Stephen Miller wants to use his new role as White House chief of staff to win back young and minority men who helped elect President Trump in 2024 but swung toward Democrats in the midterms, two people familiar with the administration's plans tell Axios' Alex Isenstadt.

• Why it matters: Miller, named last week to replace Susie Wiles, plans to focus on reviving the populist agenda that helped the president build his 2024 coalition, with an emphasis on working-class voters.

Young, working-class and minority men fled the GOP in droves in last week's elections, amid high prices fueled by Trump's tariffs, the war in Iran, and concerns about AI's impact on the job market.

• Trump won men under 30 by 14 points in 2024, according to a Tufts study. Last week, Democrats won them by 22 points in House races — a 36-point shift.
• Latino men also swung sharply toward Democrats, as the administration's hard-line immigration crackdown became an increasingly contentious political issue.

🔎 Zoom in: Miller wants to spend more time highlighting administration policies he believes haven't gotten enough attention, and that will appeal to working-class voters concerned about the economy, insiders tell Axios.

• His priorities will sound familiar to Trump watchers: eliminating what the administration considers "woke" policies from colleges and workplaces, lowering prescription drug prices, and rooting out government and health-care fraud.
• He also wants to emphasize reducing the federal bureaucracy and push for permitting reform, while highlighting how those efforts could help address affordability.
• Sources in the business community say Miller's ideological drive makes him mostly impervious to typical Washington lobbying.

👓 Between the lines: With Democrats taking control of Congress in January, Miller will have to advance that agenda without the help of Republican majorities in either the House or Senate.

• Some of his plans could be pursued through executive orders by Trump. Others, including permitting reform, would require bipartisan cooperation.

Reality check: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who's in line to become House speaker in January, has said he has "zero interest" in working with Miller, whose immigration policies have made him a frequent target of Democratic attacks.

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A week of political upheaval, financial turmoil and salacious scandal delivered one final indignity to the AI industry yesterday, as Anthropic's staggering IPO target fell short of expectations, Axios' Zachary Basu and Ben Berkowitz write.

• Why it matters: The bubble is wobbling. Investors, businesses and governments need a spectacular success from Anthropic to stave off a crisis of confidence that could tear through the broader economy.

🔬 Zoom in: Anthropic announced plans yesterday to raise as much as $64.4 billion in one of the largest IPOs in history, targeting a valuation of up to $1.4 trillion.

• That's roughly $600 billion below what investors envisioned just months ago.

Zoom out: Anthropic's valuation reset caps a punishing stretch of new challenges that began with last week's stunning midterm results:

• 🌊 A blue wave of AI-skeptical Democrats will arrive in Congress armed with subpoena power and an appetite for investigating the industry's safety failures and vast political influence.
• 🤖 Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the central cog in AI's global gears, was swept up in an espionage scandal after admitting to an affair with a suspected Chinese spy. His board, the FBI and Congress are investigating. Nvidia has shed more than $1 trillion in market value since the first revelation.
• 📉 Wall Street went into a tailspin as investors reckoned with the implications of the Democratic sweep — including in data-center havens like Texas — for AI's sprawling infrastructure ambitions. The Nasdaq lost $2.5 trillion in market value Thursday before staging a sharp rebound.

Keep reading.

House Republicans are turning to one of their fiercest fighters to lead their diminished conference after one of their biggest drubbings in decades, Axios' Kate Santaliz writes.

• Why it matters: Jim Jordan, 62, a founding member of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, has completed a stunning insurgent-to-establishment turn after spending much of his nearly 20 years in Congress battling Republican leaders from the right.

Jordan's 106-73 win over House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) is a bet by Republicans that they shouldn't move away from President Trump to claw their way back to power.

• "I think when you take a beating like we took, you need to make some changes, and I also think we're gearing up for war," Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), who backed Jordan, told us.

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Washington's newest senators got their first taste of life on Capitol Hill this week as Democrats prepare to take control of Congress:

• Above: Sens.-elect Annie Andrews (D-S.C.), James Talarico (D-Texas) and Troy Jackson (D-Maine) walk together as they arrive for orientation.
• Below: Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed (D-Mich.) and his wife, Sarah Jukaku, ride the Senate Subway from the Capitol to the Hart Senate Office Building.

🐘 Republicans in both the House and Senate chose leaders for their next two years in the minority:

• House Minority Leader: Jim Jordan (Ohio)
• House Minority Whip: Tom Emmer (Minn.)
• House Conference Chair: Lisa McClain (Mich.)
• NRCC Chair (House campaign chief): Brian Jack (Ga.), replacing Richard Hudson, who lost his reelection bid.
• Senate Minority Leader: John Thune (S.D.)
• Senate Minority Whip: John Barrasso (Wyo.)
• Senate Conference Chair: Tom Cotton (Ark.)
• NRSC Chair (Senate campaign chief): Bernie Moreno (Ohio), replacing Tim Scott.

More on the Senate ... House.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally warned President Trump about Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's relationship with a suspected Chinese spy during a flight to China in May, The New York Times reports.

• The warning came before Huang boarded Air Force One at a refueling stop in Anchorage.

📝 Behind the scenes: Rubio oversaw the preparation of a highly classified memo detailing Huang's relationship with Alice Huang, whom U.S. intelligence officials believe is a Chinese intelligence agent.

• The memo drew on surveillance of Alice Huang and a chip-smuggling investigation into her company, Megaspeed.

👉 Axios scoop: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — who oversees efforts to keep sensitive U.S. technology out of the hands of American adversaries — also received the classified memo, Axios' Maria Curi and Marc Caputo report.

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When Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with his G7 counterparts in Paris yesterday, he told them that President Trump had considered resuming the war with Iran or cutting a deal — but chose a third option: strangling the Iranian regime, Axios' Barak Ravid reports.

• Rubio explained: "It's not just return to war or sign a ridiculous peace deal. We won't do a stupid deal. The third option we have is to continue to do what we do now," Rubio said, according to three people in the room.
• He went on to say that the U.S. is imposing devastating costs on Iran's economy, making it harder for it to fund terrorist organizations or rebuild its military. And there's no end date.

The intrigue: U.S. officials say that Rubio was among the members of Trump's national security team who pushed for the strangulation strategy, along with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Jared Kushner, Trump's adviser and son-in-law.

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President Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in March, but Democrats aren't finished with her, Axios' Brittany Gibson writes.

• Why it matters: Armed with commanding House and Senate majorities, they're preparing to haul the architects of Trump's mass deportation agenda before Congress to answer for their actions.

Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, said in a letter to colleagues he'd prioritize investigating every death in DHS custody and during arrests.

• Thompson, who is running for committee chair and the subpoena power that comes with it, also plans to investigate alleged financial corruption at the agency and oversight of spending, particularly the gargantuan budget supplied by the One Big Beautiful Bill.

Keep reading.

Veteran homelessness has declined by more than 50% over the past 15 years, Axios' Brad Jennings writes.

• Numbers fell in 43 states and D.C. between 2011 and 2025, according to an Axios analysis of Department of Housing and Urban Development data.
• New York (-78%), North Dakota (-77%), Louisiana (-75%) and Georgia (-72%) saw the sharpest declines. Keep reading.

Above: Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, walks through Corozal American Cemetery in Panama after a Veterans Day ceremony yesterday.