Trump Elevates Stephen Miller, a Fiery Hard-Liner, to Chief of Staff

The Republican wipeout has inflamed tensions within the administration, as officials brace for congressional investigations by Democrats and further turnover in the West Wing and the cabinet. Mr. Miller’s pitch for the job as the gatekeeper to the president, according to people who heard it, was that Mr. Trump needed to wind down the Iran war, a conflict that the president’s core supporters viewed as a betrayal.

People familiar with Mr. Miller’s views say he is also likely to steer the president away from his early instinct after Tuesday’s losses to seek deals with Democrats. That could involve leaning even more into culture war issues, such as hard-line immigration enforcement and efforts to target diversity initiatives.

Democrats immediately criticized the decision, and Mr. Miller. Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the New York Democrat who is poised to be the next House speaker, called Mr. Miller “a dangerous xenophobe” who should have been fired instead. Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, said that handing Mr. Miller an even more powerful role showed that Mr. Trump had “learned nothing” from Republicans’ losses on Election Day.

Ms. Wiles, who said Friday would be her last day, is the highest-ranking White House official to leave in the wake of the midterm elections, which cost Republican majorities in the House and Senate. The first woman to hold the top staff job in the West Wing, she helped steer Mr. Trump to his election victory in 2024 but now joins a recent exodus of high-profile women from the administration in his second term.

Here’s what else to know:

• Miller’s move: For weeks, Mr. Miller had been making known his interest in the job if Ms. Wiles left, and Mr. Trump had been asking people privately in recent days what they thought about him for the job.

• Loyal ally: Mr. Miller, 41, has worked for President Trump since his first presidential campaign, served all four years in the White House during the president’s first term and has amassed immense power since Mr. Trump retook office.

• Internal criticism: Before the departure of Ms. Wiles was announced on Friday, a former Trump health official, Calley Means, accused her of bowing to “unrelenting” pressure from industry lobbyists while prioritizing political fund-raising over Americans’ health. Read more ›

Now, she is also the latest in a wave of women who have left the Trump administration in the past year, as The New York Times reported last month, and one of the first to depart since Tuesday’s elections. On Thursday, Harmeet Dhillon, a top official in the Justice Department, resigned after conflicts with department leaders.

Four of Mr. Trump’s eight female cabinet-level officials resigned or were fired earlier this year: Attorney General Pam Bondi; Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the labor secretary; Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem; and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence.

Like Ms. Wiles, all four were replaced by men.

When Mr. Trump was putting together his administration for his second term, the president-elect tapped women for many cabinet-level jobs and high-profile positions in his inner circle. Among them was Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, who gained attention as the youngest person to serve in the position. She stepped down in August.

At a Women’s History Month celebration last year, Mr. Trump declared that he was “thrilled to say that we have more women in our cabinet than any Republican president in the history of our country.”

That is no longer the case. There are now three women remaining in cabinet-level positions: Brooke Rollins, the secretary of Agriculture; Linda McMahon, the secretary of education; and Kelly Loeffler, the head of the Small Business Administration.

Jonathan Swan contributed reporting.

People close to Mr. Miller said he had little interest in compromising with Democrats and was prepared for a fight over congressional subpoenas and investigations, as The New York Times reported last week.

The new chief of staff plans to focus on trying to rebuild the fractured MAGA coalition and pursuing policies that will energize the voters who elected Mr. Trump in 2024, they said. He has also privately indicated the need to resolve the Iran war and mitigate the high prices that drove deep voter dissatisfaction in last week’s midterm elections.

Mr. Trump has not offered an explanation for his decision to fire Susie Wiles, his former chief of staff, and replace her with Mr. Miller, noting only that “Stephen’s been with me from the beginning” and was one of his most trusted advisers.

Mr. Miller, 41, has advised Mr. Trump for nearly a decade, and has either authored or significantly contributed to many of the president’s most high-profile moves. Those include separation of migrant families at the border; the 2017 Muslim travel ban; directing the government to stifle critics of Mr. Trump; the ending of nearly all U.S. refugee programs; the widespread pressure campaign against American universities; extrajudicial boat strikes that have killed hundreds; and purges of officials deemed insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump.

But perhaps Mr. Miller’s most wide-reaching influence can be seen in Mr. Trump’s mass deportation campaign, which Mr. Miller has overseen. Mr. Miller helped set in motion militarized operations on the streets of American cities, pitting masked, heavily armed immigration agents against residents of cities like Minneapolis and Chicago.

Many of those raids have targeted immigrant communities that Mr. Trump has denigrated, including Somalis. Mr. Miller has also fixated on accusations that Somali-Americans have committed fraud and are spending public money on luxury cars, mansions and first-class travel.

Mr. Miller has earned Mr. Trump's trust by validating the president’s impulses and his worldview, particularly on immigration. Mr. Miller, once an aide to Senator Jeff Sessions, an immigration hard-liner, was drawn to Mr. Trump by his anti-immigrant rhetoric that dominated his 2016 presidential campaign. Mr. Trump, in turn, was impressed by his ideas on immigration policy and the fervor with which Mr. Miller would rile up crowds during campaign rallies and defend Mr. Trump in media appearances.

“I love watching him on television,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Miller last year.

Republicans in Washington have said that they consider Mr. Miller to be channeling the president when he speaks. The two spent the four years that Mr. Trump was out of power speaking on nearly a daily basis, “talking about what a second term agenda might look like before many of us even dreamed that there would be a second term,” said Senator Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana.

Mr. Miller, who has now amassed considerable power in the second Trump administration, has continued to serve as a fiery surrogate for the president’s most divisive moves.

Earlier this year, as Mr. Trump publicly toyed with the idea of invading Greenland, Mr. Miller laid out a vision of American imperialism in which the United States could freely overthrow national governments and take foreign territory and resources so long as it was deemed in the national interest.

“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else,” Mr. Miller told Jake Tapper of CNN. “But we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Mr. Miller has also echoed Mr. Trump’s efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the federal judiciary. When judges blocked the president’s tariffs last year, Mr. Miller attacked the decision as a “judicial coup” on social media. He has also blasted other judges scrutinizing Trump administration policies as Marxists and “crazy” communists.

But near the week’s end, instead of ceding to the clear evidence of voter displeasure, Mr. Trump pivoted to a familiar move: more MAGA.

On Friday, the president ousted his onetime close adviser, Susie Wiles, from the role of White House chief of staff, replacing her with Stephen Miller, his deputy chief of staff. More than any other top adviser, Mr. Miller encouraged an aggressive flexing of executive power when Mr. Trump returned to office.

Mr. Miller has been the driver of the president’s most muscular actions, including the use of increasingly hostile tactics to capture immigrants across the country and the bombing of small boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean that he and Mr. Trump declared constituted a foreign invasion.

The president’s choice sent a clear signal about the posture he intends to strike in his final two years in office and how little he intends to alter his approach in response to the most decisive political rout in half a century. He also put on center stage a figure who had already been a galvanizing target for Democrats intent on using their new powers in Congress to check the administration.

In a social media post, Mr. Miller praised Mr. Trump as “the most transformative political leader” in U.S. history, saying that he had “single-handedly saved America from those who would destroy it.”

“The mission now is more clear than ever: Fight with all of our soul to support our president and defend this magnificent Republic,” he added.

People close to Mr. Miller said he had shown no interest in compromising with congressional Democrats and was ready for a fight over subpoenas and investigations that are expected to emanate from the Hill. His top priority, they said, is rebuilding the fractured MAGA coalition and pursuing policies that will energize the voters who elected Mr. Trump in 2024.

“Stephen is and always has been the eternal flame of the MAGA movement — putting the president’s words and policy into action,” Hunter Morgen, who worked as a deputy to Mr. Miller during the president’s first term and is now a lobbyist at Ballard Partners, wrote in a text message.

While Ms. Wiles made clear she did not consider her job to be protecting the country from the president, as some of his first-term senior aides did, Mr. Miller is far more willing than she ever was to push legal boundaries.

He knows how the levers of government function. He is one of two top West Wing staff members who were part of the first administration when the House majority flipped in 2018, prompting a blitz of subpoenas from Congress.

Mr. Miller spent the years between Mr. Trump’s two terms recruiting a team that would help him put in place a sweeping agenda once back in power. Today, he has allies among the lawyers in key agencies across the executive branch, as well as a running dialogue with Attorney General Todd Blanche and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Mr. Hegseth celebrated Mr. Miller’s promotion with several posts on social media. “Huge CONGRATS,” he wrote, calling Mr. Miller “a true patriot and America First fighter.” He followed that with a post that declared: “Patriots in control,” and a subsequent one that included a picture of himself and Mr. Miller.

Still, Mr. Miller’s allies have indicated that he understands the Iran war has been a political disaster, and believes the president needs to get back to policies that are popular with the MAGA base.

While Ms. Wiles may be staying in Mr. Trump’s orbit by moving to the president’s outside political operation in a still undefined role, her departure and the ascent of Mr. Miller will fundamentally shift the circle of advisers around the president as the White House absorbs the shock of the midterm elections.

“I wanted to make a change,” Mr. Trump told reporters as he departed the White House for a trip to Florida. Ms. Wiles did a “great job,” he said, but added: “Sometimes in life, you have to make moves.”

Asked what he wanted Mr. Miller to do differently than Ms. Wiles, who he had previously claimed wasn’t going anywhere, the president said, “Just run things well.”

Mr. Trump, in his private conversations as well as his public remarks, has not accepted blame for the election results.

Instead, he repeatedly blasted Ms. Wiles and his other political advisers, insisting he was poorly served in the lead-up to the midterms. He criticized Ms. Wiles in front of several people at an East Room election watch party Tuesday night, according to people with knowledge of the incident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations.

Mr. Trump has also been privately critical of James Blair, Ms. Wiles’s ally, who ran the president’s outside political operation, people with knowledge of the comments said.

Mr. Trump publicly expressed his confidence in Ms. Wiles in recent months. But behind the scenes, there were signs that her standing with the president was shaky, according to officials with knowledge of the dynamics.

He has berated Ms. Wiles in front of other staff members about his frustrations that his administration has not moved faster to find people he brands as “leakers,” as well as the stalled prosecutions of his perceived political enemies, they said. In front of several advisers, he would accuse her of being among the leakers.

Mr. Trump began cutting Ms. Wiles out of hiring decisions, including when he chose an inexperienced television pundit to replace the departing press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.

Allies of Ms. Wiles described her as prepared to leave her role, and uninterested in fighting to stay in it. Her supporters saw the criticism of her as an effort to assign blame for a political and policy strategy largely driven by Mr. Trump himself. And they faulted her detractors inside and outside the administration for spreading information meant to undercut her with Mr. Trump, including stories about her daughter’s lobbying work.

In her own statement posted on social media, Ms. Wiles described working for Mr. Trump in the White House as the “honor of a lifetime.”

“While my role may be changing, my commitment to the President and the mission never will,” she added.

Ms. Wiles, the first woman to hold the top staff job in the West Wing, helped steer Mr. Trump to his election victory in 2024, playing a central role in his return to power four years after his loss to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

She was diagnosed with breast cancer in early 2026. Ms. Wiles stayed in her role as she started treatment and recently announced that she was cancer free.

Ms. Wiles came into the job having established a rapport with Mr. Trump and a level of trust that none of his four first-term chiefs of staff had enjoyed.

She tried to influence his decisions on core issues including his immigration crackdown, even if only on the margins, according to people with knowledge of her role. She pushed for the appointments of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and both have been seen by many outside the government as stabilizing figures.

But Mr. Trump has relied primarily on his own instincts this term, and few advisers have engaged him in the kind of direct confrontations over policy that characterized his first administration.