The Brief

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

In 2002, Josh Lee watched South Korea’s World Cup run from a Korean Pentecostal megachurch in New York.

Congregants gathered before dawn to watch the matches, packing into a sanctuary normally reserved for worship. When Ahn Jung-hwan scored the golden goal that sent South Korea past heavily favored Italy and into the World Cup quarterfinals, the church erupted.

“We’re used to people praying in tongues and stuff, but people were going even crazier at like three in the morning,” Lee said. “It literally was in a house of worship and I think that bridged a lot of things for me of how important this is.”

Memories like Lee’s sit at the center of Korea, Away, a documentary series exploring the Korean diaspora through the Korean men’s national soccer team. The title, the creators say, refers to the experience of always being the away team, even in your home country.

Behind the series is Lee, a Los Angeles-based creative and member of a Koreatown-based LAFC supporters group; Ray An, founder and creative director of a L.A. streetwear brand; and Emanuel Hahn, a filmmaker and photographer. Drawing on interviews and reporting from Korean communities across North America throughout the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the three are trying to understand why people support a team from a country they no longer live in — or, in many cases, have never lived in at all.

For An, the question “Why do we support Team Korea?” begins with a contradiction. Many of the people around him are U.S. citizens who don’t closely follow soccer. An, while a soccer fanatic — he’s been to every World Cup since 2014 — was raised in the U.S. Yet every four years, when the World Cup arrives, they find themselves pulling for South Korea.

Again and again, their interviews returned to 2002, when South Korea stunned the world with a run to the semifinals.

The 2002 of it all

Hahn was 12 years old at the time, living in Singapore with his brothers. The family didn’t have cable, so they followed South Korea’s matches through Yahoo Sports’ live updates.

“I didn’t even understand the significance of winning against a powerhouse like Italy. We were just so ecstatic.”

For Hahn, who jumped from place to place as he was growing up — Singapore, Cambodia, Saipan, New York and L.A. — soccer was a constant in his life and how he found his identity.

The tournament left a similarly lasting impression on James Kim, who was 21 and watching matches at Liberty Park in Koreatown.

“I just remember they were selling ‘Be the Reds’ shirts everywhere,” Kim, 45, said. “I even had the ‘Be the Reds’ and Korean flags attached to my car and you just kind of saw that all over Koreatown and it was a really big, cultural experience.”

Kim, who is half Korean and half Filipino, was raised primarily in a Korean household by his Korean father and stepmother. He said the tournament also changed the way he thought about himself.

“I don’t look full-Korean,” he said, “so whether it was at the market or at a restaurant, I never really got treated like I was Korean, and so that was always a little bit of a struggle.”

“I felt like I was able to be a part of something that everyone else — all the other Korean Americans around me — were also a part of,” he continued. “I think that was probably the first time I felt just very proud to be Korean.”

Finding a place on Team Korea

Hahn said many of the people they spoke with described support for the national team in terms of belonging, particularly among immigrants and members of the diaspora navigating questions of identity.

Many immigrants arrive in the U.S. expecting to assimilate, Hahn said, only to discover that that is often more complicated than they imagined.

“When that assimilation is thwarted for whatever reason, there is this response to finding a place that they feel like they can belong,” he said.

The team’s reputation as an underdog resonates with many immigrants who see parallels in their own experiences.

“When they see the South Korean team, especially in 2002, overcoming the odds to go on this sort of Cinderella run, it’s hard not to be romantic about that,” Hahn said.

The interviews also revealed very different relationships to Korean identity.

One of the earliest interviews featured in the project was with Meeja Richards, a biracial Korean and the child of an adopted Korean parent.

Lee said Richards described supporting the national team as a way to connect with a culture she did not grow up around.

“The Korean national team became this choice that she made in adulthood as a way to be like, ‘hey, I want an extension, I want an extra branch, I want a bridge to the Korean culture that I’m not very familiar with,'” Lee said.

Another interviewee, Lee said, considers it his “birthright” to support South Korea despite being a U.S. citizen.

The project tries to understand what lies beneath those convictions, An said.

The interviews also revealed generational differences, Hahn said.

While younger interview subjects grew up surrounded by Korean cultural exports such as BTS, Blackpink and Son Heung-min, older interview subjects often viewed the success of the national team through the lens of immigration and sacrifice.

“What I gathered from these interviews was it’s very gratifying, I think, for them to see the success of the Korean men’s national team and to see someone like Sonny, it almost feels like a validation of all the hard work that they’ve done,” he said.

While the docuseries focuses on Korean identity, An, Hahn and Lee say that diversity is central to the series.

“We want to highlight just how diverse the diaspora is,” Hahn said. “How can soccer be a tool to inform the parts of yourself? We want to build a big tent where hopefully people can see a bit of themselves in the interviews that we do.”

The series is expected to be released after the World Cup, likely in late summer or early fall. Follow the project on Instagram, @korea.away, for updates.

This is the Nov. 6 issue of Make It Make Sense, LAist's elections newsletter breaking down the results of the 2026 general election. You can sign up here to receive issues in your inbox through the end of November.

Good morning! We’re beginning to feel the drag of Election Month. Cue the 🎶 Jeopardy music 🎶. We’re still waiting for an outcome on a lot of our statewide propositions, but we’ve got some juicy tax updates (if you can call them that) and another key race call.

First, now that Nithya Raman will be L.A.’s next mayor, what happens to her current council seat that stretches from the San Fernando Valley to the Santa Monica Mountains?

LAist asked L.A. City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson’s office: “We look forward to working with Mayor-elect Raman and will discuss with her an appointment who best serves the residents of the Fourth District,” Martin Schlageter, a senior adviser to Harris-Dawson, said in a statement.

That indicates the district could avoid a special election, but who could be appointed is still very much up in the air.

Meanwhile, Raman will have to work closely with a City Council that didn’t back her bid for mayor. LAist asked the 12 members who will be working alongside her about how they plan to work with her — read what they said here.

🌴 L.A. city attorney: Marissa Roy takes the win with a commanding lead

• What happened: Marissa Roy will be the next L.A. city attorney. Her opponent, John McKinney, conceded the race, saying in a statement, “While the results are not what we hoped for, I accept the outcome and congratulate Marissa Roy on her victory. I wish her well as she prepares to serve as Los Angeles City Attorney. Her success in protecting our residents and serving the public interest will be important to the future of our city.”
• How we got here: Roy held onto a strong lead over McKinney ever since polls closed, and currently has more than twice as many votes. Roy will be a fresh face in the role after incumbent city attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto was ousted in the June primary in a rare defeat of an elected city official.
• What the candidates had to say:
  
  • Roy said on social media Wednesday that election night was “a really good night for the people who believe that we should take care of one another, that we can stand up for our rights — even in what feels like an increasingly lawless world — and that we will achieve justice when we fight for it.”
  • McKinney added that he is deeply grateful for everyone who supported his campaign, including voters, volunteers and supporters.
• What’s at stake: The city attorney runs an office of more than 550 lawyers representing L.A. in all legal matters, including filing lawsuits and defending against them. Roy, backed by powerful progressives like U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, has vowed to take on the Trump administration in court.

💸 L.A. and O.C. voters are saying yes to dozens of tax measures

• What happened: By LAist’s count, more than 30 cities or districts in L.A. and Orange counties asked voters to approve tax measures this election. They include sales taxes — like Measure FD in the city of Los Angeles — hotel taxes, business taxes and utility taxes. So far, all but six seem likely to pass.
• 🌴Measure FD is passing: L.A. city voters are steadily approving (53.68%) another half-cent sales tax, this time to bolster L.A. Fire Department resources. The sales tax will go up to 10.75%, although residents likely won’t start paying the higher rate until spring. And it still won’t be the highest in the county — Palmdale and Lancaster pay 11.75%, and San Gabriel's newly passed Measure PS brings its combined rate to 12%.
• 🌴 South Gate utility users tax is failing: The L.A. County city is asking residents to approve an 8% tax that would be added to bills for utilities such as electricity, water, cable and phone services. Voters are resoundingly rejecting Measure SG, with nearly 70% saying “no.”
• 🌴🍊 Transient occupancy taxes: Nearly a dozen of these proposals, which tax overnight hotel guests or short-term rentals, are passing in cities from Burbank in L.A. County to Los Alamitos in O.C. You can see more details in our roundup here.
  

Check out the vote count charts for these too-close-to-call races

🌴 L.A. City Council District 3

• What’s happening: This San Fernando Valley race to replace Bob Blumenfield is getting spicy as more results roll in. Tim Gaspar, an entrepreneur who has said the city needs someone coming from the outside, is losing his early lead. He’s fallen 875 votes behind Barri Worth Girvan, a Valley community advocate with experience in various government offices.
  
  • Worth Girvan said in a social media post Thursday that she is encouraged by the trend so far. “While many ballots remain to be counted and results will continue to shift, we expect this trend to continue as more mail-in ballots are tallied, and we remain cautiously optimistic that when all the votes are counted, we will prevail.”

🌴 L.A. City Council District 9

• What’s happening: The race to succeed Curren Price has been narrowing each day. Jose Ugarte had more than a 14-point lead over Estuardo Mazariegos when polls closed, but it has since shrunk to about four. Ugarte, a community outreach director, is endorsed by Price and a few other members of the City Council. Mazariegos leans more to the left and is supported by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, as well as L.A. City Controller Kenneth Mejia.
  
  • Ugarte said on social media Thursday that while ballots are still being counted, “we remain optimistic.”

🍊 O.C. Supervisors District 4
In the race for the Fourth District, Democrat and Buena Park mayor Connor Traut is leading with 50.80% of the vote over Republican Tim Shaw, a member of the O.C. Board of Education.

🍊 O.C. Supervisors District 5
Democratic incumbent Katrina Foley is still on track to keep her Fifth District seat against Republican Assemblymember Diane Dixon, with a gap that’s widened to 7,600 votes. If either Republican wins, it will change the balance of power on the Board of Supervisors.

What else got called

• 🥑 State superintendent: Republican Sonja Shaw is conceding the race to Democrat Richard Barrera, who is more than a million votes ahead. In a social media post Wednesday, Shaw wrote, “Last night, voters made their choice. I would be lying if I said my heart wasn’t heavy.” Barrera is a labor leader and union organizer in San Diego, and has served on the board of San Diego Unified for nearly two decades.
• 🌴 L.A. County Superior Court judge: Office No. 87 is settled. Attorney David DeJute has conceded the race to Anthony "A.J." Bayne, a deputy public defender with over 30 years of courtroom experience. Bayne ran without a long roster of Democratic endorsements, which were a common fixture this cycle for judicial candidates. He was rated “well qualified” by the L.A. County Bar Association.

👀 We’re still watching 👀

• 🥑 Insurance commissioner: We’re still holding our breath on the race to lead the nation’s largest property and casualty insurance market. Two Democrats are trying to take on the role: State Sen. Ben Allen and attorney Jane Kim. Allen (47.3%) has been steadily trailing Kim (52.7%), who slightly bumped up her lead in the last few days.
• 🥑 The remaining props:
  
  • Prop 4: This proposal would lift the ban that keeps California and many local governments from using tax dollars to fund political campaigns. It could reshape how elections are funded, but so far, it’s failing by a few percentage points.
  • Prop 5: Should California change how it replaces elected state officials being recalled? The Legislature put it on the ballot, and it’s succeeding by 2 percentage points. If it holds on to the lead, voters would no longer vote on a recall and a replacement in the same election, instead punting a successor to a separate ballot.
  • Prop 38: This proposition is passing by a decently wide margin (55.1%). It would pave the way for the state to borrow $8.4 billion in bonds for immunology research. Supporters argued that the research could lead to treatments that help people living with cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer's, but opponents say half the funds would go to just one research group.
  • Props 40, 41, 42: This is the billionaire’s tax and the two countermeasures designed to kill it. So far, it’s looking like Prop 40, the wealth tax, is failing (54.5% “no”), as well as Prop 41 (53.4% “no”), which would prohibit new tax revenue from being excluded from the state spending limit. The other, Prop 42, may pass (53.3% “yes”), which would ban new wealth taxes on personal property.
  • Prop 43: Speaking of taxes … this would make it harder to pass and raise some local taxes by bumping up the threshold of votes to a two-thirds majority. It would specifically apply to special tax measures put up by voters. It’s currently failing by about a million votes.
  • Prop 45: This is designed to limit environmental reviews for certain projects, such as housing and infrastructure, by cutting the time it takes to go through the state’s evaluation process. It’s opposed by groups like the National Wildlife Federation, and it's failing by about a 10-point margin.
• 🌴 L.A. County’s judicial seats: The races for offices 64 and 65 are still up in the air, but there are clear leaders. Maria Ghobadi, a deputy district attorney running for seat 64, has nearly 53% of the vote, while Justin Allen Clayton, a deputy public defender running in 65, has 56%. Neither of their competitors has conceded yet. Meanwhile, the fight for Office No. 131 between two public defenders is narrowing. David Ross trails Donna Tryfman, but he picked up more votes in this morning’s drop.

😰 Is it over yet? 😰

These results are based on about 8.9 million votes counted so far statewide — more than 2.5 million in L.A. County and nearly 892,000 in Orange County.

We still have a ways to go! The California secretary of state estimates there are 4.8 million ballots left to count overall, which includes 642,000 in L.A. County and 298,270 in O.C.

This election is turning out to be a banner year for voter turnout — we’re on track to far exceed the 2022 midterms. But we won’t know the full picture until after Nov. 10, the deadline for mail-in ballots to arrive. You can check on the status of your ballot via the state’s BallotTrax system.

The next local ballot counts drop this afternoon starting around 4 p.m., but hey, we’re going into the weekend! From here on out, we’ll only be back in your inboxes when there’s major news to share — like a call on the billionaire’s tax — and we’ll focus on understanding what these results mean for your life in Southern California.

📰 Catch up quick

If this is your first day reading Make It Make Sense, you can get caught up on our past issues here:

• Nov. 5: Nithya Raman wins the L.A. mayor’s race
• Nov. 5: All 8 L.A. city measures could pass
• Nov. 4: We’ve got a new governor, plus voter ID fails

Otherwise, you can keep up with the results here:

• L.A. County
• Orange County

Catch up on what you missed with our Education newsletter, sent weekly.

Long before the Trump administration started deporting hundreds of thousands of immigrants, many with school-age children, public schools nationwide faced a massive and accelerating drop in student enrollment caused mostly by shrinking families.

"Birth rates here in Los Angeles County have been declining for decades, which means fewer children enrolled in our schools," said Kelly Gonez, a board member in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second largest in the country, which lost more than 300,000 students over the last two decades.

L.A. isn't alone. The population of children under age 18 began to fall nationwide after 2010, according to U.S. Census data, dropping by roughly 2.1 million kids through 2025.

With public schools in much of the country facing a demographic cliff, the Trump administration last year began detaining and expelling large numbers of foreign residents. A study by the Migration Policy Institute found as many as 1.9 million people left the U.S. during the first 18 months of Trump's second term.

As part of the crackdown effort, federal officials weakened restrictions that prevented ICE agents from operating near public schools. "Many of our families immediately went into hiding," Gonez said. "We were predicting a 2% drop in enrollment. It was double that."

Researchers who study education and population trends aren't surprised. This is the first time in nearly a century, since the era of the Great Depression, that birth rates and immigration levels are low at the same time. Large-scale deportations mean even bigger and more rapid changes in areas with large immigrant communities.

"The U.S. isn't alone in facing the challenges of demographic decline," said Thomas Dee, an economist who specializes in education policy at Stanford University. "To stop or slow immigration really exacerbates those problems. Communities are now confronting very painful decisions about closing schools."

Special needs teacher Deja Nebula sets up an art installation displaying names and faces of people who have been detained or deported during ICE raids in Southern California, at Olvera Street Plaza in Los Angeles, July 2025.

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Damian Dovarganes

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AP

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The scale of decline is daunting. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the number of kids in public schools nationwide peaked in 2019 and fell by roughly 1.5 million students as of the 2024 school year.

Based on data gathered before Trump's immigration crackdown began, federal researchers project enrollment will decline by at least another 2 million students by 2030. That would mean a 7% national decline in roughly a decade.

40 states see public school enrollment declines

An empty classroom is seen at Hollywood High School in L.A. The school district has begun a process aimed at closing and consolidating schools.

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Rodin Eckenroth

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Getty Images

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It's unclear how large or sustained the impact of Trump-era immigration policies will be on enrollment trends. Dee and other researchers say that depends on how long ICE crackdowns and other restrictions remain in place.

In the short term, the blow to many districts could be severe. When Dee studied public schools in communities hit by ICE raids in California's Central Valley in 2025, he found student daily absences spiked more than 20%.

Texas, meanwhile, saw the number of kids in classrooms plunge statewide last year by more than 76,000 students. The vast majority of that drop came among Hispanic kids and the children of immigrant families, according to a study by the Texas Education Agency.

Florida, home to a large community of Haitian refugees who were stripped of temporary protected status by the Trump administration in July, saw a big drop in enrollment this year. The state's two largest public school districts, Miami-Dade and Broward County, lost roughly 30,000 children combined in a single year.

"It's really the effect of both the exodus of the existing families and stopping the inflow [of foreign migrants and children] that normally would have occurred," Dee said.

A report published in June by two education think tanks, Bellwether and WestEd, warned that public schools have entered an era of "sustained" enrollment declines which are already reshaping districts in 40 states.

The analysis found the "primary overall driver of declining enrollment is a sustained drop in birth rates" followed by a "national slowdown in immigration."

"At the local level, enrollment decline may permanently reduce available resources and will significantly reshape public education systems for years to come," the study concluded, while predicting a loss of $11 billion a year in public school funding linked to falling enrollment.

Other factors have spurred public school enrollment losses, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the shift of more students to private and homeschool learning. But the U.S. Department of Education projects private schools, too, will lose more than a million students by the end of this decade.

'We had over 200 students that didn't show up'

Guadalupe Cardona, a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, said kids vanished from her public school after ICE raids surged in 2025.

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Carlos Jaramillo for NPR

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While debates over immigration policy play out in Washington, D.C., teachers, parents and students say ICE crackdowns already mean more empty classrooms and less vibrant neighborhoods around schools.

"This street right here is actually where the ICE standoff happened. It was right before school," said teacher Guadalupe Cardona, who stood recently outside Santee Education Complex, a high school in South Los Angeles as school buses rumbled past.

In October 2025, an ICE agent opened fire here. No children or school employees were injured, but a man from Mexico without legal status and an ICE agent were struck by bullets. Cardona believes fear following that clash and other raids caused enrollment to plummet.

"In my school alone, we had over 200 students that didn't show up on the first day of school," she said.

"We found that a lot of them were just [gone], no longer living where they had put their address down. We lost two teachers at the beginning of the school year because of it. It is something that hurts beyond just, like, putting your job at risk."

Guadalupe Pineda, a parent, works in a shop just down the street from Santee High. She says dread of ICE, combined with fewer students coming and going, have hurt her community. "There's definitely less sales, less traffic, less everything."

Declines in enrollment at Santee Education Complex, a high school in Los Angeles, intensified after immigration raids started in the city last year. Education experts say public schools nationwide are being hit hard by low birth rates and aggressive Trump-era immigration policies.

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Carlos Jaramillo for NPR

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After growing up in LA and attending public school here without legal status, Pineda told NPR she was able to secure U.S. citizenship a few years ago. She said she understands why people are pulling their kids out of school and, in many cases, leaving the U.S. altogether.

"People are still scared, very much scared to go out to do everyday things. I feel like if I didn't have everything set [with my immigration status], I would probably leave. I would be afraid of being separated from my family."

White House celebrates deportation campaign

NPR asked White House officials about the impact on public schools of ICE crackdowns and other federal immigration policies, including the revocation of temporary refugee status for hundreds of thousands of people living in the U.S. legally.

White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis sent a brief email response saying deportations "make American classrooms less crowded." Bis also pointed to a September post on the social media platform X, where administration officials celebrated the overall drop in the number of legal and undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.

"The total foreign-born population declined 2.9 million from January 2025 to July 2026," the statement said. "The huge recent decline in the foreign-born population indicates that net migration to the United States was negative in the last year and a half for the first time since the 1930s."

Advocacy groups that support sharply reduced immigration view these trends as a necessary correction after years of what they describe as lax border security. Ira Mehlman with the Federation for American Immigration Reform said he's not troubled by the prospect that many public school districts will have to downsize.

"We don't guarantee the school system X number of kids," Mehlman said. "That is not the job of our immigration system, that you're going to have X number of kids every single year and if you don't, we're going to go find some for you."

But research suggests it's not only foreign-born children disappearing from classrooms. According to Brookings Institution estimates, as many as 4.6 million school-age kids, including many U.S. citizens, live in homes with family members vulnerable to deportation.

Vanessa Salazar was one of them. She was 18 years old, a U.S.-born senior in LAUSD last year, when her mother was detained and deported to Mexico. "It really threw me off balance," she said. "Coming home without my mother there to be my anchor, really affected my performance in school."

Salazar dropped out to cope with what she describes as her family's trauma and now lives in Mexico with her mother. "It's like, why am I going to be in this country that doesn't really want my people, my community or my culture?" she said.

With birth rates hitting another record low last year and ICE now arresting as many as 50,000 people each month, future school district losses could soar.

A study released in August by state officials predicted public schools in California alone could lose another 710,000 students over the next decade "if current trends in fertility and migration hold."

LA school district board member Kelly Gonez said she thinks many of the demographic changes hitting her community are irreversible and will bring big changes, even if the Trump administration's immigration policies ease.

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Carlos Jaramillo for NPR

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With LAUSD now facing a second school year in a row with 4% enrollment declines, the district announced a citywide effort in September aimed at identifying buildings and campuses that will close.

Kelly Gonez, the school board member, told NPR she expects cuts to be deep and painful. "When your district is roughly half the size of student population it was 20 years ago, it's hard to find a sustainable path to keep campuses open," she said.

Copyright 2026 NPR

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Were you affected by the Lineage warehouse fire this summer and have something to say? 

CASA 0101 Theater is calling on community members, regardless of writing experience, to express themselves through storytelling in the wake of environmental disasters on the Eastside.

A free, six-week playwriting workshop will guide participants through writing monologues and formatting short plays about their experiences during the fire or their feelings about the history of other environmental disasters on the Eastside, including the March oil spill in East L.A. and the years of toxicity caused by the Exide battery recycling plant in Vernon. 

Ten works will be produced and featured in “Fire in the Eastside,” a short play festival at CASA 0101 Theater in spring 2027.

The idea, by CASA 0101 Artistic Director Josefina López, will focus on the personal experiences of people who lived them, said Ignacio Gonzalez, a stand-up comedian and playwright who will lead the workshops. 

“Rather than just point the finger and say Lineage is bad, the government is bad … we want to tell the stories from the individual people and how they were impacted,” Gonzalez said. “We hope that people can look at these and say, ‘You know what, I never thought about that. I never thought that people would have to take these measures or be impacted in this way.’”

For Gonzalez, there is power in performing a 10-minute play in front of a crowd. Though the performances will be short, participants will have the undivided attention of an audience to share an experience that has deeply impacted them, he said. 

Gonzalez recalls watching the aftermath of the Lineage warehouse fire unfold through news reports and updates on his phone and thinking about the residents living nearby. 

“We can put the phone down and go about our business, and we have clean air, and there are no flies, and everything’s fine. But I just understand there are human beings living there with stories to tell,” Gonzalez said.  

More about the workshops

The free workshops will take place from 7 to 9 p.m. every Monday from Nov. 9 to Dec. 14 at CASA 0101 Theater, located at 2102 E. 1st St. 

All levels of experience are welcome. Spanish-speaking participants can also attend and write their work in Spanish. 

How to sign up

To register for the workshops, fill out the form on CASA 0101’s website here.

If you cannot attend the workshops but still want to share your play or monologue, CASA 0101 will be accepting individual submissions. To be considered, submit your work by sending an email to classes@casa0101.org by Dec. 14 at 11:59 p.m. 

Any works that are not chosen can still be performed during a public reading at CASA 0101.

President Donald Trump said Friday that Stephen Miller was replacing Susie Wiles as White House chief of staff, mere days after Republicans lost control of Congress in the midterm elections.

On his social media site, Trump praised Wiles and said she’d continue to work for his political organization. Wiles also released a social media statement Friday.

“Serving President Trump in the White House has been the honor of a lifetime. I’m so proud to have been a part of what we’ve accomplished together from securing our border and cutting taxes to strengthening our economy and putting America First,” Wiles said in a social media post shortly after Trump’s announcement. She added that her commitment to “the President and the mission” will not change.

Miller, long a key member of Trump’s inner circle, is a key architect of the administration’s hard-line immigration policies.

Wiles, the steely political operator and longtime adviser to Trump, was the first woman to ever serve in that post.

Wiles’ departure comes almost immediately after the GOP’s midterm thrashing on Tuesday. She will be replaced by Miller, a longtime trusted aide to Trump.

The departure also came months after Wiles indicated she no longer showed evidence of breast cancer after she underwent months of treatment for the disease, a diagnosis she went public with in March 2026.

Wiles is the longest-serving White House chief of staff for Trump, who cycled through four of them during his first four-year term.

Miller is one of Trump’s closest and longest-serving advisers, jumping on board during his longshot 2016 presidential campaign as a speechwriter. He currently serves as White House deputy chief of staff, and though he has a wide-ranging portfolio, Miller is most closely aligned with Trump’s immigration policy and rhetoric on immigration.

Miller is a former aide to hardliner former Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who would go on to serve as Trump’s first attorney general.

Wiles brought order to Trump’s campaign

The veteran Florida operative joined Trump’s team during his 2016 presidential bid to run the campaign in his adopted home state. She performed the same role again in 2020 before overseeing the entire 50-state effort in 2024. She is the second woman to lead Trump’s presidential campaign to victory, although she never embraced the formal title of campaign manager.

Wiles, 69, has been credited with steering the most disciplined of his three presidential bids, and Trump himself has said he was often told that Wiles led his “best-run campaign.” Often called the “ice maiden” by the president, she was seen as the no-brainer choice to serve as White House chief of staff at the start of his second term.

She cut her reputation as someone who brought discipline to the president’s chaotic style and shunned the spotlight, so much so that at Trump’s 2024 election night victory party, she repeatedly shook her head and avoided the microphone as Trump tried to coax her to speak to the crowd.

Wiles showed unusual candor in an interview

But in December 2025, nearing the end of Trump’s first year back as president, Wiles became the headline when Vanity Fair magazine published a series of interviews with her and other top Trump administration officials conducted by the author Chris Whipple, an expert on White House chiefs of staff.

The Wiles interviews stuck out for their candor, which is unusual for a sitting White House chief of staff. She said Trump has an “alcoholic’s personality,” although the president does not drink, and said then-Attorney General Pam Bondi had “whiffed” in her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files while remarking that Vice President JD Vance has been a “conspiracy theorist for about a decade.”

Trump and other administration aides rushed to defend Wiles, who in turn disparaged Vanity Fair for publishing what she called a “disingenuously framed hit piece,” although she did not deny making the comments that were attributed to her.

In the interviews, which were conducted over a period of several months, Wiles also revealed a bit of her management style, saying she was “not an enabler.”

“I try to be thoughtful about what I even engage in,” Wiles said. “I guess time will tell whether I’ve been effective.”

Trump grinded through four chiefs of staff in his first term: Reince Priebus, who Trump fired after just six months; John Kelly, who served the longest at 17 months; Mick Mulvaney, who held the role for a little over a year in an “acting” capacity; and Mark Meadows, who served as gatekeeper for the 10 months before Trump left office.

Wiles overcomes personal health struggle

In March 2026, Wiles revealed she had been diagnosed with early stage breast cancer and she juggled surgery and treatments alongside her demanding job.

Six months later, she said she was “cancer-free,” indicating she no longer showed evidence of cancer after her pathology results came back clear. On social media, she thanked her family, friends, doctors and “everyone who prayed for me, checked in, and supported me along the way” and gave special thanks to Trump for his “unwavering support.”

“She’s tough,” Trump said of his chief of staff in an October 2026 event at the White House. “She’s a tremendous fighter.”

In a rare October 2026 interview, Wiles told Fox News Digital that she hadn’t been planning on getting the mammogram that ultimately detected her cancer, because she wasn’t due for one for several more months. Her doctor suggested she do the exam anyway, because a mammogram machine was available that day and her schedule was too busy and unpredictable.

“Had he not encouraged me to do it that day, I would have gone back to work and probably not thought about it again until July,” Wiles told the outlet. “We would be having a very different conversation in that case. Four months may not sound like a long time, but with cancer, early detection matters. I will always be grateful to my doctor for knowing me well enough to insist.”

Wiles is a seasoned political operative

In addition to Trump, Wiles also ran incumbent Sen. Rick Scott’s 2010 campaign for Florida governor and briefly served as manager of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman’s 2012 presidential campaign. She spearheaded Ron DeSantis ’ successful run for governor in 2018, but DeSantis would eventually urge the Trump campaign in 2020 to cut ties with Wiles, creating a rift that led to a particularly vicious effort by those in Trump’s orbit to mock DeSantis throughout his failed run for the Republican presidential nomination against Trump in 2024.

Wiles, the daughter of the late NFL player-turned-broadcaster Pat Summerall, also worked in the offices of former Jacksonville mayors John Delaney and John Peyton. Her first White House job was as a scheduler for President Ronald Reagan.

In addition to her government and campaign positions, Wiles has worked as a lobbyist. She was a partner at Florida-based Ballard Partners, which rose to prominence in Washington during Trump’s time in the White House. Her varying list of clients included General Motors, a trade group for children’s hospitals, homebuilders, and the city of Jacksonville.

She was also registered as a lobbyist for the Venezuelan television network Globovisión, which was owned by businessperson Raúl Gorrín, who was charged in Miami with money laundering. The firm later called its work for Gorrín a mistake and said Wiles had almost no role in managing the relationship with Gorrín.