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ChooseDemocracy.us,
You haven’t heard from us in a few weeks. We’ve had our hands full with trainings or giving presentations (like this one at CUNY). But we wanted to share the latest from Daniel Hunter in Waging Nonviolence “It’s time to oust Stephen Miller.”
If you don’t want to read the whole article, just go ahead and send a letter at OustMiller.com.
Kristi Noem defamed murdered Veterans Affairs intensive care nurse Alex Pretti by calling him a domestic terrorist. But she didn’t act on her own. According to Axios reporting, Noem took direction from Stephen Miller, who first called Alex “an assassin.” Noem explained, “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done at the direction of the president and Stephen.”
Kristi Noem’s firing is a sign of shifting times. And while many eyes are on her successor, it may be a moment to set our sights a little higher.
As my mentor used to tell me, “Being only on the defensive is another way of saying losing.” There is no pathway out of the authoritarian morass we are in without people developing offensive campaigns.
While the movement still needs a bigger and broader vision, one immediate step is turning attention from Noem toward Stephen Miller, and calling for his ouster.
We can take a page from the firing of Kristi Noem: Movements don’t always convince powerful officials directly — they raise the political cost of their position until other actors intervene.
It’s okay to cheer — because we did this
It’s difficult to trace what caused Trump to finally axe Noem. His actions are guttural and reactive. But Trump was apparently livid after Noem told Congress that he had approved her emergency $220 million ad buys that gave money to her friends and featured her (at the expense of our children’s schools or fixing roadways). That means we don’t get to her firing without that disastrous Congressional hearing.
And that hearing only came about from public pressure. Yes, the two murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good had garnered attention. But lawmakers are fantastic at avoiding controversy and keeping their heads down. They’ve fully avoided doing anything of consequence about an off-duty ICE officer killing Keith Porter Jr.; a federal agent killing Julian Bailey in Washington, D.C.; the ICE murder of Silverio Villegas González during a traffic stop; or the case of half-blind Nurul Amin Shah Alam, who was wrongfully picked up by ICE and then abandoned miles from his house — only to be found dead five days later.
All of these stories involve people of color and have gained less notoriety. So let’s pause and remind ourselves that our attention matters a great deal here. Organizers made sure that the murders of Pretti and Good, at the peak of unrest in Minneapolis, in front of many witnesses, with multiple videos, were impossible to ignore.
Because we are quite powerful. The risk-taking on the streets of Minneapolis and the disciplined pressure on congresspeople became so great that Democrats are holding firm and (as of writing) have still not approved additional funding for the Department of Homeland Security.
None of this would have been possible without our growing people power.
We don’t have direct control over what those in power do. But we can compel it. It’s like politicians are a balloon. Tied to a rock, they are constantly being blown by oligarchs away from the people. But in moments where we activate and remind politicians that their power ultimately flows from us, we are able to pick up the rock and move them. Street activists create drama and spectacle that sharpen public attention. Insiders, meanwhile, must seize the brief windows when more radical steps become possible — and take them.
This was one of the lessons the civil rights movement gave us. One of our greats, Bernard LaFayette, who died on March 5, had been tasked with setting up the on-the-ground organizing for voter registration in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. When 600 Black marchers set off on a march from Selma to Montgomery to demand voting rights, Alabama state troopers viciously attacked them with clubs and tear gas as they crossed over Edmund Pettus Bridge, in what came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.”
The public reaction pushed Lyndon Johnson to move Congress to pass voting legislation — the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that Trump is right now trying to destroy.
This is the lesson of the Tesla Takedown movement, too. Elon Musk had so much to gain by staying in power. We didn’t control the specific moment that led to his fallout with Trump. But we forced his ouster through a combination of outside pressure at showrooms and boycotts coupled with inside bureaucratic resistance, like millions refusing to obey his demand for weekly email updates from civil servants. All of these tactics created pressure on his shareholders, his workers, his fans and Trump’s cabinet members, which ultimately helped split him and Trump apart.
And that’s what we’ll have to do as well with who some Trump officials are accurately and jealously calling “President Miller.”
Why Stephen Miller?
There are some awful characters in the White House. Most are cruel. Some are persuasive. A few are tactically and bureaucratically competent. Miller is the rare one that’s all three — and he has the influence in government to match.
Kristi Noem has been an honorable Trump lackey — obedient, dramatic, chaos-driven and cruel. But Stephen Miller is the Trump whisperer — a policy architect and ideological driver behind so much of the bad that’s happening. His role is uniquely powerful — as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt explained to The Atlantic, Miller “oversees every policy the administration touches.”
He allegedly orchestrated blowing up fishing boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific, killing at least 157 people — an act which senators and international law experts have called a war crime and crime against humanity.
Attribution of Miller’s actions is sometimes hard because he eschews formal process. Allegedly he crafted the Compact for Excellence in Higher Education to rip up universities. He designed family separation at the southern border. He approved every executive order at the start of Trump’s presidency, including rolling back LGBTQ+ protections. And he, of course, is the primary architect of Trump’s violent and callous deportation policy.
As if destroying the lives of immigrants wasn’t enough, Miller is profiting off of it. He has invested as much as $250,000 in Palantir, even as policy decisions he makes could benefit the company. The Project on Government Oversight reported that ethics experts say it “raises conflict of interest” concerns — normal folks just call it corruption.
The Southern Poverty Law Center added Stephen Miller to their Extremist Files in 2020— alongside people like David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan. This designation came after leaked emails of his promoted white nationalist websites, “white genocide” books, and eugenics laws that Adolf Hilter used in “Mein Kampf.”
A new site called StephenMillerHatesYou.com shows how Stephen Miller hates you. If you’re Black. Gay. Poor. A small business owner. Muslim. Anti-imperialist. Native. Believe in the free press. Have a disability. Want a breathable climate. His policy portfolio is only outpaced by his hatred for most of us in this country.
An election about President Miller
Despite Stephen Miller’s incredible influence, no one voted for him. And he is deeply unpopular: A January poll found only 17 percent of respondents had a positive opinion of him. Imagine if we had coordinated campaigns displaying his contempt for this country!
Kristi Noem’s exit shows that it is possible to take on Stephen Miller. Her firing marks the first major cabinet dismissal in Trump’s second administration, in a return to Trump’s vintage move: “You’re fired.” White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has kept the cabinet stable, but this leaves the door open for more turnover.
It shows there are limits — even inside a chaotic administration. It vindicates the collective power of the people fighting this regime. And it puts the wind in our sails.
Some initial pressure is building. Following Noem’s ouster, Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said Stephen Miller is a “big problem” and “should go” — calls that should be echoed. On March 28, Free DC and the No Kings DC march will bring their message directly to Stephen Miller’s doorstep with an action at his home at Fort McNair. Their message: “join us to make it clear that No Kings means #FireStephenMiller.”
A campaign against Stephen Miller would likely follow a pattern similar to the pressure that built against Noem and Musk — a combination of inside and outside pressure that steadily raises the political cost of keeping him in power.
Rather than focusing on Noem’s replacement, it’s time to start focusing on direct accountability for Miller: publicly demanding his removal, confronting the administration with the question of why someone the public never elected now wields such extraordinary influence in the White House.
Exposure is also critical: digging up and amplifying the long trail of controversies, statements and policies tied to Miller’s record. The goal is not simply criticism — it is repetition. The more the public hears his words and sees his record, the less support there is for the ideology he represents.
Meanwhile, elected officials can be pushed to exercise formal oversight: investigations, hearings and public questioning that drag his decisions and influence into the light. When controversial figures are forced to answer questions under scrutiny, their power often begins to erode.
The strategy is simple: Turn the spotlight toward him and refuse to turn it off.
Some folks have created this very campaign: Oust Miller. Launched recently, it offers toolkits to help focus attention and build collective pressure.
Even using the phrase “President Miller” may help drive a wedge between him and Trump, since Trump can’t stand anyone else taking credit for his ideas. If the spotlight stays on Miller, one of two things happens: either the pressure becomes great enough that he is forced out of the White House, or the public face of the administration — and the upcoming election cycle — becomes more associated with the man whose ideology the vast majority of Americans reject.
Miller thrives in the shadows of bureaucratic power. He is combative, ideological and relentlessly focused on pushing a vision of the country rooted in exclusion. But that can also lead to his downfall. The more the country sees him, the clearer the stakes of the election and the future of our democracy.
So as we move toward bigger demands, one clear next step presents itself: Let’s oust Stephen Miller.
In solidarity,
Choose Democracy
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