By Breaking with party leaders, Rep. Jared Golden, a Democratic congressman from Maine, offered blunt criticism of two fellow Democrats over recent run-ins with law enforcement, describing their behavior as “politics as theater” and out of step with the role of elected officials.
Golden—who represents a rural Maine district that backed Donald Trump in the last presidential election—singled out Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat from California, and Rep. LaMonica McIver, a Democrat from New Jersey, for their high-profile clashes with authorities in recent weeks, reported Axios.
Padilla was briefly detained and handcuffed during a tense confrontation outside the Los Angeles FBI field office, where he attempted to confront Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a scheduled press event. McIver, meanwhile, is under indictment for allegedly shoving a law enforcement officer during a demonstration outside an ICE facility last month—a charge she denies.
Golden told reporters that while police should exercise restraint, elected officials have a duty to act with discipline. “Storming into an FBI headquarters to disrupt a press conference or charging at a Cabinet secretary isn’t in the job description,” Golden said. On McIver’s case, he added: “Where I’m from, if you push a cop, you’re getting arrested. That’s not persecution—that’s just what happens.”
His comments mark a rare public rebuke from within the party, as most Democrats have defended Padilla and McIver. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), part of the House Democratic leadership, stood by Padilla, saying the senator clearly identified himself before being “manhandled” by officers. “This was a dangerous overreaction,” Garcia said. “And people are right to be outraged.”
Others in the caucus are calling for further review of the Padilla incident. Rep. Stephen Lynch, a Democrat from Massachusetts, the acting top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said he supports a formal investigation. “We only saw clips of it, so I’d like to find out everything that happened and how that occurred. He was very roughly handled, and it seemed like he was just trying to interject and attend the [press] conference. So, yeah, I think we need to take a good, hard look at it.”
Golden’s remarks reflect the tightrope he walks as a centrist Democrat in a conservative-leaning district—one who often stakes out positions at odds with the progressive wing that has come to dominate the party.
On the right, the reaction has been much more clear, according to The Hill. When asked about potential consequences for Padilla’s actions, Speaker Mike Johnson initially hesitated, saying, ”it’s not my decision to make, I’m not in that chamber,” before endorsing censure for the California Democrat.
“I think that that behavior at a minimum rises to the level of a censure,” Johnson told reporters. “I think there needs to be a message sent by the body as a whole that that is not what we’re going to do, that’s not what we’re going to act.”
“We’re not going to have branches fighting physically and having senators charging Cabinet secretaries,” he added. “We got to do better and I hope that we will.”
He continued, saying he “saw the same video, a very brief video, that I think many people did — I think the senator’s actions, my view, is it was wildly inappropriate,” he said. “You don’t charge a sitting Cabinet secretary, and everybody can draw their own conclusions, you can see it’s a heated debate here.”
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