{"id":13128,"date":"2025-09-11T12:02:28","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T12:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-charlie-kirks-killing-sends-a-chill-through-congress\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T12:02:28","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T12:02:28","slug":"capitol-agenda-charlie-kirks-killing-sends-a-chill-through-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-charlie-kirks-killing-sends-a-chill-through-congress\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitol agenda: Charlie Kirk\u2019s killing sends a chill through Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The killing of Charlie Kirk is hitting lawmakers hard.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething happened on Capitol Hill,\u201d Johnson said on BLN Wednesday night. \u201cIt\u2019s changed the atmosphere in the place.\u201d<\/p>\n

The shooting has sparked \u201ca deluge\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know why anybody would want to serve when this is what you\u2019re staring down the barrel of,\u201d Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) told reporters Wednesday.<\/p>\n

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 \u201csilent prayers get silent results\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a reflection of the emotion of the moment, the real sense of shock that people were feeling,\u201d Johnson said later on BLN. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.) told BLN Wednesday that the recent string of political attacks \u2014 Kirk\u2019s killing, the shooting of state legislators in Minnesota and the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump \u2014 is a threat to America as we know it.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur entire democratic experiment is going to crumble if people don\u2019t believe they are safe when they express their political views,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Some members also see risks in the pressure to put more distance between themselves and their constituents because of safety concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all in different places every day. There\u2019s no way you lock that down,\u201d GOP Sen. John Curtis of Utah said on BLN Wednesday night, as he responded to Johnson\u2019s comments about growing calls for enhanced member security. \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

What else we\u2019re watching:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u2014 Government funding developments: <\/b>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.<\/p>\n

\u2014 ACA talks: <\/b>The weekly lunch meeting of House Ways and Means Republicans got heated Wednesday<\/a>as members debated whether to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits that are set to expire at year\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Russia sanctions legislation: <\/b>Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday there\u2019s \u201cintensified interest\u201d 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\u2019s (D-Conn.) secondary sanctions bill on the floor.<\/p>\n

Meredith Lee Hill, Jordain Carney and Benjamin Guggenheim contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. \u201cSomething happened on Capitol Hill,\u201d Johnson said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}