Why Trump should ditch Stephen Miller and strike an immigration deal

To keep doing the same thing over and over again in the face of failure is the definition of insanity. It's time Trump tried something different.

President Trump and Stephen Miller.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Jim Lo Scalzo-Pool/Getty Images, Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, Scott Olson/Getty Images, alexxx1981/iStock)

Twice in less than 14 months President Donald Trump shut down the government to obtain funding for his border wall — a key piece of the enforcement-first agenda that his hardline White House adviser Stephen Miller has pushed on him. He's lost badly both times.

If Trump were smart, he'd ditch Miller. And then he'd look for innovative strategies to advance border security that involve not slamming — but welcoming — immigrants and that he could sell to his base without alienating everyone else.

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Shikha Dalmia

Shikha Dalmia is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University studying the rise of populist authoritarianism.  She is a Bloomberg View contributor and a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and she also writes regularly for The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. She considers herself to be a progressive libertarian and an agnostic with Buddhist longings and a Sufi soul.