Democrats did so well in last Tuesday’s midterm elections that for a few days afterwards it was possible to imagine we’d just lived through the end of the Trump era.
asserted
we → do → era
On social media and podcasts, pundits took note of the fact that the president appeared to accept the outcome without a fight.
asserted
president → take → fight
Could this mean he would be open to bipartisanship with the new and sizable Democratic majorities in Congress?
uncertain
he → mean → Congress
Or perhaps that he would recede from governing altogether, allowing aides to run the show while he all but retired to the White House?
asserted
he → recede → House
Or might it even be possible he would resign the presidency, allowing Vice President JD Vance to take over and the country as a whole to move on from the anxiety and dramas of the past decade?
uncertain
country → resign → decade
Such musings were nice while they lasted—but they didn’t last long.
asserted
they → last → ?
The fantasies came to an abrupt end on Friday, when the president announced on Truth Social that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles would be stepping down to be replaced by Stephen Miller.
asserted
Wiles → come → Miller
Miller served as a senior advisor to the president in the first Trump administration, with special focus on immigration policy.
asserted
Miller → serve → policy
But this rundown of Miller’s resume fails to capture what is most distinctive about him.
asserted
what → fail → him
Miller is a true-believing MAGA ideologue, a fiercely committed Trump loyalist, someone convinced Judeo-Christian white civilization is fatally threatened with a “great replacement” by people from other races and religions, and a man who longs to see the president assert and wield unconstrained power.
asserted
president → believe → power
Far from signaling the conclusion of the Trump era, the midterm elections of 2026 now look likely to be viewed as the moment when the country began to confront an even more intense challenge to liberal democratic principles from the hardline xenophobic right than the one we’ve already been enduring for much of the past 10 years.
asserted
we → signal → years
Respect vs. Contempt for Public Opinion
When Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama saw their parties’ congressional majorities swept away by midterm discontent, they were chastened.
asserted
they → see → discontent
Their embrace of greater moderation after electoral rebukes flowed partly from an acceptance of political reality: With Congress lost, governing required the trimming of sails and a willingness to compromise with ideological opponents.
asserted
governing → flow → opponents
Politicians in a democracy typically defer to and respect public opinion, even when they disagree with it.
asserted
they → defer → it
Just as a solid electoral victory bestows a sense of democratic legitimacy on a governing agenda, a drubbing does the reverse.
asserted
drubbing → bestow → reverse
It conveys vital information about how the American people are responding to that agenda.
asserted
people → convey → agenda
When the response is sufficiently negative, the former sense of legitimacy diminishes or vanishes altogether, leaving a president and his party weakened.
asserted
sense → diminish → president
Though only if the president is open to receiving the message.
asserted
president → receive → message
Trump’s decision to promote Miller to the position of White House Chief of Staff is an undeniable sign that the president has no intention whatsoever of deferring to the message of displeasure the midterm elections conveyed.
asserted
elections → promote → displeasure
On the contrary, the president appears eager to defy that message.
asserted
president → appear → message
Rather than feeling chastened, Trump seems committed to moving further away from anything resembling moderation and compromise.
asserted
Trump → feel → moderation
Whereas the election showed that many more Americans disapprove of how Trump is governing the country than support it, the president thinks the right response is to double down on a maximally MAGA agenda.
asserted
response → show → agenda
The Politics of Hyperbole
Miller is passionately devoted to the cause of doing exactly that.
asserted
Miller → devote → that
In addition to strongly supporting Trump’s protectionist tariff agenda and the vaccine skepticism of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he is an unapologetic anti-immigration zealot.
asserted
he → support → Jr.
Miller wants ICE and the Border Patrol to deport as many people as possible as quickly as possible, without regard for the effect this will have on immigrant communities, families, and children, or for whether the immigrants have committed any crime since arriving in the country.
asserted
immigrants → want → country
(Miller was the primary advocate behind the highly unpopular policy of family separation that generated considerable controversy and was eventually abandoned during the first Trump administration.)
asserted
that → generate → administration
This makes Miller an extremist on the issue.
asserted
Miller → make → issue
But it’s not merely his goals that are radical.
asserted
that → ’ → ?
It’s also the means he believes should be employed to achieve his preferred ends.
asserted
he → ’ → ends
When an ICE agent killed anti-ICE protester Renee Good in Minneapolis last winter, Miller immediately labeled her, without evidence, a “domestic terrorist,” just as he described protester Alex Pretti, a nurse shot to death in the same city 17 days later by two federal immigration agents, as a “would-be assassin.”
asserted
he → kill → assassin
They were expressions of a worldview rooted in panic and alarm about the existential threat immigration and its defenders pose to the American way of life.
asserted
immigration → root → life
The threat is so acute that Miller has long advocated suspending habeas corpus (the requirement that government officials must legally justify detaining a person) for noncitizens, despite its presence in Article I of the Constitution.
asserted
officials → advocate → Constitution
The rule has been suspended four times in American history, each time in conformity with the constitutional stipulation that a suspension can only be put into effect in times of rebellion or invasion.
asserted
suspension → suspend → rebellion
That’s why Miller consistently calls, and urges the president to call, immigration a form of “invasion” that is leading the country to being “conquered”—that is, in order to lay the legal groundwork for such a move.
asserted
that → ’ → move
(Miller has also called birthright citizenship “a deep knife wound in the heart of the American republic” that will produce the “suicide” of our “civilization,” and has denied the Democrats are even a party, preferring to call them “a domestic extremist organization.”)
asserted
Democrats → call → them
As Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan of The New York Times reported, others in the administration have actively opposed Miller’s efforts in this area, though with Miller set to run the White House, such opposition will now likely be neutered.
asserted
opposition → report → House
Miller (along with Vance) has likewise been a leading advocate of Trump invoking the Insurrection Act against those protesting deportation sweeps.
asserted
Trump → lead → sweeps
Doing so would give the president exceptionally broad powers to deploy military forces on American soil.
asserted
Doing → do → soil
As with the suspension of habeas corpus, Miller favors Trump asserting these powers in order to test the limits of what the system will permit the president to do in emergency situations.
asserted
system → favor → situations
Political philosophers as different from one another as Aristotle, John Locke, and Carl Schmitt have recognized that legal norms, and even the rule of law itself, can be justly set aside in emergency situations in which the very survival of the polity is at stake.
asserted
survival → recognize → stake
…and 18 more, not listed.
The Aporia
