Congress
Capitol agenda: Charlie Kirk’s killing sends a chill through Congress
The killing of Charlie Kirk is hitting lawmakers hard.
Some, like Speaker Mike Johnson, were close with the conservative activist. For many others, his death in Utah is fresh evidence of a chilling escalation in political violence and the latest shocking reminder of their own exposure to attacks.
“Something happened on Capitol Hill,” Johnson said on BLN Wednesday night. “It’s changed the atmosphere in the place.”
The shooting has sparked “a deluge” of members calling for heightened security, Johnson said in the interview. He had already been raising an alarm, warning in recent days of rising threats against members of Congress. He said earlier this month that Capitol Police had tracked close to 14,000 assessments of threatening and concerning behavior this year, up from 9,000 in 2024. Lawmakers were already working this year on ways to enhance their security.
“I don’t know why anybody would want to serve when this is what you’re staring down the barrel of,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) told reporters Wednesday.
Congressional leaders are emerging from the tragedy united in calling for an end to the rise of political violence, without pointing fingers at each other. But emotions briefly boiled over on the House floor Wednesday, with Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) yelling “silent prayers get silent results” after a moment of silence for Kirk. Democrats shouted about a school shooting in her state that also occurred Wednesday, and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) hurled expletives at her colleagues across the aisle.
“That was a reflection of the emotion of the moment, the real sense of shock that people were feeling,” Johnson said later on BLN. “I think justifiably, understandably. But I think after that, I think a lot of people will reflect upon things they said and did in that moment, and they probably regret it.”
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.) told BLN Wednesday that the recent string of political attacks — Kirk’s killing, the shooting of state legislators in Minnesota and the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump — is a threat to America as we know it.
“Our entire democratic experiment is going to crumble if people don’t believe they are safe when they express their political views,” he said.
Some members also see risks in the pressure to put more distance between themselves and their constituents because of safety concerns.
“We’re all in different places every day. There’s no way you lock that down,” GOP Sen. John Curtis of Utah said on BLN Wednesday night, as he responded to Johnson’s comments about growing calls for enhanced member security. “And that would be a terrible thing for the American people. I mean, we would lose the closeness that we cherish with our constituents if we even tried to do that.”
What else we’re watching:
— Government funding developments: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will discuss government funding at 8:45 a.m. ahead of the Sept. 30 funding deadline. The meeting was initially scheduled for Wednesday evening but was pushed to Thursday morning.
— ACA talks: The weekly lunch meeting of House Ways and Means Republicans got heated Wednesdayas members debated whether to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits that are set to expire at year’s end. The bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus also discussed the ACA credits during a separate meeting Wednesday, including whether an extension should include a new income cap on who can qualify for the subsidies.
— Russia sanctions legislation: Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday there’s “intensified interest” among senators to pass Russia sanctions legislation amid escalating aggression from Moscow. He stopped short of saying he was ready to put Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Richard Blumenthal’s (D-Conn.) secondary sanctions bill on the floor.
Meredith Lee Hill, Jordain Carney and Benjamin Guggenheim contributed to this report.
Congress
DHS stopgap set for quick House action after Rules Committee vote
The House Rules Committee advanced a measure Friday evening that would fund the entirety of the Homeland Security Department through May 22 — without setting up debate or a separate vote on the funding bill itself.
The panel, after a raucous meeting that devolved into shouting at multiple points, voted 8-4 on party lines to advance the measure to the floor.
The rule includes a “deem and pass” provision, a tactic that allows legislation to be passed by the House automatically once the rule itself is adopted. While there will be one hour of floor debate and a vote on the rule, there will not be a standalone House vote on the DHS spending bill.
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) described himself as needing “a neck brace” from the whiplash of hearing Republicans argue for hours that the Senate’s early-morning voice vote on a different DHS funding measure was “shameful” for lack of transparency and accountability.
House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) accused the Senate of moving their bill “in the middle of the night, with the smell of jet fumes in the air,” lamenting that the House was left “to take it or leave it.”
House leaders, McGovern suggested, have chosen a similar path by fast-tracking the eight-week DHS stopgap.
“You’re in charge,” he told Rules Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.). “You can do whatever the hell you want to do.”
Congress
Rand Paul weighs a 2028 presidential bid
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is considering a bid for president in 2028, as Republicans jockey for the future of the GOP post-Trump.
In a “CBS Sunday Morning” interview airing Sunday, a reporter asked Paul about an article that implied he would be running for president.
“We’re thinking about it,” Paul said. “I would say fifty-fifty,” adding that he would make a final decision after the midterm elections.
Paul ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2016 with a libertarianism-focused campaign but ultimately dropped out after a poor performance in the Iowa caucuses and a shortage of cash. He instead ran for reelection to the Senate.
Paul has had a complex relationship with his own party and with President Donald Trump, often finding himself the lone Republican on certain issues. More recently, he was the only Republican to support a joint resolution that would limit Trump’s war powers in Iran.
His father, former Rep. Ron Paul, also ran for president three times: first as a Libertarian in 1988, and twice as a Republican in 2008 and 2012.
Congress
‘Meltdown’: DHS shutdown set to drag on after House GOP rejects Senate deal
House Republicans moved Friday to further extend the six-week shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security by rejecting a Senate bill that would fund the vast majority of DHS agencies through September.
Instead, Speaker Mike Johnson proposed a temporary extension of DHS funding through May 22 — a plan that has uncertain prospects in the House and certainly won’t pass the Senate before the shutdown becomes the longest funding lapse in U.S. history Saturday.
But Johnson said House Republicans simply could not swallow the Senate bill, which omits funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Border Patrol and some other parts of Customs and Border Protection.
“The Republicans are not going to be any part of any effort to reopen our borders or to stop immigration enforcement,” he said. “We are going to deport dangerous criminal illegal aliens because it is a basic function of the government. The Democrats fundamentally disagree.”
The move toward an eight-week stopgap creates a tactical gulf between Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who called an end to weeks of abortive bipartisan talks Thursday and pushed through the funding bill in hopes of tacking on funding later for ICE and CBP in a party-line budget reconciliation bill.
President Donald Trump has largely stayed out of the GOP infighting on Capitol Hill, keeping his criticism trained on Democrats. He ordered DHS to pay TSA officers Thursday as long security lines snarls more U.S. airports.
Johnson played down the split with his Senate counterpart, saying the Democratic leader there bore more blame for the impasse.
“I wouldn’t call John Thune the engineer of this,” he said. “Chuck Schumer and the Democrats in the Senate have forced this upon the Senate. I have to protect the House. … Our colleagues on this side understand this is not a game. We are not playing their games.”
Thune said early Friday morning he did not speak directly to Johnson in the final hours leading up to the Senate’s voice vote, but he said they had texted. He acknowledged he did not know in advance how the House would handle the Senate bill.
“Hopefully they’ll be around, and we can get at least a lot of the government opened up again, and then we’ll go from there,” he said.
Johnson made his game plan clear with House Republicans on a private call just minutes before addressing reporters in the Capitol, according to four people granted anonymity to describe the call. He warned that a failure to advance the short-term DHS stopgap would upend GOP plans for a reconciliation bill, the people said.
He suggested the Senate could quickly clear the stopgap measure once it passes the House. Most senators have left Washington for a recess running through April 13, but Johnson said the chamber could approve the House measure by unanimous consent at a planned pro forma session Monday.
But some House Republicans on the private call, including Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida, aired doubts it could pass the Senate — or even the House. Some fellow GOP centrists argued that the House should just swallow the Senate bill and end the standoff.
The House plan for a 60-day stopgap won a cold reception in the Senate, with even Republicans warning it will only prolong the partial government shutdown.
The plan is instead fueling frustration among both Republicans and Democrats who view House Republicans as essentially throwing temper tantrum. Three people granted anonymity to speak candidly each described the House as having a “meltdown.”
Schumer publicly slammed the House GOP plan Friday, saying it was “dead on arrival” across the Capitol, “and Republicans know it.”
A Senate GOP aide granted anonymity to speak candidly added that the quickest way to end the shutdown is for the House to pass the Senate bill.
Five people granted anonymity to comment on Senate dynamics said there was no possibility that Democrats would let the House GOP plan pass during the Senate’s brief pro forma sessions over the next two weeks. It would only take one Democratic senator to show up and object to any attempt to pass it.
The bill, according to the five people, also can’t get 60 votes in the Senate once the chamber returns. Democrats have previously rejected even shorter stopgaps, leaving some to privately question why House Republicans would ever think their plan would work.
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