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Donald Trump names Stephen Miller White House chief of staff in place of Susie Wiles, days after the midterm defeat

By Staff Writer  |  7 November 2026

Miller, the deputy chief of staff who has shaped the administration's immigration policy, takes over on Monday. Wiles, the first woman to hold the post, moves to the president's political operation.

Donald Trump has named Stephen Miller as his White House chief of staff, replacing Susie Wiles three days after the Republican Party lost control of both houses of Congress in the midterm elections. The president announced the change on Friday in a post on his own social media platform, in which he praised Wiles and said she would move to his political operation, and Miller starts on Monday. As recently as last month, the president had said there was no chance of replacing Wiles.

Leaving the White House for a trip to Florida later on Friday, Trump told reporters that Miller had been with him from the beginning and would be a good manager, although the decision itself was explained to them in a single sentence.

I wanted to make a change.

Donald Trump, President of the United States

A long-serving adviser

At 41, Miller is one of the president's longest-serving advisers, having joined the 2016 campaign as a speechwriter after working for Jeff Sessions, the former Alabama senator who became Trump's first attorney general. Since January 2025 he has been deputy chief of staff, and although his portfolio has been wide, he is most closely identified with the administration's immigration policy. In the first term he was the president's chief adviser on immigration, and his proposals in the second have included a target of 3,000 arrests a day by federal immigration agents.

Wiles, who is 69, led Trump's 2024 campaign and became the first woman to hold the post of White House chief of staff. She has served longer than any of his other chiefs of staff, of whom there were four in his first term alone, and she reportedly handed in her resignation on Thursday. After disclosing a diagnosis of breast cancer in March, she later said there was no longer evidence of the disease following months of treatment. In her own statement on Friday she said that serving the president had been the honour of a lifetime and that her commitment to him would not change.

Democrats prepare for January

Democratic leaders, whose party takes control of both chambers in January, criticised the appointment within hours. In a statement, Chuck Schumer, who is expected to become Senate majority leader in January, said that Trump could not have made a worse choice and that the Democratic majorities would fight him at every step. Robert Garcia, the congressman expected to chair the House Oversight Committee, said Democrats on that committee would continue to investigate Miller.

With control of Congress, the Democrats also take the chairs of the committees that oversee the White House. Wiles leaves the post on Friday, and Miller begins work as chief of staff on Monday.