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