On Friday afternoon, President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that Stephen Miller, his deputy chief of staff, would become White House chief of staff on Monday, November 9. Susie Wiles, who has held the job since the inauguration, “will be moving over to the Trump Political Operation,” the president wrote, adding: “She has done a great job!” This came three days after Republicans, as NBC News put it, lost both chambers of Congress by wide margins. It is the first big change since the midterms, and it is a revealing one.
Here is the setup. Initial results from the NBC News Exit Poll found that 57% of midterm voters thought Trump’s immigration enforcement had gone too far, 23% said it was about right and 21% said it had not gone far enough. (That adds up to 101%, which is rounding, not enthusiasm.) So the electorate’s main verdict on the main policy was “too much.” The main policy was designed largely by Stephen Miller. And the response is to give Stephen Miller the office closest to the Oval Office.
You could read that as a failure to get the message. I think it’s more useful to look at what the job actually is. The Duke Chronicle points out that the chief of staff oversees the Executive Office of the President, including the Office of Management and Budget, and that the role needs no Senate confirmation. From January there will be a Democratic Senate, so that last part matters. A Democratic House also brings subpoenas. When you know you’re about to spend two years being investigated, the person you want running the building may not be a manager. You may want someone who enjoys a fight.
Trump’s allies more or less said this out loud. An ally who spoke to Trump told NBC that Miller will be combative with Congress, especially over investigations: “When the president says, ‘Do this,’ Stephen will do it, and he’ll leave bodies behind doing it.” Steve Bannon said Miller “gets parachuted in and takes immediate control.” Chris Whipple, who wrote a book on White House chiefs of staff, told CNN, as the Guardian reported, that it was “almost a declaration of war by Trump.” David Axelrod said the appointment was “a bucket of ICE cold water” for anyone who hoped Trump would work with the new Congress.
Why Wiles left
Trump’s account, given on his way to Florida, was this: “I wanted to make a change. I think Susie’s done a very good job ... Stephen’s been great, and we’ve got to make moves.” He later said publicly that her exit was “not because of the election,” though sources told ABC News he was privately blaming her for the losses. Axios reported that Wiles had offered to quit for two days before resigning on Thursday night. It also reported that she had argued against the war in Iran and had repeatedly questioned the immigration tactics Miller championed. In mid-October, Trump told NBC that Wiles would “be there until the end.” The end turned out to be about three weeks later.
Wiles, 69, was the first woman to hold the job, and she lasted longer than any of the four chiefs from Trump’s first term. She was credited with bringing discipline and plugging leaks. She also had a complicated year. She told Vanity Fair that Trump has an “alcoholic’s personality.” She went public with a breast cancer diagnosis in March and later said she no longer showed evidence of the disease. And El País reported on a controversy over her daughter, Katie, who works for a lobbying firm that signed a $35,000-a-month contract (about $420,000 a year) to represent Republika Srpska. Two Trump campaign veterans who had worked with Wiles, James Blair and Chris LaCivita, went to Bosnia in October to help Milorad Dodik’s party win. On her way out, Wiles said serving Trump “has been the honor of a lifetime” and that her “commitment to the President and the mission never will” change.
The résumé
Miller’s record isn’t really in dispute. Only the adjectives are. CBS News runs through it. In the first term he helped write and defend the travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries, and the Supreme Court upheld its third version in 2018. He was a leading backer of the 2018 zero-tolerance policy, which led to thousands of family separations. He pushed the refugee ceiling down to 15,000 for fiscal 2021. In the second term he pressed ICE for at least 3,000 arrests a day; in May 2025, according to NBC, he berated officials and threatened to fire them over the numbers. He championed using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to send alleged Venezuelan gang members to CECOT in El Salvador. He said in May 2025 that the administration was actively considering suspending habeas corpus. All of this ran on roughly $170 billion from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The American Immigration Council puts the figure at $170.7 billion and says less than 8% of it supports immigration court processing.
Miller became less visible after federal agents killed two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis in January. That was not a scandal of the usual Washington kind. Before the facts were in, Miller tweeted that Pretti was a “domestic terrorist” who tried “to assassinate federal law enforcement.” He later said the White House had been given bad information by Customs and Border Protection.
Hakeem Jeffries, expected to become speaker in January, wrote that Miller “is a dangerous xenophobe and reckless extremist who has American blood on his hands” and said: “Fire him today.” Chuck Schumer said Trump “learned nothing from his historic defeat.” Opposition from Democrats was expected. Opposition from Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who told CNN that Miller was “the worst of all possible choices,” according to ABC, was less so. Vice President JD Vance called it a “well deserved promotion.”
Some trivia. Most outlets give Miller’s age as 41, while El País says 40. Either way, he is the youngest chief of staff since Jimmy Carter’s Hamilton Jordan. Politico had reported a purported shortlist that also included Yankees president Randy Levine, Steve Witkoff, Bill Pulte and Kevin McCarthy. In the end, the job went to the man already sitting one desk over.
The night before the election, Miller told Sean Hannity’s viewers: “what he needs from you tomorrow is your vote.” Voters answered on Tuesday. Miller got promoted on Friday anyway.