Texas U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro has introduced a House resolution condemning White House aide and noted white supremacist Stephen Miller, noting in a statement received by Daily Kos, “As Senior Advisor to President Donald Trump, he has pushed his vile beliefs forward through major policy changes which have sown divisiveness into our federal policy. His work in the administration has encouraged a resurgence of racism and bigotry, creating a climate of fear, danger, and violence for communities of color and immigrants.”
The resolution, co-sponsored by Rep. Judy Chu, Rep. Karen Bass, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Rep. Don Beyer, Rep. Brad Schneider, and Sen. Kamala Harris—who plans to introduce a Senate version—further demands Miller’s immediate removal from the White House. “When we see the families suffering at the border or being torn apart by ICE raids, we can look to Stephen Miller as the main architect of the Administration’s cruel anti-immigrant policies,” Castro said. “He must be removed from the White House immediately to stop further damage to our country and our communities.”
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Congressional leaders have long demanded Miller’s resignation, but these calls have escalated following a leak of hundreds of emails further exposing his white supremacists beliefs. “Miller directly and repeatedly suggested story ideas to the website Breitbart,” the resolution states, “pushing Breitbart’s news coverage to reference White supremacist, racist, and eugenic ideologies.” Legislators note that the former Breitbart writer who leaked the communications “has acknowledged Stephen Miller’s suggestions were used to ‘spin a narrative where immigrants of color were not only dangerous, violent individuals but also posed an existential threat to America.’”
The emails also exposed Miller’s affection for one anti-immigrant hate group in particular, the Tanton network’s Center for Immigration Studies, sharing the group’s racist garbage with Breitbart writers nearly 50 times in hopes they’d help him spread his radical beliefs. Miller also praised the scrawlings of Jason Richwine, a CIS contributor who in 2013 was forced to resign from the Heritage Foundation after his Harvard University dissertation arguing that Latinos have lower IQs than whites was exposed.
Five years later, Miller’s devotion to CIS has only grown more intense. “CIS researchers say the White House has invited them into policymaking discussions,” the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch said. As the resolution states, this has been dangerous for America’s immigrant families: “Stephen Miller is now widely understood to direct immigration policy for the Trump administration, including support for legislative and administrative proposals that would severely reduce immigration to the United States.”
Miller has to go. “The House of Representatives does hereby condemn Stephen Miller for his trafficking in bigotry, hatred, and divisive political rhetoric and policies that are inconsistent with the trust and confidence placed in him as a Senior Advisor to the President,” say the co-sponsors of the resolution, declaring that Miller “should immediately resign from office, and if he does not resign, the President should remove him from office.”
“Since his earliest days in government, Stephen Miller has zealously worked to spread bigotry and xenophobia,” Chu said. “And, as leaked e-mails show, he has been more than willing to disseminate and amplify white supremacist and neo-Nazi propaganda in service of this agenda of hate. No community of color has been spared his deliberate cruelty, including Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. If Stephen Miller had it his way, our United States immigration system would revert back to a time when Asian immigrants were completely barred from the United States.”
“Americans, and in particular the Latino community, will never forget it was President Trump and Stephen Miller’s hateful rhetoric that helped inspire the deadly attack in El Paso where 22 individuals were killed for being Latino,” Castro said. “When we see the families suffering at the border or being torn apart by ICE raids, we can look to Stephen Miller as the main architect of the Administration’s cruel anti-immigrant policies. He must be removed from the White House immediately to stop further damage to our country and our communities.”