Members of Congress worry about lack of plan as political violence rises

In the fall, a couple of soon-to-retire lawmakers decided that it was time to have an uncomfortable discussion: How should Congress handle matters if their own members were the victims of the kind of politically motivated violence that has become all too common these days?

While those talks did not produce a tangible plan, the ideas behind them have suddenly become more urgent after the killing and attempted killing of two Minnesota state lawmakers in what local authorities have described as politically motivated attacks.

“Part of our job is to think about the unthinkable,” then-Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Washington) said in September, explaining his fear of how a narrowly divided Congress could inspire a perverse madman to target federal lawmakers.

Then-Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), a combat surgeon in the Iraq War, noted that senators have a plan for succession if there’s a death or resignation, most often with a vacancy filled by an interim appointment, and that there is an 18-person lineup ready to succeed the leader of the free world.

“We have a succession plan for the president,” Wenstrup said at a House Administration Committee hearing in September focused on political violence.

But there is no plan to easily replace one or multiple House members should the worst happen. The Constitution requires the states to pull together a special election to fill individual vacancies, something that takes anywhere from three months to sometimes a year.

When there’s a large House majority for one party, such a prolonged vacancy makes little difference to the institution at large. But now, after three straight elections left one party with just single-digit control of the lower chamber, every seat can mean the difference between majority control and legislation passing or failing.

“The status quo also creates a perverse incentive for political violence through targeted killings designed to switch the majority party in the House,” Kilmer said at the fall hearing.

And Saturday’s violence in Minnesota, in which a gunman killed one member of the state House and severely wounded a state senator, has prompted another round of discussions on Capitol Hill about what to do to prevent political violence. Lawmakers have been told that security was strengthened following the attacks in Minnesota. But so far, there’s been very little focus on how to manage the institutional fallout after violent incidents happen.

U.S. Capitol Police data shows the threats against members of Congress are as high as ever - almost 9,500 last year, way above the 3,900 from eight years ago. Some blame the sharp rise on increasing political polarization on both sides; others specifically fault the bellicose rhetoric of President Donald Trump. The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol while lawmakers voted to certify Joe Biden’s election brought the problem into sharp relief.

And members of Congress have reacted to the Minnesota shootings with sudden urgency. The alleged assassin’s hit list reportedly included Minnesota’s U.S. Democratic senators, Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar, along with members of the House.

The Republican and Democratic leaders of the House Administration Committee sent a letter Tuesday to the Justice Department asking for more prosecutors to bring charges against those making violent threats against lawmakers. That has been a contentious issue for several years and prompted U.S. Capitol Police to start their own internal investigative unit to handle these cases.

Many lawmakers have asked for increased flexibility in using taxpayer funds to protect their homes and offices. Congress sets the budget for its own protection, although the president signs off on it. “We need more protection,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) told reporters after Tuesday’s security briefing.

Violent incidents directed at lawmakers over the past eight years - including a shooting at a GOP baseball practice in 2017, apparent attempted assassinations of Trump and last weekend’s attacks in Minnesota - show too many people have the will to carry out the violence.

That’s why Kilmer and Wenstrup, when they were about to retire at the end of last year, started the uncomfortable discussions about how institutionally debilitating it would be even if they were to lose just a few lawmakers to violence.

Their warnings about what could happen in Congress have instead played out in the state Capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The state House was previously tied at 67-67, governed by a bipartisan power-sharing agreement. But Republicans now hold a one-seat majority until Gov. Tim Walz (D) can hold a special election over the next few months. In the state Senate, a 34-33 Democratic majority has become essentially a tied chamber until the Democratic senator, John Hoffman, recovers and rehabilitates enough to return to work.

The legislature is not in session and not slated to return until early next year, so Minnesota officials feel comfortable knowing that the death of former Democratic House speaker Melissa Hortman will not cause a real political shift in power.

“I am hopeful that in Melissa’s memory that our tradition in Minnesota - while we’ll have vigorous debates, but of working together and getting things done - will continue,” Klobuchar said Tuesday.

But Washington’s political environment has become so toxic that Kilmer and Wenstrup worried about what would transpire if such a thing were to happen to Congress.

Wenstrup recalled how he went into “Army mode” at the 2017 baseball practice and helped save the life of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana), now the House majority leader, whose security detail returned fire and killed the shooter before more people were shot.

A couple dozen Republicans were in attendance at the practice, enough to change the House’s balance of power. “That’s an insurrection,” Wenstrup said in a phone interview Wednesday.

Today’s House margin is 220 Republicans and 212 Democrats, with three seats almost certain to be filled by Democrats later this year from heavily liberal districts where lawmakers died. Even with those vacancies, Republicans have passed several pieces of legislation by just a single vote, including the massive tax-and-border package that is Trump’s most important domestic policy issue before Congress.

Moreover, it’s a new era of super-close margins. Over the past three elections, voters have chosen a Republican or Democrat in 1,305 contests for the House - all 435 seats run over three elections, excluding special elections.

Republicans have won 655, Democrats 650.

Many lawmakers did not want to discuss the issue of possible mass killings of colleagues, but Wenstrup said Wednesday that it is better to prepare now rather than have to address the issue in a time of crisis.

“To the crazies, that’s a pretty appetizing idea,” he said of changing, even temporarily, the party in power.

The last real effort at planning for continuity of Congress in the event of a tragedy came in the first years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The proposals focused heavily on events in which hundreds are killed, how to reconstitute Congress and where to convene if the Capitol were destroyed.

The Kilmer-Wenstrup approach tried to tackle both those type of mass-casualty events and also smaller tragedies in which the demise of just a few lawmakers could lead to a seismic event.

Upon getting sworn in for a new term, each House member would create a list of five people who would take over for them if they were to die or become incapacitated, with the governor choosing among the five.

This could create political continuity until a special election could be held for a formal replacement to be chosen by voters, Wenstrup said Wednesday. “To me, it’s a national security issue to have a plan for continuity of government without altering the will of the voters.”

This week, Kilmer declined to comment about how his former colleagues were handling the congressional continuity issues, referring to his testimony from last year.

Such a plan, however, would require an amendment to the Constitution, which is a very cumbersome process requiring congressional supermajorities and then ratification by 38 of the 50 states.

Constitutional amendments are the jurisdiction of the House Judiciary Committee, which has its focus on higher-profile issues such as immigration and crime, not continuity of Congress.

So the issue just sort of faded away as the two lawmakers retired from Congress.

Two other congressmen, Reps. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Missouri) and William Timmons (R-South Carolina), co-sponsored the bill to create this constitutional amendment that Kilmer and Wenstrup advocated. But so far, they have not reintroduced the measure.

Wenstrup suggested that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) need to create an evenly divided select committee to study this issue and several others related to continuity of Congress, forcing some lawmakers to seriously study the topic.

“It almost needs a task force,” he said.

With two months left in a 12-year tenure in Congress, Kilmer introduced his second-to-last bill: the Preventing Political Violence Act.

With 24 members from more than a dozen agencies across the federal government, the proposed task force would have filed interim reports to Congress and then, after two years, a final report with recommendations.

Kilmer got one co-sponsor, Timmons, who had worked with him for several years on reform issues inside Congress.

The bill was referred to committee and never got consideration.