‘One Vote Away From Losing Our Lives’: Lawmakers Grapple With Rise of Political Violence

As the shootings in Minnesota rattle Capitol Hill, lawmakers are scrambling to disrupt what they see as a long and escalating pattern of political violence — and grappling with the growing fear they might not be able to stop it.

“It is so unfortunate what happened in Minnesota, it raises this dark reality that we are all one vote away from losing our lives,” Rep. Norma Torres, a member of the House Administration Committee, which has oversight of member security, told NOTUS.

“At any moment, somebody could be radicalized,” she said. “It plays a big role in how people are feeling right now.”

On Monday, the feeling on Capitol Hill — where the most powerful people in the country decide the laws of the land — was powerlessness. The Saturday morning shootings in Minnesota that left state Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband dead, as well as Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife wounded, are just the latest examples in a recent spate of attacks targeting politicians.

“I don’t think the members are the problem,” Sen. Kevin Cramer told NOTUS. “I think members are more a reflection of the problem, which is a population that feels out of touch with their electorate.”

There was a gunman shooting then-Rep. Gabby Giffords and 18 others at a 2011 constituent meeting. There was a shooter opening fire on Majority Leader Steve Scalise and four others at a 2017 congressional baseball practice. There was a 2020 domestic terror plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The 2021 attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The 2022 attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, in their home. The 2024 assassination attempt on President Donald Trump. And the 2025 arson attack on Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s mansion.

This weekend, the suspect in the Minnesota shooting, Vance Boelter, left behind what investigators call a “manifesto” that allegedly outlined 70 potential targets, including members of Congress around the country.

The attack has presented Congress with a familiar round of questions: Should lawmakers up their security protocols to protect themselves? Should Congress appropriate its members a larger stipend to do so? Do politicians have a proactive responsibility to “take down the temperature” in their rhetoric?

But as of Monday night, there were few new solutions.

Sen. Mike Rounds told reporters he fears that perpetrators feed on radical social media discourse. But citing free speech concerns, he said he wasn’t sure “that’s something that we can do much about.”

When NOTUS asked lawmakers Monday evening about how Congress could prevent the next attack on a politician, the most common response was an enumeration of each member’s own harrowing experience. There were over 9,000 investigated threats against members of Congress in 2024, according to the U.S. Capitol Police, up from fewer than 4,000 in 2017.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis said she’d had two death threats against her, including one “very credible” threat. She said she appreciated her local Wyoming sheriff driving through her ranch “once in while” to check on her well-being.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin said he operates with a “tremendous amount of death threats.” So much so, he said, that he has bulletproof glass on his house, cameras “everywhere” and “heavily trained” security dogs.

Just about every lawmaker NOTUS talked to wanted more security.

Even before the Minnesota shootings, lawmakers had been contemplating their legal and security protocols. Multiple Democratic members told NOTUS last week they have recently observed a heightened security awareness among colleagues. One House Democrat said that the death threats they’ve received have become “insane — and they are for a lot of people.”

Personal security details are currently reserved for top congressional leaders and high-profile lawmakers who face credible threats. In 2022, House lawmakers were entitled to a $10,000 stipend to install security measures and an additional $150 a month for maintenance.

Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Joe Morelle, the House Administration Committee’s ranking member, are asking Speaker Mike Johnson to increase the member allowance to support additional safety measures, according to a letter obtained by NOTUS.

As it stands, many lawmakers have resorted to paying for personal security, fearing that official resources are inadequate to protect them and their families. In 2021, for example, Axios reported that Sen. Raphael Warnock spent over $600,000 on personal security, while Sen. Ted Cruz spent $350,000.

House Republicans held a security briefing Saturday and House Democrats are set to hold a briefing Tuesday to discuss what, if anything, can be done to give protection to lawmakers at this time. Multiple House Democrats, including Reps. Hillary Scholten, Greg Landsman and Veronica Escobar, revealed in statements and social media posts Monday that they were on the Minnesota shooter’s target list.

“We need to make sure that people still feel comfortable running for office across the country,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin told NOTUS. “So I think we have a responsibility to put security protocols in place for state legislators as well.”

But security wasn’t the only issue on lawmakers’ minds. As has become customary after each act of modern political violence, many lawmakers called for their colleagues to deescalate partisan rhetoric in the wake of the Minnesota shootings.

A few lawmakers are increasingly considering that what was once a theoretical question about the health of civic discourse may be a very real question of self-preservation.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who said she was named on the assassin’s manifesto, told NOTUS that the Trump administration and members of Congress are responsible for taking the “temperature down.”

“Words matter,” she said.

That will be easier said than done. In recent months, both parties have raced to outdo each other via outrageous name-calling, ubiquitous cursing and shameless sexual innuendo. Even if lawmakers succeed at taking the temperature down a few degrees, it might still be burning hot.

“It’s the person, not the weapon. We can start talking about this all we want. It’s the rhetoric that continues to come — and I will say, from both sides,” Mullin, who threatened to physically fight a hearing witness in 2023, told reporters. “But the rhetoric is what steams and stirs the fire.”

Still, the response to the Minnesota shooting also proved that Congress is far from getting on the same page, and partisan mudslinging clearly won’t be erased overnight. Several members of Congress were quick to place blame across the aisle, publicly, to their tens of thousands of social media followers.

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy called the assassin a “hate-filled right-winger.”

“So can we stop walking on eggshells about MAGA’s legitimization of political violence?” Murphy wrote.

Two GOP lawmakers promoted an unfounded theory that Boelter targeted the Democratic state lawmakers for not being liberal enough.

Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden, in a post Sunday, commented on photos of nationwide anti-Trump protests, calling the protesters “a whole pack of election deniers” who got together “and spewed hate.”

“One of them decided to murder and attempt to murder some politicians that were not far Left enough for them,” Van Orden wrote.

“This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way,” Republican Sen. Mike Lee posted Sunday on X alongside a security camera photo of the Minnesota assassin.

Lee’s post, in particular, caught fire on social media, clocking in 7.5 million views.

Sen. Tina Smith — a Minnesota Democrat who was also named in the manifesto — confronted Lee during Monday evening Senate votes.

After, Smith told reporters she wanted to convey to Lee “how much pain that caused me and the other people in my state, and I think around the country, who think that this was a brutal attack.”

“I hope that my talking with him will cause him to think more about the hateful things that he has been putting out on his personal X account that really should have no place in our public discourse,” Smith said.

Smith’s deputy chief of staff was even more explicit, sending Lee’s top staffers an email on Monday that detailed “how much additional pain you’ve caused on an unspeakably horrific weekend.”

“Using the office of a U.S. senator to post not just one but a series of jokes about an assassination — is that a successful day of work on Team Lee?” the email asked. “Did you come into the office Monday and feel proud of the work you did over the weekend?”

“You exploited the murder of a lifetime public servant and her husband to post some sick burns about Democrats,” the email added. “Did you see this as an excellent opportunity to get likes and retweet? Have you absolutely no conscience? No decency?”

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Riley Rogerson is a reporter at NOTUS. Helen Huiskes is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Daniella Diaz is a reporter at NOTUS.
John T. Seward and Samuel Larreal, who are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows, contributed to this report.