On July 11, Federal Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong ordered the Trump administration to halt its indiscriminate immigration arrests across California.         

Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s White House deputy chief of policy and homeland security advisor, was outraged.

Miller has been called one of the most powerful officials in the second Trump administration. According to the Wall Street Journal, he “has written or edited every executive order that Trump has signed.” 

Miller now acts as the driving force behind Trump’s effort to arrest at least 3,000 Hispanics every day.

On July 12, he responded on X:

“The ruling has just been issued. A communist judge in LA has ordered ICE to report directly to her and radical left NGOs — not the president. This is another act of insurrection against the United States and its sovereign people.” 

Stephen Miller 

And that led California Governor Gavin Newsom to respond to Miller on X:

“This fascist cuck in DC continues his assault on democracy and the Constitution, and his attempt to replace the sovereignty of the people with autocracy. Sorry the Constitution hurt your feelings, Stephen. Cry harder.”

Newsom defended his language at a later news conference: “I don’t think they understand any other kind of language, so I have no apologies for standing tall and firm and pushing back against their cruelty.”

Mainstream liberals were stunned. 

On July 20, the Los Angeles Times mourned: “Forger the high road: Newsom Takes the Fight to Trump and his allies.”

And the story noted: “The MAGA-embraced epithet from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s official press office in response, however, was hardly typical for a Democratic politician.

“Popular among the far right and the gutters of social media, the term is used to insult liberals as weak and is also short for ‘cuckold,’ which refers to the husband of an unfaithful wife.

“The low blow sanctioned by a potential 2028 presidential candidate set a new paradigm for the political left that has long embraced Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high” motto to rise above the callousness of Trump and his acolytes.” 

Gavin Newsom

Following that mantra had cost Democrats the 2016 election and that of 2024—as well as the United States Senate and House of Representatives.

But some Democrats have decided it’s time to fight fire with fire.

Questioned on the use of “Politically Incorrect” language by the governor, Newsom’s Director of Communications Izzy Gardon, said: “We were inspired by the White House’s use of the term.”

In June, Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, had called Newsom “the biggest cuck in politics.”  And President Trump has repeatedly referred to the governor as “Gavin Newscum.”

Bob Salladay, Newson’s top communications advisor, added: “Sometimes the best way to challenge a bully is to punch them in the metaphorical face.

“These tactics may seem extreme to some and they are, but there’s a significant difference here: We’re targeting powerful forces that are ripping apart this country, using their own words and tactics. Trump and Stephen Miller are attacking the powerless like every fascist bully before them.”

By calling Miller a “fascist cuck,” Newsom was stealing a page from the Right-wing’s playbook.

In this case, “cuck” clearly refers to unsubstantiated online rumors that Miller’s wife, Katie, became romantically involved with Elon Musk after he set up the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Musk selected her as a DOGE official. And when the billionaire left DOGE in May, Katie Miller left with him—to take a job at xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company.

Katie Miller

The Democratic party’s official X account posted a “cuck chair” meme, representing a hotel room chair where a husband or wife would sit while watching a partner have sex with someone else.

Political blogger Peter Sage had mixed feelings about Newsom’s foray into Trump-style rhetoric: 

“I am not a big fan of Newsom adopting the Trump tactic of trolling and name-calling. There is a me-too quality to it. But my instincts here may be out of date for this media environment.

“Maybe trolling the other party needs to be everybody’s brand in a world where people get news via social media.

“Policy discussion bores most people. Many people think they want serious political discussion of the issues, but people at the margin who decide elections respond to quick shots that position a politician in the political universe. One defines oneself by one’s fights.”

In April, a Pew Research Center study found that a majority of Democrats believe in pushing back against Trump rather than finding common ground with him.

This division was demonstrated on July 29 by New Jersey United States Senator Cory Booker, who screamed at his Democratic colleagues that they needed “a wake-up call!” 

He angrily blocked the passage of several bills—popular with Democrats and Republicans—to fund police programs. His reason: The Trump’s administration had withheld law enforcement money from Democratic states. 

“This is the problem with Democrats in America right now,” Booker yelled, “we’re willing to be complicit with Donald Trump!” 

Only the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections—and, more importantly, that of the 2028 Presidential one—will decide  which was a better tactic for Democrats: Attempted conciliation with Trump—or brutal confrontation.

Cuck: 1. a weak or servile man (often used as a contemptuous term for a man with moderate or progressive political views); 2. a man whose wife is sexually unfaithful; a cuckold. 

It’s a term often used by Right-wingers to attack the masculinity of their enemies.  

So imagine how Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s White House deputy chief of policy and homeland security advisor, felt when the term was trained on him.

And by no less a major political figure than California Governor Gavin Newsom. 

Miller has been called one of the most powerful officials in the second administration of President Donald Trump. According to the Wall Street Journal, he “has written or edited every executive order that Trump has signed.” 

And as Reinhard Heydrich, second-in-command of Adolf Hitler’s Schutzstaffel, or SS, acted as the architect of the Holocaust, Miller now acts as the driving force behind Trump’s wholesale effort to arrest at least 3,000 Hispanics every day.

Stephen Miller 

During an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Miller claimed that illegal aliens were a “clear and present danger” to national security, and charged that federal judges were “telling President Trump he can’t deport these threats from our community. 

“This is the choice facing every American: Either we all side and get behind President Trump to remove these terrorists from our communities, or we let a rogue, radical-left judiciary shut down the machinery of our national security apparatus.”

Miller orchestrated the June 6 raids on Los Angeles by agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 

On July 2, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its sub-agency, ICE. Its introduction reads:

“Since early June, this District [Los Angeles] has been under siege.

“Masked federal agents, sometimes dressed in military-style clothing, have conducted indiscriminate immigration operations, flooding street corners, bus stops, parking lots, agricultural sites, day laborer corners, and other places, setting up checkpoints, and entering businesses, interrogating residents as they are working, looking for work, or otherwise trying to go about their daily lives, and taking people away.

“The raids in this District follow a common, systematic pattern. Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force, and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from.

“If they hesitate, attempt to leave, or do not answer the questions to the satisfaction of the agents, they are detained, sometimes tackled, handcuffed, and/or taken into custody. In these interactions, agents typically have no prior information about the individual and no warrant of any kind.

“Those who have borne the brunt of Defendants’ heavy-handed pattern of unlawful conduct include day laborers, car wash workers, farm workers, street vendors, service workers, caregivers and others who form the lifeblood of communities across Southern California.

“Over a thousand residents in [Los Angeles] have already been impacted, including a shocking (though hardly surprising) number of U.S. citizens and individuals lawfully present in the country.”

ICE agents in Los Angeles

The ACLU lawsuit specifically blamed Miller for these outrages:

“Federal immigration enforcement is constrained by law. But since the federal government began its mass immigration enforcement operations in [Los Angeles] on June 6, 2025, all of these legal requirements have given way to one overriding consideration: numbers, pure numbers. Quantity over quality.

”In late May, the White House and the Department of Homeland Security imposed a quota of 3,000 immigration-related arrests per day—with ‘consequences for not hitting arrest targets.’ In order to reach this target, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller directed high-level officials to change their approach to stops and arrests in the field.

“Agents and officers, according to him, should no longer conduct targeted operations based on investigations. Instead, they should ‘just go out there and arrest [unauthorized noncitizens] by rounding up people in public spaces like ‘Home Depot’ and ‘7-Eleven’ convenience stores.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom immediately protested the raids. They charged that Trump’s dispatching 4,700 federal troops to Los Angeles—4,000 National Guardsmen and 700 Marines—was both unnecessary and inflammatory. 

Karen Bass

On June 9, Newsom sued the Trump administration for what he called an illegal federalization of the California National Guard. But a three-judge appeals court panel allowed Trump to maintain the Guard in Los Angeles.

On July 11, Federal Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong ordered the Trump administration to halt its indiscriminate immigration raids across California.

Concluding there was a “mountain of evidence” to prove that ICE was systematically targeting brown-skinned people in Southern California, she issued temporary orders which:

1. Prohibited immigration agents from arresting people without reasonable suspicion that they were in the country illegally;
2. Restricted ICE from relying on factors like race, language, or occupation when determining reasonable suspicion; and
3. Required agents to allow detainees immediate access to legal counsel. 

On July 12, Miller responded on X: “The ruling has just been issued. A communist judge in LA has ordered ICE to report directly to her and radical left NGOs — not the president. This is another act of insurrection against the United States and its sovereign people.”