Karoline Leavitt

Karoline Claire Leavitt

Leavitt studied politics and communication at Saint Anselm College, graduating in 2019. She interned in the White House Office of Presidential Correspondence and later became its associate director. In June 2020, Leavitt became an assistant White House press secretary. After Donald Trump's loss in the 2020 presidential election, she became a communications director for New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik.

In July 2021, Leavitt announced her campaign for the United States House of Representatives election for New Hampshire's first congressional district. She established herself as a pro-Trump candidate. Leavitt won the Republican primary, but lost to Democratic incumbent Chris Pappas. She served as a spokeswoman for MAGA Inc., Trump's super PAC, and became the press secretary for his 2024 presidential campaign.

In November 2024, President-elect Trump named Leavitt as his White House press secretary. She is the youngest person to hold the position in U.S. history. In August 2026, Trump announced that Leavitt would resign as the White House press secretary.

Early life Karoline Claire Leavitt was born on August 24, 1997, in Atkinson, New Hampshire. She was the third and youngest child Her family owned an ice cream stand in Atkinson and her father owned a used truck dealership in Plaistow. Leavitt attended Central Catholic High School, a private Catholic school in Lawrence, Massachusetts. She played softball and was named an Eagle-Tribune All-Star in 2014 and 2015. In interviews, she has credited her Catholic education as formative for her spirituality and instilling her with certain mores, including faith, family, discipline, the importance of public service, and an anti-abortion stance.

Leavitt began attending Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire, in 2015, where she received a scholarship to play softball and majored in communications and minored in political science. She interned with NBC Sports Boston but later shifted toward political journalism. Leavitt became involved with the New Hampshire Institute of Politics in her sophomore year; as the institute's ambassador, she interned for a United States senator and the television station WMUR. By the end of her sophomore year, she had given up softball. but later interned as a writer for the White House Office of Presidential Correspondence writing letters and notes on behalf of the president. She graduated in 2019, becoming the first person in her immediate family to graduate from college.

Career White House assistant press secretary (2019–2021) After graduating, Leavitt was offered a full-time job in the White House Office of Presidential Correspondence by June 2020, she was its associate director. That month, she was named as an assistant White House press secretary Leavitt later tested positive for the virus. In January 2021, weeks before Trump left office, she became the communications director for New York representative Elise Stefanik.

U.S. congressional campaign in New Hampshire (2021–2022)

On July 19, 2021, Leavitt announced her intention to run in the United States House of Representatives election for New Hampshire's first congressional district as a Republican in an interview with WMUR. She said she was encouraged to run after President Joe Biden reversed many of the policies enacted by his predecessor, Donald Trump, and after Twitter erroneously suspended her account while she was working for Stefanik. Within three days, her campaign had raised $100,000. She officially filed to run in June 2022. Polling in August placed Leavitt second behind Matt Mowers, who had been the Republican nominee in the 2020 House of Representatives election.

Leading up to the primary, Leavitt criticized Mowers as insufficiently pro-Trump, including noting that he was a former advisor to former New Jersey governor Chris Christie. The dichotomy in Leavitt's firebrand approach and Mowers's tempered strategy demonstrated a divide in the Republican Party, according to The New York Times; Leavitt received endorsements from Texas senator Ted Cruz and representatives Lauren Boebert, Jim Jordan, and Stefanik, in a demonstration of support from Republican lawmakers. She concluded her campaign with a gun shoot at a fish and game club. Leavitt won the Republican primary in September. At 25, she was the second member of Generation Z to win a House primary and the first Republican to do so, after Democrat Maxwell Frost won his Florida primary the previous month. She was defeated by Democratic incumbent Chris Pappas.

In 2022, Leavitt faced a Federal Election Commission complaint from End Citizens United alleging that her campaign and treasurer had illegally accepted campaign donations over the legal limit and had never repaid her donors. In January 2025, Leavitt disclosed in 17 amended campaign filings $326,370 in unpaid campaign debts she had failed to disclose for several years. Roughly $200,000 of the debt had been composed of illicit campaign donations made in excess of campaign finance limits she had never paid back, in violation of campaign finance laws.

Post-election work (2023–2025)

After losing to Pappas, Leavitt began working for MAGA Inc., Trump's super PAC. Leavitt began working for Trump's 2024 presidential campaign in January 2024 as his national press secretary.

White House Press Secretary (2025–2026)

On November 15, 2024, president-elect Trump named Leavitt as his White House press secretary. She is the youngest White House press secretary in history. She was given a smaller office in the West Wing in comparison to her predecessors, with the office reserved for press secretaries instead being occupied by Taylor Budowich, the deputy chief of staff for communications and personnel. During the press conference, she falsely said that $50 million in taxpayer dollars had been intended for use in funding condoms in the Gaza Strip. Reporters indicated that the erroneous claim appears to originate from the government initiative DOGE misinterpreting a grant to prevent the spread of HIV in Gaza Province, Mozambique.

Her tenure was marked by a separation from precedent, particularly with non-traditional media. In February, Leavitt announced that the White House would select who participated in the presidential press pool. That month, she said that "new voices are going to be welcomed" alongside traditional media. The following month, Axios reported that the White House sought to change the seating chart for reporters, potentially by appointing Leavitt as president of the White House Correspondents' Association. Leavitt was named as a defendant in Associated Press v. Budowich (2025), a lawsuit that began after Trump's staff moved to block the Associated Press from certain press events over the Gulf of Mexico–America naming dispute. According to the lawsuit, Leavitt told Zeke Miller, the chief White House correspondent for the Associated Press, that the organization would be barred from certain areas of the White House unless it referred to the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America".

In her tenure as press secretary, White House briefings began to reflect Trump's conflict with the news media. According to an analysis by The New York Times in April 2025, Leavitt called on individuals standing on the perimeters of the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room—a collection of reporters from The Gateway Pundit, Real America's Voice, One America News Network, The Daily Signal, LindellTV, The Daily Wire, and Turning Point USA—approximately a quarter of the time. Leavitt additionally added a "new media" seat in January, calling on its occupants first in every briefing; the journalists sitting in the seat were primarily from right-wing media outlets and online news publications.

In August 2026, Trump announced that Leavitt would leave her position at the end of that month to spend more time with her family. Trump wrote that Leavitt would serve as one of his "outside advisors".

Communications style Leavitt has employed a combative communications style. Kayleigh McEnany, who mentored Leavitt, told USA Today that her approach was to bring "evidence-based accountability".

Political positions Leavitt's campaign for New Hampshire's first congressional district focused on lowering taxes and lessening regulations to support small businesses, challenging critical race theory in public schools and educational indoctrination, supporting school choice, increasing ID requirements on voting, and funding police. She also supported Trump's immigration policies and opposed vaccine mandates. Leavitt is a proponent of repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which provides service providers immunity from liability for third-party content generated by users. Tweets that she posted after the attack praised Vice President Mike Pence, who refused to certify the fake electors provided by Trump, and Eugene Goodman, a Capitol Police officer who led rioters away from the Senate chamber. Both tweets were later deleted.

Personal life

Leavitt is a practicing Roman Catholic.

In December 2023, Leavitt became engaged to Nicholas Riccio, a real estate developer from New Hampshire who is 32 years her senior. They were introduced in 2022 at a restaurant during Leavitt's congressional campaign. Leavitt has described Riccio as "an introvert" and her "opposite". Their son was born in July 2024. She returned to work within a week of his birth, on the day of Thomas Crooks's attempted assassination of Trump. In December 2025, Leavitt announced that she was pregnant with a second child, making her the first White House press secretary to be pregnant while serving. Her daughter was born in May 2026.

In November 2025, the mother of one of Leavitt's nephews was detained by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement and removal proceedings began.

Electoral history