Stephen Miller 'should own the policy': Democratic lawmaker suggests nominating Trump adviser Stephen Miller to lead Homeland Security
- A Democratic lawmaker pitched an idea she suggested would help lawmakers hold President Donald Trump's senior adviser Stephen Miller accountable to the public.
- "How about Stephen Miller asks the president to appoint him as the secretary of [Department of Homeland Security] so he can be up front, and he can come to the committees on the Senate and the House side and answer questions about these policies that he is pushing single handedly," Rep. Kathleen Rice of New York said during a CNN interview on Monday.
- Rice's suggestion comes one day after Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was forced to resign, and amid a broader upheaval at the agency.
- Nielsen was at odds with Trump on a number of his hardline immigration policies, some of which were championed by Miller.
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A Democratic lawmaker pitched an idea she suggested would help lawmakers hold President Donald Trump's senior adviser Stephen Miller accountable to the public.
"Look, Trump owns his immigration policy," Rep. Kathleen Rice of New York said during a CNN interview on Monday. "But there are a lot of people talking about how Kirstjen Nielsen was pushed out by Stephen Miller and that [he] is the true architect of this administration's immigration policy."
"So I've got a proposal," Rice said. "How about Stephen Miller asks the president to appoint him as the secretary of [Department of Homeland Security] so he can be up front, and he can come to the committees on the Senate and the House side and answer questions about these policies that he is pushing single handedly."
Rice's suggestion comes one day after Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was forced to resign, and amid a broader upheaval at the agency. Nielsen was at odds with Trump on a number of his hardline immigration policies, some of which were championed by Miller.
Miller's name has become synonymous with the White House's immigration policy ever since the first wave of restrictions that banned people traveling from seven Muslim-majority countries. According to multiple reports, Trump suggested that Miller should lead the administration's immigration agenda, which includes replacing current, establishment officials with loyalists.
"Let him explain to the American people why he wants to go back to ripping babies out of their mothers' arms," Rice said, referring to the Trump administration's move in 2018 to separate some families at the US-Mexico border.
Rice added: "Own it. He should own the policy that he is pushing, that he's the architect of."
Trump has pitched some new, extreme measures to address what he sees as an emergency on the border, including the idea of closing the border entirely. He backed off of that suggestion last week amid protests inside his administration and beyond.
Laying the blame
Some White House officials have pushed back against notion that Miller was the driving force behind Nielsen's ouster. And one unnamed adviser cited by CNN's chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta on Monday said Trump's action on the border of late "is his failing and his alone ... this is not a Kirstjen Nielsen or Jeff Sessions issue. This is a lack of understanding issue," the source reportedly told Acosta.
As for the latest shuffle in the Trump administration, Secret Service director Randolph Alles is also scheduled to resign, and there are rumblings that more shakeups are coming, according to CNN anchor Jake Tapper: "Trump administration officials also say WH adviser Stephen Miller wants the president to get rid of the Director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services Lee Cissna and DHS general counsel John Mitnick," Tapper wrote Monday.
Now some high-ranking Republicans are concerned.
"One, those are good public servants," Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said in a Washington Post report, referring to Cissna. "Secondly, besides the personal connection I have with them and the qualifications they have, they are the intellectual basis for what the president wants to accomplish in immigration."
Grassley said he shared his worries with the acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who he claimed "didn't seem to know who I was talking about."