Stephen Miller will become White House chief of staff on Monday, replacing Susie Wiles, Trump announced Friday, three days after Democrats took control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections. “I am pleased to announce that Mr. Stephen Miller, the current Deputy Chief of Staff of the Trump Administration, and one of my most trusted advisors, will become the Chief of Staff starting Monday, November 9, 2026,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. He said Wiles, “who has done an outstanding job, will be moving over to the Trump Political Operation.”
Wiles confirmed her exit on X. “Today is my last day as White House Chief of Staff,” she wrote.
The chief of staff is the most powerful unelected job in the White House. The person in that seat runs the daily operation, decides who gets in the room with Trump, controls what reaches his desk and manages the hundreds of people who work for him. Wiles ran Trump’s 2024 campaign and had been chief of staff since his first day back in office. She is the longest serving chief of staff of his time in politics. In his first term, Trump went through four of them.
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Stephen Miller is not a steadying hand in the Wiles mold. He is one of the most hardline figures in Trump’s orbit. Miller, 41, joined Trump’s 2016 campaign as a speechwriter after working for Jeff Sessions, then a senator from Alabama known as one of the most anti immigration voices in Congress. In Trump’s first term, Miller was a driving force behind the travel ban on people from several Muslim majority countries and the 2018 policy that separated migrant children from their parents at the southern border. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group that tracks hate groups, lists Miller as an extremist.
In Trump’s second term, Miller has served as deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor, with a hand in nearly every major domestic decision. He has been most closely tied to the mass deportation campaign and the expansion of ICE operations in cities across the country.
The move comes as Republicans turn on each other after Tuesday’s losses. Before the announcement, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon said in an interview that Wiles and the White House’s political consultants “should be removed and removed immediately” because of the results. Wiles had been one of the names rumored to be on her way out since Tuesday night.
Stephen Miller’s promotion sends a clear message about how Trump read the election. Voters handed Democrats both chambers of Congress, flipped Senate seats in Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kansas and Iowa, and elected Democratic governors in states Trump won easily two years ago. Immigration crackdowns were a major issue in many of those races. The same day Trump named Miller, Houston Mayor John Whitmire signed an order cutting back his police department’s cooperation with ICE and told reporters that “elections matter.” Trump responded to the same results by putting the architect of his immigration agenda in charge of the entire White House.
Miller takes over on Monday with a Democratic Congress arriving in January that has promised hearings, subpoenas and oversight of the administration, including its immigration operations.
