Congress
Mike Johnson tries to keep a lid on partisan tensions after Kirk’s slaying
Not even two hours after Charlie Kirk was fatally shot in Utah, Speaker Mike Johnson sought to hold a moment of silence for the young conservative activist.
It lasted only a few seconds before the situation devolved into yelling and chaos, leaving Johnson banging his gavel as he tried to restore order in the House. Ever since, he’s been struggling to convince both sides of the chamber to keep partisan finger-pointing from spiraling out of control.
Over the past 24 hours, Johnson has been the most powerful elected Republican urging lawmakers and Americans generally to keep things from escalating both online and in person. The Louisianan’s approach is largely in keeping with the way previous speakers might have handled the traumatic situation, but it is out of step with a polarized political culture that has come to color most everything that happens on Capitol Hill.
“What I’m going to do is what I’ve always done,” Johnson told reporters later Thursday. “I’m always about turning down the temperature and encouraging members to walk in the dignity of their office and treat one another with dignity and respect. And I think it’s an important moment for leaders to say that.”
Johnson’s approach is informed in part by his role as nominal leader of the whole House, Republican and Democrat, and his responsibility for managing the security of its 435 members. On Thursday, he described a new burst of private concerns from lawmakers in both parties about their own safety, citing the skyrocketing tensions.
Just last week he noted an uptick in threats against members of Congress during an address to a meeting of G7 country legislative chiefs. On Thursday, Johnson indicated would expedite a review of enhanced funding for lawmakers’ security — a pilot program of money that’s set to expire at the end of the month. He also suggested to a small group of reporters that Republicans were considering boosting funding for member security in a government funding stopgap.
“People are scared to death in this building,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said Thursday. “I mean, not many of them will say it publicly, but they’re running to the speaker talking about security.”
But inside the Republican caucus, he is dealing with more than requests for bodyguards and security cameras. He is dealing with the rage of his own members, some of whom were quick to point the finger at their Democratic colleagues Wednesday.
Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, during the chaos following the moment of silence, yelled and pointed across the aisle. “Y’all caused this,” she said, before hurling expletives at Democrats.
On Thursday, Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) warned on X that the “Gloves are Off,” adding, “We will not allow these people to take our country. They are 21st Century Brown Shirts.” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) said in his own X post that he’s “going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination.”
Johnson — who told reporters shortly after the shooting that Kirk was “a good friend” — is taking a different rhetorical tack. He chose to make an appearance on BLN Wednesday night, in addition to an interview on GOP-friendly Fox News, where he played down the floor outburst as “a reflection of the emotion of the moment” and urged his members and others to take the temperature down.
While Johnson has cited threats to members of Congress generally, there is no doubt that he is himself a target. His immediate predecessor as speaker, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, was personally affected by politically motivated violence when her husband, Paul Pelosi, was brutally attacked in their San Francisco home in 2022.
Yet Johnson is also under intense pressure from some of his fellow Republicans to do more to protect the rank-and-file, with some infuriated that the speaker is insulated in his own security bubble and doesn’t have to deal with the same level of fear.
“We’ve got to protect people who run for public office or no one will, and that’s heavy on our hearts and minds as we also work through the trauma of what happened yesterday,” Johnson said Thursday.
Some Democrats think Johnson could still do more to call out the bipartisan nature of political violence as many in his party blame the left, as well as call out gun violence generally.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate to blame the speaker in a vacuum,” Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) said Thursday. “But … I wish that the speaker had gone to [House Minority Leader Hakeem] Jeffries and said, ‘We had two tragic shootings today — one at the elementary school in Colorado and another with Charlie Kirk in Utah. Can we have a moment of silence for both of those things?”
Johnson will be tested inside his own party in the coming weeks by requests from his members that could further strain partisan tensions. Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri is calling on him to allow Kirk to lie in state in the Capitol — an honor normally, but not always, reserved for elected officials. Luna is calling for a statue of Kirk to be placed in the Capitol, while other Republicans are pressing to award Kirk the congressional gold medal.
Johnson could find it difficult to keep those passions under wraps, but he appears to take his role as an institutional steward seriously.
Just moments after the outburst on the floor Wednesday night, Johnson swore in the House’s newest member, Democrat James Walkinshaw of Virginia. In his ceremonial office just off the House floor, Johnson posed for a customary photo with Walkinshaw. The speaker turned to the Democrat and said he hoped he had a long career on Capitol Hill. “We’ll try to get everybody under control here,” Johnson added.
Mia McCarthy and Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.
Rep. Tom Kean Jr. represents New Jersey’s most competitive district this November — but nobody, even his GOP colleagues, can say where he’s been for the past month.
A scion of one of the state’s most storied political dynasties, Kean’s team says the two-term congressmember is facing unspecified health issues. The New Jersey Republican hasn’t voted since March 5 and has missed almost 50 roll call votes.
The other two Republicans in the New Jersey delegation, Reps. Chris Smith and Jeff Van Drew, said they have called and texted Kean out of concern for his health. But so far, neither said they have heard from him. Van Drew said it’s been “radio silence.”
Several New York Republicans who have worked with Kean on key issues said similarly. Kean’s absence has largely fallen under the radar and GOP leaders haven’t addressed the issue to the conference, according to several Republicans.
One Republican, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), said he didn’t even realize Kean had been missing until he tried to find him on the House floor Tuesday.
“I was looking for him,” Bacon said in an interview Wednesday. “I didn’t know it was that long.”
“I know the congressman and his family appreciate all of the well wishes and support,” Kean consultant Harrison Neely told Blue Light News. “Please know that he will be back on a regular full schedule very soon.”
Closer to home, Kean’s allies also expect him to come back soon.
“I don’t even know the truth myself or even enough to disclose any information,” Union County GOP Chair Carlos Santos told Blue Light News. “But I have been texting with him and was told he’ll be fine and make a full recovery in the next couple weeks.”
Kean represents New Jersey’s most competitive House seat — the 7th Congressional District, a large swath across the northern and central part of the state that includes Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster. President Donald Trump narrowly carried it by one point in the 2024 presidential race, but Democratic former Rep. Mikie Sherrill carried the district by nearly two points in the 2025 governor’s race. Kean won the district by around five points in 2024.
Kean enters reelection in what could be his most challenging congressional bid to date. He faces an environment that is increasingly challenging for Republicans and the Trump administration is opening an immigration detention facility in his district while pulling funding for a major infrastructure project for New Jersey commuters — both of which have put him in a precarious position.
But Kean’s backers say his temporary absence will hardly be on voters’ minds come November.
“Everyone understands from their own family experiences that people run into unexpected health issues,” Bill Palatucci, a Republican National Committee member and attorney to the Kean campaign, told Blue Light News. “Voters will be completely sympathetic and it’s so early in the year that it will be long forgotten come the fall.”
There is a competitive Democratic primary to take on Kean, with four prominent candidates.
Democrats in the New Jersey delegation have also noticed his absence and have started to be concerned for the congressmember’s health. Those members have also not heard anything.
“It’s been a long absence,” New Jersey Democrat Rep. Rob Menendez said. “I hope he’s doing all right. But I haven’t heard anything.”
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
The Senate will kick off a marathon amendment voting session Wednesday night as Republicans aim to adopt a budget blueprint for immigration enforcement funding.
The chamber is expected to start the vote-a-rama free-for-all around 8 p.m., according to three people granted anonymity to disclose private scheduling. Senate Republicans need to adopt the budget resolution in order to subsequently pass their bill to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol through the party-line budget reconciliation process.
The Senate’s top cybersecurity official is aiming to expand the number of AI licenses and approved AI tools available to Senate staff — and it will come with a price tag.
The Senate sergeant at arms, the chief law enforcement official on Capitol Hill whose office also manages IT and logistics, is seeking a $2.8 million boost for the department’s fiscal 2027 budget for AI licenses as appetite grows in Congress for using large language models in day-to-day workflow.
“About 10 percent of Senate users have already used the free, unsupported version of this technology,” Senate Sergeant at Arms Jennifer Hemingway told the Senate Appropriations Legislative Branch subcommittee Wednesday. “Moving those users and other Senate users into Senate-supported versions of these platforms is necessary to protect Senate data.”
In March, the Senate green-lighted the use of Google’s Gemini chat, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot in Senate offices with licenses that support enhanced data security measures compared with the free versions. Staff in the House have been using Copilot, Gemini and ChatGPT, as well as Anthropic’s Claude, approved platforms under the chamber’s internal AI guidelines.
The cybersecurity team in Hemingway’s office is currently conducting risk assessments on about 40 AI tools, she told lawmakers. The sergeant at arms plans to bring recommendations for AI tools for Senate use to the bipartisan AI Governance Board, and “if the AI products meet our defined criteria,” make more tools available to the Senate.
“The most popular on that list is Claude,” Hemingway noted. The sergeant at arms began assessing the Anthropic product March 3.
When pressed by ranking member Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) about the sergeant at arms’ policy of issuing one license per Senate user, Hemingway explained that the protocol is designed in part to incentivize staff to use data-protected versions approved by the sergeant at arms.
“If there is demand to have more than once license per user, we’d be happy to have conversations” with the Legislative Branch panel that funds the sergeant at arms, Hemingway said, calling it a “resource issue.”
She added that staff whose work focuses on AI and who need access to multiple tools could be accommodated very quickly.
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