Haberman spots a clear signal Trump is ‘doubling down’ on unpopular agenda

In the aftermath of the Republicans’ midterm drubbing, President Trump is making Stephen Miller, his forceful domestic policy adviser, his new chief of staff. The Friday announcement that Miller will replace Susie Wiles shows the president doubling down on his unpopular agenda, according to New York Times reporter and Trump biographer Maggie Haberman.

Haberman described a disconnect in NYT: the Republican losses in the midterms were a clear rebuke of the president and what he has done in office, yet with two years to go in his term, Trump is not changing direction. By installing Miller, a man of deep ideology and, in Haberman’s view, the “most powerful policy staff member in the modern history of the presidency”, the president “is doubling down on Trump’s agenda, not switching course.”

Representative Robert Garcia of California, the Democrat due to head the House Oversight Committee in the next Congress, intends to investigate Miller over his part in the administration’s hard line on deportations.

In a statement, Garcia echoed Haberman, saying that Trump is doubling down just days after the American people rejected what he called a corrupt and lawless presidency. He described Miller as “the architect of the unconstitutional ICE raids that have terrorized our communities,” adding that the raids have kidnapped and killed American citizens and immigrant families.

A deputy chief of staff at 41, Miller has been behind some of the more divisive domestic policies of Trump’s second term, immigration foremost among them. He has been with Trump since his first presidential campaign and served all four years of the president’s first term in the White House. He has also been the impetus behind the crackdown on liberal institutions.

Wiles was the first woman to hold the top post in the West Wing and was instrumental in Trump’s 2024 victory, four years after his loss to Joe Biden.

“Serving President Trump in the White House has been the honor of a lifetime,” she posted on social media. She said she was very proud of what the administration had accomplished, from securing the border and cutting taxes to shoring up the economy and putting America First, and that above all she was thankful for the extraordinary people she had been privileged to work with.

Before her departure was announced Friday, Calley Means, a former Trump health official, charged in an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan that Wiles had caved to “unrelenting” demands from industry lobbyists and put political fundraising ahead of the health of Americans.