Stephen Miller

His mother's ancestors—Wolf Lieb Glotzer and his wife, Bessie—emigrated to the United States from the Russian Empire's Antopol, in what is present-day Belarus, arriving in New York on January 7, 1903, on the German ship S.S. Moltke, thus escaping the 1903–06 anti-Jewish pogroms in Belarus and other parts of the Russian Empire.

When his great-grandmother arrived in the U.S. in 1906, she spoke only Yiddish, the historical language of the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe.

Miller has said he became a committed conservative after reading Guns, Crime, and Freedom, a book opposing gun control by Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association.

While attending Santa Monica High School, Miller began appearing on conservative talk radio.

Stephen Miller (born August 23, 1985) is an American political advisor who served as a senior advisor for policy and White House director of speechwriting to President Donald Trump.

His politics have been described as far-right and anti-immigration.

He was previously the communications director for then-Senator Jeff Sessions.

He was also a press secretary for U.S. representatives Michele Bachmann and John Shadegg.

As a speechwriter for Trump, Miller helped write Trump's inaugural address.

He was a key adviser from the early days of Trump's presidency.

An immigration hardliner, Miller was a chief architect of Trump's travel ban, the administration's reduction of refugees accepted to the United States, and Trump's policy of separating migrant children from their parents.

He prevented the publication of internal administration studies that showed that refugees had a net positive effect on government revenues.

Miller was born on August 23, 1985, in Santa Monica, California, where he was raised, the second of three children in the Jewish family of Michael D. Miller, a real estate investor, and Miriam (née Glosser).

In 2002, at the age of 16, Miller wrote a letter to the editor of the Santa Monica Outlook criticizing his school's response to the September 11 attacks; he wrote: "Osama bin Laden would feel very welcome at Santa Monica High School."

While in high school, Miller cited Rush Limbaugh's book The Way Things Ought To Be as his favorite.

Miller invited conservative activist David Horowitz to speak, first at the high school and later at Duke University; afterward he denounced the fact that neither institution would authorize the event.

Miller was in the habit of "riling up his fellow [high school] classmates with controversial statements"; for instance, he told Latino students to speak only English.

Both when running for student government at his high school and later as a university student he made several comments that belittled and ridiculed janitors.

At 16, Miller called in to The Larry Elder Show, a conservative radio show, to complain about his high school's alleged lack of patriotism because it did not recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

David Horowitz, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as an anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant extremist, published an essay by Miller, "How I Changed My Left-Wing High School", on his website.

Horowitz has been described as an influential figure in Miller's early life.

In 2007, Miller earned his bachelor's degree from Duke University, where he studied political science.

He served as president of the Duke chapter of Horowitz's Students for Academic Freedom and wrote conservative columns for the school newspaper.

Miller gained national attention for his defense of the students who were wrongly accused of rape in the Duke lacrosse case.

While attending Duke, Miller accused poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou of "racial paranoia" and described student organization Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán (MEChA) as a "radical national Hispanic group that believes in racial superiority."

Miller and the Duke Conservative Union helped co-member Richard Spencer, a Duke graduate student at the time, with fundraising and promotion for an immigration policy debate in March 2007 between Peter Laufer, an open-borders activist and University of Oregon professor, and journalist Peter Brimelow, founder of the anti-immigration website VDARE.

Spencer later became an important figure in the white supremacist movement and president of the National Policy Institute; he coined the term "alt-right".

In a 2016 interview, Spencer said he had mentored Miller at Duke.

Describing their close relationship, Spencer said that he was "kind of glad no one's talked about this", for fear of harming Trump.

In a later blog post, he said the relationship had been exaggerated.

Miller has said he has "absolutely no relationship with Mr. Spencer" and that he "completely repudiate[s] his views, and his claims are 100 percent false."

Duke University's former senior vice president, John Burness, told The News & Observer in February 2017 that, while at Duke, Miller "seemed to assume that if you were in disagreement with him, there was something malevolent or stupid about your thinking—incredibly intolerant."

According to Jane Stancill of The News & Observer, during the Duke lacrosse case, Miller's was the "lonely voice insisting that the players were innocent."

History professor KC Johnson described Duke's atmosphere during the case as not "conducive to speaking up" and praised Miller's role in it: "I think it did take a lot of courage, and he has to get credit for that."

Miller devoted more of his school paper column, "Miller Time," to the lacrosse scandal than any other topic.

After graduating from college, Miller began to work as a press secretary for Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, a Tea Party Republican, after David Horowitz connected them.

Miller reportedly played a central role in the resignation in April 2019 of Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, who he believed was insufficiently hawkish on immigration.

As a White House spokesman, Miller on multiple occasions made false and unsubstantiated claims regarding widespread electoral fraud.

Emails leaked in November 2019 showed that Miller had promoted articles from white nationalist publications VDARE and American Renaissance, and had espoused conspiracy theories.

Miller is on the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of extremists.