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Padilla Assault Fails to Stop Senate Business as Usual
Shortly after Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) was repeatedly shoved, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed inside a federal building in Los Angeles while trying to ask Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a question about immigration enforcement, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) interrupted business on the Senate floor. “I just saw something that sickened my stomach; the manhandling of a United States senator. We need immediate answers to what the hell went on,” Schumer said. I don’t know what answers he wanted; the Padilla incident was captured on tape, and there wasn’t much left to the imagination.
The interesting context is what Schumer actually interrupted. His outraged comments came right after the Senate advanced a substitute amendment to the GENIUS Act, with the assistance of 16 Democrats. If Schumer and his fellow Democrats were truly sick to their stomachs—and I believe they were—over witnessing representatives of a Republican administration assault one of their colleagues, why are they continuing to collaborate with Republicans legislatively?
In theory, you can compartmentalize actions happening outside legislative votes with the votes themselves. But in this instance, cooperating with a Republican Party that keeps arresting, indicting, and detaining the political opposition, on a bill that would place congressional sanction on corruption in the digital asset space, including that personally conducted by Donald Trump, as well as severely destabilizing the financial system, cannot be blindly forgotten without some highly situational ethics. “They will continue to stern-letter us into fascism,” one former Hill staffer told me.
This is in part an example of the extreme power of the crypto industry. They wanted their rewards from buying Congress. They got Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) to end regular order in the Senate, and now they got Democrats to shake off the attack on Alex Padilla, so they could stay on schedule for their task.
The interesting context is what Schumer actually interrupted. His outraged comments came right after the Senate advanced a substitute amendment to the GENIUS Act, with the assistance of 16 Democrats. If Schumer and his fellow Democrats were truly sick to their stomachs—and I believe they were—over witnessing representatives of a Republican administration assault one of their colleagues, why are they continuing to collaborate with Republicans legislatively?
In theory, you can compartmentalize actions happening outside legislative votes with the votes themselves. But in this instance, cooperating with a Republican Party that keeps arresting, indicting, and detaining the political opposition, on a bill that would place congressional sanction on corruption in the digital asset space, including that personally conducted by Donald Trump, as well as severely destabilizing the financial system, cannot be blindly forgotten without some highly situational ethics. “They will continue to stern-letter us into fascism,” one former Hill staffer told me.
This is in part an example of the extreme power of the crypto industry. They wanted their rewards from buying Congress. They got Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) to end regular order in the Senate, and now they got Democrats to shake off the attack on Alex Padilla, so they could stay on schedule for their task.
https://prospect.org/politics/2025-06-13-alex-padilla-assault-senate-democrats-genius-act/