The House passes a bill to increase Secret Service protection of presidential candidates, and lawmakers lead push to change Nebraska's electoral votes.
House unanimously passes bill to beef up Secret Service protection for presidential candidates
Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe called what happened in Pennsylvania a failure by the agency.
He pointed to communication breakdowns with local law enforcement, and despite saying that the agency is burning through assets and resources, he reiterated that it is ultimately up to them to secure areas where candidates are located.
“As a result of these failures, what has become clear to me is we need a shift in paradigm in how we conduct our protective operations. As was demonstrated on Sunday in West Palm Beach, the threat is evolving, and requires this paradigm shift,” Rowe said.
Rowe did praise the personnel of the secret service, particularly its response to the potential shooter in west palm beach, florida while trump was playing golf.
Lawmakers are scrambling to ensure that the U.S. Secret Service has enough money and resources to keep the nation's presidential candidates safe amid repeated threats of violence. It's unclear, though, how much they can do with only weeks before the election, or if additional dollars would make an immediate difference.
Days after a gunman was arrested on former President Donald Trump's golf course, the House on Friday passed bipartisan legislation 405-0 to require the agency use the same standards when assigning agents to major presidential candidates as they do presidents and vice presidents. The agency has told Congress that it has already boosted Trump's security, but House lawmakers want it put into law.
The efforts come after an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a rally in July, and after Secret Service agents arrested a man with a rifle hiding on the golf course at Trump's Florida club over the weekend. The suspect in Florida apparently also sought to assassinate the GOP presidential nominee.
"In America, elections are determined at the ballot box, not by an assassin's bullet," Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., a chief sponsor of the bill, said in floor debate ahead of the vote. "That these incidents were allowed to occur is a stain on our country."
With the election rapidly approaching and Congress headed out of town before October, lawmakers are rushing to figure out exactly what might help, hoping to assess the agency's most pressing needs while ensuring that they are doing everything they can in an era where political violence has become more commonplace and every politician is a target.
"We have a responsibility here in Congress to get down to the bottom of this to figure out why these things are happening and what we can do about it," House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Tuesday. "This is not a partisan issue. We have both parties working on it."
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Thursday that "we've got to get the Secret Service into a position where its protectees are shielded in the most maximum way possible."
Democrats and Republicans have been in talks with the agency this week to find out whether additional resources are needed. Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, the Democratic chairman of the spending subcommittee that oversees the Secret Service, said Congress wants to make sure that if it is spending new dollars, "it's going to help the situation between now and the inauguration."
Murphy said new money could go toward technology like drones, partnerships with other agencies that could provide immediate assistance and overtime pay for agents. It would likely be added to a stopgap spending bill that Congress will consider next week to keep the government running, either in the form of allowing the Secret Service to spend money more quickly or providing them with emergency dollars.
"I'm confident we are going to take care of this one way or the other," Murphy said.
After the July shooting, House Republicans created a bipartisan task force focused on investigating the security failures of that day and ensuring it doesn't happen again. Johnson said this week that the task force would expand its scope to include what happened in Florida, even though the Secret Service successfully apprehended the suspect before anyone was hurt.
Graham, Nebraska's members of Congress push for winner-take-all electoral votes in state
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., an ally of former President Donald Trump, met with Nebraska legislators Wednesday to urge them to adopt a winner-take-all system in awarding the state’s Electoral College votes, according to multiple reports.
Meanwhile, Nebraska’s all-Republican congressional district, sent a letter to the state’s governor and Legislature speaker voicing their support for such a change.
Nebraska is one of two states — the other being Maine — that does not award all its electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the state. Instead, the statewide winner receives two electoral votes, while Nebraska’s other three votes are doled out to the winner of each congressional district.
Nebraska is a deep red state, but Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden each won one electoral vote there in 2008 and 2020, respectively, because the Omaha area has more liberals than the rest of the state.
A single electoral vote in Nebraska could potentially impact the outcome of the election. For example, if Trump wins all five of Nebraska’s electoral votes as well as the swing states of Georgia, Arizona and Nevada and Vice President Kamala Harris wins Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, the race would be tied at 269 electoral votes apiece. That would then send the election to the House of Representatives, where each state delegation casts a single vote, which would favor Trump.
If Nebraska continues with its current system and Harris is awarded one of its electoral votes, she would win under the same scenario. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris' running mate and a Nebraska native, courted voters in the Omaha area last month.
Graham reportedly met with more than a dozen Republican legislators Wednesday at Gov. Jim Pillen’s mansion.
Pillen, a Republican, said in a statement last week he strongly supports a winner-take-all process and is willing to call a special legislative session to “fix this 30-year-old problem before the 2024 election” but only if he has assurances that he has the 33 votes needed to pass a bill.
Republican state Sen. Tom Brewer, who has confirmed the meeting with Graham, told the Nebraska Examiner he estimates there are currently 30 or 31 legislators who support the change. The GOP holds 33 seats in the state’s 50-seat unicameral Legislature.
“Depending on how the count comes up, it may very well decide who the next president United States is going be,” Brewer said in a separate interview with KOLN-TV. “And [Graham] just wanted us to understand the big picture, that this is a national issue, not just in Nebraska.”
State Sen. Loren Lippincott, also a Republican, told KOLN that Graham also discussed “the costs involved in having an extension of the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris administration.”
Lippincott added that he believes Graham’s visit “did move the needle.”
But time could be running out. The Nov. 5 election is 47 days away, and a change to the state’s electoral system could face legal challenges.
Graham’s office, the Trump campaign and the Harris campaign have not responded to requests for comment from Spectrum News.
Nebraska’s congressional delegation sent a letter Wednesday to Pillen and Legislature Speaker John Arch saying they believe it “is past time that Nebraska join 48 other states in embracing winner-take-all in presidential elections.”
“Senators and Governors are elected by the state as a whole because they represent all of the people of Nebraska equally, and the state should speak with a united voice in presidential elections as well,” wrote Sens. Deb Fischer and Pete Ricketts and Rep. Mike Flood, Don Bacon and Adrian Smith, all Republicans.
“We urge you to work to return Nebraska to the status quo of appointing electoral votes based on winner-take-all,” they added.