Spreading Stephen Miller Like Measles

It is no secret that the new White House chief of staff, Stephen Miller, is the architect of the second Trump administration’s mass detention and deportation program that has expelled nearly a million people from the United States, terrorized communities and left dozens of people dead at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and the contractors responsible for detention centers. Less known is the conservative program to model a new generation of conservative operatives on his extremism. According to a late October report from Semafor, the conservative group American Moment is working to position “10,000 Stephen Millers” in agencies and offices where they can push the most right-wing policies and block progressive reforms — regardless of who controls the White House. 

Founded in 2021 by Nick Solheim, Jake Mercier and Saurabh Sharma, the main purpose of American Moment is to

find, train, and place young talent in the 15,000 influential positions across public-policy organizations, congressional offices, presidential administrations, and allied businesses. Every single member of our cadre must be exceptionally competent, possess good character, and above all have a worldview that places America first. 

We use a constellation of professional, policy, and social programming to find talent, train them in what they need to know, place them with teams that matter, knit them into a united community, provide them with lifelong mentorship, and equip them to advance an agenda to restore American greatness.

American Moment “hasn’t sought or gotten much publicity by design,” notes Semafor. Indeed, one of its co-founders, Sharma, said on the group’s podcast that, if it were up to him, it “would be a completely dark-arts project, almost like a glacier. You’d see a tiny 10% poking out over top, and the rest of it would happen without any attention whatsoever.” Their goal, according to Semafor,  

has been to bring the Trump generation of young people to Washington. That has partly meant broadening the pipeline beyond those with elite credentials. The program has clear ideological tests: Applicants should oppose immigration, free trade, and foreign adventures.

The damage that one Stephen Miller has already done to the country and countless lives is bad enough. Even worse is the prospect of thousands of mini-Millers spread through dozens of agencies, working quietly for their entire careers to undermine the rule of law and basic government function. While there is no shortage of urgent tasks to be taken up by progressives and the new Democratic majorities, some bandwidth should be reserved to monitor — and check — the long game of American Moment and allied groups.