Lord, Bless Our Lies - When Kristi Noem Prays and Stephen Miller’s Cousin Publicly Breaks with Him

In Portland, a city that in recent months has become the focal point of American constitutional questions, a woman entered the ICE building on October 7 whose public persona has long been draped in a religious myth. Kristi Noem, Secretary of the Interior of the United States, walked into the detention center in the southwest of the city accompanied by security forces - and did what she always does in moments of staging: she prayed.

Benny Johnson, a right-wing commentator with direct access to the Trump administration, posted a few minutes later: “I just witnessed something remarkable… Secretary Kristi Noem arrived at the ICE building, and the first thing she did was pray - for the safety of the officers and in gratitude for their bravery.”

What Johnson described as a spiritual event was in fact part of a ritual that has long since become a political method. Noem presents herself as the embodiment of a divine order - as the guardian of a faith that has nothing to do with religion anymore, but with domination. She does not pray out of compassion but as a signal. Her prayers are not addressed to God, but to power.

The view from the surrounding rooftops, captured by her own people, showed no emergency, no unrest, no threat. The surroundings were calm. The street empty. Only cameras, officers, her motorcade. And yet Noem spoke of “courage in dark times” and “divine guidance.” Her words were not an expression of empathy but of a delusion that confuses morality with control.

After the prayer came a meeting with Portland Police Chief Bob Day. Local reporter Nick Sorton wrote afterward: “We are witnessing incredible things. Noem just met with the woke police chief - and he looked absolutely defeated. She laid down the law. The Trump administration is taking control in Portland.”

The tone of these sentences is telling. “Control” and “faith” are no longer opposites under this administration. They have become synonyms. Where once law and ethics were distinct, there now stands a pseudo-Christian authority that calls itself divine and in truth is deeply inhumane. Kristi Noem stands as an example of this transformation - from political office to moral stage. Her faith is not a private confession but an ideology that declares everything opposing it to be godless. She prays in detention centers that separate children from their parents and speaks of “grace.” She justifies violence with Bible verses. She confuses oppression with salvation. And she smiles as if the kingdom of heaven had already begun - only exclusively for those who serve her.

The religious fanaticism she embodies is not a fringe phenomenon. It is the moral backbone of the Trump administration. Stephen Miller, Trump’s architect of deportation programs, shares the same cynicism. Yet in these days, something happened that struck at the heart of this ideology: his own cousin, Alisa Kasmer, publicly turned against him.

Kasmer wrote in a moving six-part letter that after the ICE raids in California she suffered panic attacks - and that her pain came less from politics than from moral horror. “I live with the deep pain of watching someone I once loved become the face of evil,” she wrote. Her words are not a political statement but a cry of despair. She describes how, after a night of tears and breathlessness, she began to write in order not to break.

She writes of a country rich in knowledge, technology, and opportunity - and yet starving of empathy in the name of ego and power. She condemns a nation “whose privilege has been wasted on cruelty and torture,” whose government terrorizes the weakest to simulate strength. “This is not by accident,” she writes to her cousin, “this is your design, Stephen.”

In a passage that could hardly be clearer, Kasmer recalls their shared Jewish heritage - families who survived pogroms and the Holocaust, the commandment never to forget where they came from. “We were taught to remember,” she writes. “We celebrated every year with the reminder to stand up and say: Never again. But what you are doing breaks that sacred promise. How can you do to others what was done to us?” Her text is a document of inner conflict, and at the same time a moral indictment. She speaks of guilt, shame, and the attempt to name the injustice embedded in her own family name. “I will never knowingly let evil into my life, no matter whose blood it carries - including my own,” she writes. It is a sentence as simple as it is radical: the rejection of blood loyalty, of the inheritance of cruelty.

These words question more than just one man. They expose the foundation of a system that uses religion as an instrument of domination. Because what Noem prays and Miller writes is, at its core, the same ideology: the confusion of faith with obedience, of morality with power, of victimhood with strength. Alisa Kasmer stands against this system not politically, but humanly. Her grief is not rhetoric but truth. Her text is the quiet countervoice to all the loud prayers being spoken in Washington. When she writes: “This isn’t about politics. This is about humanity. About decency. And you have lost yours,” that is the sentence that perhaps comes closest to defining this era.

For whoever truly seeks God will not find him in performances like the one in Portland. Not in cameras, not in slogans, not in the false devotion of a woman who prays for the cameras and governs for the cages. True spirituality, if it still exists in this politics, is not expressed in the tone of command but in empathy. But empathy is the enemy of the new order. That is why it needs its prayers - as a weapon, as a shield, as a lie. “God with us” was once the inscription of an age that believed it could justify immorality through morality. Today it wears a uniform again, this time with a star-spangled banner.

Kristi Noem stands in Portland and folds her hands. She calls on Jesus while outside the gates people protest whose children sit behind steel bars inside. And no one asks which god she truly serves. Perhaps the god of power, perhaps the god of fear. Perhaps only herself. And as she prays, somewhere in an office a monitor glows. Stephen Miller reads the headlines, Trump sees the images, Benny Johnson praises the “courage of the secretary.” Everything seems closed, choreographed, untouchable. Yet every system that calls itself untouchable already carries its first crack within.

That crack begins not on the street but in faith. When people realize that piety without compassion is nothing but theater, the stage set collapses. Perhaps one day people will remember that prayer in Portland - as the moment when cynicism reached its peak. And perhaps also as the moment when someone, for the first time, quietly thought “No.” For every empire that calls itself divine ends earthly. And every prayer that justifies power ends in silence. Yet in that silence, something new might arise: not faith in a false god, but faith that humanity is stronger than performance.

Here is the complete letter from Stephen Miller’s cousin:

A preface: I have debated about sharing this. A week ago, after the ICE raids in Camarillo, I had the worst panic attack I’ve experienced in over 30 years. (Shoutout to Zoloft for holding it together. F off, RFK Jr.) Hours of sobbing, shaking, nausea, and complete loss of control into the early morning hours led me to do the only thing that ever brings some clarity: write. The next day I started to write, still reeling from the emotional hangover. A few days later, while I was driving (thankfully close enough to home to make it back in one piece), I had another panic attack, this time triggered by the same pain that sent me back into a spiral of heartbreak. I picked up where I had left off, and kept writing. Many of you know who my cousin is. Being public about it is something I’ve struggled with. I live with the real fear that posting something this raw might bring. I am living with the deep pain of watching someone I once loved become the face of evil. But I know that staying silent only deepens the ache. There’s so much more I could say, and maybe someday I will. It’s a long read. I’m wordy AF.

Last night, I found myself in a stage of grief I didn’t even realize I had been carrying. A grief that’s been there for years - quiet, but constant. It comes from being so close to the root of something violent and so close to those who cause it. I cried until I couldn’t breathe - hours of sobbing, gasping, shaking, sick to my stomach with a weight in my chest that was too heavy to hide from. I was having a panic attack and I tried to escape. Maybe it was the year-long wall of pain finally breaking through. Maybe it was simply my rage turning into sorrow. Whatever it was, something in me started to crack. I think my grief has many layers. Grieving a world that will never be the same. Grieving the family that will never be whole again. Grieving for the country we once knew. Grieving all that we’ve lost - our dignity, compassion, and humanity. I try to make sense of it, but sometimes it feels like I’m trapped in a nightmare I can’t wake up from.

Then there’s the grief I carry inside my own family - the family I grew up with. I grieve a cousin I once loved. A boy I watched grow up, a boy I shared a childhood with. The kid I made fun of for his obsession with Michael Jackson and Ghostbusters. The awkward, funny, nerdy middle child who loved to chase attention, yet was always the sweetest with the littlest family members. A kid that reminded me of Alex P. Keaton, young, smart, maybe a little misguided, but basically harmless. Or so I thought. But I was so deeply wrong. And the realization that I didn’t know you at all - it guts me. I grieve what you’ve become, and I grieve what I’ve lost because of it. I grieve our family - the true family you’ve stolen from me by choosing this dark, cruel path that I cannot, and will not, be a part of. I will never knowingly let evil take hold again, no matter how seductive its shadow holds it carries. I grieve for the power you’ve been given and for those around you who have enabled it. I grieve for the souls you’ve lifted up, only to break them. I grieve for those you’ve left terrified and unsafe. I grieve because I realize that maybe I never really knew the people you are. My heart breaks every day, over and over.

But most of all, I grieve for those directly harmed by your actions. For the communities here in Los Angeles, our shared home, for all of California, and for the rest of the country terrorized by the cruelty you have brought upon us all. I grieve for the families shattered by cruelty dressed up as “immigration policy.” Targeting hardworking, vibrant community members who are being terrorized for simply being born. This was never about criminals. Or “illegal entry.” And now, with the passing of this bloated, grotesque bill - stuffed with more funding for ICE than most countries spend on their entire military, I’m left speechless. Where does this hatred come from? What are you trying to build besides fear? Immigrants were a part of your upbringing. Is this cruelty your way of rejecting a part of yourself? People always ask me, “What happened to you?” I don’t have a clear answer. I can only surmise it was a perfect storm of ego, fear, hate, and ambition - all of it maligned into something cruel and hollow, until it was too late. And now I’m left with guilt and shame. Someone asked me, “If social media had existed back then - if we had seen the horrific videos of children in cages, of mothers sobbing - would we have spoken up? Would we have intervened?” Yes, absolutely we would have. I grieve that we never got that chance.

Stephen, you and I both know what that means. We were raised with stories of survival. We learned what happens when hate spins out of control. We grew up hearing stories about pogroms, ghettos, the Holocaust - not just as history, but as part of our identity. We carry the weight of generations who were hunted, hated, expelled, murdered, just for existing. We celebrated holidays each year with the vow “never again.” But what has become of that vow? How can you do to others what has been done to us? How can you wake up each day and repeat everything we were taught never to forget? How far have you strayed from the roots we were taught to never forsake? We’ve erased it all. And it devastates me. The abyss that lies so close to the cruelty we were taught to resist has me ashamed and shattered. I try to forgive you in every way I can. But it will never be enough. I can’t undo what you’ve done or who you’ve become. I can’t outmatch your reach or stop these losses. The panic attacks haven’t stopped. The tears won’t dry. The weight on my chest is constant. This isn’t about politics. This is about humanity. About decency. And you have lost yours.

You’ve destroyed so many lives just to feed your own obsession and ego and uphold an administration so corrupt, so vile, I can barely comprehend it. As surreal as it all feels, this is reality. As much as I try to disassociate from it, the truth remains - being this close to such deep cruelty fills me with shame. I am gutted. My heart breaks that this is the legacy you have brought to our family. A legacy I never asked to share with you, and one I now carry like a curse.