Stephen Miller Brings His Trumpist Crusade to the Courts
America First Legal, Miller’s right-wing answer to the ACLU, is suing the Biden administration over immigration and relief for Black farmers
Eric Larson 12 October 2021: "Stephen Miller, the firebrand political operative known as the architect of former President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, is reviving his cultural crusade at the helm of a new activist legal group.
The 36-year-old former speechwriter and senior White House aide is heading up America First Legal (AFL), a conservative nonprofit that boasts of close ties to the former president, disdain for the “radical left,” and a wide-ranging plan to challenge the Biden administration in court.
The group has already scored some early victories, including in lawsuits accusing the U.S. of discriminating against White business owners. Earlier this year, federal judges granted AFL’s requests to temporarily block the U.S. from earmarking billions of dollars in pandemic-relief funds for minority-owned restaurants and farms. AFL also won permission to intervene in the U.S. Department of Justice’s high-stakes challenge to a new Texas ban on abortion. The group represents anti-abortion activists in the case, which could ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
ALF’s other targets include everything from LGBTQ anti-discrimination policies to the teaching of critical race theory in schools.
> It remains to be seen whether AFL, which is based in Washington, can sustain its early victories as the politically charged cases wind their way through the legal process. But prevailing in court may be secondary to using the underlying issues to raise money and keep Trump voters pumped up.
A Trumpist answer to legal groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Common Cause, AFL is the latest example of the former president’s inner circle seeking to rouse his movement as he weighs a possible 2024 run to return to the White House. AFL’s board includes Miller, former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, and former acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker.
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Paul S. Ryan, vice president of litigation at Common Cause, says AFL is using fear and hyperbole to tap Trump supporters for money and wait for the next election cycle. “They seem to be using the Trump playbook—using highly divisive, hot-button culture-war issues—which isn’t surprising,” Ryan says. “They’re bringing Trumpism to courts across the country.”
AFL and Texas have already gained traction with the case’s Trump-appointed judge, who said in a recent ruling that “negligently allowing even one Covid-19-positive” noncitizen child into the country is wrong, but willfully admitting thousands “is deplorable.” The Justice Department argues that the case is without me
AFL’s website says the group is “committed to fighting for all Americans—regardless of race, color, religion, or creed,” adding that it will “defend the rights of all Americans from attacks by anyone, in any party, who would seek to attack their freedom, their dignity, and their equal rights under the law.”
The cases AFL has brought so far make it clear the group intends to have national reach and a high profile. In May, it offered pro bono legal help to the state of Louisiana in a suit accusing the Biden administration of trying to “abolish” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by releasing thousands of undocumented immigrants who enter the country illegally. Miller, in a statement, called the case “one of the most important lawsuits happening anywhere in the country.”
AFL’s Freedom of Information Act requests are arguably even more political than its lawsuits, touching on the latest outrages being condemned by guests on Fox News, Newsmax, and OAN, where Miller and other AFL representatives make frequent appearances. The FOIA requests seek to uncover suspected wrongdoing by the Biden administration and Democrats on a range of issues, including Biden’s scrapping of Trump’s office supporting victims of crime by undocumented immigrants. AFL has even suggested wrongdoing by the Senate in approving Biden’s judicial nominees too quickly.
One way the group is able to juggle so many legal issues at once is by joining litigation that’s already under way, as it did with the Louisiana case over ICE and the suit over Texas’ abortion ban. . . .
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Trump Senor Advisor Stephen Miller Outed As Ally For White Nationalism
Retribution from a fired former editor of Breitbart News
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Katie McHugh, who was an editor for Breitbart from April 2014 to June 2017, leaked the emails to Hatewatch in Juneto review, analyze and disseminate to the public. McHugh was 23 when she started at Breitbart and also became active in the anti-immigrant movement, frequently rubbing shoulders with white nationalists. McHugh was fired from Breitbart in 2017 after posting anti-Muslim tweets.
She has since renounced the far right.
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“What Stephen Miller sent to me in those emails has become policy at the Trump administration,” McHugh told Hatewatch.
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McHugh, Sept. 6, 2015, 3:34 p.m. ET: “[Breitbart editor] Neil [Munro], Julia [Hahn] and I are going to do a series of stories on [nonwhite SAT scores] to break it down. Neil says it’s easier for people to digest that way and change their minds.”
Miller, Sept. 6, 2015, 3:41 p.m. ET: “On the education angle? Makes sense. Also, you see the Pope saying west must, in effect, get rid of borders. Someone should point out the parallels to Camp of the Saints.”Hahn wrote a Breitbart story on Sept. 24, 2015, headlined “‘Camp of the Saints’ Seen Mirrored in Pope’s Message.” The article ran 18 days after Miller’s email on the same theme. Hahn is now an aide to Trump
The SPLC claims to have three- to four-year-old emails, many previously reported on, involving an individual whom we fired years ago for a multitude of reasons, and you now have an even better idea why we fired her. Having said that, it is not exactly a newsflash that political staffers pitch stories to journalists – sometimes those pitches are successful, sometimes not.
It is no surprise to us that the SPLC opposes news coverage of illegal-immigrant crime and believes such coverage is disproportionate, especially when compared to the rest of the media, which often refuse to cover such crimes.
No one in our senior management has read the book, “Camp of the Saints,” but we take The New York Times at their word that it is a “cautionary tale,” and the National Review at theirs that “the central issue of the novel is not race but culture and political principles.”
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