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Today the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officially announced its new restrictions on flavored e-cigarettes. As expected, the policy applies to cartridge-based products such as Juul and Vuse, which will be limited to menthol and tobacco flavors. The FDA will not be targeting flavored e-liquids used in refillable vaporizers.

“Under this policy,” the FDA says, “companies that do not cease manufacture, distribution and sale of unauthorized flavored cartridge-based e-cigarettes (other than tobacco or menthol) within 30 days risk FDA enforcement actions.” FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn explains that the agency aims to “combat the troubling epidemic of youth e-cigarette use” by eliminating “certain flavored e-cigarette products we know are so appealing to teenagers—so-called cartridge-based products that are both easy to use and easily concealable.”

The FDA acknowledges the harm-reducing potential of “electronic nicotine delivery systems” (ENDS) as an alternative to smoking. “By not prioritizing enforcement against other flavored ENDS products in the same way as flavored cartridge-based ENDS products,” it says, “the FDA has attempted to balance the public health concerns related to youth use of ENDS products with considerations regarding addicted adult cigarette smokers who may try to use ENDS products to transition away from combustible tobacco products.” Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, whose department includes the FDA, likewise says “our action today seeks to strike the right public health balance by maintaining e-cigarettes as a potential off-ramp for adults using combustible tobacco while ensuring these products don’t provide an on-ramp to nicotine addiction for our youth.”

Technically, the FDA wants us to know, it is not imposing a ban on flavored e-cigarette cartridges, since “all ENDS products currently on the market are considered illegally marketed and are subject to enforcement, at any time, in the FDA’s discretion.” Rather, the FDA is using its enforcement discretion to target the products that are most popular with teenagers.

Rather ominously, the FDA warns that its policy—which certainly should not be confused with a ban—could be expanded if that seems appropriate. “Because of the relatively low numbers of youth using both menthol- and tobacco-flavored, cartridge-based ENDS products, these products are not among the current enforcement priorities,” it says. “However, should the FDA become aware of an increase of youth using any other flavored products (both cartridge-based or otherwise), the agency will take additional steps to address youth use of those products if necessary.” Since at least some adolescent vapers who like cartridge-based e-cigarettes will switch to menthol or tobacco when the flavors they currently prefer become harder to get, while others may switch to refillable vaporizers, those “additional steps” seem inevitable.

Meanwhile, the vape shops that were spared by the exemption for flavored e-liquids used in open systems still depend on sales of products that “are considered illegally marketed.” Those products will remain in that perilous category unless the FDA decides that letting them stay on the market is “appropriate for the protection of public health.” To persuade the FDA of that, manufacturers (including vape shops that mix their own e-liquids) have to submit “pre-market tobacco product applications” (PMTAs) by May 12, a process that will be prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of businesses and products.

“By allowing vape shops to continue selling flavored vape liquids, the FDA is preventing hundreds of thousands of ex-smokers from being forced to return to smoking,” writes Boston University public health professor Michael Siegel. “It also ensures that this important off-ramp from smoking remains available to adult smokers. However, the battle is not yet over because if the FDA implements the PMTA deadline in May of this year, it will wipe out most of the vaping industry, handing it over to the tobacco companies. The results would be devastating to the public’s health, as many ex-smokers would return to smoking and many more would turn to a new black market for these products.”

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[1.] President Trump’s Executive Order on Combating Anti-Semitism begins by noting that, though Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act only bans “discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin”—and not religion—”in programs … receiving Federal financial assistance,”

Discrimination against Jews may give rise to a Title VI violation when the discrimination is based on an individual’s race, color, or national origin. It shall be the policy of the executive branch to enforce Title VI against prohibited forms of discrimination rooted in anti-Semitism as vigorously as against all other forms of discrimination prohibited by Title VI.

That strikes me as quite sensible. Much discrimination against Jews stems from hostility to Jews as an ethnic group—a group linked by ancestry and culture, quite apart from religion. In this respect, it’s much like discrimination against, say, people of Hispanic or Arab ethnicity. Whether such ethnic discrimination against Jews qualifies as forbidden discrimination based on race or national origin turns out to be surprisingly unsettled, as I discussed in a September 2019 post (Is Rejecting Someone Because of His “Jewish Blood” Race Discrimination Under Title VII? National Origin Discrimination?). But there are ample precedents for the view that ethnic discrimination is race/national origin discrimination (again, see that post for more), and I think the Administration’s position rightly endorses that view.

[2.] But the Order also goes on to say,

In enforcing Title VI, and identifying evidence of discrimination based on race, color, or national origin, all executive departments … shall consider the following:

(i)   the non-legally binding working definition of anti Semitism adopted on May 26, 2016, by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which states, “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.  Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities”; and

(ii)  the “Contemporary Examples of Anti-Semitism” identified by the IHRA, to the extent that any examples might be useful as evidence of discriminatory intent.

(b)  In considering the materials described in subsections (a)(i) and (a)(ii) of this section, agencies shall not diminish or infringe upon any right protected under Federal law or under the First Amendment.  As with all other Title VI complaints, the inquiry into whether a particular act constitutes discrimination prohibited by Title VI will require a detailed analysis of the allegations.

The IHRA examples state that “Contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to”:

Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.

Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective—such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.

Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.

Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).

Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.

Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.

Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.

Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

This, I think, has the potential to unconstitutionally suppress speech. Let me explain why.

[A.] To begin with, imagine that President Bernie Sanders issues the following Executive Order:

In enforcing Title VI, and identifying evidence of discrimination based on race, color, or national origin against Palestinian-Americans, all executive departments shall consider the following examples to the extent that they might be useful as evidence of discriminatory intent:

Denying the Palestinian people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that any Palestinian state would lead to terrorist attacks on Israel.

Applying double standards by requiring of Palestinians a behavior not expected or demanded of any other group that is waging an insurrection against an oppressive government.

Drawing comparisons of contemporary Palestinian policy and attitudes towards Jews to those of the Nazis.

Holding Palestinians collectively responsible for actions of Palestinian de facto governmental organizations.

Justifying the killing or harming of Palestinians in the name of protecting another nation’s security, or on the theory that it is acceptable collateral damage in the other nation’s defensive operations.

The premise in the first paragraph is legally accurate: Discrimination against Palestinian-Americans is likely already prohibited by Title VI as discrimination based on race or national origin, just as discrimination against Hispanics or Arab-Americans is already prohibited. But I take it that we’d be concerned that the following examples—even if cast just as examples of what might be useful as evidence of discriminatory intent—are likely to (and probably intended to) deter people from expressing their political views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

To be sure, one can draw distinctions between the examples I give above and the examples in the IHRA Anti-Semitism statement. For instance, some people argue that it’s illegitimate to deny to Jews a right to have a nation of Israel, because it already does exist, but legitimate to deny the Palestinians a right to have a nation of Palestine, because it has not been officially recognized. (I’m quite skeptical of the view that official international recognition should make a difference for which arguments are legitimate, and especially for which arguments are protected by the First Amendment.) Or some might say that, in their experience, the view that Jews don’t have a right to national self-determination is highly correlated with anti-Semitism but the view that Palestinians lack such a right is not highly correlated with anti-Palestinian prejudice.

But do you think it’s likely that courts will indeed reliably accept such distinctions? Or, if a court were to uphold President Trump’s Executive Order, would that decision be a powerful precedent in favor of the constitutionality of the hypothetical order from President Sanders?

[B.] More specifically, one problem with the real Executive Order (as well as the hypothetical Order) is that speech has in recent years often been labeled discrimination, on the theory that certain statements create a “hostile environment” and therefore violate antidiscrimination rules. Under this theory, a rule that “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is “evidence of discrimination” means that a university could be punished under Title VI for allowing speech drawing such comparisons. Likewise, drawing such comparisons would violate campus speech codes that ban “discrimination” and “harassment.”

The Lawfare Project’s Dec. 18, 2019 complaint against Columbia, which cites the Executive Order, relies on precisely this theory. Among other things, it lists sharply anti-Israel (and pro-Hamas) public statements by Prof. Joseph Massad and Prof. Hamid Dabashi as examples of “discrimination against” the complainant and “discrimination directed at” other Jews or Israelis. (I received a copy of the Complaint with authorization to quote portions but not post it; it’s not a court filing, so it apparently isn’t a fully public document.) Likewise, the complaint takes the view that Columbia’s refusal to silence such criticisms, or to publicly condemn them, has helped “create[] a hostile environment” in “violation of Title VI.”

(Columbia’s decision not to condemn certain statements would itself be an exercise of its own First Amendment right not to speak. But the complaint argues that “Although Dabashi has a right to free speech, the university has an obligation to either sanction or condemn this speech when it conflicts with university policies and federal law,” and seemingly takes the view that the speech does “conflict[] with … federal law.”)

As David Bernstein has pointed out, the problem here partly stems from the view that public comments by students, professors, and others can violate antidiscrimination law if they create a “hostile educational environment” based on race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, and the like. Many courts have struck down campus speech codes framed in such terms, but the government and various universities has continued to assert that such speech restrictions are constitutional.

But the Executive Order, it seems to me, exacerbates the problem by sweeping in anti-Israel speech (and not just overtly anti-Jewish speech) as potentially punishable “discrimination.” Both anti-Israel speech and anti-Jewish speech are protected by the First Amendment (unless they fall within one of the narrow exception to First Amendment protection, such as for true threats). But broadening the unconstitutional restrictions is surely not a step forward.

Nor do I think that the Order’s statement that, “In considering the materials described in subsections (a)(i) and (a)(ii) of this section, agencies shall not diminish or infringe upon any right protected under Federal law or under the First Amendment,” helps much. The problem is that government officials often tend not to recognize that various speech, especially speech that is viewed as bigoted or “discriminatory,” is protected by the First Amendment; the Order, notwithstanding its “shall not diminish or infringe language,” tends to reinforce this attitude.

[C.] But say that the Executive Order were limited to what one might think of as purely evidentiary uses of speech—e.g., if someone has been attacked, or had his property vandalized, or has been excluded from some university program, or given a low grade, and the question is whether the action was motivated by his being Jewish. That may be what at least one adviser to the Administration may have intended, according to this article in Haaretz (Amir Tibon):

Avi Berkowitz, a close adviser to Kushner and heavily involved in working on the executive order, says the answer is no. “A complaint against a lecture as you describe would not trigger Title VI,” he says. “In order for Title VI to apply, there has to be actionable conduct. Title VI requires a certain level of conduct, and the executive order does not change that requirement. The lecture remains protected speech.”

Let’s set aside the possibility that, as some have argued, the creation or tolerance of a “hostile environment” would itself be treated by some as “actionable conduct,” even if the environment stems just from speech that doesn’t fit within any of the narrow First Amendment exceptions; and let’s focus on the purely evidentiary uses I just mentioned.

Even for such evidentiary uses, I think the Executive Order is dangerous and unconstitutional, as my hypothetical Sanders Executive Order helps illuminate. Say that you are a professor who rejected a student’s application to a graduate program. He claims that the rejection stemmed from his or his parents’ having been born in Gaza. (Assume he’s an American citizen, so the claim is of discrimination based on national origin, and not based on current citizenship, which would raise more complicated program.)

You argue that, no, you rejected him because you thought his past scholarly work wasn’t strong enough. He responds that, (1) under the hypothetical Sanders Executive Order, “Denying the Palestinian people their right to self-determination” is an example that “shall [be] considere[ed] … to the extent that [it] might be useful as evidence of discriminatory intent”; (2) you had publicly argued against a separate Palestinian state; and therefore (3) that is evidence that you were biased against him based on his national origin.

I think such an argument would be quite wrong, and dangerous to academic freedom. If the argument were accepted, it would sharply chill advocacy of various views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the government has no business doing that. And of course the same is true of the actual Trump Executive Order.

Now I acknowledge that speech can be used as evidence of motive; indeed, sometimes it’s the only such evidence. (See this post for more, including a discussion of some key Supreme Court cases on the subject.) Even in the absence of any Executive Order, if a professor publicly says “All Jews are scum and I hate working with them” or “all Palestinians are scum and I hate working with them,” that could be evidence that a particular action by a professor with respect to a student was deliberate discrimination based on ethnicity. The same would be true if a student is being accused of punching a classmate or vandalizing the classmate’s property based on the classmate’s being Jewish or Palestinian.

But when there is such concrete evidence of ethnic hostility, the Executive Order is unnecessary. The Order would make a difference only in cases where statements overtly expressing ethnic hostility are weak or even absent, and the evidence stemming from one’s views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would then be brought in.

The closest analog in the Supreme Court precedents (not a perfect analog, but I think a helpful one) is the presumption struck down in Virginia v. Black (2003). There, the law banned cross-burning with the intent to intimidate; and some such cross-burning (e.g., burning a cross in front of a black family’s house with the intent to make them fear that physical violence would be next) may indeed be punishable, when it falls within the First Amendment exception for true threats of violence. But the law also added,

Any such burning of a cross [including in any public place] shall be prima facie evidence of an intent to intimidate ….

The Court held that this “prima facie evidence” provision violated the First Amendment, for reasons stated by Justice Souter (joined by Justices Kennedy and Ginsburg), and agreed with by Justice O’Connor (joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Stevens and Breyer):

As I see the likely significance of the evidence provision, its primary effect is to skew jury deliberations toward conviction in cases where the evidence of intent to intimidate is relatively weak and arguably consistent with a solely ideological reason for burning. To understand how the provision may work, recall that the symbolic act of burning a cross, without more, is consistent with both intent to intimidate and intent to make an ideological statement free of any aim to threaten.  One can tell the intimidating instance from the wholly ideological one only by reference to some further circumstance. In the real world, of course, and in real-world prosecutions, there will always be further circumstances, and the factfinder will always learn something more than the isolated fact of cross burning. Sometimes those circumstances will show an intent to intimidate, but sometimes they will be at least equivocal, as in cases where a white supremacist group burns a cross at an initiation ceremony or political rally visible to the public.

In such a case, … the prima facie evidence provision … will have the practical effect of tilting the jury’s thinking in favor of the prosecution…. [T]he provision will encourage a factfinder to err on the side of a finding of intent to intimidate when the evidence of circumstances fails to point with any clarity either to the criminal intent or to the permissible one…. The provision will thus tend to draw nonthreatening ideological expression within the ambit of the prohibition of intimidating expression.

To the extent the prima facie evidence provision skews prosecutions, then, it skews the statute toward suppressing ideas…. The question here is … [whether] the statute’s terms show that suppression of ideas may be afoot…. And if we look at the provision for this purpose, it has a very obvious significance as a mechanism for bringing within the statute’s prohibition some expression that is doubtfully threatening though certainly distasteful.

I think the same reasoning applies here. If a university responding to a student complaint, or the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights determining whether a university’s response was inadequate, sees the usual sorts of evidence that would normally prove discriminatory motivation (e.g., “I hate Jews”), it can certainly rely on that evidence.

But the Executive Order, by listing specific political statements as potential evidence, “skew[s] [the decisionmaker’s] deliberations toward [a finding of forbidden behavior] in cases where the evidence of [anti-Semitism] is relatively weak.” It “tilt[s] the [decisionmaker’s] thinking in favor of [a finding of guilt]” simply based on a professor’s or student’s expression of political views about Israel (or, in my hypothetical, about Palestinian organizations). If “[t]he question” is whether “the [Executive Order’s] terms show that suppression of ideas may be afoot,” those terms have “a very obvious significance as a mechanism for bringing within [Title VI’s] prohibition some expression that is doubtfully [evidence of discrimination].”

[* * *]

On the merits of the Israeli-Palestinian controversies, I generally support Israel; and I don’t always support arguments that various attempts to protect Israel or Israelis from discrimination violate the First Amendment—consider, for instance, my amicus briefs (e.g., this one), filed on behalf of Prof. Michael Dorf, Prof. Andy Koppelman, and myself, arguing that various state anti-BDS statutes do not violate the First Amendment. (My position there is that actual refusal to deal with Israel and Israelis are not protected speech, even if they are politically motivated, just as refusal to deal with Muslims or Christians are not protected speech.)

But here it seems to me (as I’ve argued before as to similar proposals) that the Executive Order really does risk suppressing not just discriminatory conduct but speech—speech that I generally disagree with, but speech that is fully constitutionally protected.

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It’s not just in your head: When it comes to how we all experience life, “Bad is generally stronger than good.” 

We remember trauma more than joy, we’re brought down by criticism more than we’re elevated by praise, and we pay more attention to bad news than good. 

A new book called The Power of Bad, by journalist John Tierney and psychologist Roy F. Baumeister, explores “the negativity effect,” or the “universal tendency for negative events and emotions to affect us more strongly than positive ones.” The negativity effect shapes everything we do, from our personal relationships to our careers to how we vote to what media we consume.

But The Power of Bad isn’t one more cause for despair. Its subtitle is How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It, and it offers practical tips on all sorts of ways to approach life so that we can be happy, productive, and well-adjusted.

Nick Gillespie sat down with Tierney, a contributing editor at the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal and a former New York Times columnist and reporter, to talk about the root causes of the negativity effect and how to combat it.

Interview by Nick Gillespie. Intro by Meredith Bragg. Edited by Ian Keyser. Cameras by Jim Epstein and Kevin Alexander.

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In November, a hundred U.S. lawmakers called for the termination of senior White House adviser Stephen Miller after a former Breitbart News reporter, who previously identified as a white nationalist and an alt-righter, leaked emails to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in which Miller gave her leads and ideas to depict immigrants in a negative light. At the time the emails were written, Miller was an aide to then–Sen. Jeff Sessions (R–Ala.). Miller went on to become one of President Donald Trump’s closest advisers and the architect of his immigration policies.

Now, 25 Jewish members of Congress are joining the call to fire Miller after Rolling Stone published another email expose. These emails, which are from Miller’s time in the White House, show that Miller has not only stacked immigration enforcement agencies with hardline restrictionists but also routinely bypasses normal channels to push his agenda. These members are particularly incensed that Miller is using his part-Jewish background as a cover for his hardline anti-immigration policies. “If there was ever a group that should be most sympathetic to the plight of immigrants, to the plight of the downtrodden and to minorities, it should be Jewish people,” Rep. Kim Schrier (D–Wash.), one of the lawmakers, told NPR. “His behavior is contrary to everything in our ethos.”

Although the White House is hanging tough for now, even accusing the SPLC of engaging “in a vile smear campaign against a Jewish staffer,” the calls for Miller’s firing are likely to escalate after another story broke showing that Miller tried to embed ICE agents in the Office of Refugee Resettlement for interior enforcement purposes, a move that was almost certainly illegal.

The leaked emails from Katie McHugh, the Breitbart reporter, are from 2015 to 2016. They show Miller sharing stories with her from InfoWars, Alex Jones’ far-right site that often peddles conspiracy theories, and VDare, a white nationalist website. The VDare story he sent her argued, for example, that there would be disastrous repercussions for the U.S. should Mexicans impacted by Hurricane Patricia be permitted to take shelter in America. In other email exchanges, Miller depicted immigrants of color as criminals and terrorists, and wrote, “it has never been easier in American history for illegal aliens to commit crimes of violence against Americans.” McHugh dutifully published many stories linking immigrants with crime, even though the undocumented are, in fact, less crime-prone than natives.

According to McHugh, even though Miller was working for Sessions, he was effectively “the editorial director of the political section of Breitbart News.” It was tantamount to Sen. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.) writing op-eds that CNN passed off as its own, McHugh told NPR. “It was wildly unethical—incredible violation of journalistic ethics.”

McHugh, who has now repudiated her white nationalist ideology, was finally terminated from Breitbart in June of 2017 after outrage following this tweet: “There would be no deadly terror attacks in the U.K. if Muslims didn’t live there.”

But two years before that, in September 2015, Miller got upset with Pope Francis, who he felt was “in effect” saying “get rid of borders.” He wrote to McHugh telling her that “someone should point out [to the Pope] the parallels to The Camp of the Saints,” referring to the racist novel that has long been a cult classic in white supremacist circles. Written by French author Jean Raspail, the novel portrays the apocalyptic effects of migration. Its plot centers around a flotilla of hundreds of thousands of Indians—who eat their own poop and are described as murderous, sex-crazed, “kinky-haired,” “swarthy-skinned,” and “long-despised”—as they sail across the ocean to France in search of the “white man’s comfort.”

Brietbart obliged Miller. “Raspail’s thesis, quite simply, is that liberalism is inadequate to defend liberalism,” wrote Julia Hahn, then a Breitbart staffer, who is one of the people Miller has brought in as a Special Assistant to Trump. “All around the world, events seem to be lining up with the predictions of the book.”

All of this barely scratches the surface of the stories Miller fed to Breitbart.

But the most recent tranche of emails obtained by Rolling Stone‘s Andy Kroll shows how Miller has used his White House perch to put like-minded individuals in key positions to push some of this administration’s most notorious policies. “Miller, with his white-nationalist mindset and fervor to enact xenophobic policies, is far from an isolated actor,” Kroll writes. “He’s the leader of a broad operation spread across the federal government.”

One of Miller’s regular correspondents, the Rolling Stone emails show, is Jon Feere, a senior adviser at ICE and former policy analyst at the ultra-restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). CIS is the respectable spin-off of the Michigan-based Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), founded by the late John Tanton. An ophthalmologist, Tanton lamented that Hitler gave eugenics a bad name and accepted funding from The Pioneer Fund, which advocated eugenics. FAIR is the organization responsible for republishing The Camp of the Saints in America. Despite FAIR’s notorious background, Miller helped place its former staffer, Julie Kirchner, as an adviser to the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection and later as the top ombudsman at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service.

Feere is on record arguing for the elimination both of birthright citizenship and also the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that gives temporary legal status to Dreamers (those who were brought to this country as minors without proper authorization).

The emails between Feere and Miller show the two working together, sometimes bypassing Feere’s bosses and senior staffers, including former ICE Acting Director Tom Homan, no slouch himself when it comes to harsh enforcement.

Writes Rolling Stone‘s Kroll:

“In the emails, Feere strategizes with Miller about how to use the federal government to amplify their anti-immigration message; tees up potential attacks on prominent Democratic politicians; directly briefs Miller in great detail about upcoming enforcement actions and policy changes in the works; and recommends to Miller people the administration should hire to expedite its immigration agenda.”

In one email, Feere tells Miller about a meeting he led about crafting a new agreement between ICE and the Department of Labor on worksite immigration enforcement actions that would be “more favorable to ICE’s mission” of tracking down and deporting undocumented residents. Feere also describes helping plan an upcoming ICE raid in the Bay Area. All of this constituted a major escalation of ICE’s enforcement mission. But what’s also notable about the email, Kroll points out, is that Feere apparently sent it straight to Miller and other White House officials without running it by his bosses at ICE, including Homan, who learned about the communication only after the fact.

Kroll also found evidence of Feere saying he stopped the administration from responding to an Amnesty International inquiry about its immigration enforcement practices and helped a Fox News contributor and “friendly NGO” publicly defend a leaked draft proposal for separating migrant families.

Feere and Miller collaborated on defending some of this administration’s most draconian policies, such as separating children from their migrant parents. But they also brainstormed to advance their enforcement agenda in more creative ways. For example, they discussed the possibility of transferring a like-minded employee from the Treasury Department to the Social Security administration as a “senior advisor” so that the individual would have “clout” in setting up information-sharing efforts to track down and deport undocumented immigrants.

All of this had already deeply upset many lawmakers. But then just before Christmas, The Washington Post reported that Miller attempted to embed ICE agents in the government agency charged with resettling refugees to intensify deportation efforts against the adult sponsors who come forward to claim unaccompanied minors. This flies in the face of language that Congress included in the 2018 funding bill prohibiting DHS from using any federal funds to “place in detention, remove, refer for a decision whether to initiate removal proceedings, or initiate removal proceedings against a sponsor, potential sponsor, or member of a household of a sponsor or potential sponsor of an unaccompanied alien child.”

While the DHS rejected Miller’s plan to let ICE agents infiltrate the refugee outfit, it nevertheless allowed them to collect biometric data on adults who come to claim the unaccompanied minors in its custody. The DHS says it is doing so to ensure that the kids aren’t handed to traffickers. But the worry is that ICE will classify them as ineligible to take custody of the kids for all kinds of reasons, including minor immigration violations, and set them up for deportation.

This would likely violate the law. Worse, it will scare away relatives or parents of these children from coming forward. The last time the administration implemented zero tolerance, the amount of time unaccompanied kids ended up spending at government shelters almost doubled, from 50 to 93 days. That policy also resulted in a growing number of what are called “category four” cases, where the government cannot find an eligible adult to take custody of the kids. After several months, the kids are placed in foster homes, The Post notes.

Given all these revelations about Miller, the chorus of calls demanding that President Trump fire him are only likely to grow louder in the coming months.

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