Senate Republicans are sharply criticizing Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., for his disruption Thursday of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem‘s press conference. “Sen. Padilla should have been in Washington, D.C., voting. He has a responsibility to his constituents to show up at work—not try to make a spectacle of himself,” Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., the Senate Majority Whip, told The Daily Signal.  Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., also had harsh words for the California lawmaker. “Sen. Padilla should be standing up for the law-abiding citizens he was elected to serve—not defending illegal aliens committing horrific crimes in communities across California,” Blackburn said. “His decision to storm into Secretary Noem’s press conference and refuse to follow instructions was entirely unacceptable. This kind of behavior shouldn’t be tolerated from anyone, let alone a sitting U.S. senator,” the Tennessee lawmaker told The Daily Signal. After Padilla repeatedly ignored instructions from Noem’s security team to put his hands up and pushed against the team in attempting to make his way to interrupt her press conference, he was forcibly removed from the room. At that point, he was told to get on the ground and was handcuffed.  “You can’t show up without your pin, refuse to announce yourself, and lunge at a Cabinet secretary. It doesn’t matter who you are,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said in a post on X.  “If Sen. Padilla wanted to speak with Secretary Noem, he could have set up a meeting like everyone else,” Tuberville said.  “But this wasn’t about that. Sen. Padilla wanted to cause a scene … and then to cry wolf when he got it,” the Alabama senator contended.  Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told The Daily Signal he was still assessing the situation. “Well, I’ve spoken with Sen. Padilla. I’ve spoken with Jennifer Hemingway, who is the sergeant-at-arms in the Senate, and I’m trying to connect with Secretary Noem. I haven’t reached her quite yet, but we want to get the full scope of what happened and do what we would do in any incident like this involving a senator. And that’s try to gather all the relevant information,” Thune said. (The GOP leader said he has since spoken with Noem, a fellow South Dakotan.) Padilla defended his outburst in a number of posts on X. “What happened yesterday was part of a much bigger effort to try and silence anyone who dares to question what the Trump administration is doing. But we will not be intimidated, and we will not be deterred. We must hold this administration accountable,” the California senator said on the social media platform. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., criticized the response to Padilla’s disruption. “[It] sickened my stomach—the manhandling of a United States senator,” Politico reported Schumer as saying. Fellow California Democrat Sen. Adam Schiff also weighed in on the incident. “The disgraceful and disrespectful conduct of DHS agents, pushing and shoving him out of a briefing like that, demands our condemnation,” Schiff said in a post on X. .@SenAlexPadilla represents the best of the Senate. The disgraceful and disrespectful conduct of DHS agents, pushing and shoving him out of a briefing like that, demands our condemnation.He will not be silenced or intimidated. His questions will be answered.I’m with Alex. https://t.co/QlQyDO1k80— Adam Schiff (@SenAdamSchiff) June 12, 2025 Padilla was initially appointed to his Senate seat by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill the vacancy left by Kamala Harris after she was elected to the vice presidency in 2020. In November 2022, he won a special election to complete Harris’ term, which was set to expire in January 2023. He won a full six-year term for the Senate in a separate general election also held that November. Now 52, Padilla has spent half of his life in California politics, serving first as a member of the Los Angeles City Council, where he became the council’s youngest member at just 26 in 1999. Padilla was elevated to president of the City Council by his colleagues in 2001 and briefly served as acting mayor of Los Angeles after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. From there, he entered state politics, serving as a member of the state Senate from 2006 to 2014. He became California’s secretary of state in January 2015, and served in that role until his appointment to represent the state in the U.S. Senate.  The post ‘Entirely Unacceptable’: Senate Republicans Condemn California Democrat’s Outburst appeared first on The Daily Signal.