Congress

Senate program for in-state lawmaker security could hitch a ride on spending stopgap

Published

7 months ago

September 12, 2025

Elected officials are on edge and clamoring for enhanced safety measures for themselves and their families after the shooting of Charlie Kirk. But even before Kirk’s death, Senate appropriators green-lit funding to continue a pilot program for increased security for lawmakers at home, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee said Thursday.

“The bill that we passed would provide for a pilot program,” Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) told reporters Thursday.

The funding for the pilot program flows through the Senate Sergeant at Arms accounts, which fund Senate-specific security programs separate from the Capitol Police, sparing lawmakers’ office accounts from the burden of large security costs.

The Sergeant at Arms was given an allocation in the legislative branch appropriators bill the Senate approved in July, but as with many security related accounts, itemized details are not made public.

Collins cautioned the measure is now headed to bicameral negotiations, where the funding levels could change and entire policies could get stripped. The inclusion of this money to begin with, however, reflects the extent to which the specter of political violence has become a bleak reality for elected officials.

For years, lawmakers have raised concerns that they are unprotected when they are outside the highly securitized Capitol campus in Washington, even when conducting official duties back home. Their fears became more pronounced after the shooting of state legislators in Minnesota in June, and have metastasized following the targeted killing of Kirk, a prominent conservative activist, at an event on a Utah college campus Wednesday.

But members of both parties and chambers signaled Thursday there’s an appetite for spending money on more security options for lawmakers.

“I think there would be agreement on doing whatever needs to get done for members’ security,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a brief interview Thursday morning.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Legislative Branch subcommittee, said Thursday that the pilot program has already been operating on a small scale for “several members” with “higher threat levels” participating so far. The hope is that Congress will approve a final version of the Senate-passed legislative branch bill that includes the ability to continue the pilot program through the end of the next fiscal year.

Mullin said appropriators are hoping to soon learn “the actual cost” of providing senators with in-state security, plus get information about the necessary size of a member’s security detail and how visible each detail would have to be.

Noting he has received an uptick in questions from concerned colleagues and spouses about funding for enhanced security in the wake of Kirk’s death, Mullins was candid.

“Ultimately, every member needs to be protected,” he told reporters. “Unfortunately, most people think that we have security on us already. Truth is, we don’t.”

And, he added: “It takes money.”

The cost of outfitting every lawmaker in the House and Senate with an around-the-clock Capitol Police detail — a privilege typically only afforded to members of congressional leadership — would likely run into the multi-billions of dollars. It is a price Congress isn’t likely to be willing to pay. Many rank and file lawmakers outside the line of presidential succession also aren’t interested in giving up their freedom to that degree.

In addition to funding for the Sergeant at Arms pilot program, the Senate-passed legislative branch bill provides $25 million for the Capitol Police’s mutual aid reimbursement program, which reimburses state and local law enforcement for protective detail coverage for lawmakers when they are in their home states and districts.

In May, outgoing Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger touted over 100 memorandumsof agreement for mutual aid partnerships with state and local police around the country. But according to Capitol Police this week, there was a significant surge in mutual aid agreements finalized in the wake of the Minnesota shootings that killed a state representative and her husband; wounded a state senator and his wife; and revealed a list of other elected officials who might have also been targets.

The Senate’s pilot program seems aligned with an updated security framework the House released in the wake of the Minnesota attacks.

The House, on a short term basis, doubled funding for residential security to $20,000 per member to “allow for a more comprehensive suite of security equipment to be installed at their residences,” according to a memo distributed to lawmakers.

These funds flowed through an ongoing House Sergeant-at-Arms initiative for securitizing lawmakers’ homes, which saved members’ office accounts from the expense.

Congress

DHS stopgap set for quick House action after Rules Committee vote

Published

2 days ago

March 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

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

Published

2 days ago

March 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

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

Published

2 days ago

March 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

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.