U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Friday that Stephen Miller will replace Susie Wiles as White House chief of staff.
Trump said that Miller, who currently serves as deputy chief of staff for policy and as homeland security advisor, would take over from Wiles on Monday.
“Susie Wiles, who has done an outstanding job, will be moving over to the Trump political operation,” Trump wrote. “She has done a great job.”
Wiles revealed in September that she was diagnosed with breast cancer in March and said she was “cancer-free” following treatment.
Miller, whom Trump described as one of his “most trusted advisors,” is an immigration hawk who is one of the architects of the Trump administration’s deportation policy.
That policy has been a flashpoint of contention between the Trump administration and Democrats, many of whom have called for local law enforcement to refuse to cooperate with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers or for the abolition of the agency in its entirety.
Miller, who is Jewish, has also reportedly been involved in the Trump administration’s efforts to strip federal funding from schools like Harvard University and Columbia University over their alleged discrimination against Jewish students after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel. Some universities have reached settlements over those allegations, but Harvard and the Trump administration remain engaged in a legal battle after a federal judge ordered the funding be restored in 2025.
The promotion of Miller, one of Trump’s most partisan and hard-nosed lieutenants, to one of the most powerful jobs in the White House may signal how Trump intends to respond to the massive defeat Republicans suffered in the midterms on Tuesday.
Democrats have said they will launch investigations of the Trump administration when they take over the House and Senate in January, with Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, issuing the two-word warning “lawyer up.”
One likely target of those investigations, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who vowed on Thursday to fight the “sham articles of impeachment” against him from Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), congratulated Miller on Friday.
“Patriots in control,” he wrote.
Democrats slammed the decision to promote Miller and said it was evidence that Trump intended to double down on his policy agenda.
“Clearly, the president learned nothing from the ass kicking he took from the American people on Tuesday,” Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) wrote.
