WASHINGTON — Members of Congress will attend emergency briefings this week after the murder of a Minnesota state lawmaker brought renewed fears — and stoked existing partisan tensions — over the security of federal lawmakers when in Washington and at home.
The suspect in the attack had dozens of federal lawmakers listed in his writings, in addition to the state lawmakers and others he allegedly targeted. The man is accused of shooting and killing former Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their home early Saturday in the northern Minneapolis suburbs and wounding another lawmaker and his wife at their home.
The shootings come after credible threats to members of Congress have more than doubled in the last decade, the troubling tally of an era that has been marked by a string of violent attacks against lawmakers and their families.
In 2011, Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot and wounded at an event in her Arizona district. In 2017, Republican Rep. Steve Scalise was shot and wounded as he practiced for a congressional baseball game with other GOP lawmakers near Washington. In 2022, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul was attacked in his home by a man who broke into their San Francisco home. And in 2024, two different men tried to assassinate Donald Trump during his presidential campaign.
All four survived, some with serious injuries. But those attacks, among others and many close calls for members of both parties, have rattled lawmakers and raised recurring questions about whether they have enough security — and whether they can ever be truly safe in their jobs.
“I don’t have a solution to this problem right now,” said Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith, a friend of Hortman’s who received increased security after the attack. “I just see so clearly that this current state of play is not sustainable.”
Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said lawmakers are “clearly at the point where we have to adjust the options available to us.”
The U.S. Capitol Police’s threat assessment section investigated 9,474 “concerning statements and direct threats” against members of Congress last year, the highest number since 2021, the year that the Capitol was attacked by Trump’s supporters after he tried to overturn his 2020 presidential election defeat. In 2017, there were 3,939 investigated threats, the Capitol Police said.
While members of Congress may be high-profile, they do have some resources available that might not be available to state and local lawmakers, said Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, who was a member of the South Dakota state Senate for 10 years before he was the state’s governor. In the state legislature, “it just wasn’t feasible all the time” to have increased security, Rounds said.
As threats have increased, members of Congress have had access to new funding to add security at their personal homes. But it is unclear how many have used it and whether there is enough money to keep lawmakers truly safe.
“Resources should not be the reason that a U.S. senator or congressman gets killed,” Murphy said.
Instead of bringing lawmakers together, the Minnesota shootings have created new internal tensions. Smith on Monday confronted one of her fellow senators, Utah Republican Mike Lee, for a series of posts on X over the weekend. One mocked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat who ran for vice president last year. Another post said of the murders, “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way.”
Friends and former colleagues interviewed by The Associated Press described Vance Luther Boelter, the man accused of assassinating Hortman and her husband, as a devout Christian who attended an evangelical church and went to campaign rallies for Trump. Records show Boelter registered to vote as a Republican while living in Oklahoma in 2004 before moving to Minnesota, where voters don’t list party affiliation.
Smith talked to Lee outside a GOP conference meeting as soon as she arrived in Washington on Monday. “I would say he seemed surprised to be confronted,” she told reporters afterward.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer also called out Lee’s posts on the Senate floor, saying that for him to “fan the flames of division with falsities, while the killer was still on the loose, is deeply irresponsible. He should take his posts down and immediately apologize to the families of the victims.”
Lee’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Lawmakers were already on edge before the shootings, which came less than two days after Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a press conference with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in California. Officers restrained Padilla and put him on the ground.
Angry Democratic senators immediately took to the Senate floor Thursday afternoon to denounce Padilla’s treatment. “What was really hard for me to see was that a member of this body was driven to his knees and made to kneel before authorities,” said New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. “This is a test. This is a crossroads.”
At the briefing Tuesday, Senate Democrats say they plan to ask security officials, as well as Republican leadership, about Padilla’s removal from the press conference as well as their protection against outside threats.
“I certainly hope to hear leadership responding in a profound way,” said New Mexico Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, a Democrat.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., who said she had been informed that her name was also on the suspect’s list, said she wanted to hear recommendations at the briefing on how to improve security.
“And we can take those recommendations,” Baldwin said. “But I think, both with the president and his administration and with members of Congress, that we need to bring the temperature down. There’s no place for political violence ever. And the rhetoric — words matter.”
