Increased security after Charlie Kirk's death

President Trump paid tribute to conservative activist Charlie Kirk during remarks Thursday, at a 9/11 Memorial event at the Pentagon, and announced he would posthumously award him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. We miss him greatly. Yet, I have no doubt that Charlie's voice and the courage he put into the hearts of countless people, especially young people, will live on.

Kirk's assassination has sparked bipartisan condemnation of political violence and prompted extra security measures. CBS News has learned, President Trump's remarks were moved to an interior courtyard out of an abundance of caution. We will not be doing any public events anytime soon until we have a better handle on greater security controls.

Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace is just one of a number of lawmakers adjusting their plans in light of the assassination. House Speaker Mike Johnson says increased security for lawmakers is under consideration. We are in a deliberate review process right now to determine what measures are appropriate. President Trump called Kirk a martyr for truth and freedom and as for a renewed commitment to American values. Trump also condemned what he calls radical and political violence. Thursday, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle called for calm. There will be a tiny subset of people for whom toxic rhetoric inspires them to do awful things. We need to condemn it, but kind of recommit ourselves to make sure that we can disagree in a better way.

Legislators involved in attacks of their own, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, also called for an end to political violence. Erica Brown, CBS News, the White House. And CBS News Correspondent Shanelle Kaul took a closer look at the rise in political violence in the United States over the last several years. Conservative activist Charlie Kirk's death is the latest act of political violence to grip the country. This year alone, there have been four acts of violence targeting political figures here in the US. In June, Minnesota's former Speaker of the House, Melissa Hortman, along with her husband and dog, were assassinated. Her colleague, Democratic State Senator John Hoffman, and his wife, were also shot multiple times, allegedly by the same gunman on the same night. Now, two months earlier, in April, an arsonist had burned part of Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's home. Last year marked two separate assassination attempts against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. In July, a man shot at Trump during a political rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. He killed one rally attendee and wounded two others. Almost exactly two months later, in September, another man was caught with guns positioned near Trump's golf course in Florida, but Secret Service had intervened before any shots were fired at the president. The suspect in that case is now on trial. And members of US Congress have also faced violent threats. In 2022, the violence then hit the home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, when her husband was seriously injured by an assailant who was looking for the speaker. And in 2021, rioters, you'll remember, stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden's 2020 election win. According to a bipartisan Senate report, seven deaths were connected to the Capitol attack. And during the violence, lawmakers had hid from protesters, who were calling for their execution. The decade started, though, with two incidents targeting the private residences of political and legal officials. The FBI had foiled an attempt to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer at her vacation home, in what prosecutors said was an attempt to start a civil war. And a self-described anti-feminist had killed the son of a federal judge at her home in New Jersey over his disagreements with her rulings. The judge's husband was also wounded. Now, this timeline here only scratches the surface of recent political violence. A Reuters analysis found that at least 300 incidents of political violence between January 2021 and the 2024 presidential election, that includes high-profile assassination attempts to fights that escalated over political signage.

Shanelle Kaul, thank you. I want to bring in now, Gina Ligon. She is the director of the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center. Gina, thank you very much for joining us. You just heard all those different events and incidents. How would you describe the state of political violence in this country today? Yeah, thanks for having me. The Department of Homeland Security actually had our center looking at these trends over the last 10 years, and I'm sad to report that 2025 is on track to be the highest threat of political violence that we have seen in the last decade.

This is not just one incident that strikes the people that are there. How do violence and the fear of violence threaten democracy itself? Yeah. I mean, it's not just these political figures, right? It's also, we're looking at civil servants. We're looking at elected officials. I mean, just last week alone, we've had threats of murdering an ICE agent. We've had threats of beheading the president. We've had threats of killing judges. I mean, it is a rampant threat environment right now that's really just blinking red from all different types of ideologies. And so when you think about these people who serve in these positions, who are often serving in them for ideological reasons themselves-- they want to keep us safe-- it might just seem a little bit too daunting with this current threat environment and hostility toward public servants.

Is there a concern that what happened yesterday, Charlie Kirk's killing, could inspire copycat attacks on other political figures? Yeah. I mean, as a terrorism center, we're very concerned about that, because terrorists always want to increase the attention that they get. And so for us, it's not only just copying it, but it's also escalating. Because what we've seen is when they're trying to get attention, they're learning from what's happened in the past, and they want to do something bigger, so that they can get even more attention than what we are seeing right now with the Charlie Kirk assassination.

Gina Ligon, thank you very much for joining us and for your insight.