Stephen Miller’s next act finds a stage in the courts

Miller, architect of the latest administration’s restrictive immigration policies and sponsor of its socially conservative initiatives, launches a new organization this week, America First Legal, to challenge Biden administration initiatives at odds with priorities of the Trump era.

“Anything the president does that we believe is illegal is fair play,” he said.

The group, Miller said, would draw on the experience of lawyers from the Trump administration, work with Republican attorneys general, and work with lawyers across the country who needed legal and financial resources for their cases. .

The group also has broader ambitions, Miller said, to end up getting involved in litigation that goes beyond the Biden administration, including to support police officers, go looking for big tech companies, and take on other business interests. whose positions go against those he adopted. in the White House.

The conservative legal arsenal is almost naked. Republicans, as they did during the Obama administration, have already launched a series of challenges, including Biden’s limits on oil and gas production, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton managed to block the planned break in 100 days of Mr. deportations.

Miller said he arrives at the new project after observing first-hand how relentless litigation by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union can slow the White House. When the Trump administration followed a new initiative, it said, “We wouldn’t get just one lawsuit in one court, we’d get six lawsuits in six courts.”

“It was an extraordinarily effective tactic and there is no counterpoint,” he said.

Miller, 35, is not a lawyer, but a political agent who worked for Conservative lawmakers, including Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Alabama) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.) Before joining. if. his star in Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. He said he left the White House believing that “the most important thing we could do as people who philosophically believe in traditional values, conservative values ​​… was to develop and launch a conservative response in the ACLU.”

Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, suggested he was not baffled by this prospect. “Good luck because he pushes positions he couldn’t secure when he was sitting on the west wing,” he said. “It will be a difficult road to travel.”

Supporters of America First Legal include former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Matthew Whitaker, a former U.S. Attorney General, both members of the group’s board of directors. Miller has also received private encouragement from former Attorney General William Barr and expects public support from Mr. Trump.

“Supporters of the Conservatives and America First need to seriously catch up and turn the tables, so I applaud Stephen and Mark Meadows because they were quick to fill this critical gap,” Trump said in an emailed statement. to The Wall Street Journal.

Miller refused to disclose his initial budget or fundraiser so far, saying only that he had raised “an orderly sum of money” that would pay the initial staff and fund a first round of cases. These funds come from donors “who can write very large checks,” he said, but the group plans to start soliciting small and medium donations soon.

A White House spokesman for President Biden declined to comment.

“You can anticipate an avalanche of challenges to what we see as an abdication of any resemblance of the rule of law in this administration,” South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said. “We’re all here working together in tandem and there’s a space for people like Stephen.”

Paxton said Miller is already deeply involved with Republican attorneys general across the country. “It will be an invaluable resource for which we can rely,” he said.

There are already many conservative public interest groups in the legal world, but they tend to focus on specific areas of the law, such as protecting religion from public life, opposing abortion, or attacking economic regulation.

Miller said he wants to take a broader, more agile approach and push for a maximum volume of cases. “No one has the attitude of: ‘We find the weakest points and attack them legally non-stop and as often – and everywhere – as we can,’ he said.

Meadows said he anticipated the group would spend much of its time working behind the scenes, with “a stealthy group of lawyers who are not as interested in making headlines as putting limits on the administration’s excess executive. “We hope this is a hallmark of this group.”

Litigation has become a key feature of the modern presidency and was a central line of Trump’s four-year term. The ACLU sued the administration 413 times. Democratic state attorneys general often sued the Trump administration; California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, now Secretary of Health and Human Services, sued the previous Administration at least 100 times.

The administration saw a series of plans blocked or stalled in the courts. The Supreme Court sometimes allowed the implementation of its policies, but at other times it dealt a final blow, including its efforts to add a U.S. citizenship question to the census and cancel an Obama-era program that it provided work permits and protections against the deportation of young immigrants.

Romero, of the ACLU, said his organization sued the Trump administration “not because they were Republicans, but because they were the worst administration of modern times in terms of civil liberties and rights.”

“We deliberately decided to bomb the administration in many of its policies,” he said. “This requires a certain kind of firepower, knowledge and infrastructure that took 101 years to build.”

Romero said the Trump administration facilitated some of the work “because they were in excess and ignored the clear language of the statutes and the legal precedent.”

During the Trump years, Republicans criticized left-wing groups for prosecuting nationwide lawsuits in more liberal judicial jurisdictions, such as northern California, that put Trump’s policies on ice across the U.S.

Now, they will try to take the same approach: from more inclined courts, a strategy that Republicans have followed before. Miller said his group is already working with a Texas attorney to deploy a first trial.

“We want to get the same legal action, we absolutely do,” he said. “It would be unforgivable for us to say that this will only be a tool used by those on the left side of the spectrum.”

Miller admitted that his group would take time to grow in terms of operations and resources. In addition to money, you will probably need some success in the courts to have the power to stay.

The Trump campaign, for example, raised large sums of money to challenge the 2020 election results, but the numerous lawsuits he and his supporters filed were defeated in courts across the country, and judges quickly expelled them. most cases.

“Motions to fire them are not hard to file and easy to lose,” Romero said.

—Jess Bravin contributed to this article.

Write to Brent Kendall to [email protected]