Sunday, 7 March 2021

Susan Rice is burning sage in her West Wing office, once occupied by anti-immigrant hardliner Stephen Miller, used to cleanse a space of negativity

Susan Rice has redecorated the West Wing office formerly occupied by Stephen Miller.
In the room where Miller formulated Trump's anti-immigration policies, she's put up Haitian art and used scented sage.
The Biden administration has reversed many of the Trump administration's migration policies.
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Susan Rice, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, occupies the same West Wing office recently used by Stephen Miller, the Trump administration's anti-immigration hardliner, The New York Times reported Saturday.

As a prominent Black Democrat often vilified by conservatives, she's aware of the "symbolism" of occupying the space where Miller formulated policies, including the widely reviled child separation policy, and has taken a few steps to redecorate.

In the room, a painting from Haiti's Caribbean nation now hangs, and the room is scented with sage candles.

Burning sage has been used in indigenous people's rituals for centuries to cleanse a person or space of negativity and promote healing and wisdom.

Apparently confirming the report, Rice, on Saturday evening, tweeted a picture of the office's new decorations.

—Susan Rice (@AmbassadorRice) March 7, 2021

Miller was among Trump's most influential advisors. He was the architect of Trump's hardline anti-immigration strategy, including the child separation policy, the Muslim ban, and the redirection of military money to finance the wall along the southern border that remained unfinished when Trump left office.

Under the child separation policy, thousands of children were separated from their undocumented migrant parents and held in squalid detention facilities on the US-Mexican border.

He survived calls from Democrats for his resignation after emails were obtained by the Southern Poverty Law Center showing him promoting white nationalist conspiracy theories and citing notorious white nationalist websites.

Rice, a domestic policy advisor, is taking a key role in President Biden's reversal of Trump-era migration policies.

On February 3, Rice said that the administration would form a special task force to reunite the 3,000 children still displaced due to the child separation policy with their parents or family.

Rice served as Barack Obama's national security advisor and attracted criticism from conservatives over the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, where a US diplomat was killed.

In February, the administration was criticized for reopening one of the Trump administration's detention facilities for children to house unaccompanied minors entering the country.

Read the original article on Business Insider