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Representative Robert Garcia, the California Democrat who is poised to lead the House Oversight Committee in the next Congress, said that he planned to investigate Stephen Miller for his involvement in the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation efforts.
“Just days after the American people rejected his corrupt and lawless presidency, Donald Trump is doubling down,” Garcia said in a statement. “Stephen Miller is the architect of the unconstitutional ICE raids that have terrorized our communities and kidnapped and killed American citizens and immigrant families.”
“Stephen Miller should lawyer up,” he added.
Susie Wiles is one of the most powerful women to have served in Trump’s second term. And she is the latest in a wave of powerful women who have left the Trump administration amid an internal power struggle. On Thursday, Harmeet Dhillon, one of the top officials in the Justice Department, resigned after conflicts with department leaders.One of the disconnects right now is that the Republican midterm losses were a decisive rebuke of the president and his actions in office. But Trump has two years left of the term, and elevating Miller — who is deeply ideological and also the most powerful policy staff member in the modern history of the presidency — is doubling down on Trump’s agenda, not switching course.
Bill Pulte, the administration’s finance housing chairman who Wiles allies believed was undermining her with the president, was quick to praise Miller as the new choice. “Congratulations to my dear friend and colleague, Stephen Miller, on your promotion to Chief of Staff,” Pulte wrote on social media. “I can’t wait to work with you!”
Miller’s pitch for the job, according to people who heard it, was that the president needed to wind down the Iran war, a conflict that the president’s core supporters viewed as a betrayal.
Miller has also echoed Trump’s effort to undermine the legitimacy of the federal judiciary. When judges blocked the president’s tariffs last year, Miller attacked the decision as a “judicial coup” on social media. He has also attacked other judges scrutinizing Trump administration policies as Marxists and “crazy” communists.
Susie Wiles posted on social media that today was her last day as chief of staff. “Serving President Trump in the White House has been the honor of a lifetime,” she wrote. “I’m so proud to have been a part of what we’ve accomplished together from securing our border and cutting taxes to strengthening our economy and putting America First. More than anything, I’m grateful for the extraordinary people I’ve had the privilege of working alongside. While my role may be changing, my commitment to the president and the mission never will.
”Stephen Miller, a deputy chief of staff, has been the architect of some of the most radical domestic policies in Trump’s second term, particularly on immigration. He has also served as a fiery surrogate for the president’s most divisive moves. Earlier this year, as Trump publicly toyed with the idea of invading Greenland, 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.
In his Truth Social post, Trump said Wiles would be moving over to his political operation. He said Miller would take over as White House chief of staff starting on Monday.
Wiles was diagnosed with breast cancer in early 2026. She stayed in her role as she started treatment and recently announced that she was cancer free.
Stephen Miller has worked for 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 Trump retook office. He has been the driving force behind Trump’s hardline immigration policy and his crackdown on liberal institutions.
On election night, the president blamed Wiles for the midterm disaster in front of others. He has been furious at his political team. Trump had been asking people privately in recent days what they thought about Stephen Miller for the job. He was also asking people’s views on Jay Clayton, the director of national intelligence.
For weeks, Miller had been making known his interest in the job if Susie Wiles left, through proxies. But he has deep relationships with a number of key cabinet officials, which may have added to Trump’s consideration.
President Trump announced Friday he would make Stephen Miller, the powerful domestic policy adviser who has helped drive the administration’s immigration crackdown, his new chief of staff, replacing Susie Wiles following sweeping Republican losses in the midterm elections.
Ms. Wiles is moving to the president’s political operation, Mr. Trump said. But her departure and the ascent of Mr. Miller will fundamentally shift the circle of advisers around Mr. Trump as the White House absorbs the shock of the midterm elections.
It also signals an aggressive doubling-down by the president, after losses of Republican majorities in the House and Senate that served as a rebuke of Mr. Trump’s handling of issues ranging from the economy to the war with Iran to tariffs to his push for a mid-decade redistricting effort.
“I wanted to make a change,” Mr. Trump told reporters as he departed the White House for a trip to Florida. She had done a “great job,” he said. “Sometimes in life you have to make moves,” he added.
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.”
The Republican wipeout had further inflamed tensions within the administration, with officials bracing for a slew of congressional investigations by Democrats and turnover in the West Wing and the cabinet.
It also signals an aggressive doubling-down by the president, after losses of Republican majorities in the House and Senate that served as a rebuke of Mr. Trump’s handling of issues ranging from the economy to the war with Iran to tariffs to his push for a mid-decade redistricting effort.
“I wanted to make a change,” Mr. Trump told reporters as he departed the White House for a trip to Florida. She had done a “great job,” he said. “Sometimes in life you have to make moves,” he added.
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.”
The Republican wipeout had further inflamed tensions within the administration, with officials bracing for a slew of congressional investigations by Democrats and turnover in the West Wing and the cabinet.
Mr. Trump’s decision elevates one of the most deeply ideological members of the White House, someone known for flexing his power, to a prime role. Mr. Miller is one of the few people in the current West Wing who spent years preparing for a second Trump term from the standpoint of executive power, and who knows how the levers of government function. He is also one of two top West Wing staff members to have been part of the first administration when the House majority flipped in 2018, prompting a blitz of subpoenas from Congress.
People familiar with his views say he is 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.
“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. “Since the earliest days of the 2016 campaign, he has been a steadfast torchbearer of the president’s agenda.”
In the short term, Mr. Miller’s focus is said to be the Iran war, which has been viewed by the president’s base as a betrayal of the president’s campaign promises.
Mr. Miller has relationships with some of the key cabinet officials involved in Mr. Trump’s top priorities, such as Attorney General Todd Blanche, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. His arrival may help Mr. Hegseth, at least in the short term, as the president has heard myriad complaints about him from Republicans on Capitol Hill.
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 up with a post that said, “Patriots in control,” and a subsequent one that included a picture of himself and Mr. Miller.
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 this week, 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. And for the last several months, Mr. Trump 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.
Allies of Ms. Wiles described her as prepared to leave her role. Her supporters saw the criticism of her as an effort to assign blame for a political 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.
Unlike some of Mr. Trump’s previous chiefs of staff, Ms. Wiles made clear she did not consider her job as trying to fundamentally change the president. But 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.
Mr. Trump has 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.
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.
And Mr. Trump started to criticize his chief of staff in front of other staff members, including over decisions he had approved, according to people familiar with his remarks.
After the elections, Mr. Trump made it clear to some advisers that he was unhappy with Ms. Wiles and his political team, who persuaded him to sign off on his super PAC’s spending $400 million to help Republicans in the midterms. The president had been reluctant to approve the spending and agreed to it only in September.
Stephen Miller is the architect of Trump’s mass deportation effort and a perennial target of liberal critics of the administration.Maggie Haberman, Tyler Pager and I had reached out to the White House with reporting that the president was replacing Susie Wiles. Shortly before the deadline we had given for the administration to comment, Trump posted on Truth Social.President Trump announced on Friday that Susie Wiles was leaving as White House chief of staff after sweeping Republican losses in the midterm elections. She will be replaced by Stephen Miller, who has worked for Trump since his first presidential campaign and served all four years in the White House during his first term.
Calley Means, who resigned as a top federal health official two weeks ago after clashing with the White House, on Friday accused President Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, of bowing to “unrelenting” pressure from industry lobbyists while prioritizing political fund-raising over Americans’ health.
In a two-hour interview with the podcaster Joe Rogan, Mr. Means said that Ms. Wiles withheld support from his efforts to make children’s diets healthier, citing the need for sugar industry money. He said her team demanded more approvals of flavored e-cigarettes, a top priority for major tobacco companies that donated at least $20 million to the G.O.P. in 2026. And he said they gave in to heavy lobbying from the kratom industry to relax proposed restrictions on products often referred to as “gas station heroin.”
“Susie said to me many times: ‘We need money for the midterms, Calley. We need money for the midterms,’” Mr. Means said.
In recent days, Ms. Wiles has become a target of criticism and finger-pointing in an escalating blame game after Republicans’ stunning losses in the midterm elections. In a post on Truth Social on Friday afternoon, Mr. Trump announced that Ms. Wiles would leave her post on Monday and Stephen Miller, a top White House adviser, would replace her.
“Susie Wiles, who has done an outstanding job, will be moving over to the Trump Political Operation. I want to thank her for her service as Chief of Staff — She has done a great job!”
Ms. Wiles was not immediately available to comment. A White House spokeswoman, Allison Schuster, did not respond to questions about Mr. Means’s statements. But she said in an emailed statement that Mr. Trump had “made incredible strides to Make America Healthy Again,” citing the government’s new dietary guidelines and work to eliminate artificial ingredients from food.
Mr. Means, a close ally of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who helped build the Make America Healthy Again movement, avoided criticizing Mr. Kennedy or Mr. Trump. He directed his ire almost entirely at Ms. Wiles, a former lobbyist and political consultant, who he asserted had “spent her career taking money,” including from the pharmaceutical and pesticide industries and from the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a former client.
Mr. Means framed Ms. Wiles and her top deputies as welcoming lobbyists into the White House while sidelining Mr. Kennedy and infantilizing Mr. Trump. Mr. Means made a larger argument about the corrosive role of corporate money in politics, but also suggested that the president should “exorcise” Ms. Wiles and her aides “from the White House.”
Ms. Wiles’s policy interests also aligned with those benefiting her family, Mr. Means said, claiming that any corporation that hired her daughter, Katie Wiles, a partner at the lobbying firm Continental Strategy, “was getting a high priority.”
“So if you’re a special interest and you want to get something done, the secret’s out,” Mr. Means said. “You pay Susie’s daughter, and it was openly discussed when they had a client.”
Mr. Means’s tirade against Ms. Wiles, while depicting Mr. Kennedy as a “hero,” comes as Democrats are beginning to consider their new powers to investigate what they view as the most destructive actions of the Trump administration. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who will lead the influential Senate Finance Committee, has already announced an investigation into Mr. Kennedy’s role in “corruption favoring” of the tobacco and kratom industries.
In the podcast interview, Mr. Means said the administration fumbled a series of issues that had been crucial to the MAHA coalition that had helped propel Mr. Trump to the presidency.
The missteps included an executive order aimed at supporting the production of glyphosate, the herbicide tied to cancer that many MAHA supporters want to see restricted. The order was issued in February, as the Supreme Court was about to hear oral arguments in a case that would determine whether Bayer, the maker of glyphosate, could receive immunity from lawsuits alleging the weedkiller caused cancer.
Mr. Means asserted that military leaders did not believe the order was necessary to protect national security, as the White House said. He described how one of Ms. Wiles’s deputies dropped the executive order on a table and said it was nonnegotiable.
“I read it, I said, ‘This is a political disaster,’” Mr. Means recalled. The aide was insistent. “Please inform Bobby. And this is not up for discussion.” He pointedly told Mr. Means that the health secretary should not call the president, adding, “Susie then called Bobby’s office and said, ‘We’re not discussing this.’”
The executive order was announced the next day, infuriating MAHA leaders.
Mr. Means also claimed that Dr. Heidi Overton, then a White House health official whom Mr. Trump has since nominated to lead the Food and Drug Administration, had helped Justice Department officials create legal arguments urging the Supreme Court to review the glyphosate case and supporting Bayer’s position.
A White House official said that the court had asked the Trump administration to weigh in on the case. The solicitor general drafted a brief and then shared it with the White House Counsel’s Office, which circulated it to relevant policymakers, including Dr. Overton, who commented on it, the official said.
The Supreme Court sided with Bayer in a decision that gave the company broad liability protection and infuriated many in the MAHA movement.
Mr. Means joined the White House after working on Mr. Kennedy’s campaign and helping to broker the partnership between the secretary and Mr. Trump; he later went to work directly for Mr. Kennedy. He is primarily interested in the secretary’s food agenda and has not been involved in more controversial policy-making on vaccines.
But in the interview, he accused Ms. Wiles of pressuring Mr. Kennedy to downplay vaccine safety while relying on the work of a pollster, Tony Fabrizio, who receives funding from the pharmaceutical industry.
Mr. Means also described how some of his efforts to draft policies to make the food supply healthier were thwarted, such as one aimed at pushing the food industry to address whether the amount of sugar in children’s diets was appropriate.
“And that’s where Susie told me we can’t do that,” Mr. Means said. “‘I need the sugar industry money.’”
Mr. Means also said that Dr. Marty Makary, the former F.D.A. commissioner, was “pounded” in numerous meetings to approve flavored e-cigarettes, which James Blair, a former deputy of Ms. Wiles, framed as “a core midterm issue.”
Dr. Makary left the agency in May over the disputes on the matter. Mr. Means said that Dr. Overton did what Dr. Makary would not: “She wrote up a policy to relax standards on fruit-flavored vapes.”
Mr. Means said that his “last straw” came after months of delays on his effort to arrive at a definition of ultraprocessed foods, which could eventually lead to regulation. He said that he and Mr. Kennedy went to Ms. Wiles, who denied any special interest influence on the matter.
“Lied to us to our face,” he said, recounting that he later heard her say we need to “do something” about MAHA.
Mr. Means said he believed Democrats were also guilty of ceding to similar influences and said the solution could come from a presidential candidate running on the issue of amending the Constitution to take money out of politics.
“Americans need to understand that if they are getting whipped up and excited about policy promises through our existing structure, they are being duped and gaslighted and lied to,” he said. “We need to have systemic reform.”
The Latest on the Trump Administration
Europe’s Concerns: The Democratic victory in the midterms has brought private relief to some Europeans but no official glee, with Ukraine, Iran and NATO all hanging in the balance along with a politically wounded U.S. president.
Communities Face Cuts: The Trump administration is scaling back or stalling investments that help disaster-prone places harden themselves to rising flood and fire threats.
Harmeet Dhillon Resigns: The chief of the Justice Department’s civil rights division resigned after conflicts with department leaders, including disagreements over legal strategy in the midterm elections, two people familiar with the situation said.
National Guard in D.C.: The National Guard is expected to expand its use of military trucks, Humvees and boats for armed patrols in Washington, D.C., escalating a deployment in the nation’s capital that President Trump intends to maintain for the rest of his term.
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Stephen Miller with President Trump in the Oval Office in August. Credit…Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
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