Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff who drove the administration’s immigration crackdown, will become Donald Trump’s new chief of staff on Monday, the president announced on Friday. Miller replaces Susie Wiles, the first woman to hold the job, after the Republicans suffered heavy losses in the midterm elections. Trump made the appointment in a Truth Social post, describing Miller as one of his most trusted advisers.
Wiles is moving to the president’s political operation. “I wanted to make a change,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House for a trip to Florida, saying Wiles had done a “great job” and that “sometimes in life you have to make moves.” Asked what he wanted Miller to do differently, he said, “Just run things well.”
The reshuffle follows the loss of Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate, a result that has sharpened tension inside the administration as officials prepare for congressional investigations led by Democrats. Trump has not taken blame for the outcome. He has instead criticised Wiles and his political advisers, including James Blair, who ran his outside political operation. After the elections, Trump told some advisers he was unhappy with the political team that persuaded him to let his super political action committee spend $400 million to help Republicans, money he had been reluctant to approve and signed off on only in September.
Miller is among the most ideological figures in the West Wing and one of the few current aides who spent years preparing for a second term from the standpoint of executive power. People familiar with his thinking say he is likely to steer the president away from his early instinct to seek deals with Democrats and could lean further into immigration enforcement and efforts to target diversity initiatives. In the short term, his focus is said to be the war with Iran, which parts of Trump’s base have viewed as a betrayal of his campaign promises.
Miller has working relationships with cabinet officials central to Trump’s priorities, including Attorney General Todd Blanche, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Hegseth marked the promotion with several posts, calling Miller “a true patriot and America First fighter” and following up with “Patriots in control.”
Wiles helped steer Trump to victory in 2024 and arrived with a level of trust none of his four first-term chiefs of staff had enjoyed. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in early 2026, stayed in the role through treatment and recently said she was cancer free. In a statement on social media, she called working for Trump in the White House the “honor of a lifetime,” adding, “While my role may be changing, my commitment to the President and the mission never will.”
