{"id":10241,"date":"2025-06-12T21:32:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-12T21:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/democrats-marched-on-hill-gop-leaders-offices-in-protest-of-sen-alex-padillas-handcuffing\/"},"modified":"2025-06-12T21:32:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T21:32:08","slug":"democrats-marched-on-hill-gop-leaders-offices-in-protest-of-sen-alex-padillas-handcuffing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/democrats-marched-on-hill-gop-leaders-offices-in-protest-of-sen-alex-padillas-handcuffing\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats marched on Hill GOP leaders&#8217; offices in protest of Sen. Alex Padilla&#8217;s handcuffing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Dozens of House Democrats marched to Hill GOP leaders&#8217; offices Thursday afternoon in protest of Sen. Alex Padilla&#8217;s detention by federal agents, but they weren&#8217;t able to meet with Speaker Mike Johnson or Senate Majority Leader John Thune. <\/p>\n<p>As the House wrapped up its last votes for the week, dozens of House Democrats walked across the Capitol first to Thune&#8217;s office, then back to Johnson&#8217;s office, in an effort to speak with them. But neither GOP leader was available, the Democrats said after. Thune was at the White House Thursday afternoon for a meeting with President Donald Trump on the megabill. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have concerns, grave concerns when the Speaker of the House refers to a sitting member of the U.S. Senate who simply tried to exercise his First Amendment rights as acting like a thug,&#8221; said Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), chair of the Hispanic Caucus. <\/p>\n<p>Earlier, the group of Democrats heckled Johnson on their way to Thune&#8217;s office as the speaker took a victory lap about the passage of billions of dollars of clawbacks of congressionally-approved funding. As Johnson started to address Padilla&#8217;s brief detention and called his actions \u201dwildly inappropriate,\u201d one lawmaker yelled: &#8220;keep propping up that authoritarian!\u201d Another shouted \u201cthat\u2019s a lie!\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Johnson also floated to reporters the possibility of censuring Padilla, drawing outrage from the Democrats who later gathered outside his office. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Anyone that&#8217;s reasonable that sees the video will understand Sen. Padilla was not aggressive,&#8221; Espaillat said. <\/p>\n<p><i>Meredith Lee Hill and Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report <\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dozens of House Democrats marched to Hill GOP leaders&#8217; offices Thursday afternoon in protest of Sen. Alex Padilla&#8217;s detention by federal agents, but they weren&#8217;t able to meet with Speaker Mike Johnson or Senate Majority Leader John Thune. As the House wrapped up its last votes for the week, dozens of House Democrats walked across [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}