Stephen Miller becomes White House chief of staff on Monday, the most senior post in the administration after the president, according to Dagens Nyheter. He succeeds Susie Wiles, who was dismissed from the role.
The Swedish daily reports that Miller, 41, has for years held unusual influence over both policy and Trump's thinking, and that his formal promotion expands that power further. Many observers describe him as the architect of the administration's hardest-line measures.
Why it matters
The change comes shortly after American voters delivered what Dagens Nyheter characterizes as a forceful rejection of Donald Trump in the midterm elections. Some might have expected the president to soften at least parts of his agenda in response — the nationwide immigration enforcement raids by ICE, the attacks on media, or the pursuit of real and perceived enemies.
Instead, the paper reports, the man now running the staff is one who has, according to many sources, encouraged and fueled the president's most aggressive instincts. Wiles was widely seen as an occasionally moderating force; her replacement is not.
Dagens Nyheter notes that Miller's influence is not new. As deputy chief of staff he was already regarded as the driving force behind mass deportations and ICE's harsh methods, just as he shaped the first Trump term's entry ban on several Muslim-majority countries and the practice of separating children from parents at the border. In the current term, he personally drafted the language of many of Trump's most controversial orders, the paper reports, and is credited with talking points that describe immigration as "an invasion" and Somalis as "trash."
A long record before the White House
Dagens Nyheter traces Miller's politics to his adolescence in Santa Monica, in southern California, where he grew up in a liberal, Jewish family in a multicultural area. The paper describes his ideology as, in many eyes, a sustained rebellion against that background.
As a teenager he provoked students and teachers at his high school with xenophobic views, the paper reports. He demanded that all announcements in Spanish be abolished, and he gave a speech mocking the school's janitors — nearly all of them immigrants — for allegedly not earning their pay. Before he turned 20 he was a regular guest on right-wing talk radio, and a conservative newspaper editor recounted how a 16-year-old Miller walked into his newsroom and asked to write opinion pieces.
Dagens Nyheter also cites Jason Islas, a close friend in early adolescence. The two belonged to a nerdy trio with a shared interest in "Star Trek," but during the summer between eighth and ninth grade Miller contacted him to end the friendship, presenting a whole list of reasons — among them that Islas was too strange and too short. Islas has told NPR about the episode.
Much of Miller's own Jewish and liberal extended family has distanced itself from him, according to the paper. His uncle, the psychologist David Glosser, wrote in 2018 that he had watched with dismay as his nephew — a educated man fully aware of his origins — became the architect of an immigration policy that would have undone the family's ability to find refuge in the United States and escape the Holocaust.
Loyalty as the deciding factor
Trump repeatedly denied during the campaign that Wiles would be removed, Dagens Nyheter reports, but White House sources told media he had already made the decision and long wavered over her successor. Many believe what settled it was Miller's unbroken, total loyalty to the president.
The paper reports that Wiles' departure was followed by commentary describing the choice of Miller as a gesture of defiance toward voters. A separate Dagens Nyheter piece notes that the women around Trump are disappearing and being replaced by men.
With his expanded authority, the paper reports, mass deportations could intensify again, as could what Trump regards as retribution against politicians, institutions and states he considers enemies. Because Miller now serves as the top personnel manager in the White House, many expect further purges among the president's advisers, producing an administration even more loyal to Trump than the current one — a prospect Dagens Nyheter suggests may not improve Republican chances in the next election.
Miller's previous titles include deputy chief of staff for policy and adviser for homeland security. He remained behind Trump during the Biden years of 2021–25. He is married to Katie Miller, a right-wing podcast host, and has four children.
Watch whether the expected staff turnover materializes in the coming weeks and whether enforcement operations escalate under the new chief of staff.
