Karoline Leavitt’s surprise resignation as the White House press secretary is set to trigger a sharp-elbowed race inside Donald Trump’s world for one of the most prominent positions in the Trump administration.
Several names have circulated since the US president announced that Leavitt would step down at the end of the month to spend more time with her family.
Here are some of the possible contenders.
Stephen Cheung
Cheung currently serves as the White House communications director, and has worked closely with Leavitt throughout the second Trump administration. When he praised the outgoing press secretary for her tenure on Wednesday, Leavitt joked on social media that the pair had survived “many, many news cycles” together.
Alina Habba
Habba is a loyal ally of the president who served as his personal lawyer before becoming a short-lived US attorney for New Jersey. A federal judge ultimately ruled her appointment was unlawful.
But Habba has been one of the president’s most vocal defenders on conservative outlets. According to the New York Post, citing sources within the administration, Habba is an early frontrunner to replace Leavitt.
Anna Kelly
Kelly already works at the White House as the principal deputy press secretary, working under Leavitt. She was previously a spokesperson for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, and before that she served as national press secretary for the Republican National Committee.
Katie Miller
As the wife of Stephen Miller, a top White House aide and immigration policy architect, Katie Miller has a front row seat to the administration’s movements. And as an influential conservative podcast host, Katie has spent a lot of time interviewing cabinet officials and rightwing media figures.
Before launching her podcast, Katie was a communications director for the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge). She was Vice-President Mike Pence’s press secretary from 2019 to 2021.
Taylor Budowich
Budowich is a former White House deputy chief of staff, who worked alongside Miller and Dan Scavino. He left the White House last year to join the private sector.
Alongside Leavitt, Budowich was one of the defendants in the case brought by the Associated Press after the outlet was banned from the press rotation for refusing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”.
