“Mullin bashes Maria Elvira Salazar’s pro-immigration amnesty GOP ad: ‘A criminal is a criminal’”, 18 September 2026 (Photo via Washington Examiner — the original report)
As it ran on the front
My nephew Anthony is in his second year of law school up in Hartford, and I called him Sunday about this Justice Department grant, because my daughter says he is the one who actually reads these things instead of just skimming past the seal at the top. He was quiet on the phone for a second, which is what lawyers do right before they tell you something is going to cost more than you thought.
The federal grant office put out the notice Thursday, the same day the Attorney General hosted a summit for families of violent crime: twenty-five million dollars, the notice said, to help and reward law enforcement offices across the nation. That is a word from their own release, not mine, not my nephew's.…
…(cont) One of the mothers in that room Thursday was Jessica Gorman. Gorman's daughter Sheridan was eighteen, killed on a pier in Chicago in March, and this summer Gorman testified to Congress about it — the record shows that much. Thursday Gorman was back, this time at a podium with the program's name behind it, telling Fox News that Democrat lawmakers won't listen to families like Gorman's, that one congressman slept through the testimony. I don't know what that's like, having somebody sleep through the worst thing that ever happened to you. Neither does my nephew. He just said that's a hard thing to build a program around.
Here's the other mother. Susan Pretti's son Alex was a nurse — an ICE nurse, no, I keep saying that wrong, let me say it right — Susan Pretti's son Alex was a nurse, and ICE agents shot him dead on a street in Minneapolis in January. Seven months later, this August, the family sat down with a reporter and asked one question, on camera, same as Gorman was on camera: what did he do to deserve to be murdered. Nobody from the Justice Department answered that Thursday. Nobody from the Justice Department has answered it since January, far as my nephew or I can find. There was no summit for that question. There's no acronym for that question.
I was at the toll plaza Tuesday, the E-ZPass lane and the cash lane side by side, and the cash lane backed up twenty minutes while the E-ZPass lane just waved everybody through. Nobody built the cash lane slow on purpose, probably. It's just that somebody decided, a long time before I got there, which lane gets the sensor and which lane gets the human being counting out quarters. That's what I kept thinking about, sitting in the cash lane, after I hung up with Anthony.
My wife says I think about tollbooths too much for a man who mostly stays home. Maybe. But twenty-five million dollars is a real number — she about dropped her coffee when I said it out loud — and a program is a decision about who's in the fast lane and who sits counting quarters. My nephew says that's the whole trick of a grant. Nobody has to say no to anybody. You just build the summit for one mother and not the other.
I called Anthony back Wednesday about something else entirely, my sister's lease, and right before we hung up I said, oh, hang on, one more thing — the notice, the twenty-five million, does it say anywhere in the paperwork who decides which mother gets the podium and which one gets the toll lane with the quarters?
He didn't have an answer. I didn't figure he would. I just sat there with the phone warm in my hand, thinking about their word for it. Reward.
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“They call it a reward program right there in the paperwork — twenty-five million bucks for law enforcement, wrapped around one grieving mother's face for the cameras. Meanwhile ICE shoots a nurse dead in the street in January and his mother's still waiting on an answer to one question seven months later, no podium, no acronym, nothing. That's not victims' services, that's a marketing budget with a grief filter on it, and the filter only turns on for certain bodies.”
“The ANGEL program funds legitimate victims' services, twenty-five million dollars for real families who lost real people — I genuinely don't see the controversy here. As for the Pretti situation, look, that's federal law enforcement doing federal law enforcement work, agents follow use-of-force protocols, and it's been — okay, seven months is a while, why haven't we — no, scratch that. The summit was about public safety, full stop. Did I say full stop twice this week? That doesn't sound like me.”
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is not bothered by Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar’s (R-FL) campaign advertisement against aggressive immigration enforcement because his department is focused on catching and deporting illegal immigrants. In the 30-second ad released Thursday, the pro-immigration Republican lawmaker declared the…
Sheridan Gorman's mother accused Rep. Pramila Jayapal of dismissing angel families and Rep. Jerry Nadler of napping during sanctuary city testimony.
The DOJ disbanded its crypto enforcement team in April 2025 and ordered inconsistent investigations closed - while the president's family runs a crypto business CNBC, 8 April 2025 (Blanche memo)
The Justice Department unveiled a $25 million grant opportunity Thursday as Attorney General Todd Blanche hosted violent crime survivors and grieving families for a summit focused on public safety and support for victims. The Assisting Neighborhoods and Governments with Enforcement of Laws program will serve to help and reward law…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.
