Donald Trump has stripped Kamala Harris of her Secret Service detail just as she prepares to embark on a book tour about her failed presidential campaign. This feels petty, and undoubtedly Trump and his team got some petty pleasure from it, but it’s actually well within the established precedents. Maybe we should give long-term Secret Service protection to former vice presidents, but we don’t, and Congress hasn’t required it.

By tradition rather than statute, the Secret Service would protect former VPs for six months after leaving office, which is about how long it takes for them to move into a new residence (whose location may not be public), fade from the national debate as it moves on to the new administration, and arrange if they see fit (and can afford it) for their own private security. As GovTrack noted in 2021, the protection offered to the VP has evolved a good deal over time: “Starting in 1951, a vice president could first receive the protection if they requested it. In 1962, the protection became required rather than opt-in. In 1971, the protection began for both Democratic and Republican vice presidential nominees, several months before they were potentially sworn in. In 1974, protection began for the vice president’s immediate family (spouse and children). In 1976, immediate family protection was added for major-party vice presidential nominees as well.” In July 2009, Barack Obama approved a further extension of Dick Cheney’s security beyond six months, undoubtedly in recognition of Cheney’s unusually prominent role in wars and counterterrorist operations that were then still-ongoing. Harris has already gone beyond the six months.

Perhaps we should provide lifetime protection — a bill was proposed in 2021 to do that — but as of now, that’s all just at the president’s discretion. Trump, for his part, has not-unreasonable concerns from his own assassination attempt last summer that the Secret Service’s protective operations have been stretched too thin. That can also be fixed if Congress wants to fund the agency more extensively, but given its serial failures and scandals over the past decade or so, it probably needs to rebuild some confidence first in its own competence.