Good morning, it's Saturday, Nov. 7. President Trump replaced his chief of staff with Stephen Miller, the adviser behind his toughest immigration policies.

Also in today's issue: Hiring beats forecasts, Houston's new ICE rule, Two more DOJ exits, Alaska's ballot fight, Trump's Iran decision.

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The most powerful job in the White House is one no voter ever fills. On Friday, three days after voters handed Congress to Democrats, President Trump gave it to Stephen Miller.

Miller, the deputy chief of staff behind Trump's mass deportation program, becomes White House chief of staff on Monday, Nov. 9. He replaces Susie Wiles, who ran Trump's 2024 campaign and has run his White House since day one. She turned in her resignation Thursday night, according to CBS News, and is moving to Trump's political operation.

Why would a staff change reach your kitchen table? Because Miller starts the same Monday the outgoing Congress returns to Washington. Lawmakers have until Dec. 11 to pass a spending law, or the government shuts down. Trump is also weighing whether to restart strikes on Iran, a choice that moves gas prices. The chief of staff shapes how both decisions reach the president's desk.

And Miller is taking the job without a step every Cabinet member must clear.

So what does a chief of staff actually do? The job decides who gets into the Oval Office, which memos the president reads and which fights the White House picks. One political scientist told NPR the role is the gatekeeper of the president's time and information.

Wiles ran a tight ship. She was the first woman to hold the job, and she got credit for cutting the turnover and leaks of Trump's first term. Back then, he went through four chiefs of staff. Weeks after Republicans lost the House in 2018, John Kelly was out, too.

Trump framed Friday's move as loyalty, not a shake-up. "Stephen's been with me since the beginning," he said, calling Miller one of his most trusted advisers. Wiles wrote that serving Trump was "the honor of a lifetime." Miller wrote that Trump had "single-handedly saved America."

Critics read a different signal. Voters rejected Republicans up and down the ballot on Tuesday. Miller is the aide most tied to the administration's hardest-line immigration moves. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries called him a "reckless extremist." Earlier this year, some Republican senators in swing states urged Miller to tone it down. Others, like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, defended him as the right voice on the border.

Now that missing step. Cabinet secretaries need Senate approval. A chief of staff does not. So a Democratic Senate will soon get a say over Trump's next defense secretary or attorney general. It gets no say over the person running his White House.

What to watch is the spending fight. If talks with Congress move fast, Miller's White House is signaling it's ready to bargain with a divided government. If the White House holds firm and talks stall, the country could face a shutdown weeks before the holidays.

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Hiring picked up sharply in October, as employers added 165,000 jobs, the Labor Department said Friday. That's more than double what forecasters expected. The unemployment rate dipped to 4.1%. Health care, factories and business services led the way, while restaurants and builders cut jobs. Earlier months were revised higher, too. The White House called it a blowout, and the report eases fears that the economy was stalling. But there's a catch for households. Paychecks have been rising more slowly than prices, so a typical raise buys a little less than it did a year ago. That gap is the number to watch next, when new price data comes out this month.

Houston police will stop calling ICE over minor stops, under an executive order Mayor John Whitmire signed Friday. Whitmire is a Democrat. Officers will now call ICE only when someone is arrested for a crime that can bring jail time and also has an ICE warrant. A driver who just gets a ticket goes on their way. "Elections matter," Whitmire said, days after Democrats swept Texas' top state offices. It's a U-turn from April. Back then, Gov. Greg Abbott froze about $110 million in city grants over a similar rule. Attorney General Ken Paxton also sued, citing a 2017 state law that bars cities from limiting help to ICE. Supporters say the order eases fear in immigrant neighborhoods. Abbott and Paxton both leave office in January. The open question is whether either fights the order first.

Two more top Justice Department officials resigned Friday, a day after the head of its civil rights office left. Attorney General Todd Blanche named John Eisenberg and Jason Reding Quiñones, but gave no reasons. Eisenberg ran the unit that handles terror, spy and leak cases. Reding Quiñones, the top federal prosecutor in South Florida, led the so-called "grand conspiracy" probe. It asks whether former spy chiefs, including ex-CIA head John Brennan, plotted to keep Trump from power. After more than a year, it hasn't charged any such plot, and other leaders on the case had already quit. Its future is now unclear. Lasting replacements will need a Democratic Senate's okay after Jan. 3, though stand-ins can fill the jobs for now.

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Alaska's Senate race went to court Friday, as Democrat Mary Peltola's campaign sued state election officials. It wants records showing whose absentee ballots are being rejected and why. The state says it doesn't have to share that early data, which can still change. Peltola now leads Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan by about 600 votes, after he led on election night. Tens of thousands of early and mail ballots are still uncounted, with new counts Monday and Tuesday. Alaska's ranked-choice tally comes later this month. The only other uncalled Senate race is Mississippi, where Democrat Scott Colom leads Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by about 1,800. If Democrats win both, they'd hold 56 seats, giving them room to lose a vote or two on judges and bills.

President Trump called Qatar's emir Friday to discuss ending the war with Iran. Qatar has been the main go-between in peace talks. A day earlier, Trump said the world would "know very soon" what he decides. One choice is an agreement. The other is new strikes to "destroy what is left" of Iran, which he said he'd rather avoid. The waterway that carried a fifth of the world's oil before the war stayed dangerous Friday. More tankers were reported damaged in the Strait of Hormuz, and a sailor died in a suspected missile strike on a tanker bound for Bahrain. For drivers, the stakes are plain. Gas has eased to just above $4 a gallon, and oil traders are watching which way Trump goes.

That's how many times Houston police contacted ICE in the first eight months of 2025. In all of 2024, it was nine, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis cited by the Texas Tribune. Friday's order is meant to bring that number back down.

P.S. What do you want most from a president's top adviser? Hit Reply — We Read Everyone.