President Donald Trump has selected a Fox News commentator with conservative credentials to fill the White House press secretary position being vacated by Karoline Leavitt. Katie Zacharia, a Fox News commentator who has focused on the Trump administration, is set to assume the press secretary role once Leavitt steps down in August.
Zacharia holds a senior communications advisory post at Trump Media and Technology Group, the company behind the Truth Social platform, which operates under the president's ownership. She previously held a spokesperson position within the Department of Homeland Security under Kristi Noem, who led the agency at the time.
Zacharia was reportedly brought on at DHS to serve as a public spokesperson following two fatal shootings of people protesting against ICE, incidents that drew considerable public criticism of the agency. A Los Angeles native aged 41, she held the DHS position for approximately six weeks, with that tenure concluding in March 2026.
At the time of her departure, Zacharia pushed back against accounts suggesting it had been connected to a working relationship with Corey Lewandowski, who held the position of chief adviser to Noem. Both Noem and Lewandowski had been removed from their positions by Trump in the weeks prior.
After leaving the DHS in March, Zacharia stated that she had entered the department motivated by a desire to support Trump and expressed an intention to pursue that work through other avenues. On Friday, Trump posted on Truth Social describing his pick as someone whose record of backing him had remained without blemish from the outset, whose dedication to the MAGA movement he characterised as genuine, and whose performance in the role he expressed confidence would prove strong for the country.
Throughout her approximately eighteen months at the podium, Leavitt consistently articulated and defended the president's stated positions on a range of issues. A programme bearing her name is set to debut on an established news outlet in the coming weeks.
Natalie Harp, a television journalist whose track record had been marked by strong support for the president, was among the aides drawn into Trump's closer orbit. Zacharia holds a dedicated page on the Trumpettes USA website, a membership organisation bringing together women who back Trump politically.
The profile on that site describes her background as spanning legal practice and business, with a focus on US corporate law and political advocacy, and notes that her personal interests include family, fitness, politics, and outdoor pursuits around Southern California with her husband and four children. Her LinkedIn profile lists her as general counsel at Fix California, an organisation founded by Richard Grenell — who holds the role of presidential envoy for special missions — with the group oriented around conservative advocacy.
Her academic path ran through Pepperdine University's California campuses — Seaver College for her undergraduate studies and the Caruso School of Law for her legal training — where she held leadership roles in both the Christian Legal Society and College Republicans. Zacharia, her husband Tyler — who works as a film production executive — and their four children reside in Westlake Village, a suburb in California.
The appointment came against a backdrop of strained relations between the president and the press, with midterm voting drawing nearer. Three media outlets lost access to White House grounds in September, a move that prompted US broadcasters to collectively withhold cooperation with the administration for roughly a week. A federal judge's ruling in a lawsuit brought by the outlets against the administration subsequently restored their access to the White House.
Credentials for CNN's camera crews aboard Air Force One were pulled, and a Politico journalist found their name absent from the pool roster assigned to the president's Monday trip to Nebraska.
