The House of Representatives voted unanimously on Friday to increase security for presidential candidates less than one week after a s...
The House of Representatives voted unanimously on Friday to increase security for presidential candidates less than one week after a second assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
The House voted 405-0 to adopt a bill that would standardize security for presidents, vice presidents, and major presidential and vice presidential candidates. The vote comes just days after a man was arrested after the Secret Service said they spotted him lying in wait with an AK-47 outside just a few hundred yards away from where Trump was playing golf.
“We as a federal government have a responsibility to ensure the safety and the well-being of these candidates. One of them is going to be president, and the election should be decided by voters at the ballot box — not by an assassin’s bullet,” said bill sponsor Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY).
“And if the argument by the Secret Service is that they don’t have enough resources or they don’t have enough manpower,” he added. “Then that needs to be addressed immediately.”
The bill says that the director of the Secret Service “shall apply the same standards for determining the number of agents required to protect Presidents, Vice Presidents, and major Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates.”
It also calls for the Secret Service to “conduct a comprehensive review of the provision of protection by the Secret Service for Presidents, Vice Presidents, former Presidents, and major Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates.”
The report would be submitted to the House Committee on Homeland Security and the Senate Committee on Homeland Security.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said previously that there needed to be concrete steps to ensure candidate safety.
“We have got to get down to the bottom of this. We got to ensure that this doesn’t happen again,” he said. “If they need additional funding, Congress will supply that. But we’re told it’s a manpower problem.”
On Friday, the Secret Service admitted to several key failures during the attempted assassination of Trump on July 13 at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when he was struck in the ear by a bullet. Secret Service acting Director Ronald Rowe said that there were “communication deficiencies” that allowed the attack to take place, including a reliance on cell phones.
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