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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 Secret Service that found the agency was stretched too thin to operate effectively, with agents working long hours and many leaving the agency.
“Attrition fluctuates but remains high and steady, placing additional demands on the already understaffed Division,” the report read. “Overall, job satisfaction and employee engagement as reflected in the interviews and surveys is low, and the current level of focus, commitment, and drive put the Division at a concerning level of risk.”
In 2015, the House Oversight Committee released a bipartisan report on the agency after a man jumped the fence at the White House. That came after a 2012 scandal when agents had been found to have been soliciting sex workers in Cartagena, Colombia. Even then, the report said that the agency lacked sufficient staff to carry out its mission.
“USSS has a zero-failure mission and must be given the appropriate funding to meet that mission,” the report said explicitly. “Both the Protective Mission Panel and the Committee agree that USSS must be able to properly define the mission and determine what the mission will cost in order to allow Congress to fund USSS at the appropriate levels.”
Like the 2021 report, it also cited overwork as a problem, stating: “The President and other protectees cannot receive the best possible protection when agents and officers are deployed for longer and longer hours with fewer and fewer days off.”
Firing the director of an agency may offer a catharsis and the semblance of having “done something,” but clearly, the troubles facing the agency go beyond one administration or one party.
This comes just as Congress is gearing up for another spending fight. The federal government runs out of money at the end of the month and Congress needs to either pass the 12 spending bills — which is highly unlikely, given the tight deadline — or pass a stopgap spending bill while it finishes its homework after the election.
Already, some hard-right conservatives like Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida and Chip Roy of Texas have threatened to reduce funding for the Secret Service. But this would only put Trump — as well as everyone in a similar political position — at even greater risk.
The Secret Service seems to have done its job on Sunday after a massive failure in July. But despite this, politics will probably get in the way of fixing the agency, despite warnings for almost a decade.
