{"id":13129,"date":"2025-09-11T13:31:52","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T13:31:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/johnson-hill-officials-expediting-member-security-review-following-charlie-kirk-killing\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T13:31:52","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T13:31:52","slug":"johnson-hill-officials-expediting-member-security-review-following-charlie-kirk-killing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/johnson-hill-officials-expediting-member-security-review-following-charlie-kirk-killing\/","title":{"rendered":"Johnson: Hill officials expediting member security review following Charlie Kirk killing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday that Hill officials were expediting a planned review of member security following the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.<\/p>\n<p>Republican and Democratic House leaders had previously announced a pilot program to increase money available for security for members and their families, which they had planned to evaluate at the end of this month.<\/p>\n<p>But following Kirk\u2019s violent killing at a public, political event in Utah Wednesday, Johnson said there&#8217;s new clamoring for enhanced protection from both Republicans and Democrats. He said roughly 20 lawmakers had expressed interest in using extra security funding before Kirk&#8217;s death, but more members approached him in the immediate aftermath.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe&#8217;re in a deliberate review process right now to determine what measures are appropriate, how much we could allocate for that,\u201d Johnson told reporters.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve got to protect people who run for public office or no one will, and that&#8217;s heavy on our hearts and minds as we also work through the trauma of what happened yesterday,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>A spokesperson for the U.S. Capitol Police in a statement Thursday said that while \u201cwe cannot provide specific details about our increased security posture\u201d out of safety concerns, \u201cwe continue to work with our federal, state and local partners to carry out our critical mission.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The spokesperson also acknowledged the Capitol Police \u201chave been operating in a heightened threat environment for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><i>Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday that Hill officials were expediting a planned review of member security following the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Republican and Democratic House leaders had previously announced a pilot program to increase money available for security for members and their families, which they had planned to evaluate at the end [&hellip;]<\/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-13129","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\/13129","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=13129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}