Stephen Miller spent his first week as President Donald Trump’s chief of staff sending a clear message across the West Wing: He’s no Susie Wiles.
The new top aide has sought to quickly consolidate control within the White House and distance himself from his ousted predecessor, signaling plans to overhaul key procedures and personnel as the administration girds for a final two years of political warfare.
Miller’s aggressive early moves, including issuing a pair of memos purporting to empower Cabinet secretaries and restrict lobbyists’ influence, surprised many White House officials and allies who interpreted them as direct shots at Wiles — and a response to criticism in the MAGA base over how she directed the first two years of Trump’s presidency, leading up to November’s disastrous midterm losses.
“Stephen’s in the driver’s seat now,” said one Trump ally. “It’s going to be very, very different — extremely different.”
Since taking over as chief of staff on Monday, Miller has announced changes to the administration’s communications strategy, which is aimed at giving Cabinet leaders more autonomy to shape and deliver their own messaging. He’s instituted a ban on White House meetings with lobbyists without prior approval.
And he’s streamlined some staffing structures in the West Wing that will effectively route greater decision making authority directly through him, while relying on a tight circle of allies — notably including his wife Katie, who people familiar with the matter said had played a central role in pressing Trump allies to support Miller’s candidacy for the chief of staff job ahead of Wiles’ ouster.
The changes represent the first steps in a broader effort by Miller to effectively accelerate Trump’s MAGA agenda over the final stage of his presidency. Some people familiar with his early moves described the 41-year-old loyalist as attempting to set the parameters for what Trump wants to get done — and then pushing officials across the administration to fulfill those goals as rapidly as possible. It’s a familiar strategy for Miller, who has spent the last two years taking that exact approach to accelerate a controversial immigration crackdown.
“He understands how government works and what the powers and levers of government are,” one Trump adviser said of Miller, “and he knows what the president is trying to accomplish.”
While the new tack has won praise among some in the administration who had chafed over Wiles’ efforts to tightly control the administration’s messaging and policy priorities, some Miller skeptics worry it could end up turning an already freewheeling White House even more chaotic.
His decision to revoke a Wiles policy that every appearance and announcement across the administration first get approval from the West Wing has been particularly polarizing. One administration official called the prior rule “suffocating,” but another person close to the White House worried about the practical effects of a White House — particularly one led by an always-opinionated Trump — with less oversight.
Under the new approach, Cabinet secretaries will have more direct access to Miller and Trump — a change meant to allow the president to communicate more freely with his top officials. Yet that could also herald a return to the unruly, knives-out atmosphere of his first term, when Trump’s Cabinet members routinely undermined and fought with one another in an effort win his favor.
In a statement, White House spokesman Taylor Rogers praised Miller as “a loyal aide to President Trump for more than a decade” who “is trusted by the President’s entire Cabinet.”
“In his role as Chief of Staff, he will continue working to implement President Trump’s populist agenda on behalf of the nation’s working people,” Rogers added.
Still, despite Miller’s plan for a renewed effort to crack down on unauthorized media disclosures, large swaths of the administration spent the last week consumed by infighting and leaks over the fallout from revelations that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had an affair with a women suspected of having links to Chinese intelligence.
“This is a Trump-centric White House. The system was designed to enable a top-down White House centric operation, where the agencies move on the president’s America First policy,” that source said of Wiles’ communications’ system, which aimed to head off major disagreements and keep all of Trump’s aides aligned. “So are we not a White House-centric administration now?”
US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been among those particularly invigorated by the changeover, people who have spoken to him said. He believes that Miller will supercharge his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda after months of White House stalling on a series of key policies, according to those people.
While Kennedy has been publicly complimentary of Wiles’ tenure, the decision to sideline those priorities frustrated those around him, prompted his top adviser to quit and spurred backlash among some of the MAHA movement’s most vocal supporters.
But others across the Trump administration have been unnerved by the lengths at which Miller has gone to publicly change Wiles’ policies. The moves sowed immediate concerns over what the new regime would look like and who would remain a part of it, with one official describing staffers as walking on eggshells, unsure if their jobs were safe.
Miller has not yet held an all-staff meeting since taking over on Monday, primarily because he’s not yet finished making all of his planned changes to White House personnel, a White House official said.
Miller’s second memo, meanwhile, appeared to be an even more direct effort to separate himself from Wiles’ tenure. The missive barred staffers from meeting with lobbyists on White House grounds without permission — a rule likely to have little impact on lobbyists’ ability to reach Trump staffers, but that nevertheless one that served as an implicit rebuke of Wiles and her team.
A former lobbyist, Wiles and some of her closest allies have faced harsh criticism from the MAGA right over allegations that they granted outsized influence to lobbying firms and wealthy donors who gave money to Republicans ahead of the midterms.
The White House has frequently denied that outside interests had any power to shape policy decisions. But since his promotion, Miller’s allies have stressed his own personal skepticism of lobbyists, contending that he’s long been unmoved by any arguments that don’t directly advance the Trump agenda that he’s long played a central role in developing.
“Stephen is a guy who isn’t moved by connections; he’s a guy who’s moved by policy arguments,” said Hunter Morgen, a lobbyist at Ballard Partners who worked with Miller during the first Trump administration. “He can be moved on issues, but you need to have the tightest, strongest argument and also be willing to concede points.”
To that end, the White House under Miller is expected to double down on Trump’s efforts to expand his executive authority and cement his legacy, despite voters’ widespread rejection of his and his party’s governing choices less than two weeks ago.
Miller and other Trump officials have sought to prepare a range of executive actions ahead of next year that the administration can take to unilaterally advance its agenda and try to re-energize the MAGA base. In the meantime, the White House sent a pair of clear signals in recent days that it plans to fight any efforts by the incoming Democratic majorities in the House and Senate to bog it down with investigations.
In the hours after Miller’s ascension to chief of staff, White House officials worked to shield Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from impeachment, ultimately rallying enough Republican support to defeat the measure.
The White House then separately issued an extraordinary letter threatening congressional Democrats who planned to investigate the administration that they could soon face criminal probes of their own.
In the days since Republicans’ midterm drubbing, some Trump allies and advisers have counseled the president and Miller to leave the door open to working with Democrats, arguing that they may be able to find ways to advance parts of the administration’s agenda.
But while Trump has continued to publicly suggest he could strike deals with Democrats, there is far less private belief that the effort will amount to anything, said the people familiar with the matter. They cast doubt on the idea Democratic lawmakers could ever make the kinds of concessions necessary to win over the president and Miller.
Instead, Trump is more likely to wage a lengthy, contentious battle over the next two years to cement his legacy — and bet that Miller can manage the sprawling administration well enough to rack up a few victories.
“If you have (Democrats), in essence, saying they’re going to war with you, then you want a wartime consigliere,” said Newt Gingrich, a close Trump ally and former GOP House speaker. “And Steve Miller is a great wartime consigliere.”
