Stephen Miller is the architect of our American Nightmare

From the Gestapo tactics of ICE and turning the military on Democratic cities to the extreme politicization of college campuses and efforts to use student visas as a way to curb free speech, the most un-American of policies implemented under the Trump administration have a common architect: Stephen Miller.

Miller’s official title is “White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Homeland Security Adviser," a newly designated position meant to give him an official capacity within the administration. The moniker is grossly understated, however, given Miller’s sway over President Donald Trump’s policy decisions. Indeed, there does not seem to be one person in the president’s orbit who wields as much meaningful influence as the 40-year-old Miller.

In Trump’s first administration, there existed a cadre of so-called adults in the room. Given that the president and the majority of his top campaign staff had no background in public policy, the administration needed people who knew how to operate within government.

Many of the initial picks came from the establishment wing of the GOP: RNC Chairman Reince Priebus was tapped as his Chief of Staff. Senator Jeff Sessions was named Attorney General, banker Steve Mnuchin as Secretary of the Treasury, retired Marine Corps General James Mattis as Secretary of Defense, and ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State.

Despite having never served his country and actively dodging service in Vietnam, Trump showed an initial fondness toward generals. In addition to Mattis, General Michael Flynn was named National Security Advisor. Flynn was forced to resign in short order after lying to the administration regarding his communications with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and was replaced by retired Army General H.R. McMaster. Retired U.S. Marine Corps General John Kelly, who had initially headed Homeland Security, replaced Priebus as chief of staff just months into the term.

Except for Kelly, who lasted nearly a year and a half as Chief of Staff, the tenures were very brief, and Trump’s selections were deeply unimpressed by his leadership skills. Tillerson reportedly called Trump a "moron" who doesn't like to read with a "limited" understanding of global events and history. Kelly, who confirmed that Trump would not read anything longer than one page and preferred charts and graphs, warned that he preferred a "dictator approach," scorned the Constitution, and fit the definition of a fascist. He also warned about Trump's strong inclination to use our military against U.S. citizens.

Mattis also cited Trump's unwillingness to read and lack of "mental framework" for complex issues, said Trump was "the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us," adding "We're actually showing how to destroy America … We are declaring war on one another inside America." Mattis also used the terms "dangerous" and "unfit" to describe his former boss and said he left the post when Trump's ideas escalated from bad to felony bad. Former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats reportedly said, "To him, a lie is not a lie. It's just what he thinks. He doesn't know the difference between the truth and a lie."

Two things can be said about Trump’s first term. There were many instances in which his worst inclinations were abated by those adults in the room, perhaps most notably both Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, on different occasions having to dissuade him from ordering that peaceful protestors be shot in the legs. We were also spared many of Trump’s worst policy inclinations because he was, in most instances, too lazy to follow through beyond an executive order. He had no real interest in governing beyond decree and would often move from one dumb idea to the next without successful implementation because the adults in the room knew better and could manage to steer him away toward another topic.

That general ineffectiveness likely contributed significantly to his reelection in 2024. Many Republicans commonly pointed out that he had already been president and we still had a democracy, ignoring the fact that were it not for his lazy approach to, well, everything, the insurrection he attempted to orchestrate first through unwilling accomplices like Vice President Mike Pence and Attorney General William Barr and then through the madness of the mob, might have been successful.

What too few seemed to calculate was the possibility that a second Trump administration, especially having had four years to regroup, might prove much more capable of achieving the authoritarianism he clearly admires in other leaders. His political orbit changed drastically. Gone were the establishment veterans, replaced by hardcore extreme-right ideologues and outright sycophants. Fringe members of his first term, who struggled to gain influence, even came together to create a blueprint for derailing democracy should Trump win in 2024.

It's called Project 2025, and while Trump insisted he didn't know what it was and hadn't read it, while on the campaign trail, he is now bragging that OMB Director Russ Vought, "of Project 2025 fame," is taking advantage of an “unprecedented opportunity” to slash government agencies during the government shutdown. Vought was deputy director of OMB in the first term and was one of the people in Trump's orbit who played the long game to gain more significant influence, should there be a second administration. His bet paid off. 

However, no one ascended higher from the first term to the second than Stephen Miller. Miller’s political mojo seems to sprout from a simple tactic: encourage Trump’s worst inclinations. Miller grew up in Santa Monica and studied political science at Duke. His family was said to have more moderately conservative and even liberal views, but Miller was described as a contrarian loner at all levels of education. He became a gun fanatic and hardcore zionist who had a particular disdain for immigrants, especially those from south of our border.

Miller began working in politics as a press secretary for former Republican presidential hopeful Michelle Bachmann and later landed a gig as press secretary for then-Senator Jeffery Sessions (R-AL). Sessions was the first sitting Senator to endorse Trump and was rewarded for his loyalty with the AG spot in his first cabinet, an appointment that didn’t last long once Sessions proved unwilling to break the law on Trump’s behalf. He was, however, able to bring Miller along as a senior policy advisor, speech writer, and opening act at Trump rallies. Miller achieved a surprising amount of success in influencing immigration policies for someone in that role, who was only 31 years old when Trump took office in 2017.

Miller was subpoenaed by both the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack and the special counsel investigation due to his promotion of false claims of election fraud and his key involvement in the Trump fake electors plot. He testified privately before the select committee again in 2022, during which he was questioned extensively about Trump’s rally speech preceding the attempted insurrection, specifically regarding potentially incendiary language. Miller was not charged criminally.

During the four years between Trump’s terms, Miller strategically amassed power and influence via his hardline stance on the border and calls to expand Trump's immigration policies, including raids, mass deportations, and larger detention facilities. He found an ally in Trump mega-donor Elon Musk, with the two bonding over their shared fear that mass immigration would lead to the decimation of Western culture.

Miller was the architect of ICE’s massive expansion (its budget is now more than Israel's entire military), the use of masked agents who do not identify themselves, deporting or kidnapping people, without due process, and sending them to a foreign gulag, as well as the agency's shift from “the worst of the worst” criminals to rounding up day laborers and intervening in immigration hearings. A recent military-style raid in Chicago, during which federal agents rappelled from  Black Hawk helicopters onto the rooftops of residential buildings, demonstrates just how quickly this agency has transformed into something we haven't seen in this country since the battle over integration and the Civil Rights Act. 

Miller was behind Trump’s effort to use the Alien Enemies Act to conduct mass deportations without due process, a plot he detailed during a 2023 interview. He was also the first member of the administration to publicly suggest suspending habeas corpus, a constitutional right that protects individuals from arbitrary detention by the state. Speaking to reporters at the White House in May, Miller said, "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion, so I would say that is an option we’re actively looking at." Miller wants to test the characterization of immigration issues as an "invasion," and given SCOTUS's reluctance to rein in this administration, and ICE's increasing aggression toward citizen protestors, that is becoming a more terrifying prospect with each day that passes.

Most troublingly, Miller has been telegraphing an effort to use government force to stifle any and all dissent to the Project 2025 agenda. Miller was a central figure to the document, serving as an influential advisor and key architect of its immigration policies through America First Legal, the conservative organization he founded, which was initially listed as a member of Project 2025’s advisory board. His method is to other his detractors as the "enemy from within," a phrase the president himself has now seized on, most notably using it in an incoherent rant to the military's top brass this week while defending his use of federal troops in American cities. “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military,” said Trump. A Signalgate sequel exposed by the Minneapolis Star Tribune on Saturday shows that the administration has actually been discussing sending the elite 82nd Airborne Division into Portland!

You'll notice a trend in which Miller adopts a rhetorical approach, and Trump quickly incorporates it into his own talking points. 

“There is an ideology that has steadily been growing in this country, which hates everything that is good, righteous, and beautiful and celebrates everything that is warped, twisted, and depraved,” Miller wrote in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination. “This ideology has one unifying thread, the insatiable thirst for destruction. It is an ideology that leads, always, inevitably, and willfully, to violence. The fate of millions depends on the defeat of this wicked ideology.”

On Sean Hannity’s show, Miller went further.

“The last message that Charlie Kirk gave me before he joined his creator in heaven was he said that we have to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence,” Miller told the Fox News host. “And we are going to do that, under President Trump’s leadership. I don’t care how. It could be a RICO charge, a conspiracy charge, conspiracy against the United States, insurrection. But we are going to do what it takes to dismantle the organizations and the entities that are fomenting riots, that are doxxing, that are trying to inspire terrorism, that are committing acts of wanton violence. The power of law enforcement, under President Trump’s leadership, will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and, if you’ve broken the law, to take away your freedom.”

As the president threatens to send federal troops to Chicago and Portland, Miller has become completely unhinged: "I see the guns and badges in this room,” he told Memphis police officers this week. “You are unleashed. The handcuffs that you are carrying, they’re not on you anymore. They’re on the criminals. Whatever you need to get it done, we’re going to get it done."

Miller was also the architect behind National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” Much more potent than an executive order, NSPM-7 directs federal agencies to investigate and disrupt networks involved in political violence and intimidation, instructing the National Joint Terrorism Task Force to lead a comprehensive strategy targeting individuals and organizations engaged in acts designed to suppress lawful political activity or obstruct the rule of law, including through doxing, swatting, rioting, and other forms of civil disorder.

Most disturbingly, it identifies beliefs such as anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity, along with hostility toward traditional views on family, religion, and morality, as motivations and indicators for domestic terrorism. The directive expands investigative authority to include not only principal actors but also funders, officers, employees, and affiliated organizations that may be seen as inciting political violence, while mandating that the Department of Justice prioritize prosecutions. That is a very wide net using extremely subjective terms, and I think we all know it is not going to be trained on the kind of organizations that foment very real political violence from the right, and is likely to be abused to restrict speech and political organization from both Democrats and Republicans who are not aligned with MAGA.

The ineptitude of cosplaying podcasters and TV talking heads like Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth is dangerous, to say the least. The cowardly fealty shown by figures like Pam Bondi, Scott Bessett, and Marco Rubio is a disgrace. But the unhinged, fascist, white nationalist zealotry of Stephen Miller is what should be keeping you up at night. Because the American reality the rest of us rightfully fear most is nothing short of his wildest fantasy. There is no country in the world more in danger of repeating the fate of Nazi Germany or falling into the Gilead described in The Handmaid's Tale than one in which Miller is calling the shots. 

During the Mueller investigation, expressing frustration with Attorney General Jeff Sessions' recusal and longing for the aggressive loyalty his former mentor once provided,  Trump reportedly screamed, "Where is my Roy Cohn?" He may think that he has found him in Stephen Miller. I believe he has found his Joseph Goebbels.

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Dennis "Mitch" Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times and the host of our weekly podcast. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County government since 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University and later served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Click here for his bio. Mitch is also the author of three novels and a short story collection available here. He can be reached at editor@thebradentontimes.com.