In February 2024, Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., received a devastating phone call from a sheriff in his home district while attending a Trump rally in South Carolina. The sheriff informed Collins that Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student enrolled at Augusta University’s College of Nursing, had been murdered while jogging on the University of Georgia campus in Athens on Feb. 24.
The gruesome murder set off almost a year of policy debates and political calculus that culminated in President Donald Trump signing the Laken Riley Act into law. Collins, the leading House Republican on that piece of legislation, joined “The Signal Sitdown” to give a behind-the-scenes look at how Republicans got this major legislative accomplishment across the finish line.
When Collins received that call in February 2024, he had a feeling the perpetrator was a criminal illegal alien. “I…
