Stephen Miller wages war on the GOP’s libertarians
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Stephen Miller is leading a public war against the Republican party’s libertarians as he reframes the “one big beautiful bill” to being the key that unlocks President Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
Going mainly after libertarian-leaning lawmakers like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who have brought up concerns about the megabill’s deficit impact, the White House deputy chief of staff — and chief architect of Trump’s immigration agenda — is taking a sledgehammer to what remains of the libertarian-conservative fusionism that was prominent in the party pre-Trump.
“The libertarians in the House and Senate trying to take down this bill — they’re not stupid. They just don’t care,” Miller said in an interview with conservative activist and commentator Charlie Kirk last week.
“Immigration has never mattered to them, it will never matter to them, deportations have never mattered to them, it will never matter to them. You will never live a day in your life where a libertarian cares as much about immigration and sovereignty as they do about the Congressional Budget Office.”
Miller’s personal advocacy for the bill ramped up amid outcry from deficit hawks within Congress and from outside voices like Elon Musk. And while he echoed other top Republicans in denying the CBO budget math, Miller has particularly focused on one of the legislation’s key pillars: The billions of additional dollars to fund construction of the border wall and deportation efforts such as detention facilities, more ICE officers, and transporting deportees.
The uprisings by those objecting to deportations that popped in Los Angeles over the weekend — prompting Trump to deploy the National Guard in response — is further fueling Miller’s arguments. And there is plenty of polling to explain the strategy: A CBS News poll released Monday, for instance, found 54 percent of Americans approved of Trump’s deportation efforts.
Miller has explicitly wondered if libertarian-leaning Republicans like Massie were fighting the bill in order to oppose the deportation program. Massie, calling from the road on his way back to D.C. on Monday, told me that is not the case.
“He and I have the same immigration, deportation, wall policy, with the exception of E-verify. That's the only libertarian objection I have,” Massie said. “He's appealing to a trope that all libertarians are open borders, and he knows that's not true about me. He and I have spent hours talking, Stephen Miller and I, on these drives to and from DC .... He's trying to spread some doubt about the messenger, and not my message.”
But times are different now.
“He can't be as honest and candid as he was with me when he didn't Donald Trump as his boss,” Massie said. “He's got his job is to sell this bill, and he's trying to put lipstick on a pig, and Rand Paul and I are pointing out it's a pig.”
Paul again became a Miller target after he told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” that the funding Trump administration is seeking for the border wall is “excessive” and he would probably do “half as much” as what he wants for hiring more agents. The border, Paul argued, is “largely controlled right now,” warning against hiring “an army of border patrol agents that we have on the hook for payments and pensions
Miller seethed. “While ICE officers are battling violent mobs in Los Angeles, Rand Paul is trying to cut funding for deportations and border security,” he posted on X.
A spokesperson for Paul sent me a statement firing back at Miller and the campaign against the libertarian senator.
“Clearly, they are afraid the big, not yet beautiful, bill won’t pass. That’s why he’s being attacked by a pack of rabid paid influencers and the guy that wants to suspend the ancient writ of habeas corpus,” the Paul spokesperson said — making a reference to Miller saying the administration was “actively looking” at suspending the constitutionally-protected mechanism that migrants have used to challenge their detention by declaring an invasion.
“They’ve given up arguing on the issue of our time, the debt, and have now descended to lies, innuendo and nonsense,” the Paul spokesperson said.
Asked about Miller’s digging into libertarians, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson responded: “Libertarians hate taxes which is why they’re going to love The One, Big, Beautiful Bill that gives a 15 percent tax cut to working Americans while totally eliminating taxes on tips and overtime.”
Miller’s aversion to libertarians, though, seems to go deeper than opportunistic messaging for the bill. He posted in 2022 that the uprising of the ideology in the House GOP is “how we ended up with open borders globalist [Paul] Ryan.” He blamed libertarian candidates for siphoning votes away from failed Trump-endorsed candidates in 2022 — Hershel Walker in Georgia, Blake Masters in Arizona, and Don Bolduc in New Hampshire.
“Another example of how libertarians ruin everything,” Miller said in one post responding to a 2022 Georgia Senate poll.
He did, however, praise Trump’s courting of the Libertarian Party — speaking at the minor party’s national convention in 2024, and following through with a major campaign promise giving a full pardon to Ross Ulbrict, the founder of the Silk Road drug marketplace. And Massie told me he endorsed Trump to try to help boost the small-L libertarian contingent of the GOP coalition.
That coalition, though, has apparently worn out its usefulness to Miller.
“By including the immigration language with the tax cuts with the welfare reform, it creates a coalition. Politics is all about coalitions,” Miller said in the interview with Kirk — also praising Trump in the interview as “able to create a winning formula for populist, nationalist, conservative government.”
Massie sensed that the lack of electoral pressure is adding to the willingness to cast the libertarians aside.
“The thing here is that he doesn't have to run again,” Massie said. “This is one of these signature things. If he has to burn part of the coalition to get it done, they're probably willing to do it.”
Alex Nowrasteh, vice president of economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute – the biggest libertarian think tank in Washington — said that Miller’s attacks on libertarians are, in one sense, no surprise. But he warned about the political implications that Miller’s war has for the right.
“They are not typically long term thinkers in terms of political coalition,” Nowrasteh said of Trump folks like Miller, adding that “this disagreement between Miller and Massie and Paul just shows how sundered that coalition was.”
A White House official noted that Trump’s coalition includes Americans from all different backgrounds, including those who were not Republican voters prior to supporting Trump.
Welcome to The Movement, a weekly newsletter looking at the influences and debates on the right in Washington. I'm Emily Brooks, House leadership reporter at The Hill. Tell me what’s on your radar: ebrooks@thehill.com.
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STEPHEN MOORE ON TAX CUT PROGRESS AND POPULISTS
Free-marketers are putting their advocacy for extending President Trump’s tax cuts into overdrive. The free market group Unleash Prosperity Now came out with a letter signed by 300 economists saying that the extension of tax cuts in Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” will “succeed in making the tax system more pro-growth and fairer,” getting positive shout-outs from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and a Truth Social share from Trump.
Stephen Moore, a former economic adviser to Trump in his first term who co-founded Unleash Prosperity Now, told me that the advocacy for the tax cuts is going well — but that GOP leaders’ goal of sending it to Trump’s desk by Independence Day is likely too ambitious.
“I’d love to see that, but I think there’s too many differences right now to get it done by Fourth of July,” Moore told me.
And he is “not pleased” by the House version of the bill hiking up the state and local tax (SALT) deduction from $10,000 to $40,000.
“It’s going to have to be negotiated down,” Moore said.
“We're very much in favor of playing hardball with them and saying, ‘Look, okay, you want to take the whole party down with you, and you want to vote against a bill that gets 85% of your constituents a tax break, go ahead and blow it up,’” Moore said of the SALT-focused blue-state Republicans.
Moore also responded to my reporting from last week’s edition of The Movement about the “new right” populist think American Compass celebrating its fifth anniversary with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“This is kind of, you know, the big government Republicanism coming back. I view it as a cancer in the party,” Moore said. “This is a movement that's anti-trade, anti-immigration, pro-union, pro-big-government spending. Those are all contrary to the very free market freedom policies that binds all Republicans together. It’s a movement that's really being funded by the left to try to divide and conquer the Republican Party.”
“The fact that Rubio and JD Vance have associated themselves with that movement is not a positive sign for the future of the party,” Moore added.
Related: Over 300 economists urge Trump, GOP leaders to extend tax cuts before massive tax hike hits Americans, from Fox Business’s Eric Revell…
Last week’s newsletter on American Compass and my interview with founder Oren Cass…
CONGRESSIONAL DOGE DAYS IN QUESTION
President Trump’s move to empower Elon Musk after the 2024 election — namely through the meme-inspired Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort — was met with excitement over the winter, with lawmakers giddy to see Trump’s new bestie, the world’s richest man (a campaign benefactor for several of them).
But now the Musk-Trump falling out over the “big, beautiful bill” has soured many Republicans on the “DOGEfather.” If you’re a Republican, choosing between Musk and Trump is an easy call (in favor of the president, of course).
And it raises questions about the future of the DOGE organizations within Congress.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) had hitched her political wagon to DOGE by chairing a new DOGE subcommittee — and while she needled Musk buy condemning “lashing out on the internet,” she still has high praises for the government efficiency effort.
“I think DOGE is great. Government efficiency is fantastic. It's exactly what we need. And the American people support it, and it must continue. It doesn't have anything to do with with a disagreement on the internet. It has everything to do with the massive $36 trillion in debt,” Greene said.
But Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), a co-chair of the House DOGE Caucus, said the blow-up does impact his group’s effort.
“It impacts anytime there's a casualty on the field,” Sessions told me.
Related: Elon Musk’s stock plummets among Republicans, from me and my colleague Mychael Schnell
ON MY CALENDAR
- Tuesday, June 10: Americans for Prosperity has a fly-in of state leaders to press Senators to extend the 2017 tax cuts.
- Wednesday, June 11, 7:05 p.m.: Congressional Baseball Game for Charity
- Thursday, June 12, 12:00 p.m.: The Cato Institute hosts a policy forum: “What Is the Opportunity Cost of State AI Policy?”
THREE MORE THINGS
- Florida State Sen. Ileana Garcia (R), co-founder of Latinas for Trump, excoriated the president for seeking to ramp up deportations efforts, calling the effort “unacceptable and inhumane.” She posted on X: “I understand the importance of deporting criminal aliens, but what we are witnessing are arbitrary measures to hunt down people who are complying with their immigration hearings—in many cases, with credible fear of persecution claims—all driven by a Miller-like desire to satisfy a self-fabricated deportation goal.” A White House spokeswoman said in response that deportees receive due process.
- Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) misidentified a Sikh as a Muslim while saying it was “deeply disturbing” that the turban-wearing guest chaplain delivered the opening prayer in the House on Friday. She later deleted the post, but said: “America was founded as a Christian nation, and I believe our government should reflect that truth, not drift further from it.”
- Derek Guy, the man behind the @dieworkwear account on X that posts commentary on men’s fashion, revealed he is an undocumented immigrant whose parents brought him over the border with Canada when he was a baby — prompting teasing from Republicans who have often been the target of his commentary. Vice President JD Vance responded with an approving meme to a post that suggested he now had “the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever.” Guy responded with a jab at Vance’s outfits: “I think i can outrun you in these clothes.”
WHAT I'M READING (AND WATCHING)
- Spectator World’s Kara Kennedy: The rise of Eric Trump
- Wall Street Journal’s Joshua Chaffin: The Other Nasty Breakup Inside MAGA
- The Hill’s Zach Schonfeld and Ella Lee: Trump unleashes MAGA rebellion on Federalist Society
- Axios’s Scott Rosenberg: Silicon Valley's not crying for Musk