As chief of staff, Stephen Miller will reinforce Trump’s worst instincts

President Donald Trump today announced that Stephen Miller will replace Susie Wiles as White House chief of staff. That change does not bode well for anyone who hoped that Trump, chastened by his party’s disastrous performance in the midterm elections, would moderate the policies that alienated voters.

Miller, previously a deputy chief of staff, is the main architect of Trump’s immigration crackdown, which has targeted many peaceful and productive U.S. residents, contrary to the promise that it would focus on “the worst of the worst.” Although Trump has intermittently expressed qualms about the impact of immigration enforcement on businesses and their longtime employees, Miller has made it clear that he favors an indiscriminate approach.

A January 2026 profile of Miller in The Atlantic described an exchange that epitomizes his attitude toward immigration. “Stephen, if you had it your way, everyone would look exactly like you,” Trump reportedly told Miller, who was arguing about immigration policy with another White House aide. “That’s correct,” Miller replied.

Since illegal immigration is an “invasion,” Miller told reporters in May 2025, the Trump administration was “actively looking” at suspending the writ of habeas corpus to facilitate its mass deportation campaign. “A lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not,” he said. It turned out that Miller was not just spitballing: The New York Times later reported that his comment reflected a serious internal debate about whether to unilaterally override the ancient principle that people nabbed by the government have a right to challenge their detention in court.

Miller’s support for aggressive immigration enforcement extends to violence against Americans who object to it. After immigration agents fatally shot Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti in January, Miller defied the video evidence by condemning him as “a domestic terrorist” and “would-be assassin” who “tried to murder federal law enforcement.”

Last April, Miller described birthright citizenship as “the gravest and most preposterous of all constitutional abominations.” Two months later, after the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s attempt to rewrite the 14th Amendment, Miller called it “one of the most destructive and outrageous decisions” in the Court’s history.

Miller also was appalled by judicial pushback against Trump’s “emergency” tariffs. After the U.S. Court of International Trade rejected them in May 2025, he implied that it had no legitimate role in determining whether the president had the authority he claimed. “The judicial coup is out of control,” he wrote on X. Last February, when the Supreme Court agreed that Trump’s tariffs were illegal, Miller condemned the decision as “cowardly” and “horrendous,” saying the justices were “torturing” the law and the Constitution.

Miller’s hostility toward judicial review mirrors Trump’s attitude. Also like Trump, Miller has no compunctions about punishing people for constitutionally protected speech.

In November 2023, after Media Matters for America reported that X was “placing ads for Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity next to pro-Nazi content,” Miller urged “conservative state Attorneys General” to investigate the organization for “fraud.” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey took Miller’s advice, launching investigations that were ultimately blocked by federal courts on First Amendment grounds.

After conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated in September 2025, Miller blamed a “vast domestic terror movement,” including “messaging designed to trigger [and] incite violence”—i.e., harsh political rhetoric. “In Charlie’s name,” he said, “we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks.”

Miller, in short, is apt to be the opposite of a calming influence on Trump. His elevation seems likely to reinforce the president’s worst instincts.