Angela Mistrulli, who lost her father in the World Trade Center collapse, met with President Trump in Dallas to push Congress to replenish a federal terrorism victims' fund before its September 30 fiscal deadline, and says the president treated it as more than a policy briefing.
Mistrulli, founder of American Victims of State-Sponsored Terrorism (AVSSTU), joined other 9/11 family members, Gold Star families, and families of civilian terrorism victims on the sidelines of the Republican midterm convention Thursday evening. The group secured face time with Trump to make a direct case: the United States Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund, a federal account Congress created in 2015 to compensate Americans harmed by international terrorism, has run out of money. More than 22,000 victims depend on it.
Speaking with Fox News Digital the next day, Mistrulli described a president who engaged with the families on a level she did not expect.
"Meeting with the President last night, it was clear to me how genuinely empathetic he was to our fight for American victims of state-sponsored terrorism. He listened, and I could tell this isn't just a policy issue to him, it felt personal."
No direct quotes from Trump were reported, and Mistrulli did not describe any specific commitment the president made during the meeting. What she did describe was momentum: AVSSTU is now working with unnamed members of the Administration on what she called "a legislative path forward this year" for the fund.
Congress established the USVSST Fund a decade ago. Since then it has distributed more than $10 billion to victims harmed by acts of international state-sponsored terrorism, including personal representatives of those killed in attacks like 9/11. The fund was designed as a single destination where victims could seek relief without navigating a patchwork of programs.
Now the money is gone. Mistrulli laid out the stakes plainly:
"Congress created the United States Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism (USVSST) Fund. It was supposed to be a place for all victims to be able to go and receive some sort of relief. It was a lifeline to over 22,000 victims. Unfortunately, that fund has run dry, and September 30 is the fiscal deadline for Congress to act in order for victims to receive relief."
She did not specify a bill number or legislative vehicle. No Congressional members were named as sponsors or co-sponsors of any replenishment effort. The September 30 deadline, attributed to Mistrulli, not independently confirmed by a government source, sets a narrow window for action, particularly in a Congress consumed by midterm-year politics.
The question of what drained the fund, whether it hit a statutory cap, exhausted its appropriation, or ran into another structural limit, was not addressed. That gap matters. A fund that was underfunded from the start requires a different fix than one that was raided or mismanaged. Lawmakers who want to act need to know which problem they are solving. Families who have waited a quarter-century deserve an answer, too.
Mistrulli's father died in the collapse of the World Trade Center twin towers. Twenty-five years later, she is still walking the halls, or in this case, working the sidelines of a convention, to extract promises that should have been kept long ago.
Her weariness was unmistakable:
"This is a hard one this year. 25 years. It feels like forever, but it also feels like yesterday, and it's also disappointing because I feel like our country has come so far away from who we were on September 12th. It's also exhausting that it's been 25 years of us fighting for justice."
That line, "so far away from who we were on September 12th", carries weight that no policy brief can match. September 12, 2001, was the day Americans of every political stripe agreed on something: the people who lost family members in those attacks would not be forgotten. Flags went up on every block. Congress moved fast. The country meant it.
A quarter-century later, the fund Congress built for those families is empty, and the daughter of a man who died in the towers is begging for a meeting at a convention hotel in Dallas. The gap between the promise and the follow-through is the story.
Mistrulli framed her mission in broader terms, too, calling for national unity as the anniversary approaches. In an era when families of fallen Americans have had to fight just to be heard at public ceremonies, her appeal landed with a certain bluntness:
"We have now been divided as a nation and my wish to everyone out there as we commemorate this anniversary, memorialize, never forget by coming back together."
Mistrulli did not hold back about where responsibility sits. "We are still fighting for justice, transparency, recognition, and relief that Congress promised us," she told Fox News Digital. The word "promised" does real work in that sentence. It is not a request. It is a reminder that the federal government made a commitment, took credit for making it, and has not followed through.
The families traveled to Dallas not just to mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11 but, as Mistrulli put it, "to try to get some face time with these leaders and these higher ups to be able to discuss this urgent and critical topic." That phrasing, "try to get some face time", says something about the power dynamic. These are not lobbyists with retainers and PAC money. They are bereaved families who have to hustle for fifteen minutes with a president at a convention.
The fact that Trump took the meeting, and that Mistrulli described him as engaged and empathetic, is notable. Whether that engagement translates into a signed bill before the fiscal deadline is another matter entirely. Administrations can express sympathy and still let a legislative deadline pass. Congress can hold hearings and still fail to appropriate a dollar. In a political season where Senate races and intra-party fights dominate the calendar, a victims' fund reauthorization is exactly the kind of measure that gets praised in public and buried in committee.
Mistrulli's closing statement to Fox News Digital put the obligation in moral terms:
"We are now working with members of the Administration on a legislative path forward this year for the USVSST Fund, which is a vital lifeline for over 22,000 American victims of terrorism, including 9/11 families. This is about our moral obligation to victims and our promise to never forget."
Several critical details remain unresolved. No specific bill or legislative vehicle has been identified publicly. The "members of the Administration" Mistrulli referenced were not named. It is unclear how many people attended the Thursday evening meeting with Trump or which organizations beyond AVSSTU were represented. And no Congressional leader, from either party, was cited as publicly championing the fund's replenishment.
Those gaps are not trivial. A fund serving more than 22,000 victims, with a hard fiscal deadline weeks away, should have a named sponsor, a public hearing schedule, and a vote timeline. The fact that none of those exist, at least not in the public record, suggests the machinery of Congress has not yet engaged in a serious way. In a political environment where candidates compete for attention on every culture-war flashpoint, a straightforward obligation to terrorism victims should not require this much effort to get on the agenda.
"Never forget" is the easiest phrase in American politics. Keeping the promise behind it is the part that costs something, and right now, the account is empty.
