• NO STARTUP FOUNDER likes to learn they’re being sued. But when Elizabeth Gore received an email this past summer letting her know that her company was being targeted, it was who was suing her that really made her blanch: Stephen Miller.
Miller made his name as the aide to former president Donald Trump who devised the administration’s restriction on Muslim visitors to the U.S. in 2017 and later championed the separation of migrant families at the border. After leaving the White House, Miller launched a litigation factory called America First Legal (AFL), which has been waging a campaign against progressive policies in the Biden administration and, increasingly, corporations.
Now Miller’s group was suing Hello Alice, the online platform for entrepreneurs that Gore had cofounded. AFL was taking legal action against the Houston-based company over a program that offered $25,000 grants to Blackowned businesses, which AFL characterized as racial discrimination. (AFL also sued Progressive Insurance, Hello Alice's partner on the program; Progressive declined to comment for this story.)
Gore quickly conferred with Hello Alice cofounder and CEO Carolyn Rodz. “I’ll admit, I was scared to death,” Gore says. But that fear turned to resolve. Miller appeared to be using Hello Alice as
