One of Trump’s most powerful aides was quietly weakened — but now he's back

When Never Trump conservatives voice their disdain for the second Trump Administration, White House senior adviser Stephen Miller is one of the people they cite as symptomatic of everything they dislike about the MAGA movement. Miller is a divisive figure not only among Democrats, but also, on parts of the right.

Miller, however, is an unwavering Donald Trump loyalist and has so far remained the president's good graces.

In The Atlantic, journalists Michael Scherer and Nick Miroff examine Miller's turbulent role in the Trump Administration, noting that he has had his ups and downs yet continues to hold on.

Miller, they observe, favors a "hardline" policy on immigration, while Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and border czar Tom Homan are trying to appear more nuanced in their approach.

"Homan, who kept an arms-length relationship with (former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi) Noem, has said that he speaks with Mullin 'every day, several times a day,'" Scherer and Miroff report. "Miller also speaks with Mullin regularly, a White House official told us. In a statement for this story, Mullin told us that he works closely with both Homan and Miller. 'Everyone's on the same page,' Mullin said. But in contrast with the legislative negotiations over DHS (U.S. Department of Homeland Security) funding last year, Homan and Mullin, not Miller, were the ones involved in talks on Capitol Hill to restore DHS funding this year, according to two DHS officials."

A senior official in the Trump Administration, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told The Atlantic, "The new secretary is listening to Tom Homan and Rodney Scott before he is ever listening to Stephen Miller. We just have law enforcement in charge."

But other insiders interviewed by The Atlantic, according to Scherer and Miroff, "said that it is just a matter of time before Miller is able to reassert himself with new initiatives inside the administration."

A former Trump Administration official, also quoted anonymously, told The Atlantic, "In the end, Stephen is the one who comes up with new ideas. As much as everyone loves Tom Homan, he's not going to say, 'Here's a unique authority we could use to do X, Y and Z.' But the president likes Homan's approach at the moment."

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