Exclusive / Democrats push armed security for lawmakers

As members of Congress grapple with growing personal threats, top Democrats in the US House are lobbying Republicans to let each lawmaker’s office employ an armed staff member to accompany them in their districts, as well as a law enforcement coordinator.

Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, the top Democrat on the committee in charge of member security, told Semafor that he and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have discussed pushing House Speaker Mike Johnson and committee chair Bryan Steil, R-Wis., for the additional hiring capacity.

Their push, which includes other priorities, comes as lawmakers gain access to a new $20,000 monthly personal security allowance starting Monday.

“We’re certainly in a better place,” Morelle said in a recent interview, but “we’re going to continue to press the case.”

The law enforcement coordinator could “try to mitigate [threats] in advance and really do the prep work necessary,” Morelle said, while the armed staff member would be “someone who’s probably a former law enforcement, former military, who meets all the requirements of being able to carry a gun.”

Morelle placed “much of the blame” for the increase in threats to members — which he said have jumped tenfold since 2016 — on President Donald Trump, who most recently instructed the FBI to investigate six congressional Democrats who filmed a social media video telling military members not to follow illegal orders.

Trump had previously shared a social media post calling for traitors to be hanged, prompting the White House to clarify that he was not threatening the Democrats with execution.

“I wouldn’t even meet with them,” Morelle said of the FBI. “It’s just silly. It’s not going anywhere. It’s absurd. You kind of lose — at least I do — the vocabulary to describe how unserious this is.”

The threats the six Democrats have received since are “pretty disturbing,” Morelle added. “So I wish the president would just, if he didn’t like the video … say, ‘Look,’ to members of Congress, ‘I have real concerns about the way you did this.’”

“What’s actually ‘unserious’ is the Democrat party and their faux outrage when they’re the ones sowing division and slandering their political opponents as Nazis and fascists. And despite their outlandish and dangerous claims about the president in their recent video, Democrats were unable to list any examples of unlawful orders when asked — because there have been none,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “It should deeply concern all Americans that elected Democrats are publicly urging the military to openly defy the chain of command and the commander-in-chief’s lawful orders to subvert the will of the American people.”

Morelle recalled the conservative media criticism of former President Barack Obama for donning “a tan suit,” comparing it to the relative lack of pushback when Trump recently posted an AI-generated video that showed “him dumping sewage — to be generous, sewage — on people at protests.”

Morelle said Trump’s AI video, which Johnson described as satirical, deepened a “sense of unease among members, staff [and] certainly family members.”

“Members are anxious, the families are anxious, the staff is anxious,” Morelle said. “And you know, the other thing that goes probably unreported is, I suspect, constituents are anxious.”