Luke Ford

Julia Ioffe writes:

“I’M IN HEAVEN!” Ann Coulter tweeted when it was announced in late January that Trump had hired Miller, whom Coulter called “Sessions’ brain trust.” The hire, Coulter felt, offered a sign that Trump was “not backing down on immigration.”
How did Stephen Miller come to occupy such an extreme position on immigration? Strangely, it was his experience coming of age in a liberal Jewish family in liberal Santa Monica, the Berkeley of southern California. “I think it was growing up in California, he saw the role that mass migration played turning a red state blue,” says one former Senate colleague. “He was fearful that that would happen to the rest of the country.”
Miller was born into a family of lawyers and salesmen, two professions he never pursued but clearly has in him. His parents were Democrats, but Miller was pulled in a different direction early, converted to the conservative cause by a copy of NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre’s 1994 book, Guns, Crime, and Freedom, a blistering takedown of the arguments for gun control.
Miller was an ardent, dewy-eyed patriot, which often led him to surprising conclusions. Shortly after graduating high school, Miller penned a column for a Christian publication called “My Dream for the End of Racism.” “The U.S. abolished slavery in 90 years, a time span far shorter than that of other nations, and indeed we acquired emancipation through our bloodiest, most gruesome war,” he wrote. “This no doubt due to the unique status of our beloved nation as being one founded on the principle of equality.”
The 9/11 attacks hit when Miller was a junior at Santa Monica High School. The event shocked him to his core and left him feeling isolated in his patriotism, lost in a sea of peacenik liberalism. “During that dreadful time of national tragedy, anti-Americanism had spread all over the school like a rash,” he reminisced in a column called “How I Changed My Left-Wing High School.” “The co-principal broadcasted his doubts about the morality of the air strikes against the Taliban to the entire school via the PA system. One teacher even dragged the American flag across the floor as we were sending off brave young men to risk their lives for it.” Miller describes contacting conservative talk radio personality Larry Elder, and going on his show to complain about this school. Thus began a cycle that would repeat itself over and over in high school and college: Miller would clash with school administrators over a perceived leftist conspiracy—the school not saying the Pledge of Allegiance, say—then escalate the conflict by taking it to a conservative talk show, infuriating the administrators but yielding a compromise in Miller’s favor. After his appeal to Elder, for instance, the Pledge of Allegiance would now be said twice a week, though that was still not enough for Miller. “Policy dictates it should be said every day,” he wrote in a local paper.
The pattern repeated itself often enough that Miller wore it as a badge of honor. “Stephen Miller, 17 years old, just graduated from Santa Monica High School,” the bio under his column read. “Since his Junior year in High School, he has been a guest on local and national radio over thirty times, primarily as an advocate for freedom in education.”