Biden’s right that the Secret Service ‘needs help’ after the second Trump assassination attempt. Will Congress listen?

Former president Donald Trump thankfully avoided another assassination attempt on Sunday. This, of course, is the second known attempt on Trump’s life in as many months after he was shot at during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

By all accounts, it looks like Trump’s US Secret Service detail spotted the gunman, who was allegedly armed with a rifle at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course. Agents subsequently fired at him.

The Secret Service’s ability to apprehend the gunman, who allegedly had an AK-47 rifle and a GoPro video camera, looks like a success for the agency after it failed to stop a bullet from grazing the former president during his rally in Butler just two months ago. But it also shows just how an agency long beleaguered by underfunding, overstretched staff and low morale cannot afford to make any errors.

“Thank God the president is okay,” President Joe Biden told reporters earlier today. “But one thing I want to make clear — the Service needs more help.”

This might run counterintuitive to the impulse to see someone at the top be punished for the Secret Service’s failures. Indeed, in July, members from both parties railed against then Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle. Unsurprisingly, Cheatle resigned from the agency shortly after that hearing.

But the problems with the Secret Service long pre-date the shooting in Butler. A 2023 report by the Partnership for Public Service ranked the best places to work in the federal government. Out of 459 agencies, the Secret Service placed 413th — not a great number for an agency tasked with protecting the president, vice president, former president and presidential candidates.

In 2021, the National Academy of Public Administration released a report on the