A group of 27 Senate Democrats reportedly sent a letter to Donald Trump Monday demanding that his advisor, Stephen Miller, be fired over charges that he’s a white nationalist.
The letter comes a month after the Southern Poverty Law Center published an expose containing leaked emails from Miller that the Senators say show a “demonstrable white nationalist ideology” that makes Miller “unfit” to serve in the White House.
The letter was signed by five presidential candidates: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, and Michael Bennett.
Senator Kamala Harris, who recently suspended her presidential campaign, was the lead signatory of the letter.
Miller currently serves as a senior advisor to the president and has reportedly played a central role in crafting Trump’s immigration policies, including the separation and detention of migrant families.
The emails published by the SPLC’s “Hatewacth” team show that “white supremacy,” not national security, is driving Miller’s advocacy for harsh immigration policies, the Senators argued.
The SPLC reviewed 900 emails Miller sent to editors from the far-right news website Breitbart between March 2015 and June 2016.
On multiple occasions, Miller sent Breitbart editors links to articles from white nationalist websites, and used “slang and rhetoric about immigration that would be familiar to people who read white nationalists,” SPLC said.
Miller also recommended that one editor read a racist novel called “The Camp of Saints” that is revered by white nationalists and neo-Nazis.
“It is simply appalling that a senior advisor to the President advanced parallels between this book and contemporary events,” the Senators wrote in their letter to Trump.
In total, about 80 percent of the emails reviewed by Hatewatch were on the topic of race or immigration, in which Miller “touches solely on the perspective of severely limiting or ending nonwhite immigration to the United States.”
“Hatewatch was unable to find any examples of Miller writing sympathetically or even in neutral tones about any person who is nonwhite or foreign-born,” the SPLC said.
The White House has thus far downplayed the leaked emails, calling the SPLC a “far-left smear organization.”
In addition to championing a crackdown on migrants on the Southern border, Miller has also reportedly advocated in favor of banning all Muslims from the U.S., admitting no refugees, and denying Temporary Protection Status to foreign victims of natural disasters.
More than 100 Democrats in the House of Representatives have also called on Miller to resign, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who started an online petition that’s received over 100,000 signatures.
