Over the past 15 years, members of Congress have survived two near-deadly shootings, a train crash with dozens of them on board, and a Capitol riot that had hundreds of lawmakers fearing for their lives.

Despite those incidents, the institution is wholly unprepared for a catastrophic event that kills or incapacitates multiple members — even if that hypothetical tragedy results in a major power shift: changing which party holds the majority in the House or Senate.

Members of Congress themselves have proposed a host of solutions to the havoc a mass casualty could wreak. Those propositions range from a constitutional amendment allowing members to designate their own successors to simple rule changes to prevent violence from shifting party power. But a POLITICO review shows that both Republican and Democratic leaders, including chairs of key committees, have failed to significantly advance any of the ideas proposed since a mass shooting at a GOP baseball practice in 2017. That’s largely based on a reluctance to acknowledge the issue and a general resistance in Congress to changing rules.

That strikes many members as foolhardy.

“The number of rounds in one pistol clip can change the balance of power of the House or the Senate,” said former Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.), who took up the issue after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when a hijacked plane came within 20 minutes of crashing into the Capitol.

Lawmakers and their staff face real threats of political violence every day. Capitol Police opened 8,008 cases to assess threats against lawmakers in 2023, a 100 percent increase from 2017. The two assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump are blaring reminders of the ever-present dangers for public officials.

The lack of a plan to respond to a mass casualty is particularly acute in the House: It has no mechanism to quickly fill unexpected vacancies, even on a temporary basis. Instead, a special election must be held to replace a member. That can take months.

In the meantime, the House would have to operate shorthanded — perhaps extremely shorthanded. But doing so could leave a vast swath of the country unrepresented, meaning any action that Congress takes would be vulnerable to a court challenge.

In practice, this could mean putting the full power of the chamber in the hands of members who, for example, boycott a State of the Union address or speech from a foreign dignitary only to see their colleagues who attend killed in a terrorist attack. Events like party conventions, caucus retreats and international member trips are also known potential targets.

And there’s another worry: What if the slim congressional margins create an incentive for an act of political violence explicitly designed to shift control from one party to the other?

“Part of the problem right now is someone with bad intentions could flip a majority for four months. And that’s horrifying,” said Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.), referring to how long it might take to fill vacancies through special elections, rather than immediate appointments. “And our reaction can’t be, ‘Well, that’ll never happen.’ Or, ‘Well, we’ll deal with that when the time comes.’ Because once the time comes, it’s too late.”

Following multiple potentially deadly crises, House leaders in both parties have deprioritized or ignored the issue. No speaker since 9/11 — including Mike Johnson and his two predecessors, Kevin McCarthy and Nancy Pelosi — has put their political heft behind proposals to prepare the legislature for a catastrophe.

And without such high-level support, plans to prepare Congress for a mass casualty event have fallen victim to jurisdictional scuffles and lawmaker bickering.

Right now, the main idea to address the issue is a constitutional amendment that would require members of the House to submit a list of at least five possible successors to be tapped in the event of their death. If any member dies in office, the state’s governor would select an individual from the list to serve on a temporary basis until officials hold a special election for a permanent replacement.

That proposal is being pushed by Kilmer and Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), who say it would remove an incentive for political violence and preserve the legitimacy of Congress in a crisis. Wenstrup was on the baseball field in Virginia in 2017 when a gunman took aim at Republicans. He used his military and medical training to treat then-GOP Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) until paramedics arrived.

“There were 136 rounds fired that morning, and he had names of Republicans and descriptions in his pocket,” Wenstrup said. “The idea is for us to have a situation in place where no one can get away with doing that as far as changing the balance of power.”

“I worry that my friends and the Democratic caucus think I’m the angel of death,” Kilmer said, “because we’d be on a bus to a retreat, and I’ll be like, ‘does anyone know what happens if we die? Or if something happens to the bus?’ And they’re like ‘Kilmer? Enough already.’”

Of course, approving a constitutional amendment would be incredibly difficult: It requires two-thirds support of each congressional chamber and then ratification from three-fourths of state legislatures.

But there is a precedent for it. The 17th Amendment, enacted over a century ago, created a succession plan for Senate vacancies that empowered 45 states to allow the governor to temporarily appoint a replacement until an election is held. Five states still don’t allow appointments and require a special election.

The House could try other avenues if a constitutional amendment isn’t possible. Some members have mulled changes to House rules designed to prevent a mass casualty from switching control of the chamber to the opposite party mid-session. Another idea would be to impose strict mandates on states to hold swift special elections after a mass vacancy.

But advocates warn against such a piecemeal approach. Some in the chamber view the changes made after 9/11 as simply providing the veneer of solving the problem.

As it stands now, the House can only fill its vacancies only by special election, which take an average of 136 days to conduct. If a crisis occurred, Congress’ role as a check on the executive branch could be severely diminished precisely when the federal government potentially needs to act.

Opportunities to address the issue — known in congressional parlance as “continuity of government” — have come and gone over the past quarter century. The 2001 terrorist and anthrax attacks focused attention on it, as did the baseball practice shooting, in which six people were shot, including Scalise. In 2018, a train carrying Republican lawmakers to a retreat crashed into a truck, killing a passenger.

But after each incident, attention faded. The most robust examination was after 9/11, when proposals for succession planning were seriously considered but faced strong opposition from Republican Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner and David Dreier, who ran the Judiciary and Rules committees, respectively. The response to the terror attacks, from the Patriot Act to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, took precedence.

In response to more recent events, the House has boosted Capitol Police spending and expanded its authority to enhance the security of individual members, without parallel efforts to protect the House’s ability to operate. 

A post-9/11 law mandates that special elections be held within seven weeks of a mass vacancy, which is defined as one that creates 100 vacancies. But meeting that timeline could be impossible in the wake of a crisis.

Forty-one states do not have laws that bring them into compliance to hold special elections in the time frame required by federal law. And 15 of 27 state election officials who responded to a 2024 Government Accountability Office survey said they were unaware of the federal law to expedite special elections after a mass casualty incident.

Doug Lewis, a certified election registration administrator and former executive director of the National Association of State Election Directors, told lawmakers at a public hearing in 2022 that it would likely take at least 60 days and possibly a lot longer.

Since 2020, Kilmer, who chaired the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, has been looking at how Congress would function if faced with a deadly crisis. He held closed-door meetings and listening sessions with experts and helmed the 2022 public hearing.

In December 2022, the panel recommended appointing a joint House-Senate committee to examine how to ensure “continuing representation and congressional operations” in the event of tragedy. That recommendation has seemingly been ignored; such a committee was never created.

Instead, the matter is in the domain of the House Judiciary Committee, which is known for bitter partisan infighting.

In May 2023, Kilmer was looking for Republicans to collaborate with on the issue and met with Johnson, who at the time was chair of the Judiciary Committee’s Constitution Subcommittee.

“He basically said that this seems like a legitimate problem and asked me to keep him abreast as I continued the effort,” said Kilmer.

But Kilmer hasn’t approached Johnson again since he became speaker. “It feels like he has 99 problems and I don’t need to be one,” Kilmer said.

Johnson’s office declined to comment on whether the speaker supports the constitutional amendment proposal.

Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio), who served on the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, argues that filling vacancies en masse with temporary appointments is at odds with the founders’ vision for the House.

“You want to make sure you have a body that’s always elected directly by the people,” Latta said. “That’s what they call it ‘The People’s House.’ It’s the closest to the people.”

Latta, who was first elected to the House in a special election three months and six days after his predecessor had died and left a vacancy, said each state’s election apparatus should expedite special elections if the need arises.

His position aligns with previous opponents of an appointment-based system, including former Rep. Sensenbrenner, whose chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee from 2001 to 2007 and partnership with then-Rules chair Dreier gave him a prime platform to reject proposals in the post-9/11 period.

But now that vehement opponents like Sensenbrenner have left key roles in the House, there is some optimism that this effort could garner more support.

Despite the lack of real progress over the years, there is some movement. The House Administration Committee’s subpanel on modernization held a hearing on continuity of Congress in mid-September.

That’s the kind of open forum that Kilmer has been pushing for, even if it results in changes to the appointment plan that he and Wenstrup have proposed.

“I haven’t heard a good argument for not doing this. And I haven’t heard a better proposal to solve these problems,” said Kilmer. “I’m not sure I love this solution, but I can’t come up with a better one.”

Lawmakers have resisted this type of planning in part not just because of the congressional majority question, but also because it means confronting their own mortality. No one relishes thinking about losing their power, or their life.

“It’s hard work to contemplate your own death,” said Baird, a clinical psychologist.

One major rule change that was accomplished after the 9/11 attacks was the advent of a “catastrophic quorum.” If a large number of House members are missing, incapacitated or incapable of attending House proceedings, whoever remains would constitute the House.

In the two decades since, the House has adopted this rule at the start of each Congress. Attempts to challenge it — on the basis that it would deprive a large portion of the country of representation — have been thwarted. Key staffers for leadership and on the GOP-led House Rules Committee viewed the quorum rules as adequate, according to half a dozen aides and lawmakers from both parties.

But many Republicans and Democrats who want the House to enact reform see the quorum rules as, at best, a half-measure that provides false comfort and, at worst, unconstitutional. In the wake of a national crisis, Congress could be made up of a small subsection of lawmakers.

A deadly event that leaves a severely diminished House population would instantly throw the legitimacy of decisions made in the chamber into question.

South Carolina Rep. William Timmons, who was Kilmer’s GOP co-chair of the modernization panel, warned that the emergency quorum rule would “potentially create additional legal challenges,” and bring the legitimacy of every action the House took into question.

“I think there is sometimes a tendency for people to not want to reflect. … It’s like, well, it wasn’t me, right?” Wenstrup said. “But now with this, we’ve seen pretty clearly: It really can be me. This isn’t a one off.”

Sen. John Fetterman said he supports Israel’s recent pager attack on Hezbollah, adding that “if anything,” he loves it.

“I want to be very clear, I thought what Israel chose to do about blowing up the pagers and walkie talkies and after targeting and eliminating membership and leadership of Hezbollah, I absolutely support that,” Fetterman (D-Pa.) said. “In fact, if anything, I love it.”

Israel detonated Hezbollah walkie talkies and pagers last week in remote attacks that killed at least 32 people and injured more than 3,000. Hezbollah on Sunday launched dozens of rockets at an Israeli airbase. U.S. officials said the pager attacks were likely to escalate tensions — and could even cause an all-out war.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has been a strong critic of Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the war in Gaza, recently said of the attacks on the Senate floor that Netanyahu was sabotaging a cease-fire deal with the pager attack.

“Every time a deal appears close Netanyahu moves the goalposts, introducing new demands and torpedoing the deal,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a clip played for Fetterman. “It is clear to me that Netanyahu is prolonging the war in order to cling to power.”

When asked if he agreed with anything the Vermont senator said in the clip, Fetterman said, “No, not at all.”

“Israel demonstrated that they will not allow terrorists not to be held accountable,” Fetterman said. “And I fully support that and it’s not about nothing like what my colleague has said.”

Fetterman, a strong pro-Israel Democrat, has been one of the most vocal Israel defenders since the attacks last Oct. 7. He has slammed ceasefire protesters and has split with factions from his party over the issue, often going viral for doing so. The stance has caused criticism from other Democrats — and has led to a departure of staff from his Senate office.

“I would be the last man standing to be absolutely there on the Israeli side on this with no conditions,” Fetterman once said in an interview with POLITICO. “Without destroying Hamas, there will be no enduring peace and a stable, two-state solution.”

In 2007, after one of the biggest scandals in K Street history, Congress cracked down on lobbyists’ ability to wine and dine lawmakers and aides with a host of reforms — including limits on extravagant, all-expenses-paid trips.

In the nearly two decades since, the influence industry has blown a hole through those rules, according to a new analysis of House travel disclosure data by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland in partnership with POLITICO. U.S. representatives and their staff have taken at least 17,000 trips since 2012 that were paid for by private parties, many of them nonprofits with deep ties to lobbyists and special interests.

Leading the way is the nonprofit Congressional Institute: Between 2012 and 2023, Capitol Hill staff members and one lawmaker took more than 4,200 trips on the institute’s dime. Run by veteran Republican staffers, the institute is funded by $3 million in annual dues from private interest groups such as Business Roundtable and the American Hospital Association. The overwhelming majority of the trips were taken by GOP staff, according to the data, which found just one example of a Democrat attendee.

Congressional travel rules generally bar lobbyists from playing a significant role in organizing or participating in trips sponsored by corporate entities. Such free trips are limited to no more than one day, with few exceptions.

None of these restrictions, however, applies to nonprofits such as the Congressional Institute, which regularly arranges multiday trips to luxury hotels and resorts along the mid-Atlantic coast. Guests mingle with private-sector institute members who pay as much as $27,500 annually for access to the invite-only retreats. And there is nothing preventing lobbyists and industry officials from participating as speakers or attendees at the events.

“It absolutely emulates money laundering,” said Anna Massoglia, editorial and investigations manager at OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan research organization that tracks money in politics. Not only is it legal, she said, it makes it difficult to regulate gifts and travel for members of Congress: “It provides a way to really get around the intent of the law.”

Of the institute’s dozen board members, 11 are current or former federal lobbyists who have worked for some of Washington’s top lobbying firms such as the Duberstein Group, Bockorny Group and H&M Strategies. Among them, only Michael Sommers, president and CEO at American Petroleum Institute, is not registered as a lobbyist, according to disclosure forms, though API spent over $6.1 million on lobbying in 2023 alone.

Board members’ recent clients include major economic players on the Fortune 500 list, including Exxon Mobil, Toyota, JPMorgan Chase and Meta (formerly Facebook).

In February, the Congressional Institute hosted its annual conference for House legislative and communications directors at the Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay Golf Resort, Spa and Marina in Cambridge, Maryland. There, executives from Microsoft, Google and Meta led a panel about artificial intelligence “opportunities, pitfalls and unknowns.”

Attendees had the chance to rub shoulders with senior staff, including from the office of House Speaker Mike Johnson and the House Financial Services Committee, according to an itinerary contained in a House travel disclosure form. That’s the committee responsible for oversight of an industry facing a torrent of calls for regulation by members of both parties. For instance, about a week prior to the February retreat, Democratic members on the committee sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding answers about his crypto-related endeavors.

In total, 11 lobbyists addressed top House aides during the retreat. The Howard Center reached out to nine House staffers who took that trip or others sponsored by the Congressional Institute. They declined to comment or did not respond.

“What’s important to understand is that they are doing this in a social setting, so [lobbyists and staffers] become friends. It’s not just lobbyists going into the office,” said Bruce Freed, president of the Center for Political Accountability, a nonpartisan nonprofit that tracks corporate political spending.

Among those in Cambridge were Ben Nyce, deputy policy director to the House Republican Conference, and Hannah Morrow, then the legislative director for Rep. John Rutherford (R-Fla).

In their disclosure reports, Nyce cited the meeting as an opportunity to “strengthen professional relationships,” and Morrow said she attended “for leadership training and policy sessions that will enhance my work to achieve my boss’s policy goals.”

The Congressional Institute paid about $1,882 for Morrow and her husband’s lodging, meals and room rental, and $1,127 for Nyce, their reports say.

Kelle Strickland, president and CEO of the Congressional Institute, defended the role lobbyists play in the organization. “Many of the professionals that work downtown in D.C. are former Hill staff, and they provide an incredible insight to the changing needs of Congress at the member level and at the staff level,’’ she said.

Strickland joined the organization last year after two decades working in the House. Most recently she was legal counsel for the chair of the House Ethics Committee, the body in charge of approving gift travel.

In addition to travel disclosures, nonprofit tax records and lobbying registrations, the Howard Center used data collected by OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan government watchdog organization, and by LegiStorm, a public affairs information platform, to document the extensive links between lobbyists and travel sponsors.

With one exception, the Congressional Institute trips were for staff travel — often to what it bills as “family-friendly” conferences for top aides such as chiefs of staff, communications directors and legislative directors. Many trips appear aimed at putting issue experts and current and former committee experts before current Hill staff. A number of the experts are former staffers who’ve become lobbyists.

An itinerary for a June 2022 conference in Williamsburg, Virginia, lists Ralph Hellmann as a panel participant offering insights on how to get bills passed. Hellmann, an institute board member, was listed as a one-time policy director to former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert. He has since worked as a lobbyist for the Information Technology Industry Council and for “many of the nation’s largest corporations and trade groups.” Hellmann did not return a request for comment.

From 2012 to 2023, at least three-quarters of the institute’s board members were registered lobbyists while serving on the board, according to tax and lobbying records. In fiscal year 2023, 86% of the institute’s revenue came from membership dues, and more than half of expenses were for hosting congressional trips.

The Congressional Institute is not an outlier. Nine of the top 10 sponsors of privately funded congressional travel throughout the last decade have had current or former registered lobbyists on their boards or in leadership, the Howard Center found.

The rules requiring lobbyists to be hands-off in travel are “not really worth the paper they’re written on,” said Meredith McGehee, an independent expert in government ethics and money in politics who called the trips “kind of the norm.”

“The reality has been that with a little good lawyering and not much originality, you can pretty much get around these rules to do whatever you want,” she said.

The Congressional Institute was incorporated as a nonprofit in 1987 to hold educational conferences that, according to its website, provide “space for Members and staff to discuss legislative priorities and strategies as well as develop professional relationships with each other and experts in their fields.”

Lobbyists have been part of the Congressional Institute from the beginning. Kenneth Duberstein, founder of the Duberstein Group lobbying firm and former chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan, was the Congressional Institute’s founding board chair.

Congressional Institute officials declined to disclose who its members are and whether membership has increased in recent years. Lisa Camooso Miller, the institute’s media spokesperson, confirmed “a representative of dues-paying partners are invited to attend the conferences” for House members and staffers. “Private sector partners pay their own room, food and other conference expenses,” she added.

Some past and current clients of lobbyists and institute board members David Bockorny, Anne Bradbury and Dan Meyer, have made yearly contributions of $27,500 to the Congressional Institute. They include Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs, from 2020 to 2022 and the American Hospital Association from 2019 to 2021. Business Roundtable and the American Hospital Association declined to comment.

The organization also sponsors conferences for lawmakers themselves, most notably the annual House Republican retreat that took place at The Greenbrier luxury resort in West Virginia in March. However, it does not cover the members’ travel or lodging.

While the Congressional Institute is the leader in underwriting trips for legislative staff, there are many other active players.

The American Israel Education Foundation, AIPAC’s charity organization, sponsored over 800 congressional trips — primarily for House members — from 2012 through 2023, according to the Howard Center analysis. This makes it the second-largest sponsor of private travel for the House.

Another regular sponsor is the Louisiana Sugar Cane Foundation, which has sponsored about a third of House staffers’ visits to sugar-growing regions. Industry insiders tied to the American Sugar Cane League formed the foundation after the 2007 ethics reforms. More broadly, sugar interests sponsored more congressional travel than any other branch of the agribusiness sector between 2012 and 2023.

In the world of technology, the Consumer Technology Association, a tech trade association and registered lobbying organization, flies dozens of congressional staffers every January to Las Vegas for the glitzy Consumer Electronics Show.

Onsite, representatives from CTA member companies such as Microsoft, Amazon and Meta have the opportunity to discuss the laws they’d like to see passed. These officials often are not registered lobbyists, but their goal is to persuade Congress to approve legislation that benefits the tech industry.

Craig Holman, a public interest lobbyist at Public Citizen, said Congress will impose rules on itself only if the public clamors for change.

The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, the last major overhaul of lobbying rules, was passed only in 2007 after Jack Abramoff, a high-profile lobbyist, was convicted on charges involving corruption, conspiracy, tax evasion and fraud. Among other things, Abramoff admitted providing trips to lawmakers in exchange for their support of his clients’ interests.

“Members of Congress won’t start regulating themselves if it’s just left up to them,” said Holman, who worked with lawmakers to draft the overhaul. “They will start coming out with these regulations when the public gets involved. And the public gets involved only on the heels of scandal.”

Adriana Navarro, Caley Fox Shannon, and Taylor Nichols are reporters for the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland. Heidi Przybyla is a national investigative correspondent for POLITICO.

Controversial tech magnate Elon Musk stepped up his political giving in August, giving his largest-known political donation ever to boost House Republicans’ efforts to preserve their vulnerable majority.

The National Republican Congressional Committee reported receiving $289,100 from Musk in August, according to its report filed with the Federal Election Commission Friday. The money came through a joint fundraising committee linked to Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), the filing indicated, and most of it was earmarked for the NRCC’s convention and headquarters accounts, as is typical for donations of that amount.

Musk — the richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of over $250 billion — has given to both Democrats and Republicans in the past, but not in such significant amounts.

Musk has amped up his political involvement in recent months. He has forged a relationship with former President Donald Trump, whom he is assisting by bankrolling America PAC, a pro-Trump outside group. The organization, which has undergone a leadership shuffle in recent months, is expected to play a major role in helping to turn out voters for the former president and recently began spending in competitive House races across the country as well.

It is likely that Musk has given more to America PAC than the NRCC. The super PAC, which can accept unlimited amounts from individual donors, is due to disclose its financial activity for the third quarter of this year on Oct. 15, which will give a clearer picture of how much Musk has given to the group.

And in another indication of his stepped-up political involvement, Musk has hired a political gatekeeper, longtime Republican operative Chris Young. Young’s hiring was first reported by The New York Times.

How much money Musk ends up investing in the election remains an open question. In July, the Wall Street Journal reported that he planned to donate around $45 million a month to help Trump. Musk, however, later denied the report.

Despite the influx of cash from Musk, the NRCC raised just $9.7 million in August, compared to $22.2 million raised by its Democratic counterpart.