that you’re pursuing?” he asked.

In Missouri, the NAACP has sued in state court under the rules controlling when the governor can call a special session. Essentially, it argues Kehoe faced no extenuating circumstance justifying a redistricting session, typically held once a decade after the federal census.

Saundra Powell, a 77-year-old retired teacher, framed the redistricting effort as backsliding.

She recalls as a first-grader not being able to attend the all-white school three blocks from her home. She changed schools only after the Supreme Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional in 1954.

“It seems worse 1758147903 than what it was,” Powell said.

Hollingsworth, Barrow and Ingram write for the Associated Press. Barrow reported from Atlanta. AP reporter John Hanna contributed from Topeka, Kan.

LOS BANOS, Calif. — When it comes to President Trump, Angie Zamora and Phaidra Medeiros agree on very little.

Zamora, a 36-year-old Army veteran, has nothing good to say.

“The laws. All the rights taken away from women. The stuff with ICE,” Zamora said, ticking off her frustrations as she stopped outside the post office in the Central Valley community of Los Banos. “Why are they going after people working on farms when they’re supposed to be chasing violent criminals?”

Medeiros, by contrast, is delighted Trump replaced Joe Biden. “He wasn’t mentally fit,” Medeiros said of the elderly ex-president. “There was something wrong with him from the very beginning.”

Despite all that, the two do share one belief: Both say the government should cough up every last bit of information it has on Jeffrey Epstein, his sordid misdeeds and the powerful associates who moved in his aberrant orbit.

Trump “did his whole campaign on releasing the Epstein files,” Zamora said. “And now he’s trying to change the subject. ‘Oh, it’s a ‘hoax’ … ‘Oh, you guys are still talking about that creep?’ And yet there’s pictures throughout the years of him with that creep.”

Medeiros, 56, echoed the sentiment.

Trump and his fellow Republicans “put themselves into this predicament because they kept talking constantly” about the urgency of unsealing records in Epstein’s sex-trafficking case — until they took control of the Justice Department and the rest of Washington. “Now,” she said, “they’re backpedaling.”

Medeiros paused outside the engineering firm where she works in the Central Valley, in Newman, on a tree-lined street adorned with star-spangled banners honoring local servicemen and women.

“Obviously there were minors involved” in Epstein’s crimes, she said, and if Trump is somehow implicated “then he needs to go down as well.”

Years after being found dead in a Manhattan prison cell — killed by his own hand, according to authorities — Epstein appears to have done the near-impossible in this deeply riven nation. He’s united Democrats, Republicans and independents around a call to reveal, once and for all, everything that’s known about his case.

Epstein, seen in court with his lawyers, was found dead in his prison cell while awaiting prosecution for sex crimes.

(Uma Sanghvi / Palm Beach Post / AP)

“He’s dead now, but if people were involved they should be prosecuted,” said Joe Toscano, a 69-year-old Los Banos retiree and unaffiliated voter who last year supported Trump’s return to the White House. “Bring it all out there. Make it public.”

California’s 13th Congressional District, where Zamora, Medeiros and Toscano all live, is arguably the most closely fought political terrain in America. Sprawling through California’s midriff, from the far reaches of the San Francisco Bay Area to the southern edge of the San Joaquin Valley, it’s farm country: Flat, fertile and crossed-hatched with canals, rail lines and thruways with utilitarian names such as Road No. 32 and Avenue 18½.

The myriad small towns are brief interludes amid the dairy and poultry farms and lush carpeting of vegetables, fruit and nut trees that stretch to the hazy-brown horizon. The most populous city, Merced, has fewer than 100,000 residents. (Modesto, with a population of around 220,000, is split between the 5th and 13th districts.)

Democratic Rep. Adam Gray was elected in November in the closest House race in the country, beating the Republican incumbent, John Duarte, by 187 votes out of nearly 211,000 cast. The squeaker was a rematch and nearly a rerun. Two years prior, Duarte defeated Gray by fewer than 600 votes out of nearly 134,000 cast.

Not surprisingly, both parties have made the 13th District a top target in 2026; handicappers rate the contest a toss-up, even as the field sorts itself out. (Duarte has said he would not run again.)

The midterm election is a long way off, so it’s impossible to say how the Epstein controversy will play out politically. But there is, at the least, a baseline expectation of transparency, a view that was repeatedly expressed in conversations with three dozen voters across the district.

A tractor clears the rows in an orchard in Merced.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

Zachery Ramos, a 25-year-old independent, is the founder of the Gustine Traveling Library, which promotes learning and literacy throughout the Central Valley. Its storefront, painted with polka dots and decorated with giant butterflies, sits like a cheery oasis in Gustine’s four-block downtown, a riot of green spilling from the planter boxes out front.

Inside, the walls were filled with commendations and newspaper clippings celebrating Ramos’ good works. As a nonprofit, he said, “we have to have everything out there. All the books. Everything.”

Epstein, he suggested, should be treated no differently.

“When it comes to something as serious as that, with what may or may not have taken place on his private island, with his girlfriend” — convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell — “I do think it should all be out in the open,” Ramos said. “If you’re not afraid of your name being in [the files], especially when you’re dealing with minors being assaulted, it should 100% be made public.”

Ed, a 42-year-old Democrat who manages a warehouse operation in Patterson, noted that Trump released the government’s long-secret files on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., even though King’s family objected. (Like several of those interviewed, he declined to give his last name, to avoid being hassled by readers who don’t like what he had to say.)

Why, Ed wondered, shouldn’t the Epstein files come to light? “It wasn’t just Trump,” he said. “It was a lot of Republicans in Congress that said, ‘Hey, we want to get these files out there.’ And I believe if Kamala [Harris] had won, they would be beating her down, demanding she do so.”

He smacked a fist in his palm, to emphasize the point.

Madera, with a population of roughly 70,000, is one of the largest communities in the 13th District.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Sue, a Madera Republican and no fan of Trump, expressed her feelings in staccato bursts of fury.

“Apparently the women years ago said who was doing what, but nobody listens to the women,” said the 75-year-old retiree. “Release it all! Absolutely! You play, you pay, buddy.”

Even those who dismissed the importance of Epstein and his crimes said the government should hold nothing back — if only to erase doubts and lay the issue to rest.

Epstein “is gone and I don’t really care if they release the files or not,” said Diane Nunes, a 74-year-old Republican who keeps the books for her family farm, which lies halfway between Los Banos and Gustine. “But they probably should, because a lot of people are waiting for that.”

Patrick, a construction contractor, was more worked up about “pretty boy” Gavin Newsom and “Nazi Pelosi” — “yes, that’s what I call her” — than anything that might be lurking in the Epstein files. “When the cat is dead, you don’t pick it up and pet it. Right?” He motioned to the pavement, baking as the temperature in Patterson climbed into the low 90s.

“It’s over with,” the 61-year-old Republican said of Epstein and his villainy. “Move on.”

At least, that would be his preference. But to “shut everybody up, absolutely, yeah, they should release them,” Patrick said. “Otherwise, we’re all going to be speculating forever.”

Or at least until the polls close in November 2026.

There are plenty of reasons to dislike Carl DeMaio, if you so choose.

The first-term San Diego assembly member is MAGA to his marrow, bringing Donald Trump’s noxious politics and personal approach to Sacramento. For Democrats, the mere mention of his name has the same effect as nails applied to a chalkboard.

Fellow Republicans aren’t too fond of DeMaio, either.

Party leaders worked strenuously — and far from successfully — to keep DeMaio from being elected last fall. They accused him of criminal wrongdoing. Allies spent millions of dollars to boost his GOP rival.

Republican foes “cite his relentless self-promotion, his criticism of his party and his tendency to take credit for victories he played little or no part in to help him fundraise and elevate his political brand,” CalMatters wrote in a harsh January profile.

None of that, however, excuses the silly and juvenile behavior of the Assembly’s majority Democrats last week when the chamber took up a resolution commemorating Pride month.

DeMaio, the Assembly’s first openly gay Republican member, rose on the floor to voice his objections. Usually lawmakers have around five minutes to offer their remarks without interruption.

Not this time.

DeMaio complained that the resolution — larded with more than three dozen whereas-es — strayed far afield from a straightforward commendation, endorsing some “very controversial and extremist positions” opposed even by members of the LGBQT+ community.

“This is not about affirming the LGBT community,” DeMaio said. “It’s about using them as a political pawn to divide us.”

You can agree or disagree with DeMaio. You can embrace the resolution and its myriad clauses with all your heart, or not. That’s beside the point.

About 90 seconds into his remarks, DeMaio was interrupted by the Assembly member presiding over the debate, Democrat Josh Lowenthal of Long Beach, who said he had a “very important announcement” to make.

And what was the pressing matter that couldn’t possibly wait a second longer? Wishing another Assembly Democrat a happy birthday.

Cheers and applause filled the chamber.

DeMaio resumed, only to be interrupted a short time later. Lowenthal deadpanned that he’d forgotten: It had been another Democratic lawmaker’s birthday just a few days earlier. More cheers and applause.

DeMaio resumed and then was interrupted a third time, so Lowenthal could wish “a very, very happy birthday” to a third Democratic Assembly member, who was marking the occasion the next day.

The response in the chamber, laughter mixed with more whoops and cheers, suggested the hazing by Lowenthal and fellow Democrats was great good fun and oh-so-clever.

It wasn’t.

It was petty. It was stupid.

And it bespoke the arrogance of a super-majority party too used to having its way and bulldozing Sacramento’s greatly outnumbered Republicans.

A few things are worth noting here, seeing as how California is supposed to be governed by a representative democracy.

DeMaio’s political peers may not be terribly enamored of the freshman lawmaker. But he was the clear-cut favorite of voters in San Diego, who sent him to the Assembly by a whopping 57% to 43% margin. Their views and voices deserve to be heard.

Democrats may be California’s majority party, enjoying a sizable registration advantage. They hold 60 of 80 seats in the Assembly and 30 of 40 in the state Senate. But the state has nearly 6 million registered Republicans. There are doubtless many more in California who support the party, or at least its policies and broad philosophy, but choose not to formally affiliate with the GOP.

They, too, deserve to be heard.

A not-insignificant number of California residents feel overlooked, ignored and unrepresented by Democrats and their hegemonic rule over Sacramento. The frustration helped spawn the fruitless and wasteful 2021 attempt to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom — which cost taxpayers more than $200 million — and fuels the perennial fantasy of a breakaway rural state called Jefferson.

To a larger point: One-party rule is not good for California.

“When you’re competing, you’ve got to be sort of on your toes,” said Thad Kousser, a UC San Diego political science professor who’s researched the difference between states with two vibrant political parties and those ruled by one or the other.

“When you’re solidly in control, you don’t feel like you need to prove it to voters,” Kousser went on. “You can write off certain areas of the state. You can ignore legislators in the other party, because you don’t think the shoe will ever be on the other foot.

“None of that,” Kousser concluded, “is good for democracy.”

It’s been well over a decade since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger left office and Republicans wielded meaningful clout in Sacramento. The last time the GOP controlled the Assembly was when Bill Clinton was in the White House. Gerald Ford was president the last time Republicans had a majority in the state Senate.

That’s not likely to change anytime soon.

In the meantime, Democrats don’t have to love their fellow lawmakers. They don’t even have to like them. But at the very least, Republicans elected to serve in Sacramento should be treated with respect.

Their constituents deserve as much.

RICHMOND, Va. — Democrats in Virginia have built up a hefty fundraising advantage for their effort to reclaim the governor’s mansion in a November election that is seen as a bellwether for the party in power in Washington ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Democrat Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA case manager turned congresswoman, has a more than 2-to-1 fundraising advantage over her GOP opponent for governor, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who has struggled to draw support from her fellow Republicans. Both were unopposed for their party’s nominations and were able to focus on the fall general election without having to overcome a challenge in this week’s primaries. The match-up means Virginia is all but certain to elect the state’s first female governor.

Spanberger has amassed $6.5 million toward her campaign for governor over the last two months after raising $6.7 million between January and March, according to the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project. Combined with the money Spanberger raised in 2024, she has gathered $22.8 million and still has $14.3 million in her coffers.

Earle-Sears, meanwhile, spent more than she earned between April and June, bringing in $3.5 million and spending $4.6 million. Between January and March, she also raised a little over $3.1 million. In total, she has raked in nearly $9.2 million since launching her campaign last September. Now, she has a little under $3 million in the bank, according to Virginia Public Access Project data.

In a statement, Earle-Sears’ campaign said the candidate is putting forward a message for Virginians that money can’t buy.

“Clearly the Spanberger campaign needs a lot of help attempting to erase Abigail’s bad voting record on issues that actually matter to Virginians,” press secretary Peyton Vogel said in an email. “This race isn’t being bought — it’s being built on a message that matters.”

Virginia is one of two states, along with New Jersey, that host statewide elections this year. The contests will be closely watched as a measure of whether voters in the shadow of Washington will embrace President Trump’s aggressive effort to overhaul the federal government, or be repelled by it.

Democrats’ outsized fundraising lead ahead of the primaries may reflect local Democratic enthusiasm and the party’s ability to push people to the polls in light of Trump being in office. Mark J. Rozell, dean of George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, also referenced the noticeable frostiness among leading state Republicans. The party’s statewide nominees have yet to campaign together, despite securing their nominations at the end of April.

“Enthusiasm drives fundraising and in Virginia right now the Democrats’ voting base has much greater enthusiasm“ than Republicans, Rozell said. ”It is reminiscent of Trump’s first term in office when Democratic fundraising and ultimately voting overwhelmed the Republicans in Virginia.”

Money does not guarantee success, however. In the last Virginia governor’s race, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe outspent Republican Glenn Youngkin, who had invested $20 million of his own money in the race. Youngkin still clinched the election by nearly two points.

Youngkin, who is term-limited from seeking reelection, has offered more than $21,000 in support to Earle-Sears through his political action committee.

When asked whether he would donate more, his PAC responded, “Governor Youngkin is working to elect the entire GOP ticket and is urging all Virginians to support the commonsense team this November to keep Virginia winning.”

The Democrats’ fundraising advantage isn’t confined to the governor’s race.

State Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, who eked out a primary win in a close three-way contest for lieutenant governor, raised nearly $1.8 million in her primary race and has $462,000 remaining.

The Republican nominee, conservative talk-radio host John Reid, raised nearly $312,000 since launching his campaign and has $116,000 remaining.

The only statewide GOP candidate with a fundraising lead, incumbent Attorney General Jason Miyares, has $2.3 million in the bank after raising a total of $4.6 million. His Democratic opponent, Jay Jones, has raised $2.7 million. He had about $493,000 left at the beginning of June, reports show.

This year, all three Democratic statewide candidates are backed by Clean Virginia, a political group that pushes for clean energy and often takes on legislative challenges against Dominion Energy, Virginia’s largest utility.

The two groups are some of the most influential entities lobbying on state politics and policy. With energy demand likely to be a key issue in November, their influence could be significant.

According to the nonpartisan public-access group, Spanberger has taken in $465,000 from the environmental organization. On Tuesday, Clean Virginia endorsed Hashmi’s candidacy for lieutenant governor, following its previous donations to her state Senate campaign committee.

During his campaign, Jones also received $1.5 million from Clean Virginia, while his primary opponent, Democrat Shannon Taylor, accepted $800,000 from Dominion Energy between 2024 and 2025. Clean Virginia released attack ads targeting Taylor for accepting Dominion money.

The energy utility has become entangled in other statewide battles. On the Republican ticket, Earle-Sears accepted $50,000 from Dominion in March. Miyares also gained $450,000 from the utility so far this year.

Clean Virginia has donated to both Democrats and Republicans, including to candidates running for the House of Delegates, where all 100 members are up for reelection in November.

Democrats who control the legislature are hoping to keep or expand their thin majority and amend the state’s Constitution to protect rights to voting, marriage equality and abortion.

Democratic candidates have raised about $16.9 million in those races, with $3.2 million stemming from House Speaker Don Scott.

Meanwhile, Republicans have raised $8.8 million, with former Minority Leader Todd Gilbert earning over $643,000, and newly tapped Minority Leader Terry Kilgore raising nearly $470,000.

Diaz writes for the Associated Press.

A day after federal agents forcibly restrained and handcuffed U.S. Sen Alex Padilla at a Los Angeles news conference, leaders of the country’s two political parties responded in what has become a predictable fashion — with diametrically opposed takes on the incident.

Padilla’s fellow Democrats called for an investigation and perhaps even the resignation of the senator’s nemesis, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, for what they described as the unprecedented manhandling of a U.S. senator who was merely attempting to ask a question of a fellow public official.

Noem and fellow Republicans continued to depict Padilla as a grandstander, whose unexpected appearance at Noem’s news conference seemed to her security detail to represent a threat, as she tried to speak to reporters at the Federal Building in Westwood.

Republicans continued Friday to chastise Padilla, using words like “launch,” “lunge” and “bum rush” to describe Padilla’s behavior as he began to try to pose a question to Noem at Thursday’s news conference.

The Trump administration official was just a few minutes into her meeting with reporters when Padilla moved assertively from the side of the room, pushing past a Times photographer as he moved to more directly address Noem. He did not lunge at Noem and was still paces away from her when her security detail grabbed the senator.

Padilla and his staff described how the veteran lawmaker went through security and was escorted by an FBI employee to the room where the press conference was held, saying it was absurd to suggest he presented a threat.

Padilla spoke out after the secretary asserted that her homeland security agents had come to L.A. to “liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that the governor and the mayor have placed on this country.”

The former South Dakota governor would have some reason to recognize Padilla, since he questioned her during her Senate confirmation hearing. A spokesperson at the Homeland Security Department did not respond to a question of whether Noem recognized Padilla when he arrived at her press conference.

As has become the norm in the nation’s political discourse, Republicans and Democrats spoke about the confrontation Friday as if they had observed two entirely separate incidents.

Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) said Noem “should step down,” adding: “This is ridiculous. And she continues to lie about this incident. This is wrong.”

Lujan urged his Republican colleagues to support Democrats in asking for “a full investigation.”

“This is bad. This is precedent-setting,” Lujan told MSNBC. “And I certainly hope that the leadership of the Senate, my Republican leaders, my friends, that they just look within. Pray on it. That’s what I told a couple of them last night. Pray on this and do the right thing.”

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus went to Speaker Mike Johnson’s office to protest Padilla’s treatment.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) spoke out on X and on the floor of the Senate. He said the episode fit into “a pattern of behavior by the Trump administration. There is simply no justification for this abuse of authority …. There can be no justification of seeing a senator forced to their knees.”

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) went on X to repeat the call for an investigation and to say that “Republican leadership is complicit in enabling the growing authoritarianism in this country.”

Speaking publicly only one Republican lawmaker sounded a note of distress about the episode.

“I’ve seen that one clip. It’s horrible,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). ”It is shocking at every level. It’s not the America I know.”

But most Republicans remained silent, or accused Padilla of being a provocateur.

“I think the senator’s actions, my view is, it was wildly inappropriate,” said Johnson, the House speaker. “You don’t charge a sitting Cabinet secretary.”

Johnson added that it was Padilla, who should face some sanction. “At a minimum … [it] rises to the level of a censure. … I think there needs to be a message sent by the body as a whole that that is not what we are going to do, that’s not how we’re going to act.”

Rep. Tom McClintock, (R-Elk Grove) zinged Padilla on X, with some “helpful tips.” “1. Don’t disrupt other people’s press conferences. Hold your own instead. 2. Don’t bum-rush a podium with no visible identification. … 3. Don’t resist or assault the Secret Service. It won’t end well.”

Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Big Bear Lake) also sought to reinforce the notion that agents protecting Noem sensed a real threat, having no way of knowing that Padilla was who he said he was.

The congressman said on Fox Business that Padilla had obtained “the outcome that they wanted. Now they have a talking point.”

None of the officials in the room, several of whom know Padilla, intervened to prevent the action by the agents, who eventually pushed the senator, face down, onto the ground, before handcuffing him.

Noem did not back off her earlier statement that Padilla had “burst” into the room.

“Senator Padilla chose disrespectful political theatre and interrupted a live press conference without identifying himself or having his Senate security pin on as he lunged toward Secretary Noem,” Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant Homeland Security secretary, said in a statement Friday.

McLaughlin also said that Padilla “was told repeatedly to back away and did not comply with officers’ repeated commands,” though video made public by Friday did not show such warnings, in advance of Padilla’s first statement.

The senator’s staff members said he privately had received messages of concern from several Republican colleagues, including Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.)

Padilla told Tommy Vietor of the “Pod Save America” podcast that Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown is an attempt to distract from many other failures — continued instability with the economy, a lack of peace in Ukraine and Gaza and a federal budget plan that is proving unpopular with many Americans.

“He always finds a distraction,” Padilla said, “and, when all else fails, he goes back to demonizing and scapegoating immigrants. … He creates a crisis to get us all talking about something else.”

Padilla said repeatedly that Americans should be concerned about how everyday citizens will be treated, if forces working for the Trump administration are allowed to “tackle” a U.S. senator asking questions in a public building.

On Friday afternoon, he sent a mass email urging his constituents to sign up for the protests planned for Saturday, to counter the military parade Trump is holding in Washington. “PLEASE show up and speak out against what is happening,” Padilla wrote. “We cannot allow the Trump administration to intimidate us into silence.”