Axios debut by Marc Caputo, who joins us today as a White House reporter:

Incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles tells Axios in an interview that she aims for the West Wing to be a no-drama zone for staff. If that works, it won't be the chaotic den of self-sabotaging that stymied the early days of President-elect Trump's first term.

• "I don't welcome people who want to work solo or be a star," Wiles, whose boss calls her the Ice Maiden, told Marc Caputo by email. "My team and I will not tolerate backbiting, second-guessing inappropriately, or drama. These are counterproductive to the mission."

Why it matters: Trump's 2024 campaign was more organized and less leaky than any previous Trump team. Wiles, who was co-campaign manager, gets much of the credit. Two weeks from today, she'll bring her formula to Washington.

🔎 Between the lines: Wiles, 67, will become the first woman to be White House chief of staff — and the fifth person to serve Trump in that role.

• The veteran Florida political operative — a former lobbyist who worked for Trump's GOP primary rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in 2018 — has become a true Trump loyalist who stuck with him during his post-Jan. 6 political exile.
• That earned the trust of the typically mistrustful Trump. So Wiles has become the motherboard of the MAGA mainframe: Trump programs what he wants; she tries to turn it into reality.
• Wiles already is exercising power: During Friday's chaotic reelection of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), a photo from the House floor showed the iPhone screen of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a Trump loyalist, on the line with "Susie Wiles."

The backstory: Wiles says she tries not to manage Trump — and dislikes chatter that she does, pointing out that she managed the campaign, not the candidate.

• She never tells others what she tells Trump. If she disagrees with him, it's not done in front of anyone — and it doesn't leak. She avoids the spotlight. To survive in the MAGA-verse, you have to always remember that Trump is the star around which others revolve.
• "Susie likes to stay sort of in the back, let me tell you!" Trump said during his Election Night victory speech, as he thanked Wiles and co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita. "The Ice Maiden. We call her the Ice Maiden."
• Trump invited Wiles to speak. She shook her head "no."

Wiles is looking past the fabled first 100 days of a new administration — "an artificial metric," she told us — and said the most critical period will be between the inauguration and the 2026 midterms. For those precious two years, Republicans know they'll have full control of Congress.

• Translation: All gas and no brakes. Promises made and kept.

💡 The blueprint, Wiles said, includes "getting off to a quick start and staying on that pace, together with an expectation of excellence every day."

• The plans, she said, are all about "engendering public support" to deliver on Trump's promises and policies, including promoting energy production, "rolling back redundant and burdensome regulations, keeping taxes low, cutting government waste through DOGE [the new Department of Government Efficiency], and most importantly, sealing the border and deporting criminals who are in this country illegally."

Trump's first administration "had an enviable level of accomplishment" despite "impeachment attempts and other witch hunts," Wiles said, sounding Trumpian.

• "I have every hope that the 47 administration will not have the same number of attempts to put sand in the gears," she told us. "We are off to a fast start with congressional work, hiring the best people, preliminary discussion with heads of state, fine-tuning his policy agenda, and planning for the first 100 days."

Susie Wiles Q&A below.

Lightly edited excerpts from Axios' interview with Susie Wiles:

Q. How will the Trump 47 administration differ from Trump 45?

• Wiles: Trump "knows much more about the way the Washington institutions work, especially the need to have people who are serving be both competent and loyal. He has taken a keen interest in personnel and has personally interviewed and hired all the Cabinet and many sub-Cabinet hires."

Q. How did you and Trump approach the transition?

• Wiles: "He engaged fully with hiring ... He interviewed the Cabinet leadership, and made it clear his priorities for White House and agency staff. We set timelines and held ourselves accountable for the deadlines we set. President Trump 47 will have the finest public servants available with great work ethic, a demonstrated ability to break down bureaucratic walls to help hold the bloated federal workforce accountable, have fealty to the conservative and common-sense principles that President Trump ran — and won — on, and be determined to make a difference during their time serving. We are cognizant of a turning clock — much to do."

Q. What will the hallmark of this West Wing be?

• Wiles: "The West Wing staff is a mix of new and veterans — many are young, all are prepared to work punishing hours," Wiles said. "To my core, I believe in teamwork. Anyone who cannot be counted on to be collaborative, and focused on our shared goals, isn't working in the West Wing."

Q. What was Trump's instruction to the transition team?

• Wiles: "Be smart with hiring. Remember what President Trump promised the American people he would do: Set goals and then exceed them in every area, with every staff member."

Q. What did you learn on the campaign trail that you'll apply in the White House?

• Wiles: "I cannot stress teamwork and mutual support enough. ... It's not magic — set goals and timelines for me and the team and then work to exceed them. Simple, yes, but this worked quite nicely on the campaign."

Q. What has President Biden's team been like to work with during the transition?

• Wiles: White House chief of staff Jeff Zients "has been very helpful. He has made great suggestions, helped make sure we stay on time with required functions, helped us navigate the labyrinth that is the Executive Office of the President, and been very professional. He introduced me to the 'former chief of staff club' and even hosted a dinner [for Wiles and the former chiefs] at his beautiful home."

Q. You're a Floridian. Trump's a Florida resident. The campaign was based in West Palm Beach, and now the transition is. Several of his top picks are Floridians. How will that affect this administration?

• Wiles: "Florida people overpopulate the leadership of the administration, and we would not have it any other way!"
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👀 Go inside Trump's Washington! Marc Caputo joins Jim VandeHei & Mike Allen — along with TD Cowen's Chris Krueger, one of our favorite policy minds — a week from today in an Axios AM Executive Briefing webinar on the Trump agenda. Subscribe here.

Iran's recent nuclear advances give President-elect Trump a crucial decision to make in his first months in office: Try to neutralize the threat through negotiations and pressure, or order a military strike, Axios' Barak Ravid reports.

• Why it matters: Trump's decision in 2018 to withdraw from an Obama-era nuclear deal prompted Tehran to accelerate its nuclear program. Now it's a de facto "nuclear threshold state." Officials and diplomats from the U.S., EU and Israel all told Axios they expect Trump to face an Iran crisis in 2025.

🔎 Behind the scenes: Several Trump advisers privately concede Iran's program is now so far along that the strategy might not be effective. That makes a military option a real possibility.

• After Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer met Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November, Dermer came away thinking there was a high likelihood Trump would either support an Israeli military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities — something the Israelis are seriously considering — or even order a U.S. strike, two sources who spoke with Dermer after the meeting tell Axios.
• Some top advisers to President Biden have privately argued in recent weeks for striking Iran's nuclear sites before Trump takes office, with Iran and its proxies so badly weakened by their war with Israel, sources familiar with those discussions told Axios.
• With Biden now down to his final two weeks, there are no active discussions about bombing Iran.

The flipside: Others close to Trump expect he'll seek a deal before considering a strike.

• "Anything can happen," Trump told TIME in November, when asked about the possibility of war with Iran. "It's a very volatile situation."

The bottom line: Trump will take office with fewer options to contain or destroy Iran's program than he had in 2017, and less time to decide.

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Ian Bremmer, in his closely watched annual risk forecast, warns that the world has entered "a uniquely dangerous period of world history, on par with only the 1930s and the early Cold War."

• "People everywhere are facing heightened geopolitical instability driven by a lack of global leadership," Bremmer writes in Eurasia Group's "Top Risks 2025" report, out today.

Bremmer, president and founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO media, and Cliff Kupchan, chairman of Eurasia Group, write:

"We are heading back to the law of the jungle, where the strongest do what they can, while the weakest are condemned to suffer what they must."

Beyond the arrival of GZERO (the global order "slipping away. No single power or group of powers is willing or able to set a global agenda. It's a world of many pretenders, but no leaders"), the report's other top risks are:

• 2. The Rule of Don ... 3. U.S.-China breakdown ... 4. Trumponomics ... 5. Russia still rogue ... 6. Beggar thy world ... 7. Iran on the ropes ... 8. Mexican standoff ... 9. Ungoverned spaces ... 10. AI unbound.

Go deeper.

On the fourth anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Vice President Harris at 1 p.m. will preside over the Electoral College certification of her defeat to Donald Trump, as Congress convenes amid a literal storm — a snow emergency.

• Harris describes her role as a "sacred obligation" to ensure the peaceful transfer of power, "one of the most fundamental principles of American democracy," AP reports.

🗞️ In a Washington Post op-ed (gift link), President Biden writes that Americans "should be proud that our democracy withstood this assault":

"But we should not forget. We must remember the wisdom of the adage that any nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it. We cannot accept a repeat of what occurred four years ago. An unrelenting effort has been underway to rewrite — even erase — the history of that day."

📜 The bottom line: As a CNN headline puts it, "Today marks the most stunning comeback in U.S. political history ... Congress will convene to certify Trump's 2024 election win, clearing his way to be America's 47th president."

• Certification explainer.

If you're in the two-thirds of the U.S. expecting dangerous, bone-chilling temperatures today, Axios climate expert Andrew Freedman momentarily transports us:

Hundreds of cities coast to coast suffered record heat during 2024, with many crushing milestones set in 2023.

• Why it matters: The year's record temperatures include periods of extreme heat, which is a deadly hazard — and shows how long-term, human-caused climate change is playing out in communities.

🌐 The bottom line: What is going on globally is also happening locally.

• Get Axios Generate.

Taylor Swift's epic two-year trip around the globe is officially the highest-grossing tour of all time, Axios' Justin L. Mack and April Rubin report.

• Following the final Eras Tour stop in Vancouver, Pollstar confirmed the tour brought in an estimated $2.2 billion.

That nearly doubles the previous record-holder, Coldplay's Music of the Spheres tour.

• Keep reading.

Two wildly audacious films — Brady Corbet's 215-minute postwar epic "The Brutalist" and Jacques Audiard's Spanish language, genre-shifting trans musical "Emilia Pérez" — won top honors at the 82nd Golden Globes in Beverly Hills last night.

• Above: Corbet accepts the award for best drama film.

Above: Karla Sofía Gascón — the transgender star of Netflix's "Emilia Pérez," who plays a Mexican drug lord who undergoes gender-affirming surgery — accepts the Golden Globe for best film, comedy or musical.

• Keep reading ... List of winners.