Stephen Miller

Credentials

Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, Duke University.¹

Background

Stephen Miller is the White House deputy chief of staff for policy² and Homeland Security advisor³ for Donald Trump, the 47th president of the United States. Previously, Miller was a senior advisor to the President and the White House Director of Speechwriting in Trump’s first term between 2017 and 2021.

CNN called Miller one of the “most powerful people in government” in Trump’s White House alongside Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.⁴ Earlier in his career, Miller worked as an aide⁵ and eventually press secretary⁶ for Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) from 2009 to 2016, when he left Sessions to join Trump’s first presidential campaign.

Miller is known for his focus on hardline immigration policies. He has been reported to be the primary official behind immigration policy during Trump’s first administration, including separating families at the border between the US and Mexico⁷ and the “Muslim ban,”⁸ an executive order blocking travel to the US for refugees and travelers with passports from seven Muslim-majority countries.⁹ He is reported to be the driving force behind plans for the mass deportation of immigrants during Trump’s second presidency.¹⁰

Miller has been the subject of several controversies. In 2019, over 100 Democrat members of Congress called for Miller’s resignation after the Southern Poverty Law Center published leaked emails between Miller and a reporter for right-wing news outlet Breitbart in which Miller shared links to two websites known to circulate white nationalist ideas.¹¹

Miller has argued on multiple occasions that there is widespread voter fraud in the US, including claims that voters from Massachusetts were “bused” to New Hampshire to vote illegally¹² and that non-citizens vote in US elections by using mail-in ballots.¹³

In 2022, Miller testified for eight hours before the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, riots at the US Capitol building. A source told the Guardian that Miller had claimed the election had been stolen from Trump and had “raised several instances of the supposed [voter] fraud.”¹⁴ The Guardian also reported that the committee “asked Miller about his role in a brazen scheme to pressure legislatures to send slates of pro-Trump electors to Congress on January 6 in battleground states won by Biden.” ¹⁵

Reporting from Politico in January 2025 stated that an expected new council on energy, when formed, would report to Miller.¹⁶ The council, ultimately named the “National Energy Dominance Council” chaired by Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and vice-chaired by Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, was established on February 14, 2025, by an executive order.¹⁷

A factsheet about the establishment of the council stated that the council “will advise President Trump on strategies to achieve energy dominance by improving the processes for permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, and transportation across all forms of American energy” and focused predominantly on oil while making no specific mention of renewable energy.¹⁸ It is unclear if the council “reports” to Miller.

America First Legal

Miller’s advocacy group, America First Legal (AFL), was formed in 2021 to file legal challenges on behalf of conservative causes against the government, corporations, and individuals.¹⁹ ²⁰ The AFL’s website states that the group “use[s] every legal tool at our disposal to defend our citizens from unconstitutional executive overreach” and “will also stand up against corporations that restrict free speech and violate our citizens’ civil rights.”²¹

A March 2025 report from Axios referred to AFL as Miller’s “outside army,” adding that as he shaped policy from inside the White House, the AFL is “shaping policy from the outside, through legal complaints and lawsuits.”²² The reporting added that the AFL “has been aggressively filing complaints and lawsuits to try to make the federal bureaucracy comply with the new president’s executive orders,” calling the group a “private enforcement arm of the White House’s assault on DEI.”

A quote attrbiuted to Miller on the AFL website’s homepage states that the AFL is the “long-awaited answer to the ACLU” and that “For years, progressives have used the court system to attack our founding documents, undermine the rule of law, and erode our nation’s most cherished principles and traditions.”²³

AFL is led by “senior members of the Trump administration who were at the forefront of the America First movement,” according to its website. AFL, registered as a tax-exempt 503(c)(3) charity, states that its board of directors “includes President Trump’s former Senior Advisor, Acting Attorney General, and Budget Director.”²⁴ Miller co-founded the group with Gene Hamilton, who served as counselor to the Attorney General at the US Department of Justice between 2017 and 2021. Reed Rubenstein, former deputy associate Attorney General, is listed as AFL’s senior vice president. Daniel Epstein, a former special assistant to the President and senior associate counsel to the President, is listed as the vice president.

AFL’s website also states that “the radical left is using its power inside and outside of the government to destroy our country” by “opening America’s borders, shutting down American energy, trying to take over American elections, and violating the fundamental civil rights of the American People.”²⁵

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a “blueprint” for Trump’s second presidency, listed the AFL as a member of its advisory board until July 2024.²⁶ America First Legal reportedly asked to be removed from the list of advisors to Project 2025, according to ABC News, with Miller telling the outlet, “I have zero involvement with Project 2025. Zero. None. I made an advice video a long while back for students. I have no involvement with the project whatsoever.” However, Miller appears in a promotional video as part of Project 2025’s “Presidential Administration Academy.”²⁷

According to reports from CNN, Miller is close with billionaire Elon Musk, who oversaw drastic changes to federal agencies through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Miller’s wife reportedly works as a spokesperson for DOGE.²⁸

Stance on Climate Change

November 11, 2024

Reporting from Politico’s E&E News referred to Miller as a “public critic” of the Paris Agreement, a 2015 international climate agreement to limit atmospheric warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.²⁹ Trump moved to remove the US from the agreement in June 2017, but the decision only took effect in November 2020.³⁰

October 30, 2018

A 2018 article from Los Angeles Magazine interviewed Miller’s former peers, teachers, and acquaintances from his childhood in California. One interviewee, a classmate from Miller’s high school who became a Vermont state legislator, wrote: “The biggest argument he and I ever had was about whether climate change was man-made or caused by volcanoes. I think at the time one of the European volcanoes had erupted, and people were commenting on the particulate matter it had put in the air. He lived in a fact-free and cherry-picked-data universe.”³¹

Key Quotes

March 22, 2025

In an interview with Fox News, Miller made comments about transgender soldiers in the US military, deportations, and the Democratic party.³²

Miller said, “They’re trying to make him have troops that are men in dresses pretending to be women.” He added, “Oh, and of course, men in women’s sports and men in women’s private spaces.”

On his administration’s immigration policies, Miller said that Democrats are “trying to stop him [Trump] from sending rapists out of the country” and “trying to stop him from ending wars overseas so that we won’t have a nuclear winter on this planet.”

He continued, “That’s the agenda of the Democrat Party: kill the Golden Age, make everyone crazy, suck all the joy and all the happiness out of our lives, and let a bunch of illegal alien rapists and criminals have their way with the country.”

March 21, 2025

In response to a video on X that showed a masked man telling a woman she had to sell her Tesla — referring to it as a ‘Nazi car’ — Miller posted, “A growing portion of the hard left has been violently radicalized. The left must never be returned to a position of national power.”³³

Tesla has been controversial due to the company’s founder, Elon Musk, and his role at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

March 18, 2025

In multiple posts on X, Miller alleged that judges around the country were attempting to “steal” Trump’s presidential term by blocking his administration’s executive orders and other actions in court.³⁴

Miller posted: “Unelected rogue judges are trying to steal years of time from a 4 year term. It’s the most egregious theft one can imagine: robbing the vote and voice of the American People. Any ‘conservative’ legal commentator who fails to condemn this lunacy has lost all credibility forever.”

Miller added on March 19:

“Currently, district court judges have assumed the mantle of Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Secretary of Homeland Security and Commander-in-Chief. Each day, they change the foreign policy, economic, staffing and national security policies of the Administration. Each day the nation arises to see what the craziest unelected local federal judge has decided the policies of the government of the United States shall be. It is madness. It is lunacy. It is pure lawlessness. It is the gravest assault on democracy. It must and will end.”

December 8, 2024

Speaking on Fox News, Miller said that in Trump’s first 100 days in office, there would be “energy reforms.” He added that Trump would deregulate the energy market during his presidency:³⁵

“When President Trump comes into office right away, he’s going to fully deregulate the energy market, fully deregulate the financial market, fully deregulate this economy. You’re going to get a jolt of job growth and job creation and inflation relief from his deregulatory agenda unlike anything anyone has ever seen before.”

July 27, 2023

In an interview on Newsmax, Miller said that charges against Trump were an attempt to prevent him from a second potential term as president. According to reporting from The Hill, Miller said,“It’s just further proof … that this is about an effort to use the Department of Justice to keep President Trump from returning to the White House, full stop.”³⁶

He added:

“I think any fair, impartial observer understands that if President Trump was not running for reelection, if he had said I’m just going to go retire to Bedminster, retire to Mar-a-Lago, I’m not going to run for president again, there is no charges brought in any of these cases anywhere in the country, whether it be in New York, Washington, D.C., Florida, or anywhere else.”

November 26, 2019

Over 100 Democrat members of Congress called for Miller’s resignation after the Southern Poverty Law Center published leaked emails between Miller and a reporter for right-wing news outlet Breitbart in which Miller shared links to two websites known to circulate white nationalist ideas.³⁷

Key Actions

March 16, 2025

According to reporting by Axios, Miller was a key actor in the Trump administration’s decision to ignore a court order that would have paused the deportation of dozens of Venezuelan people.³⁸

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported 250 people it alleged were gang members using the Alien Enemies Act of 1789. This wartime law gives the executive branch power to deport noncitizens without a judicial hearing.

Axios reported that Miller “orchestrated” the process alongside Secretary of Homeland Security Kristy Noem. Spokespeople for the White House claimed that their administration had not defied court orders, and that the planes were already in midair when the court gave the order.

The incident prompted fears of a “constitutional crisis” in which the executive branch of government — President Trump and his administration — did not abide by the principle that the judicial branch is a co-equal branch of government.

October 13, 2022

A press release from America First Legal announced that the group had obtained an internal memorandum from the US State Department that “expos[ed] the Biden Administration’s radical plan to centralize power, reshape the economy, and devastate America’s middle class, in the name of climate change.”³⁹

The press release, titled “Internal State Department Memorandum Reveals the Biden Administration’s Radical Plans to Centralize Power and Destroy the U.S. Economy in the Name of Climate Change,” alleged that the Biden administration “lied to the American people [about the Inflation Reduction Act], pretending to fight inflation while enacting a radical ‘climate change’ measure targeting ‘every sector of the U.S. economy.’”

The eight- page, unclassified memorandum emphasized the urgency of addressing climate change, outlined expected outcomes at the COP27 international climate conference, and contained information about existing climate change initiatives being undertaken by the US government.⁴⁰The memorandum also included information about the Inflation Reduction Act, a federal law that, among other actions, was designed to invest in renewable energy infrastructure around the country and help the US cut carbon emissions.

John A. Zadrozny, Deputy Director of Investigations at America First Legal, said of the memorandum, “America First Legal is proud to expose this internal State Department document, which confirms our suspicions about the intentionally mislabeled Inflation Reduction Act and the Biden Administration’s commitment to the left’s climate crisis hoax and other woke nonsense.”

July 1, 2022

A press release from America First Legal announced that the group had sued 11 government agencies “for records on Biden appointees advancing radical, woke agenda.”⁴¹ One aspect of this “agenda” was listed as “Squeezing oil and gas production in the name of climate change despite rising energy prices,” which linked to an article in Forbes titled “EPA Targets Permian Basin, Widening Biden’s War On Oil And Gas.”⁴²