In the MAGA White House, we hear a lot of names of people who set policy for the administration. We often hear the names Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, Tulsi Gabbard, and John Ratcliffe on foreign policy. For domestic matters, the names we hear daily are Robert Kennedy Jr., Pam Bondi, Scott Bessent, and Kristi Noem. Whether qualified or not, these people all have essential roles in the governance of our country.

So, who does run the MAGA White House? President Trump is the titular head of state, but who turns the wheels on a daily basis. Who’s in charge of the mass deportations? Who decides who and how many people are cut from each agency? And who decides whether Ukraine gets long-range missiles or not? The omission of one name might surprise you. Two of these individuals are obvious. And one will surprise some folks.

Stephen Miller: MAGA Deportation Monster

Donald Trump may pump his chest and bellow. Border Czar Tom Holman may talk tough and grunt a lot. And Homeland Security Secretary Noem may taunt prisoners in an El Salvadoran penitentiary with her $50K watch. But the real prince of darkness on deportation is our old friend Stephen Miller. I’ve covered Mr. Miller in great detail before, but I’ll touch on some high?/low points.

Stephen likes numbers—big numbers, as in mass deportations. In May, Mr. Miller called all ICE field officers into a meeting to bail them out for not hitting the desired deportation numbers. He scolded them when he anxiously said they were not coming close to the numbers Trump had promised on the campaign trail.

Interpretation: Don’t worry if the individual is legally in the country. Who cares about the Writ of Habeas Corpus? And for gosh sakes, it doesn’t matter that they were really not part of a Venezuelan gang. The MAGAs eat this stuff up.

In the same meeting, Miller set a new “minimum” arrest number of 3,000 per day, double the quota set in January. He also threatened to fire ICE field office heads who were lagging behind on their totals. He pushed them to round up non-criminal migrants and to make volume arrests at big box retail stores, large warehouses, and restaurants, and to stay focused on the quota goal.

MAGA Budget Cutter: Russell (Project 2025) Vought

Like a bad penny that never goes away, Russell Vought is around to show MAGA nation the power of Trump through mass firings of federal employees. He is undeterred by the fact that these are previously budgeted positions at Congress-funded agencies—small details to Mr. Vought. In his second go-around as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, Vought is tirelessly working to turn Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) recommendations into permanent budget cuts.

Evidence of this was apparent in the recissions package that Congress passed, and Trump signed into law last week. This bill was applauded by MAGA Nation, which took $9 billion in Congressionally directed funds away from the Public Broadcasting Service, National Public Radio, and USAID, among other agencies—Vought’s pretense for the cuts.

“The way this package was structured was that we basically took a laundry list of the waste and abuse that we had found in conjunction with DOGE and worked together.

And in a moment of unprecedented arrogance, Vought said it wasn’t in the White House’s interest to release the full federal budget proposal to lawmakers. Under a 1974 law, the president is required to submit a budget to Congress no later than the first Monday in February.

Vought said they decided not to fulfill that obligation to avoid confusion as Congress debated and approved the president’s tax law changes. When pressed, Vought explained, “We’re certainly going to release a full budget eventually.” Many budget experts cannot remember a White House delaying a full budget package release to Congress this long.

Elbridge Colby?

And a name that most of MAGA nation is not even familiar with, undersecretary of defense policy Elbridge Colby, is the one who is pulling the strings at the Pentagon. As his boss, Mr. Hegseth, has proven to be a lightweight on policy matters, major defense department decision-making has fallen to Colby. It was he who decided to withhold weapons from Ukraine without the president’s knowledge. He has long advocated for reducing U.S. military aid to Ukraine and moving the funds to the Pacific Rim to counter Chinese influence in the region.

And with Trump and his MAGA followers losing interest in foreign and defense policy, the decision-making in this area has been centralized at the staff level. For several years, Colby has been a foreign policy subject expert who has always used restraint in his actions. However, with Hegseth ceding power to him, he has gotten out in front of the administration on several different policy planks that have triggered public embarrassment regarding Trump’s decision-making processes.

For example, this past spring, Japanese officials were under the impression that the Trump administration would only push them for a modest increase in defense spending. Colby initially asked Japan to spend at least 3 percent of their GDP on defense this year. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. was angered by this and by a later suggestion of a 5 percent share to the extent that the talks fell apart.

No Susan Wiles

Conspicuous by her absence from this list is MAGA’s favorite White House chief of staff, Susan Wiles. The “Dragon Lady” has apparently been preoccupied with other matters, including putting out internal catfights within the administration, so her eye has been off the policy area. And it could only get worse for her as the Jeffrey Epstein scandal continues to remain on the front burner.