Alex Padilla, a Democrat, is a U.S. Senator for California and the first Latino to represent the state in that chamber. Governor Gavin Newsom appointed him in January 2021 to fill the vacancy left by Kamala Harris’s election as Vice President, and he won a full six-year term in November 2022. Raised in Los Angeles and educated in its public schools, he holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering from MIT.
Padilla built a long career in California government before the Senate. He was elected to the Los Angeles City Council in 1999 at age 26 and became its youngest-ever president and the first Latino in over a century to hold that post, serving as acting Mayor of Los Angeles in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. He served two terms in the California State Senate starting in 2006, chairing the Energy, Utilities, and Communications Committee, before becoming California’s first Latino Secretary of State in 2014, a role in which he expanded automatic and same-day voter registration and secured $500 million for statewide voting-system upgrades. In the U.S. Senate, he chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Safety and also serves on the Budget, Environment and Public Works, Energy and Natural Resources, and Rules committees.
On June 12, 2025, Padilla was forcibly removed, taken to the ground, and handcuffed by federal law enforcement after approaching the podium to ask Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a question during a Los Angeles press conference held amid protests over federal immigration enforcement. He was not wearing his Senate identification pin at the time; he was released without charges after being identified, and he and Noem later spoke privately. Padilla said afterward that he had “simply” been asking a question and was not disrupting the event, and the incident drew bipartisan attention along with Democratic calls for an investigation.
