A growing number of Trump administration officials are moving out of their homes and into military housing where they can be shielded from protests and political violence.
The Atlantic first reported on the moves last Thursday.
Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy, is the most recent addition to seven high-ranking officials who have been encouraged to make the move. Miller joined Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, another senior political appointee to the Army and one other senior White House official.
The morning after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated, Miller’s wife said she was threatened in front of her home.
On Fox News, Katie Miller told Sean Hannity, “The morning after our dear friend Charlie was assassinated, I take a step out on my porch and I had a lady saying, ‘I’m watching you.’”
After that incident, someone passed out flyers all over their neighborhood, “saying my husband, Stephen, is a Nazi, is a war criminal and had our home address,” Katie Miller said. The Millers lived just south of Washington, D.C., in Arlington, Virginia.
“They spread it all over our neighborhood and have continued to do so, not only at my children’s parks, but around town,” she said in September.
She added that while the people who doxxed her and her husband are not assassins, “they are inciting the same violence we saw take out our friend Charlie Kirk last week.”
Katie and Stephen Miller have three children under 5 years old.
Threats against Trump admin higher than previous administrations
There is “no record of so many political appointees living on military installations,” The Atlantic reported.
After the Daily Mail described where Noem lived, she moved into a home on Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, which is located in southeast D.C. in Ward 8.
Rubio and Hegseth now live on “Generals’ Row” at the Army enclave, Fort McNair.
Another official who asked to remain anonymous vacated their private home and moved into military housing following Kirk’s assassination, according to the report.
While these officials have had military accommodations provided for them, when National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard requested to move to Fort McNair with Hegseth and Rubio, she was told she couldn’t, due to space shortages.
The Atlantic said the reason Trump has seen an uptick in violence against himself and his Cabinet is because his rhetoric and actions have intensified divisions.
Specifically, The Atlantic wrote, “It is an ominous marker of the nation’s polarization, to which the Trump administration has itself contributed, that some of those top public servants have felt a need to separate themselves from the public.”
However, The Washington Stand reasoned that the root of the problem is that public officials are no longer safe in public, and this, they believe, leads to a much more serious issue.
They wrote, “When an increasingly visible faction views the officials chosen through these legitimate means as enemies of the people — proper targets for harassment, obstruction, or perhaps even assassination — it threatens the foundational ideas on which America has been built.”