White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is stepping down from her role at the end of August, a surprise announcement after her return to the White House less than a month ago following maternity leave.
Leavitt “will be departing her role at the end of the month so she can spend more time with her beautiful young children and family, a decision I totally understand and respect,” President Donald Trump wrote Wednesday on Truth Social.
Trump’s combative spokesperson will be one of the president’s “top outside advisors,” he added, “and an influential voice within the Republican Party, as we work to defy History, and conclusively win the Midterm Elections.”
Leavitt, 28, called her time in the role — which has been marked by fierce loyalty to the president and explosive briefings — the “honor and adventure of a lifetime.”
In a lengthy statement on X, Leavitt claimed the U.S. is facing an “existential threat from an increasingly extremist Democrat Party that seeks to destroy everything great about America” as she embraced her upcoming role as a “top advisor” to the president “on the outside” as well as a “vocal advocate for MAGA and the Republican Party.
open image in galleryHer departure was announced one day after the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a stunning memo arguing that the president could claim executive privilege over communication between him and his “private advisers” if those conversations were considered confidential and related to his presidential “decisionmaking.”
Leavitt has held only one press briefing since returning to the White House from maternity leave last month, approximately eight weeks after the birth of her second child. She also has a two-year-old son.
“Being a mother and welcoming a new baby while working in one of the most demanding jobs in the world has been the most rewarding yet challenging season of my life, to say the least,” Leavitt wrote Wednesday.
“The truth is since returning to the White House after the birth of my daughter, I have felt in my heart that I cannot be the best mom my two young children deserve while devoting the constant time, energy, and attention required of the White House Press Secretary — and that is why I have ultimately made the bittersweet decision to depart the White House and embark on a new chapter in my life,” she said.
open image in galleryThe New Hampshire native entered the White House as Trump’s top spokesperson after serving as a national press secretary on his 2024 presidential campaign.
She also served as a press assistant during the last year of his first term and later as communications director for New York Rep. Elise Stefanik before embarking on an ill-fated campaign for House seat in the Granite State.
Her tenure as White House press secretary has encompassed nearly two full years of Trump’s second term, making her his second longest-serving press secretary across his two non-consecutive terms behind Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, whose tenure encompassed nearly two full years from July 21, 2017 to July 1, 2018. She is also the youngest person to ever serve in the role.
It remains unclear who will step into the role.
The announcement of Leavitt’s exit from the administration also follows explosive reporting that the president covertly boarded a separate plane after leaving a NATO summit in Turkey last month, leaving several top administration officials and the press traveling with him inside Air Force One while he traveled with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and a handful of close aides on a smaller plane.
Leavitt did not travel with the president on that trip, but a traveling press pool joined State Secretary Marco Rubio, among others, onboard an older Air Force One to avoid potential threats from Iran.
U.S. intelligence officials reportedly identified threats from Iranian surface-to-air missiles and a potential shoulder-fired missile before Trump secretly swapped planes, which was not known to government officials, the press or public until this week.
That intelligence appeared to be deemed credible enough for the Secret Service to launch a covert operation to sneak Trump and senior members of his team into a smaller plane, while leaving other officials, and reporters, in the decoy jet.
Leavitt’s departure also comes after several other shifts inside White House communications. Former Homeland Security spokeswoman Lauren Bis is now senior White House deputy press secretary, and White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson left the administration last month to work for OnMessage Public Strategies.