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.
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