White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt faced reporters from the briefing room for the last time on August 27, 2026, and the podium is the only thing the 28-year-old is giving up. The resignation she announced August 12 sends her back to MAGA Inc., the super PAC sitting on a war chest of roughly $400 million that has quietly become the engine of President Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican Party — a hoard so large that Washington operatives keep asking why a president who cannot run again needs that much money.
Leavitt, a mother of two, framed the move around family. Her son, Niko, is two years old, and her daughter, Viviana, is four months; she shares both children with her husband, real estate developer Nicholas Riccio, 60, and said she wanted more time with them. Family is not the only motive, however: she is also positioning herself to help plan the president’s future.
A reporter at her final gaggle on August 27 asked whether Trump was “washing his hands” of Republicans, a question prompted after he amplified a conservative influencer’s post saying the GOP is “sleepwalking toward a midterm reckoning.” Her answer: “The president is wholeheartedly committed to helping Republicans across the board retain the majority.”
Her job at the super PAC has not been disclosed. A report published September 3 put the move in functional terms for the first time, saying she left the press secretary post on August 27 “to take up a role with Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC, where she will continue to advise the president.” No title was given. Leavitt worked as a spokeswoman for the group in 2023 before joining Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, but she is returning to an operation far bigger and richer than the one she left, nested inside a maze of linked dark-money groups that make the cash hard to follow.
She has no intention of dropping out of sight, as she told reporters on Friday, August 21. “You guys will still see me all the time,” she said. A report published roughly the week of August 28 said ABC has confirmed she will appear on “The View,” though not as a guest host, as had been rumored; no date or format detail was given. The Republican midterm convention is set for September 9 and 10 in Dallas, and she is expected to be back at MAGA Inc. by then, though the White House has announced neither her title nor her duties there.
The $400 Million Question
By February, filings showed MAGA Inc. had taken in $305 million since Trump’s 2024 victory — about five times what any previous president had collected in the year after winning. Little of the roughly $400 million banked heading into the midterms has gone out the door, and Republicans in competitive races are still waiting for the checkbook to open.
One of the group’s biggest plays of the cycle came in the August 25 South Carolina runoff: $827,711 on calls and texts boosting Trump-endorsed Sen. Darline Graham. She is the sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham and was appointed to his seat after his death in July; the nomination went to her over Rep. Ralph Norman.
Senate candidate Mike Rogers drew the first real spending, at a MAGA Inc. event headlined by Vice President JD Vance in Sterling Heights, Mich., on Monday, August 31 — one of the first major pushes of the group’s November campaign. Polling released the same day showed Rogers trailing Democrat Abdul El-Sayed by four points. Since January 2025, $21 million has gone out, and Federal filings show the fund holding $403.5 million at the end of July.
Industries with billions riding on administration policy fill out the donor roster like a directory. Foris Dax, the parent company of Crypto.com, tops it with about $35 million. Also on the list: pipeline billionaire Kelcy Warren, of Texas; TikTok investor and billionaire Jeff Yass; OpenAI power couple Greg and Anna Brockman; and crypto twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, whom Trump is reported to describe as “male models with a big, beautiful brain.”
Leavitt’s new colleagues will include James Blair, the group’s current chief, who arrived from the White House, where he was deputy chief of staff for legislative, political and public affairs; before that he was political director of the 2024 campaign and the RNC. Veteran Trump strategist Chris LaCivita and pollster Tony Fabrizio are there as well. Trump built the fundraising machine himself, and he says the money answers to him. The whisper among insiders is that the stockpile may have little to do with November: what the president is quietly preparing, by that theory, is a Constitution-defying bid for a third term, something he continues to raise as a joke.
An Empty Podium and No Successor
The briefing room has sat empty since July 23, a gap of 42 days. On September 2, the White House Press Office announced that the vice president would fill it with a briefing on September 3 at 1:00 PM: “Vice President @JDVance will take the podium tomorrow at 1:00 PM,” the press office wrote on social media.
As of Tuesday, the White House had not settled on a successor to Leavitt, and one may not be named until after the midterms. How suddenly she resigned accounts for one reason for the delay, a White House official told The Independent, and Trump was reportedly caught off-guard when she quit. Scott Jennings, 48, CNN’s resident conservative, is the name mentioned most often; the network has described him as the early favorite, and since the job came open he has held quiet meetings with Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles. Sources say he is unlikely to be the final pick; Jennings is loathed in parts of the MAGA movement because he initially faulted Trump for the deadly January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Until a replacement is named, Vance will serve as the administration’s lead public messenger, according to a September 2 report, and Trump has given no indication he is in a rush to choose one.
Other names in circulation: Trump’s former personal lawyer and failed U.S. attorney pick Alina Habba, 42, who pushed back on rumors she was in line for the job in a post on X; Stephen Miller’s wife, Katie Miller, married to the White House Deputy Chief of Staff; chief of protocol Monica Crowley, a onetime conservative pundit; former Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller; and Leavitt’s deputy, Anna Kelly.
Asked last month about the vacancy, Trump told reporters, “I have never seen so many job applications in my life.” On her final day, Leavitt said the president is “his own best spokesperson,” and told NewsNation there is “definitely a list” of candidates, adding, “I will say there’s no shortage of applications.”
Beyond that, Trump has stayed quiet on the replacement, aside from sharing an artificial intelligence-generated social media post declaring that he would be “The Best Press Secretary.”
From Intern to Youngest Press Secretary
Her first job in Trump’s first term was an internship in the White House Office of Presidential Correspondence, and by January 2021 she was an assistant press secretary. In 2022 she won the Republican primary in New Hampshire’s first congressional district, then lost to incumbent Democrat Chris Pappas. She took the podium at 27 when Trump was inaugurated in January 2025 — the youngest person ever to serve as White House press secretary — and built a reputation for combative exchanges with reporters.
Leavitt stepped away from her duties in late April 2026, gave birth to Viviana in early May and delivered her first formal briefing back in mid-July. Repeated calls from Trump during her leave asking when she would come back were reportedly one factor in her decision to leave. Earlier, on the Fox News show hosted by Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, she had discussed juggling work and motherhood, crediting the president with supporting working parents.
“Karoline has been one of the best White House Press Secretaries in the History of the Office,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that she would remain among his top outside advisers as Republicans fight for the midterms.
The president thanked her directly in a White House speech on Monday, August 24, streamed on Fox News. “And our press secretary, mother-of-two, and well, she decided she loved her children more than she loved Donald Trump,” he said. He went on to say he was “very upset” about her departure, adding: “She has to go home and spend time with her children. That does happen on occasion with some people when they love their children.”
Her departure caps a year of churn. Firings since the start of 2026 have claimed former Attorney General Pam Bondi and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, while scrutiny of their leadership preceded the resignations of former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement head Todd Lyons. A conspiracy theory pushed by the Iranian Embassy, meanwhile, held that she quit over an Air Force One decoy-plane betrayal, though she was unlikely to have been aboard.