One year ago, Laken Riley's murder transformed America's political spectrum | Political Update

On Feb. 22, 2024, a 22-year-old Augusta University nursing student went for a morning run ... and never came back. The murder of Laken Riley - and the subsequent conviction of Jose Ibarra, a 26-year-old Venezuelan immigrant who was in the U.S. illegally - tranformed the nation's political spectrum. The issue of illegal immigration became one of the cornerstones in Donald Trump's ultimately successful quest to reclaim the White House, and the subsequent Laken Riley Act was the first law passed out of the new Congress and the first law signed by the newly elected 47th U.S. president. Attorney and political analyst Madeline Summerville was a speechwriter in the Georgia State Senate at the time of Riley's murder, and she reflects on the horrible crime and its subsequent impact on the 2024 presidential election.

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