Stephen Miller spent his first week as President Donald Trump’s chief of staff sending a clear message across the West Wing: He is no Susie Wiles.
The new top adviser 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 prepares for a final two years of political warfare.
Miller’s early aggressive moves, including the release of two memos purporting to hold cabinet secretaries accountable and restrict the influence of lobbyists, surprised many White House officials and allies who interpreted them as direct shots at Wiles — and a response to criticism from the MAGA base over how she ran the first two years of Trump’s presidency, leading to November’s disastrous midterm losses.
“Stephen is now in charge,” a Trump ally said. “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 aim to give chiefs of staff more autonomy to shape and deliver their own message. He banned meetings at the White House with lobbyists without prior approval.
And he has streamlined some personnel structures in the West Wing, which will allow more decision-making authority to be channeled directly through him, while relying on a tight circle of allies, including his wife Katie, who, according to people familiar with the matter, played a central role in pressuring Trump allies to support Miller’s candidacy for chief of staff before Wiles’ ouster.
These changes represent the first steps in a broader effort by Miller to effectively accelerate Trump’s MAGA agenda during the final stage of his presidency. Some people familiar with his early moves described the 41-year-old loyalist as trying to set the parameters of what Trump wants to do — then pushing administration officials to achieve those goals as quickly as possible. It’s a familiar strategy for Miller, who has spent the past two years taking exactly this approach to speed up a controversial immigration crackdown.
“He understands how government works and what its powers and levers are,” a Trump adviser said of Miller, “and he knows what the president is trying to accomplish.”
Although the new approach has drawn praise from some in the administration who had chafed at Wiles’ efforts to tightly control the administration’s messaging and policy priorities, some Miller skeptics fear it could end up making an already freewheeling White House even more chaotic.
His decision to revoke a Wiles policy that every appearance and announcement within the administration must first get approval from the West Wing was particularly polarizing. One administration official called the earlier rule “stifling,” but another person close to the White House worried about the practical effects of a White House — especially one led by a still-opinionated Trump — with less oversight.
Under the new approach, cabinet secretaries will have more direct access to Miller and Trump — a change intended to allow the president to communicate more freely with his top officials. Yet it could also herald a return to the undisciplined and murderous atmosphere of his first term, when members of Trump’s Cabinet routinely undermined and fought against each other in an effort to win his favor.
In a statement, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers praised Miller as “a loyal aide to President Trump for more than a decade” who is trusted “by the entire President’s Cabinet.”
“In his role as chief of staff, he will continue to work to implement President Trump’s populist agenda on behalf of the nation’s workers,” Rogers added.
Yet despite Miller’s plan to step up efforts to crack down on unauthorized media disclosures, large parts of the administration have spent the past week gripped by infighting and leaks following the fallout from revelations that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had an affair with a woman suspected of having ties to Chinese intelligence.
“This is a Trump-centric White House. The system was designed to enable a top-down, White House-centric operation, where agencies move according to the president’s ‘America First’ policy,” the source said of Wiles’ communications system, which aimed to avoid major disagreements and keep all of Trump’s aides aligned. “So aren’t we now a White House-centric administration?
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is among those particularly invigorated by the change, people who have spoken to him said. He believes Miller will energize his “Make America Healthy” agenda after months of White House stonewalling on a series of key policies, according to these people.
Although Kennedy publicly praised Wiles’s tenure, the decision to sideline those priorities frustrated those around him. him, prompted his top advisor to resign and provoked backlash among some of the MAHA movement’s most vocal supporters.
But others in the Trump administration were disconcerted by Miller’s efforts to publicly change Wiles’ policy. The measures immediately sparked concerns about what the new regime would look like and who would be part of it, with one manager describing staff members as walking on eggshells, unsure whether their jobs were safe.
Miller has yet to hold a full-staff meeting since he took office Monday, mainly because he has not yet completed all of the planned changes to the White House staff, a White House official said.
Miller’s second memo, meanwhile, appeared to be an even more direct effort to separate itself from Wiles’ tenure. The missive prohibited 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 nonetheless an implicit rebuke of Wiles and his team.
A former lobbyist, Wiles and some of her closest allies have been harshly criticized by the MAGA right over allegations that they granted outsized influence to lobbying firms and wealthy donors who gave money to Republicans before the midterm elections.
The White House has often denied that outside interests have any power to shape policy decisions. But since his promotion, Miller’s allies have pointed to his own skepticism of lobbyists, saying he has long been impervious to arguments that don’t directly advance the Trump agenda that he has long played a central role in crafting.
“Stephen is not influenced by his connections, but by political arguments,” said Hunter Morgen, a lobbyist at Ballard Partners who worked with Miller during the first Trump administration. “He can get emotional on issues, but you have to have the tightest, strongest argument and also be willing to concede points.”
To that end, the White House under Miller should redouble its efforts to expand his executive power and solidify his legacy, despite voters’ overwhelming rejection of his and his party’s governing choices less than two weeks ago.
Miller and other Trump officials have sought to prepare a series of executive actions before next year that the administration could take to unilaterally advance its agenda and try to reinvigorate the MAGA base. Meanwhile, the White House has sent two clear signals in recent days that it plans to fight any attempt by the new Democratic majorities in the House and Senate to bog it down in investigations.
In the hours after Miller became chief of staff, White House officials worked to shield Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from impeachment, ultimately mustering enough Republican support to defeat the measure.
The White House then separately released an extraordinary letter threatening congressional Democrats who planned to investigate the administration that they could soon face criminal investigations of their own.
In the days following the Republicans’ midterm defeat, some Trump allies and advisers advised the president and Miller to keep the door open to working with Democrats, arguing that they could find ways to advance parts of the administration’s agenda.
But even as Trump has continued to suggest publicly that he might strike deals with Democrats, there is far less private belief that the effort will achieve anything, people familiar with the matter said. They cast doubt on the idea that Democratic lawmakers could ever make the kind of concessions needed to win over the president and Miller.
Instead, Trump is more likely to wage a long and contentious battle over the next two years to cement his legacy — and bet that Miller will manage a sprawling administration well enough to rack up a few victories.
“If (Democrats) are basically saying they’re going to war with you, then you want a wartime consigliere,” said Newt Gingrich, a close Trump ally and former House Republican chairman. “And Steve Miller is an excellent wartime consigliere.”
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