Congress demands equal protection for Harris, Trump

The U.S. Senate on Tuesday unanimously passed the Enhanced Presidential Security Act, sending the bill to the president’s desk. If the president signs it into law, the U.S. Secret Service will have to provide equal security details to the presidential and vice presidential candidates of both major parties.

The House of Representatives unanimously passed the bill last week, just days after a would-be assassin allegedly tried to kill former President Donald Trump while he was golfing in Miami. It was the second alleged attempt on his life in just over two months. Just days after a gunman fired on former President Trump in July, then-Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle promised to upgrade his security detail. In a separate display of political violence this week, a gunman reportedly fired on a Democratic Party campaign office in Tempe, Ariz. No one was injured in the overnight shooting.

Does this law do anything else? It requires the Director of the Secret Service to brief lawmakers from both the House and the Senate on the agencies’ protections for all the major candidates involved in the 2024 presidential election. That report would be due in late March if Biden signed the bill this week.

What was the discussion of the bill in the Senate? Sen. Rich Scott, R-Fla, introduced the bill, saying that unanimous approval of the measure would send a measure that lawmakers would not ignore the threats, which are an attack on the democratic process. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., didn’t object to moving the bill forward but expressed doubt it would solve the problem of political violence. Murphy, who is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, added that another bill under consideration would give the Secret Service an additional $231 million in funding if it is passed.

Dig deeper: Read my report in The Sift about how the U.S. Department of Justice has indicted the man who allegedly tried to assassinate Trump in Florida earlier this month.