The News
Tina Smith did something on Monday that’s rare for a senator: She told a colleague he caused her pain.
Smith pulled Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee out of a private Republican meeting to discuss what she called the “painful” effects of Lee’s tweets about the weekend shooting of two state legislators in her home state of Minnesota, one of them a personal friend. And one of Smith’s senior aides emailed top Lee staffers asking in stark terms: “Have you absolutely no conscience? No decency?”
Lee posted a picture of the now-apprehended suspect in the murders of state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, as well as the shooting of a state senator and his wife. The conservative senator added the text “Nightmare on Waltz [sic] Street,” an apparent reference to Gov. Tim Walz; Lee posted another picture of the alleged assassin with the message: “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way.”
The suspect, Vance Luther Boelter, is reportedly an abortion-rights opponent who voted for President Donald Trump last year.
“I wanted him to hear from me directly about how painful that was, and how brutal it was, to see that on what was just a horribly brutal weekend,” Smith told reporters after she confronted Lee, a discussion that left her visibly upset. “He didn’t say a lot, frankly. I think he was a bit stunned.”
“He should think about the implications of what he’s saying,” she added. “It just further fuels this hatred and misinformation.”
A Lee spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
Smith’s decision to personally take Lee aside, and her staffer’s email to Lee’s staff, spoke to the trauma that members of Congress have dealt with over the past few days. On Thursday, several were openly shaken by the forcible expulsion of Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., from a press conference about the military presence in his home state.
Then several members of Congress, including Smith, saw their names turn up on documents kept by Boelter.
On Tuesday, all senators will gather to hear about how threats to their personal safety are being handled by the Capitol Police and the Senate’s sergeant at arms.
Before then, New Mexico Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Lujan offered a blunt assessment: “Everyone needs to lower the temperature. Just stop it.”
“Now, I’m going to go on the floor — they’re going to tell me I can’t go on the floor,” said Lujan, who was dressed casually for Monday night votes in sneakers and jeans.
“They’re more concerned about what we wear on the floor than trying to keep people safe. That’s what’s happening around this place,” he added. “It’s utterly disgusting. I’m bugged about it. It’s all bad. All bad.”
In his email to Lee staffers, a copy of which was viewed by Semafor, Smith’s deputy chief of staff, Ed Shelleby, asked: “Why would you use the awesome power of a United States Senate Office to compound people’s grief? Is this how your team measures success?”
Know More
In addition to Smith, Boelter’s documents included the names of Sens. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., and three Michigan House Democrats as well as Reps. Greg Landsman, D-Ohio, and Veronica Escobar, D-Texas.
Baldwin told Semafor: “It’s scary, but I’m really focused on the families that were mourning.”
On a conference-wide call on the shootings Saturday, more than 30 House Republicans asked questions — an unusually high number, according to a person on the call. Lawmakers expressed frustration with how long it took Capitol Police to respond to threats and discussed building relationships with local police departments.
House Republicans also discussed passing a bill that would override state laws that make it difficult for public officials to wipe their personal information off the internet, the person said. Lawmakers cited property tax records in Florida as one example.
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., told Semafor that he would want to examine new ways to “do more due diligence in terms of identifying those individuals” who might attack lawmakers
“The ability to see those types of comments, and perhaps be able to have a more active weeding-out of the ones who might be willing to act on their threats, would perhaps be a path forward,” he said. He added that senators were especially concerned for staff working out of their district offices.
Threats against lawmakers, their family and their staff have more than doubled since 2017, according to the Capitol Police. High-profile attacks and near-misses have become a fixture in Washington. In many cases targeted members receive extra security from Capitol Police, sometimes for months at a time.
Padilla had a noticeable security detail on Monday as he traversed the Capitol, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had asked for stepped-up security for Minnesota’s senators. Schumer and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., requested the security briefing.
“Obviously, when something like this happens, it raises the alert, and everybody’s sense of making sure that we’re doing everything we can to protect members from these types of violent attacks,” Thune said on Monday. He said security protocol is “being worked on.”
The list of other lawmakers who have faced physical peril is not short: A man shot and nearly killed former Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz., in 2011, and another man shot Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., in 2017 at a congressional baseball game practice. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., was targeted by ricin in 2013 and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas has had several recent threats made against him.
A neighbor attacked and injured Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in 2017 and former Sen. Joe Manchin, I-W.Va., also received several threats. Not to mention that a mob protesting President Donald Trump’s election loss broke into the Capitol in 2021 and disrupted congressional certification of the balloting, forcing members to flee.
Burgess and Eleanor’s View
The most interesting part of our jobs is covering lawmakers as people. Yes, at times senators can be full of hot air, posturing politically or reciting rote talking points — but beneath that, they are humans.
And while the political violence over the weekend sent Democrats reeling, there have been plenty of incidents that made Republicans, too, feel unsafe.
We thought the rough handling of Padilla was a lot for members to process; sure, they can take getting ordered out of a press conference, but not like that. But showing up as a potential target for an alleged assassin in something else entirely.
We’re skeptical that our politics can be changed by a single shooting anymore. Just look at the terrible events that preceded the shootings in Minnesota. But there may be a reassessment now of how to protect some of the most well-known politicians in the world.
“We have to adjust the options available to us,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. “We’re probably at the point where resources should not be the reason that a US senator or a congressman gets killed.”
Room for Disagreement
Several senators, while they didn’t minimize the reactions of Smith and others, said on Monday they were not changing the way they do their jobs despite the ever-present threat.
“You just kind of press on and trust the system. It’s always in the back of your mind, you’ve got to just plow ahead and use good common sense,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Asked if lawmakers need to ratchet down the rhetoric, he added: “Have common sense. I didn’t blame the left for the shooting at the baseball game. I don’t do that.”
Notable
- House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Monday called on House Speaker Mike Johnson to increase members’ allowance to “support additional safety and security measures in every single office.”
- Sen. Amy Klobuchar told POLITICO that she dined with Hortman the same night she and her husband were killed.