‘His beliefs are appalling’: email scandal sparks calls for Stephen Miller to resign

More than 80 members of Congress, 55 civil rights groups, three Democratic presidential candidates and one conservative columnist are among those demanding that the White House senior adviser Stephen Miller resign, or be fired, in the wake of a leaked email scandal.

The communications had revealed the top aide’s obsessive focus on injecting white nationalist-style talking points on immigration, race and crime into the far-right website Breitbart, both during and after Donald Trump’s successful bid for the White House.

In the past week, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has released multiple reports showing Miller promoted racist fears, disseminated conspiracy theories and injected a white nationalist agenda into the website Breitbart News.

The SPLC said the findings come from a 900-email correspondence between Miller and Katie McHugh, a former writer for Breitbart. McHugh was fired in 2017 for making anti-Muslim comments and has since renounced the far right.

The day the first batch of emails was released, Tiana Lowe, a columnist at the conservative newspaper the Washington Examiner, criticized the SPLC, but said “interns have been fired for less” than what was revealed about Miller in the emails.

“We can’t say with certainty what hate is or isn’t in Miller’s heart, but we know that he was happy enough to use the work of hatemongers and kill the GOP’s last shot at immigration reform, apparently because it would help predominantly Mexican immigrants,” Lowe wrote. “It’s long past time for Trump to dump Miller.”

That same day, the Democratic presidential hopeful Julián Castro, tweeted: “Donald Trump put a Neo-Nazi in charge of immigration policy. Both him, and Stephen Miller, are a shame to our nation.”

In the ensuing days, fellow Democratic hopefuls Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar tweeted that Miller should resign.

Ilhan Omar, a Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, tweeted that the emails proved what she had said earlier in the year: “Stephen Miller is a white nationalist.”

Omar’s comment touched on a frequent theme in the calls for Miller to resign: that before SPLC published the emails, there were many public incidents in which Miller displayed animosity towards people of color and immigrants.

The country’s largest American Muslim advocacy group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), said Miller should resign immediately, and if he does not, the president should fire him.

“Now we have the emails to back up previous perceptions of his racism and xenophobia,” said Robert McCaw, Cair’s director of government affairs,. “Miller must resign immediately.”

Miller, one of the few people to remain in the administration since Trump took office in January 2017, is understood to be the architect behind hardline immigration policies including family separation and the Muslim ban.

Before joining Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, Miller worked for Jeff Sessions, then a Republican senator for Alabama. Sessions was known for being a strident opponent to legal and illegal immigration.

The White House did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment. In statements to the media, they have not denied the emails came from Miller or addressed the content of the emails.

Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary, said that the SPLC was an “utterly discredited, long-debunked far-left smear organization” and Hogan Gidley, the deputy White House press secretary, claimed the criticism was related to Miller’s Jewish identity. “He loves this country and hates bigotry in all forms – and it concerns me as to why so many on the left consistently attack Jewish members of this administration,” Gidley told the New York Times.

The criticism, however, has not died down.

Leaders of congressional caucuses which advocate for issues affecting the Hispanic, Black and Asian-Pacific communities as well as the progressive wing of Congress, issued a joint statement calling Miller a white nationalist and demanding his resignation.

Related: Stephen Miller is no outlier. White supremacy rules the Republican party | Cas Mudde

“His beliefs are appalling, indefensible and completely at odds with public service,” the statement said.

“We feel like it is up to us to point out the obvious – someone who writes, talks and governs like a white nationalist is in fact a white nationalist,” the caucuses wrote. “Stephen Miller is a white nationalist and he has no business serving in the White House.”

As of 15 November, more than 80 members of Congress had called for Miller’s resignation. The Democratic New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez started a petition for people to support his resignation.

Some 55 civil rights groups, including Cair, the NAACP, SPLC and Lambda Legal have signed a letter to Trump demanding he remove Miller.

“Stephen Miller represents white supremacy, violent extremism and hate – all ideologies that are antithetical to the fundamental values that guide our democracy,” the letter said. “Allowing him to remain a White House adviser is a betrayal of our national ideals of justice, inclusion and fairness.”