Members of Congress will attend emergency briefings this week after the killing of a Minnesota state lawmaker brought renewed fears — and stoked existing partisan tensions — over the security of federal lawmakers when in Washington and at home.

The suspect in the attack had dozens of federal lawmakers listed in his writings, besides the state lawmakers and others he’s accused of targeting. The man is accused of shooting and killing former Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their home early Saturday in the northern Minneapolis suburbs and wounding another lawmaker and his wife at their home.

The shootings come after credible threats to members of Congress have more than doubled in the last decade, the troubling tally of an era that has been marked by a string of violent attacks against lawmakers and their families.

In 2011, Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot and wounded at an event in her Arizona district. In 2017, Republican Rep. Steve Scalise was shot and wounded as he practiced for a congressional baseball game with other GOP lawmakers near Washington. In 2022, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, was attacked by a man who broke into their San Francisco home. And in 2024, two men separately tried to assassinate Donald Trump during his Republican presidential campaign.

All four survived, some with serious injuries. But those attacks, among others and many close calls for members of both major political parties, have rattled lawmakers and raised recurring questions about whether they have enough security — and whether they can ever be truly safe in their jobs.

“I don’t have a solution to this problem right now,” said Minnesota Democratic Sen. Tina Smith, a friend of Hortman’s who received increased security after the attack. “I just see so clearly that this current state of play is not sustainable.”

Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said lawmakers are “clearly at the point where we have to adjust the options available to us.”

The U.S. Capitol Police’s threat assessment section investigated 9,474 “concerning statements and direct threats” against members of Congress last year, the highest number since 2021, the year that the Capitol was attacked by Trump’s supporters after he tried to overturn his 2020 presidential election defeat to Democrat Joe Biden. In 2017, there were 3,939 investigated threats, the Capitol Police said.

While members of Congress may be high profile, they do have some resources available that might not be available to state and local lawmakers, said Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, who was a member of the South Dakota state Senate for 10 years before he was the state’s governor. In the state legislature, “it just wasn’t feasible all the time” to have increased security, said Rounds, a Republican.

As threats have increased, members of Congress have had access to new funding to add security at their personal homes. But it is unclear how many have used it and whether there is enough money to keep lawmakers truly safe.

“Resources should not be the reason that a U.S. senator or congressman gets killed,” Murphy said.

Instead of bringing lawmakers together, the Minnesota shootings have created new internal tensions. Smith on Monday confronted one of her fellow senators, Utah Republican Mike Lee, for a series of posts on X over the weekend. One mocked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat who ran for vice president last year. Another post said of the killings, “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way.”

Trump said he had no plans to call Walz, describing the Democratic leader as “so whacked out.”

“Why would I call him? I could call him and say, ‘Hi, how are you doing?’” the Republican president told reporters aboard Air Force One during an overnight flight back to Washington. “The guy doesn’t have a clue. He’s a mess. So, you know, I could be nice and call him, but why waste time?”

Friends and former colleagues interviewed by The Associated Press described Vance Luther Boelter, the man accused of killing Hortman and her husband, as a devout Christian who attended an evangelical church and went to campaign rallies for Trump. Records show Boelter registered to vote as a Republican while living in Oklahoma in 2004 before moving to Minnesota, where voters don’t list party affiliation. His attorney has declined to comment.

(AP)