Congress
A retiring chief strains to keep the Capitol Police above the partisan fray
Thomas Manger inherited a force in crisis when he became chief of the U.S. Capitol Police four years ago. He’s now leaving a force under a microscope.
The 70-year-old law enforcement veteran came out of retirement just months after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — tasked with stabilizing a department whose officers had been physically and emotionally battered and whose protective mission had suddenly grown immensely more complicated.
But that was only the beginning of challenge for Manger, who soon found himself holding one of the most politicized jobs in all of policing. Within months, an alternative narrative about Jan. 6 took hold on the right, and with many of its proponents now in power in Washington — including President Donald Trump — he has had to strike a careful balance between standing up for his officers and heeding the lawmakers who oversee and fund his department.
“I don’t think it’s wise or necessary or useful to try and convince members of Congress what to think,” Manger said. “I think you make the compelling argument about what the Capitol Police need, about what the Capitol Police require to do their jobs and allow them to make a decision.”
That’s not to say Manger has been silent. He has spoken out at key junctures, criticizing Trump’s blanket pardons of Jan. 6 offenders and, just last week, the Justice Department’s decision to move toward a $5 million settlement with the family of Ashli Babbit — the Jan. 6 rioter who was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer while trying to storm a room off the House floor.
But in a wide-ranging interview Tuesday — amid his last week on the job before retiring for good — Manger said it wasn’t productive for the embattled force’s chief to be snarled in political fights on Blue Light News, or in the larger war over the memory of the Capitol insurrection.
While Manger has felt compelled to speak up about situations that directly affect his officers, he has taken pains to stay out of other battles. He again called the pardons “an absolute slap in the face to police officers, frankly, all over this country” Tuesday, for instance, but refused to weigh in on the fate of a bronze plaque commemorating the officers who responded to the riot.
Congress ordered the fabrication of the memorial and its installation “at a permanent location on the western front of the United States Capitol” in March 2022. The plaque was cast, inscribed with “THEIR HEROISM WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN,” but after Republicans won the House majority the following November, it was put into storage in the Capitol basement.
Calling it a “very political issue,” Manger said he has not spoken to Republican congressional leaders about the plaque and declined to call for it to be installed. He said he had not seen the actual memorial, just a photograph.
“I hope they will find some middle ground,” he said. “There’s not a lot of memorials that are attached to the Capitol building, but there are certainly a lot of informational pedestals where you have little historical briefings around the campus.”
The tap dance reflects the enormous challenges of managing a department that is ultimately responsible to a web of overlapping overseers. There’s the three-member Capitol Police Board, four oversight committees and senior congressional leaders themselves — all of whom have influence over the department and how it operates.
Manger — who previously led the departments in Montgomery County, Maryland, and Fairfax County, Virginia — said dealing with the menagerie of Capitol Hill power centers was “very different” from reporting to a single elected executive and “very, very challenging.”
That, he said, has required a focus on the future of the Capitol Police and securing what the department needs to keep lawmakers, tourists and staff safe. It’s also a situation that will hang over whoever replaces Manger as chief.
“If they pick someone from the inside, they’re going to know what our mission is,” Manger said. “They’ll have that — that’s good. If they pick somebody from the outside, they’re going to have to learn about our mission, the uniqueness of it, but the structure of oversight as well, and there is a learning curve there.”
An even bigger challenge for the force, however, has been keeping up with a rising tide of threats against lawmakers. The department reported more than 9,400 in 2024, and a good number of those threats were deemed credible enough to require temporary protective details for rank-and-file lawmakers who otherwise would not be entitled to them.
That has stretched resources thin, Manger said: “We’re always robbing Peter to pay Paul to put that together. We should have the staffing to do those kinds of details.”
Manger recently made his final budget requests to Congress, asking lawmakers for $967.8 million for fiscal 2026, a 22 percent boost over the current funding level which was set in fiscal 2024. He acknowledged in hearings with appropriators that for his department’s size — about 2,300 sworn officers and civilians — a budget approaching a billion dollars is enormous. He stressed the sweeping intelligence, security and nationwide coordination mandate of the Capitol Police.
Both the Trump administration and Republicans on Capitol Hill are trying to rein in federal spending, and lawmakers tasked with spending are expected to begin writing their bills in the coming weeks. The outgoing chief warned against continuing to keep funding flat for the department he’s set to exit long before any spending deal is reached.
“It would impact our ability to address the growing number of threats against a member of Congress,” Manger said. “We’d just be crossing our fingers and saying, ‘Well, hope nothing happens,’ because there’s more that we think we can do if we had the resources.”
The job of choosing Manger’s replacement will fall to the Capitol Police Board, comprised of House Sergeant-at-Arms William McFarland, Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Jennifer Hemingway and Architect of the Capitol Thomas Austin. Top congressional leaders choose those officials and are expected to have some influence in the pick.
Manger said that anyone coming in after him has to know that the job has a much different mandate and set of responsibilities than a municipal police department. He said he would be available as a sounding board but was looking forward to retirement — some consulting work, maybe, and finally fixing the fence in his yard.
“One of the things that I really, truly want to get away from is the aggravations of being a police chief,” he said. “So whatever I do, it’s going to be something I want to do.”
The Senate is aiming to leave Washington for a five-week recess early Saturday after Republicans cut a deal with President Donald Trump to punt some of their priorities, including a framework for a party-line spending plan.
The Senate is trying to lock in an agreement that would set up votes on a college sports bill, a stopgap government funding bill, Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination and GOP voter ID legislation, according to a copy of an internal notice reviewed by Blue Light News.
The Senate would then leave Washington until mid-September.
Any one senator could object to the tentative deal, forcing it to be altered or dragging the Senate deeper into the weekend. Senators believe there are still objections to advancing the college sports bill. Democrats are also waiting to see if one of their own will prevent speeding up Blanche’s confirmation.
The breakthrough is a U-turn from earlier Friday evening, when Republican senators emerged from a closed-door meeting predicting they would have to spend Saturday trying to break a stalemate within the party about how to wrap final votes before recess.
Shortly after that meeting, Trump spoke by phone with Senate Republicans including Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rick Scott of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah about the path forward for the GOP’s lengthy to-do list.
During the call, according to Johnson, Trump agreed to punt a vote on a budget blueprint for a third party-line spending bill until later in the year. Lee, who has been pushing for action on the separate SAVE America Act, also agreed to drop his demand for a formal, roll call vote on adjourning given the understanding with the president.
“I think the conclusion of the conference – and we had a discussion with the president and he agrees – [is] don’t take the vote tonight,” Johnson said after the meeting in Thune’s office.
Republicans were in talks with the White House throughout Friday. A White House official granted anonymity said Friday evening that “we’re continuing to have productive conversations with senators to advance several legislative priorities.”
Senate Republicans confirmed dozens of President Donald Trump’s nominees Friday, just before they leave for a five-week congressional recess.
Senators voted 51-47 to approve officials at the Departments of Defense, Energy, State and other agencies.
They included David Cummins to head the Transportation Security Administration, Cameron Hamilton to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Hal Duncan to be OMB deputy director and Francis Brooke to be Treasury deputy secretary. Among the group were several ambassadors, including former Rep. David Brat to be ambassador to Australia.
Senate Republicans changed the chamber’s rules last year to be able to confirm lower-level nominees as a package instead of having to hold a vote on each.
After finishing the expedited procedure Friday, Senate Republicans estimate they will only have a small number of civilian nominees awaiting confirmation.
President Donald Trump said voters may seek to punish Republicans — but not him — in the November midterm elections, as GOP lawmakers sweat that affordability concerns and the war in Iran could mean Democrats flip the House and perhaps even the Senate.
“They’re angry at Republicans,” Trump said in an interview with Punchbowl News that aired Friday. “But they’re not angry at me. They’re not angry at me, but they are angry at Republicans.”
The GOP faces the prospect of heavy losses this November, as gas and grocery prices remain stubbornly high due in part to the White House’s five-month-long war in Iran. The administration’s guidance on campaign trail messaging has been “tone deaf,” House Republicans fear.
Meanwhile, the president’s approval rating has tumbled since he returned to the Oval Office last year, and even his biggest supporters have grown frustrated over his Middle East war.
And with a messy, jam-packed slate of primaries now all but in the rearview mirror, Democrats are determined to go on offense. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has 58 seats on its midterm target map that stretches into redder territory — while still facing an uphill climb to take the Senate.
Trump has a massive war chest at his disposal. His MAGA Inc. super PAC reached $400 million in June. The president told Punchbowl he plans to use it to “help Republicans,” but he stressed that he faces no pressure in this campaign cycle.
“I said to somebody, ‘Wait a minute, you don’t understand, I won,’” Trump said, referencing his 2024 presidential election victory. “I’m not campaigning.”
The biggest issue for Republicans this year? That Trump himself is not on the ballot, he said.
“If I don’t run, will those people go out and vote? And that’s the one thing I can’t tell, I’m going to ask them to,” he said.
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