The furor surrounding Jensen Huang, the now-former CEO of Nvidia, has created the first crisis for President Donald Trump’s new chief of staff, Stephen Miller, hitting as he was busy restructuring the White House staff and trying to rebuild after a disastrous midterm election.
Nvidia has a huge role in the technology economy, and instability at the company poses a challenge to Trump’s deep desire to keep the AI industry growing and pushing the stock market to new heights.
Huang’s ouster from Nvidia after admitting that he had an affair with a woman whom intelligence officials believe was a Chinese spy also has opened questions about why the administration did not impose stricter controls on exports of its chips and why the president continued to give Huang unfiltered access after Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed him on the intelligence warnings about Huang’s conduct.
Miller is known for his obsessive interest in illegal immigration and his efforts to expand presidential power, but not the problems the White House faces this week. The crisis landed as he was busy with a staff reorganization, brainstorming a list of populist policies the president could push in his final two years in office and efforts to rebuild Republican support among voting blocs that shifted away from them this fall.
“Stephen has one of the longest records of working with President Trump. He is very tough. He is very calm, and he delegates very well,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a close Trump ally, who has known Miller since he worked as a Senate aide. “He is going to put the power back with the Cabinet secretaries, but he also will keep track of how well they perform.”
This article is based on interviews with eight current and former White House aides, administration officials and Trump advisers.
Miller announced many of his initial changes this week in two memos sent to White House staff. The first outlined a new staff structure which ushered out of power some top aides to the former chief, Susie Wiles. It also empowered Cabinet secretaries to oversee their agencies’ own messaging to the public, which had previously been centrally directed from the White House.
The second memo forbade White House staff from meeting with registered lobbyists at the White House complex, unless given prior approval by the White House counsel’s office. The memo exempted anyone who works for the White House’s Office of Public Liaison, which is meant to maintain close ties to the business community. An administration official said Miller would never make a decision for personal gain, and he wants that sentiment reflected in the White House team.
The change comes after a former top administration adviser, Calley Means, accused Wiles and other White House aides of having been overly accommodating of corporate interests from the sugar, tobacco, pesticide and food industries.
In interviews with the podcaster Joe Rogan and CBS News, Means has accused Wiles of having done industry bidding to undermine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his Make America Healthy Again agenda.
Wiles previously told CBS that Trump “did more for MAHA than any president before or likely any president in the future.”
Miller’s wife, Katie Miller, has done public affairs work for a raft of corporate clients as a consultant. Over the past year, she has denounced the AI chatbots ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini — accusing them of liberal bias and lax security — while holding a major financial interest in a rival company, Elon Musk’s xAI. She has denied being paid for her social media posts and is not a registered lobbyist.
Miller’s longtime colleague, May Mailman, who helped him draft executive orders during the presidential transition and once oversaw the Trump White House’s lawsuits against Ivy League universities, has temporarily returned to the West Wing to help Miller realize his vision.
Already, Miller has promoted a longtime Rubio aide, Caleb Orr, to serve as the deputy chief of staff for policy. All West Wing policy decisions are now expected to flow through either Orr or Rubio, who serves as national security adviser in addition to his post as secretary of state, according to one of the memos sent by Miller.
Neither the National Economic Council, helmed by Kevin Hassett, nor the Domestic Policy Council, led by Vince Haley, were mentioned in Miller’s first memo, suggesting that those two entities may be downgraded under Miller’s leadership, according to a person who has read the memo but was not authorized to discuss it publicly. A White House official said both entities have always fallen under the purview of the deputy chief of staff of policy and that has not changed.
Mailman is helping Miller compile a list of potential wins the White House could unveil during Trump’s final two years in office. Many of these would be designed to come from executive orders as well as a focus on foreign policy, one of the few areas a lame-duck president can control.
Miller did not return a request for comment.
In response to questions about Miller’s tenure as chief of staff, the White House provided statements of support from three Cabinet secretaries. Rubio called Miller an “integral part” of the president’s team, citing their work together on Venezuela and the Western Hemisphere. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described Miller as a “tireless leader,” and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said “Stephen Miller has been loyal to President Trump and the MAGA movement since Day One.”
Miller’s portfolio has expanded greatly even before he took the chief of staff’s job, giving him influence over policy toward Venezuela and the rest of the Western Hemisphere, national security and trade. He’s known for favoring wonky staffers who share his ability to master technocratic details and find the outcomes he wants on policy or the president’s agenda.
Already, his aides are working on an executive order on Venezuela that would try to make it easier for energy, financial services and critical mineral companies to do business in the country, according to a former White House official familiar with the matter, who discussed it on condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing the White House.
The administration is also widely expected to use executive authority for actions on trade. Administration officials want to cement trade deals, including a new, long-lasting pact among the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Miller maintains a strong interest in immigration, directly involving himself in policy at any agency that aims to deter illegal immigrants from coming to the U.S. Last year, he attended meetings during the development of the administration’s sweeping tax and health care legislation, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill, to make sure his plans for mass deportation got the funding he wanted.
In addition to being deeply involved at the Department of Homeland Security, Miller has also been known to wade into the details of policies like finding ways to block illegal immigrants from using the banking system in the U.S.
“He is exceptionally aggressive. He will find any way to embrace and address the president’s agenda,” one former administration official said. “Sometimes he comes up with novel interpretations, like the old saying, ‘If your lawyer tells you something isn’t legal, you find a different lawyer.’”
The post Stephen Miller faces first crisis as White House chief of staff appeared first on Washington Post.
