President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he was replacing Susie Wiles with Stephen Miller as his White House chief of staff.

Miller, one of the president’s longest-serving advisors and the principal architect of Trump’s hardline immigration agenda, reportedly said in his pitch for the job that the president “needed to wind down the Iran war, a conflict that the president’s core supporters viewed as a betrayal,” according to The New York Times. 

The news comes three days after Republicans faced historic losses in the midterm elections, and suggests the White House isn’t preparing to moderate in preparation for working with the incoming Democratic-led Congress. 

Miller, who previously served as White House deputy chief of staff for policy, is a highly polarizing figure in domestic politics. He is admired by MAGA loyalists as a relentless defender of the president who orchestrated Trump’s aggressive approach to immigration enforcement, and regularly criticized by Democrats and left-wing activists for spearheading efforts like mass deportations, armed ICE agents in American cities, the travel ban from Muslim-majority countries and the family separation policy during the first Trump administration.

Ken Marcus, the founder of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, acknowledged that Miller’s maximalist approach would mark a shift from Wiles, who was known as a moderating figure in Trump’s inner circle, though he suggested that such a change was necessary for the Jewish community.

“Miller tends to be hard-charging, and that is what is needed on our issues,” Marcus told Jewish Insider. 

Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said in a statement that, “I have known Stephen since he first came to Washington, and there is no one better suited for this moment.”

“Stephen has never wavered in his robust, passionate defense of American sovereignty, freedom, and prosperity,” Brooks said. “His conviction and clarity of purpose that America is, and must remain, the beacon of liberty for the West is an inspiration to all of us who believe in America’s exceptionalism. He is brilliant, resolute, and absolutely the right choice to lead the President’s team.”

Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said in a statement on Miller’s appointment as chief of staff that he is “a complete shanda and embarrassment to the Jewish community, so it’s only fitting that he’d lead the Trump White House.”

“Three days after Americans overwhelmingly repudiated Trump and rejected his extremism, he put the most extreme person in charge,” Soifer said. “Stephen Miller is the mastermind of a policy agenda that’s completely antithetical to our Jewish values, including separating families at the border, trying to ban Muslims, and empowering the dangerous far-right.”

Miller’s appointment marks the first time a Republican president has had a Jewish chief of staff and a Jewish White House counsel at the same time. Will Scharf, who is Jewish, was appointed as White House counsel in August.