Who Is Trump's White House Chief of Staff Now?
Stephen Miller — but not until tomorrow. President Trump announced on Friday that Miller, his deputy chief of staff, "will become the Chief of Staff starting Monday, November 9, 2026." Susie Wiles, the outgoing chief, said Friday was her last day in the job. So as of today, Sunday, the White House is between the two: Wiles is out, Miller is the incoming chief, and no acting chief of staff has been named for the two days in between.
The record and the reality do not quite line up, and that gap is why the question is being typed tonight. On paper, the change is clean — an announcement on Friday, a new man in the chair on Monday. In reality, the most powerful staff job in the building has been empty since Friday evening, in the middle of the busiest transition week of the year: a Congress just lost, a new Democratic Senate and House arriving in January, and a president mapping how to govern without his own majorities. An announced name is not the same thing as a person in the chair, and for this one weekend there is no person in the chair at all — no name has been put forward for who holds the job today.
The two sides of the change describe it differently. Trump presented it as a promotion and a reward: Miller is "one of my most trusted advisors," Wiles "has done an outstanding job" and is "moving over to the Trump Political Operation," the president's political arm. CBS News reported a different mechanics underneath: Wiles submitted her resignation on Thursday night, before the announcement, and had originally planned to stay on through Congress' lame-duck session and leave around the end of the year. We set out that record in Did Susie Wiles Resign as White House Chief of Staff, or Was She Replaced? Critics have not been quiet either — California Governor Gavin Newsom called Miller's promotion "sick."
Today is my last day as White House Chief of Staff. — Susie Wiles, November 6, 2026
The common-sense point is simple: the chief of staff controls who sees the president, what paper reaches his desk and which fights get fought first. A two-day vacancy in an ordinary week would be a footnote. In the week a White House loses Congress, the order in which decisions get made is the whole ballgame — and Miller is already behaving like the man making them, having delivered his first speech as incoming chief of staff at Mar-a-Lago, pledging his absolute loyalty to the president, before he legally holds the job. If the incoming chief is already speaking for the building before his start date, who exactly is running it this weekend?
The details worth having are these. Wiles served 21 months — the longest tenure of any chief of staff across both of Trump's presidencies — and was the first woman ever to hold the job. Her new post, the Trump Political Operation, is the president's fundraising and campaign machine, which Axios reports he intends to keep running at full strength to hold his political muscle after the midterms. Miller comes to the job from deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser; he is the architect of the administration's immigration crackdown, and his arrival in the top staff job is read across Washington as the White House doubling down, not moderating, after Tuesday's losses. His first day holding the title is Monday, November 9. Wiles herself closed her time in the job with the plainest words of the week: "Today is my last day as White House Chief of Staff."