Stephen Miller runs his daily 10 a.m. conference calls\u2014yes, even on Saturdays\u2014less like a government adviser and more like a wartime general. His is the dominant voice, as he plays the role of browbeater, inquisitor, and bully. He accepts no excuses, entertains no dissent.Donald Trump\u2019s deputy chief of staff for policy ruthlessly pursues the president\u2019s vision, especially when it comes to pushing immigrants out of the country, and he runs a tight, efficient meeting. Consensus is not the goal.Instead, Miller demands progress reports on his mass-deportation campaign and issues orders to the full alphabet soup of federal enforcement agencies, including the FBI, CBP, ICE, HHS, and the DOD. One senior official who has participated in the calls told us that the intensity and urgency often veer into hectoring. \u201cHe pushes everybody to the absolute limit because he knows that the clock is ticking,\u201d this person said. \u201cHe gets on the phone and he yells at everybody. Nobody is spared from his wrath.\u201dIn May, Miller told Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials that he wanted 3,000 immigration arrests a day, a nearly tenfold increase over the number they\u2019d arrested on U.S. streets in 2024. He demands daily updates on the ICE hiring surge too; the administration had pledged to deploy 10,000 new deportation officers by this month\u2014more than doubling the agency\u2019s workforce. And Miller expects regular updates on detention capacity, deportation flights, and border crossings.Miller publicly shames bureaucrats he feels are falling short or resisting orders. \u201cIf there\u2019s a problem and you\u2019re the owner, you have to fix it quickly,\u201d another frequent conference-call participant told us. \u201cIt\u2019s not a place where you can say, \u2018I have to get back to you.\u2019\u201dA third official told us that the calls are unlike any other government meetings they\u2019ve attended. \u201cIf you say something stupid, he\u2019ll tell you to your face. You are expected to perform at a certain level, and there\u2019s no excuse for not meeting those expectations,\u201d this person said.In Trump\u2019s inner circle\u2014even with the president himself\u2014Miller is known as a dogmatic force whose ideas are sometimes too extreme for public consumption. \u201cI\u2019d love to have him come up and explain his true feelings\u2014maybe not his truest feelings,\u201d the president joked at an Oval Office briefing in October. But in Trump\u2019s second term, Miller finds himself at the height of his powers\u2014the pulsing human id of a president who is already almost pure id.Miller has tried to recast the nation\u2019s partisan political disagreements as an existential conflict, a battle pitting \u201cforces of wickedness and evil\u201d against the nation\u2019s noble, virtuous people\u2014a mostly native-born crowd that traces its lineage and legacy \u201cback to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello.\u201d He accuses federal judges of \u201clegal insurrection\u201d for ruling against Trump\u2019s policies, describes the Democratic Party as a \u201cdomestic extremist organization,\u201d and dismisses the results of even legal immigration programs as \u201cthe Somalification of America.\u201d And he has declared an end to the post\u2013World War II order of \u201cinternational niceties\u201d in favor of a world that rebukes the weak, \u201cthat is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,\u201d as he put it this week when discussing recent military action against Venezuela.Along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Miller was the chief force behind Trump\u2019s decision to capture the Venezuelan strongman Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. \u201cWe are a superpower, and under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower,\u201d Miller told CNN\u2019s Jake Tapper on Monday, articulating a worldview that started with the fear of immigration but has gradually expanded to a broader national-security and rule-of-law argument. (In this Darwinian vein, Miller also declared that the U.S. military could seize Greenland without a fight, echoing a social-media post that his wife, Katie Miller, had made two days earlier, showing an American flag superimposed on a map of the icy landmass alongside the word: SOON. NATO leaders have nervously affirmed Denmark\u2019s claim to the territory.)[Read: \u2018I run the country and the world\u2019]Miller\u2019s official titles\u2014he is also the director of the interagency Homeland Security Council\u2014understate the full sweep of his purview. Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser and a Miller ally, describes him as Trump\u2019s \u201cprime minister.\u201d Miller has a role in nearly every area about which he cares deeply: immigration and border security, yes, but also national security, foreign policy, trade, military action, and policing. He may draft a flurry of executive orders one day, lead a meeting on lowering domestic beef prices the next, and travel to deliver a fiery speech of his own\u2014think Trump at his angriest and most dystopian, without any of the president\u2019s impish humor\u2014the following week. (Miller declined to comment for this story.)Early in Trump\u2019s second term, he invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to treat migrants as part of a foreign invasion, directed Congress to pass $150 billion in new funding for homeland-security enforcement, and captained the administration\u2019s assault on elite universities such as Harvard and Columbia. Late last year, he helped orchestrate Trump\u2019s authorization of military strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, setting the stage for the military operation against Maduro.The force behind Miller\u2019s directives became clear during Signalgate\u2014in which the Trump administration accidentally included The Atlantic\u2019s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, on a private Signal chat about a bombing campaign in Yemen. It was Miller\u2014not Trump\u2019s national security adviser, Pentagon chief, or even vice president\u2014who ended the debate and directed the group to move forward with the strikes. Trump has described Miller as sitting \u201cat the top of the totem poll\u201d inside the White House.\u201cHe oversees every policy the administration touches,\u201d White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told us. \u201cI can\u2019t tell you the number of times a policy matter is discussed in the Oval and Trump will say, \u2018Where\u2019s Stephen? Tell him to get that done.\u2019\u201dTo critics, Miller is the smirking embodiment of everything they view as dangerous and authoritarian about the Trump administration. He has been called a Nazi, a neo-Nazi, a white supremacist, a kapo, and Lord Voldemort. Posters of Miller\u2014pursed lips, furrowed brow\u2014have been plastered around the nation\u2019s capital, stamped with CREEP and FASCISM AIN\u2019T PRETTY. His own uncle has denounced him, writing at one point that if Miller\u2019s immigration policies had been implemented a century ago, their family\u2014which fled anti-Jewish pogroms in Europe\u2014\u201cwould have been wiped out.\u201d Yet if Miller has internalized any of the criticism, or acknowledged the parallels to his own lineage, he has not shown it, even among friends or colleagues. Miller is now acting as an accelerant for the president\u2019s most incendiary impulses and shaping the lives of individual Americans in nearly every realm. He has demonstrated neither the interest nor the ability to moderate his views\u2014even for tactical purposes. He is apt to overreach. And he has shown that he\u2019s not afraid to use the power of the government to go after those who try to stand in his way\u2014even his liberal neighbors, whom he has accused of threatening his family.During Trump\u2019s first term, Miller pushed the family-separation policy at the southern border, a measure long considered too extreme to implement. It triggered such a massive backlash that Trump\u2019s wife and eldest daughter urged him to stop it. The separations became the defining immigration policy of Trump\u2019s first term, undermining his ability to run on the issue in 2020. Now that he\u2019s back in office, the latest polling shows eroding support for the president\u2019s immigration crackdown, especially among the Latino voters who helped carry him to victory in 2024.\u00a0\u00a0But Miller has continued to push not just for the deportation of people in the country illegally but also for narrowing or closing legal immigration pathways, especially for people from poor, not-majority-white, non-Christian nations. His actions have struck many Americans as racist and xenophobic. (In 2019, for instance, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported on leaked emails in which Miller urged the conservative Breitbart News to promote ideas from The Camp of the Saints, a 1973 French novel popular in white-nationalist and neo-Nazi circles.) Colleagues who have worked with him for years say they have never heard him utter a racist slur, even in private. His devotion is not to white supremacy per se, they insist, but to the political and intellectual thesis he has been pushing since before he arrived in Washington. He wants to halt and reverse America\u2019s post-1960s immigration boom, and he pursues that goal with a fervor that has made him the public face of Trump\u2019s restrictionist immigration policies.[Read: The return of MAGA\u2019s favorite forbidden book]During debate prep for the 2024 campaign, Miller found himself in a contentious back-and-forth over immigration with a more moderate Trump ally. Finally, a frustrated Trump interrupted the two men: Stephen, he said, if you had it your way, everyone would look exactly like you, someone familiar with the exchange told us.\u201cThat\u2019s correct,\u201d Miller said, before turning back to continue sparring.The nexus of Miller\u2019s power is a vestige of President George W. Bush\u2019s War on Terror. Weeks after the attacks of September 11, 2001, Bush established the Homeland Security Council to coordinate the government\u2019s domestic response to the new threats from abroad. More than two and a half decades later, Miller has attached that rubric of national emergency to a new target, turning the council into a daily war room to track and fine-tune Trump\u2019s campaign to deport 1 million people a year.The September murder of the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, who was close to many in the administration, including Miller, plunged Trump\u2019s already single-minded martinet into a maximalist frenzy. A portrait of Ronald Reagan hangs prominently in the Oval Office\u2014just over Trump\u2019s left shoulder when he\u2019s seated at the Resolute Desk\u2014but Miller has made it abundantly clear that this is no longer Reagan\u2019s Republican Party.Former Senator Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican who retired during Trump\u2019s first term, told us that he has noticed a clear shift from one Trump administration to the next. \u201cBefore, it was more subtle, more nuanced, but now it\u2019s pretty plain. He wants to see more immigration from the Nordic countries, and not so much from the Third World countries. It\u2019s just a clear break from the huddled masses yearning to breathe free,\u201d said Flake, who, as a senator, worked unsuccessfully to pass a bipartisan immigration overhaul. \u201cIt\u2019s not the Reagan vision. It\u2019s not the traditional Republican vision.\u201dFlake said that although the immigration system has serious problems, Trump and Miller\u2019s goal seems to be \u201cto change the nature of who we are as a country.\u201d[Read: Fast times at Immigration and Customs Enforcement]Beyond immigration, Miller specializes in turning the president\u2019s whims and rantings into government policy. As Trump griped about the homeless encampments near the State Department one day, Leavitt recalled that he turned to Miller and said: \u201cGet it done.\u201d \u201cAnd within six hours,\u201d she said, \u201cI looked at Twitter, and there were cranes cleaning them up.\u201d\u201cStephen is the most effective political aide of this generation\u2014and probably since James Baker,\u201d the former Trump adviser Cliff Sims told us in a text. \u201cNo one is more deft at moving the levers of government to turn the President\u2019s policies into action.\u201dMay Mailman, who last year worked closely with Miller to punish elite universities that the administration claims are rife with anti-Semitism and \u201cwoke\u201d ideology, explained to us how Miller approaches a problem. In March, for instance, upset with Columbia University for several reasons\u2014including prominent pro-Palestinian protests on campus\u2014Trump posted a message on social media that began, \u201cAll Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests.\u201d Miller told Mailman to come up with some options, but, with Trump\u2019s buy-in, Miller was ultimately the one who approved pulling federal funding from the school.Then he carefully watched for the reaction. \u201cIf taking money from Columbia was a bad idea and backfired in some way, then Stephen would be the one to demand a course correction,\u201d said Mailman, who first worked with Miller during Trump\u2019s first term. \u201cBut because that worked out pretty well, he then tries to figure out: How can we use that tool in other areas?\u201dClose observers of Miller say that his total command is a marked contrast to his role during the first Trump term, when, despite being a senior adviser, he was limited in his ability to direct others. David Lapan, a retired Marine Corps colonel and aide to former Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, told us that he remembers attending a 2017 meeting at which Miller urged officials to send him examples of crimes committed by immigrants so he could publicize them. The difference then, Lapan said, is that Miller had an advisory role, and the other meeting attendees could disregard requests that they felt were too outlandish. \u201cWe came out of that meeting and said, Yeah, we\u2019re not doing that,\u201d Lapan recalled. \u201cWe knew that Kelly would cover for us.\u201d\u201cAre there stories like that out there? Sure,\u201d Lapan said. \u201cBut they\u2019re the exception, not the rule. Cherry-picking a few bad cases to paint all immigrants in a negative light is not something that we were willing to do.\u201dAlthough Miller views himself as the president\u2019s loyal servant, Trump\u2019s stances appear to have shifted under Miller\u2019s direction. The president used to speak favorably about certain immigrant groups he liked, such as DACA recipients and the employees at his golf resorts. But lately, his occasional pro-immigrant chatter has quieted. \u201c\u2018America First\u2019 is becoming \u2018Americans Only,\u2019\u201d Lapan said.
\nIllustration by Ben Kothe. Sources: Getty; Jim Watson \/ AFP \/ Getty.
\nMiller turned 40 in August and celebrated with a surprise party at the Ned, a chic members-only club blocks from the White House. The president did not show up, but just about everyone else did: White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, House Speaker Mike Johnson, conservative influencers, nearly every Cabinet secretary. Miller did not have a speech prepared but spoke self-deprecatingly, thanking Wiles for putting up with his ideas and suggestions. The turnout was a show of not just Miller\u2019s immense power but also his popularity in an administration that has been rife with infighting and backstabbing, especially during Trump\u2019s first term.The gleeful brawler Miller plays on TV is no act, his colleagues told us, and he behaves similarly in private (although often with a dash of deadpan humor). Several people told us that they appreciate how dogmatic he is, for a possibly surprising reason: They always know where he stands on the issues, and where they stand with him. As Trump\u2019s speechwriter during the first administration, he built goodwill with colleagues by warning them when the president was about to say something contrary to their plans, so they had time to try to convince him otherwise.\u201cThe lazy and clearly false hit on him is to call him these disgusting names,\u201d White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told us, about the accusations that Miller is a Nazi or a fascist. \u201cIf you dig deeper and aren\u2019t suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, he\u2019s not what the media portrays him as. He\u2019s actually a very nice and cordial person who cares about this country and wants to do a good job. He\u2019s very easy to work with. I\u2019ve been in Trump world a long time, and he\u2019s probably the easiest to work with.\u201dSeveral people described Miller as an exacting boss, even a micromanager, but one who looks out for his team\u2014including younger aides. In Trump\u2019s first term, he was not yet married, and he spent many of his nights out, grabbing drinks or dinner with everyone from Cabinet secretaries to more junior staff, who were eager to get time with him. When Trump\u2019s first term wound down, Miller helped ensure that everyone on his staff (and even some not on his team) had a job lined up.Friends and colleagues say he has rarely seemed hurt by the criticism and caricatures. But he can be vain about his appearance; in Trump\u2019s first term, he once showed up to Face the Nation with what was roundly mocked as spray-on hair. (In Trump\u2019s second term, the hair is gone.) And after a recent Vanity Fair photo shoot of senior West Wing staff, the photographer\u2014whose close-up, often unflattering photos went viral\u2014recounted to The Washington Post that Miller \u201cwas perhaps the most concerned about the portrait session,\u201d asking whether or not he should smile. Colleagues also describe a proud sartorialist who regularly debated fashion and traded menswear tips with another West Wing fashionista, Hogan Gidley, a deputy press secretary during Trump\u2019s first term.\u201cWe would talk about the difference in fabrics for seasons, and lapel size and width of ties and these types of things,\u201d Gidley told us, before describing Miller\u2019s style as \u201csophisticated and smart and chic but also daring at times.\u201dIn a recently resurfaced 2003 video, a 17-year-old Miller\u2014prominent sideburns and tightly coiled brown hair\u2014sits in the back of a moving school bus, opining on the war in Iraq. In the video, Miller smirkily suggests that the \u201cideal solution\u201d for \u201cSaddam Hussein and his henchmen\u201d would be \u201cto cut off their fingers\u201d; he argues that torture is the proper punishment in a nonbarbaric society. (In a barbaric society, he implies, death would be the appropriate punishment.) \u201cTorture is a celebration of life and human dignity,\u201d he continues, briefly unable to hide his delight as his latest outlandish proclamation illicits titters from his peers\u2014his mouth widens into a toothy grin, and he emits an audible chuckle before taking a breath and continuing.This is Miller the troll, who has confided in friends that he enjoys starting a fire, then dousing it with gasoline. But after more than two decades relishing his role as the gleeful contrarian, the persona has now become more true character than occasional outlandish caricature. \u201cHe has a flair for the dramatic, and you can tell that now with the way he comports himself on TV,\u201d Bannon told us. \u201cHe plays the character well, knowing he always wants to have the libs\u2019\u2014the progressives\u2019\u2014heads blow up.\u201dAfter graduating from Duke in 2007\u2014where he vigorously defended white lacrosse players who were falsely accused of rape by a Black stripper\u2014Miller landed a job with newly elected Republican Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. As young Capitol Hill aides, he and Sergio Gor\u2014who recently became Trump\u2019s ambassador to India\u2014helped launch the supernova ambitions of Bachmann, a right-wing darling whose then-fringe ideology presaged the rise of MAGA. By the time Bachmann\u2019s 2012 presidential bid flamed out, Miller was already firmly ensconced with then-Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who shared his hard-line obsession with immigration, and Bannon, who provided a broader nationalist, populist scaffolding.[Read: Trump\u2019s right-hand troll]As Sessions\u2019s aide-de-camp, Miller helped his boss sabotage the bipartisan \u201cGang of Eight\u201d immigration bill, which passed the Senate by a wide margin in 2013. At the time, a post-2012 Republican autopsy was calling for a gentler, more inclusive GOP, and the proposed immigration overhaul had the support of business and tech leaders, interest groups, and wealthy donors. But Miller was undaunted, buttonholing reporters in the hallways of Congress to press his anti-immigrant case, and calling them later at home to talk\u2014for hours, if they\u2019d let him\u2014about the bill\u2019s minutiae and why it would harm American workers. The bill died in the House, where it never came up for a vote.Miller pushed colleagues to keep the same round-the-clock hours as he did, including calling meetings on Friday afternoons, when most Hill staffers were eager to skip out early to happy hours. Instead, Republican staffers sullenly reported to messaging meetings to talk about immigration.Working with Bannon, Miller made Breitbart News the communications arm of his effort. And, understanding that data and statistics, however dubious, could lend their cause the sheen of legitimacy, they elevated obscure anti-immigration groups\u2014the Center for Immigration Studies, NumbersUSA\u2014into prominent sources. \u201cThe more outrageous the headline, the better,\u201d Bannon said.By the time Miller joined Trump\u2019s 2016 campaign\u2014officially launched with claims that Mexico was sending \u201crapists\u201d and criminals across the border\u2014his immigration bona fides were well established, and he learned to channel Trump\u2019s voice into policy prescriptions. The baby-faced Miller quickly moved from the back of Trump\u2019s plane to the inner circle at the front.By March 2016, Miller was Trump\u2019s opening act, riling up crowds across the country with an anti-immigrant, anti-Washington populism that sometimes threatened to overshadow Trump himself. \u201cI said, \u2018Listen, the point of an introduction is that Trump doesn\u2019t have to top it,\u2019\u201d Bannon said. \u201cHe was so insane over-the-top. But of course the MAGA base can\u2019t get enough of him.\u201dIn Trump\u2019s first White House, Miller made quick use of the various levers available to him, no matter how buried in the bureaucratic bowels. He took a particular interest in the office of the staff secretary, a little-known but powerful team that vets any memo or speech or policy before it reaches the president. Not a lawyer himself, he nevertheless leaned on creative and expansive interpretations of statutes to push the president\u2019s agenda. In the early days of COVID, for instance, he successfully urged the administration to invoke a 1944 emergency public-health law to shut down the border and rapidly expel migrants to Mexico or their home country. In a White House staffed partly by amateurs, he also benefited from his deep understanding of policy issues, which he\u2019d been honing since high school. He coached Trump and others into even more extreme immigration positions, explaining why, for instance, he believed that giving merit-based green cards to promising foreign students was problematic.Even his allies find Miller to be something of an \u201cacquired taste,\u201d as one put it. Another quipped that he has the bedside manner of Heinrich Himmler, one of Adolf Hitler\u2019s earliest followers and a key architect of the Holocaust. But Mailman said that Miller could be strategic when making a policy pitch. On immigration, he instinctively understood if someone was a \u201ctype person\u201d (who cared about the type of immigrant coming to the country) or a \u201cnumbers person\u201d (who cared simply about the sheer number of immigrants) and often tailored his message accordingly. \u201cHe thinks about the rationale of how someone is approaching something,\u201d she said.Because Miller\u2019s views\u2014especially on immigration\u2014were so well known, he earned Trump\u2019s trust despite also, at times, vigorously disagreeing with him. \u201cMiller is 100 percent firm in every conviction and feeling he has, and he just says it the way he believes it, and if it aligns with what the president wants to do, then great,\u201d a first-term Trump aide told us. \u201cAnd if it\u2019s nuanced or different, then Miller stakes out his position\u2014he doesn\u2019t care if it\u2019s different from what other people think or what the president wants\u2014but then once the president makes his position clear, Miller executes on it, whether or not he agrees with it.\u201d[Read: Stephen Miller has a plan]Despite his years as Sessions\u2019s prot\u00e9g\u00e9, Miller quickly distanced himself from his longtime mentor, several people told us, when Sessions, then Trump\u2019s first attorney general, recused himself from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, angering the president. In fact, the rupture was more acute than was publicly known; Miller was enraged by what he viewed as Sessions\u2019s unforgivable betrayal of Trump.During the first term, Miller aligned himself with Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, once it became clear that they held tremendous sway with the president. The pairing was unusual, given that the president\u2019s daughter and son-in-law were seen as misguided \u201cglobalists\u201d by much of the far-right base. One person familiar with the dynamic described Miller spending hours with Ivanka Trump on her key initiatives\u2014paid family leave and tax credits for parents. The charitable explanation, this person continued, is that Miller was being generous with his time and expertise; the more cynical one is that Miller understood that Ivanka Trump was less likely to complain to her father about Miller\u2019s hard-line immigration policies if the two had a good relationship.\u201cHe always understood where power lies,\u201d Bannon said. \u201cNo matter what\u2014he can be coaching a Little League team\u2014Miller can very quickly analyze.\u201dMiller\u2019s fealty to his boss was on display right up until the end of Trump\u2019s first term. On January 6, 2021, Miller\u2019s wife\u2014who had worked as Vice President Mike Pence\u2019s communications director\u2014was on maternity leave but still employed by Pence. But when Trump called Miller that morning to discuss adding lines to his speech attacking Pence, Miller\u2014ever the good soldier\u2014did as he was told.Later that day, angry Trump supporters marched to the Capitol, calling for the vice president to be hanged for treason.The enemy arrived at the Millers\u2019 doorstep on a warm September morning in the form of a retired gender and peace-studies professor in a loose striped dress. Barbara Wien, who had been protesting the family\u2019s presence in Arlington, Virginia, pointed her index and middle fingers at her own eyes, then directed those fingers at Katie Miller, who was on the front porch.Stephen Miller took the gesture at his wife, which was captured on video, as a call to violence\u2014an offense that he uniquely had the power to punish.The Millers had already felt under siege, facing threats and fearing that the entire family was being surveilled by sophisticated actors. A Rhode Island man had been indicted in August for publicly threatening to kill Miller and other officials. A law-enforcement official told us that Katie Miller had been surreptitiously photographed in her neighborhood\u2014while going to the gym, and at least once while walking with her kids\u2014and said that there was a \u201ccoordinated\u201d and \u201cmalicious\u201d effort to, at the very least, intimidate them. Someone had also posted flyers at neighborhood parks where their kids played, revealing their home address and calling him a Nazi. The Millers had stopped allowing their children to play in front of the house or in the backyard.But they were not going to be intimidated by a 66-year-old activist.\u201cYou want us to live in fear? We will not live in fear,\u201d Miller said days later, in an appearance on Sean Hannity\u2019s Fox News program. He had gone on the program to discuss the federal response to Kirk\u2019s recent assassination, but although he was focused on \u201cdomestic terrorists,\u201d he included doxxing on the list of related offenses. For those familiar with the Millers\u2019 personal lives, it sounded less like he was talking about Kirk\u2019s assassin than about Wien, who\u2019d distributed flyers with his address.\u201cYou will live in exile,\u201d he continued, \u201cbecause the power of law enforcement under President Trump\u2019s leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and, if you have broken the law, to take away your freedom.\u201dMiller set about drafting a series of executive orders, later signed by Trump, that directed federal law enforcement to refocus counterterrorism efforts on people with \u201canti-fascist\u201d ideas, such as \u201cextremism on migration, race, and gender\u201d and \u201chostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.\u201dThis fall, Miller also began describing a central divide in the country, pitting \u201clegitimate state power\u201d against what he termed left-wing \u201cstreet violence.\u201d His definition of the latter was broad. He accused Democratic politicians who called him or Trump \u201cauthoritarian\u201d of \u201cinciting violence.\u201d (Never mind that he had repeatedly called the Biden administration \u201cfascist.\u201d) He placed doxxing\u2014what his family faced\u2014on the continuum that leads to violence. (Also never mind that Vice President J. D. Vance encouraged calling out those who celebrated Kirk\u2019s murder, including at their place of employment.)As Miller announced federal policies aimed at combatting the threat, he was also fighting a private battle against the very enemy he described. In the weeks after Wien made her gesture in front of his wife, the Millers decided that they were no longer safe in their six-bedroom, roughly $3 million Northern Virginia home. They sought out military housing at a nearby base, arguing to friends and allies inside the administration that their safety depended on it.[Read: Top Trump officials are moving onto military bases]But the legitimate powers of the state repeatedly declined to fully cooperate with the Millers\u2019 attempt to turn their own situation into a catalyst for the sort of crackdown they claimed was necessary. The FBI was initially hesitant to take a major role in the investigation of Wien, prompting the Millers to demand its involvement, according to a person briefed on their efforts. A Democratic Virginia state prosecutor became concerned about the federal involvement in a search warrant on Wien, and sought to narrow its scope. A federal magistrate judge refused to approve federal search warrants, according to a report by Axios.Katie Miller, who hosts her own podcast, recently appeared on Piers Morgan\u2019s YouTube show and accused a progressive guest, Cenk Uyger, of attacking her Jewish children by merely having a difference of opinion with her. She then offered a veiled threat to have Uyger\u2019s citizenship revoked. (Uyger is a naturalized citizen; in a text message, he described Katie Miller\u2019s threat as \u201cnot an attack on me as much as it\u2019s an attack on America.\u201d) When the investigation against Wien appeared to stall, Miller\u2019s longtime ally Jim Jordan, the House Judiciary Committee chair, announced that he had opened an inquiry into the Democratic prosecutor in Virginia who had sought to narrow the search warrant and raised concerns about federal involvement.\u201cThis is so cool,\u201d Katie Miller said on social media. \u201cThank you.\u201dDays later, the prosecutor said that she would not cooperate with Jordan\u2019s inquiry, because the investigation was ongoing and Congress lacked the ability to intervene in a state law-enforcement matter. There were still some powers of the state that Miller did not control.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Stephen Miller runs his daily 10 a.m. conference calls\u2014yes, even on Saturdays\u2014less like a government adviser and more like a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}