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Miller Gaggles with Reporters Outside the White House, Jan. 31, 2025: the Federal Buyout, Tariffs and Fentanyl

January 31, 2025 · Roll Call Factbase Videos · 0:06:21

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What happened

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller took reporters’ questions outside the White House on January 31, 2025, in Roll Call Factbase Videos’ recording. On the deferred-resignation buyout offered to federal workers, Miller said he had no exact acceptance number but that initial briefings suggested “a large number of federal workers have accepted the buyout offer,” framing the offer as paired with a wholesale reform of federal hiring to find people “really dedicated to service.” He also confirmed the directive removing pronouns from federal email signatures was consistent with the President’s day-one executive order recognizing two sexes, as he described it.

On the tariffs set to roll out the next day, Miller pointed to long-running trade imbalances with Mexico and Canada that he said erode the defense industrial and manufacturing bases, and to fentanyl, which he called “a weapon of mass destruction in this country,” arguing that cartels hold functional, government-like control over large swaths of Mexican territory and traffic fentanyl whose precursors come from overseas.

Why it matters

The gaggle captures Miller making the administration’s public case, on the eve of the first tariff actions, that trade policy and border security are one argument — and defending the buyout that opened the federal-workforce reshaping he oversees as deputy chief of staff for policy.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: Miller’s January 31, 2025 statement that a large number of federal workers had accepted the buyout offer, made before any official acceptance figure was released — flagged for the scoreboard editors; the entry itself remains review-gated.

Sources: Roll Call Factbase Videos, “Stephen Miller Speaks to Reporters Outside the White House — January 31, 2025” (video ekDaQwr3_9E); transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, never republished verbatim).