The White House chief of staff is the person who runs the White House for the president. Stephen Miller takes over the role on Monday, replacing Susie Wiles, and while most Americans could not name a single chief of staff from the last 30 years, the person in that seat shapes almost everything that comes out of the Oval Office.
The position is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, and the president does not even have to fill it. The chief of staff is appointed directly by the president, does not need to be confirmed by the Senate, and can be fired at any time. Cabinet secretaries, like the secretary of state or the attorney general, have to go through Senate hearings and a vote. The chief of staff skips all of that. The only person they answer to is the president.
So what does the White House chief of staff actually do all day? The job breaks down into a few big pieces.
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First, they are the boss of the White House staff. The chief of staff hires and supervises the senior people who work in the West Wing, from policy advisers to the communications team, and in recent administrations they have also handled firing staff members. If someone in the White House is not doing their job, the chief of staff is the one who deals with it.
Second, they are the gatekeeper. The chief of staff controls who gets in to see the president and what information lands on the president’s desk. Memos, briefings, policy proposals and requests for meetings all flow through them. That power is easy to underestimate. A cabinet secretary with an idea, a member of Congress with a complaint or an outside adviser with a pitch may never reach the president if the chief of staff decides it is not a priority.
Third, they manage the president’s time. The chief of staff shapes the daily schedule, decides which issues get the president’s attention and which get handled by someone else, and keeps the administration focused on its top goals.
Fourth, they are a top adviser. Chiefs of staff weigh in on policy, political strategy and how the administration responds to a crisis. They also work with leaders in the House and Senate to move the president’s agenda through Congress, and they coordinate between federal agencies so departments are not working against each other.
Put all of that together, and you get a person who decides what the president sees, who the president hears from and what the White House spends its energy on. That is why the job is often described as the second most powerful in Washington.
The role took shape after World War II. Harry Truman created a top assistant position in 1946, and John R. Steelman was the first to hold it. The title chief of staff came under Dwight Eisenhower. Richard Nixon’s chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, turned the position into the enforcer role it is known as today, concentrating power in the job like never before. Gerald Ford’s last chief of staff was a young Dick Cheney, who later became one of the most powerful vice presidents in American history.
It is also a job people do not hold for long. The average chief of staff lasts a little more than 18 months. Trump went through four of them in his first term: Reince Priebus, John Kelly, Mick Mulvaney and Mark Meadows. Many chiefs of staff go on to bigger things. Rahm Emanuel left the job under Barack Obama and became mayor of Chicago, and Jack Lew went on to become treasury secretary.
Wiles made history in 2025 as the first woman to hold the position. Miller, who had been serving as deputy chief of staff for policy and is known as the architect of the administration’s hardline immigration agenda, now inherits all of that power. In his first remarks after being named to the job, he pledged Trump his “absolute loyalty.”
