President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that 27-year-old campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt will serve as his White House press secretary.
Leavitt "is smart, tough and has proven to be a highly effective communicator. I have the utmost confidence she will excel at the podium, and help deliver our message to the American People," Trump said in a statement.
Leavitt will become one of the youngest people to take the key position, acting as the face of the White House and fielding questions from the media.
She acted as national press secretary for Trump during his campaign, giving birth in July to her first child ahead of the election, she told a Fox News podcast posted online on Friday.
After working as an assistant press secretary for Trump during his first term in office, she ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the House of Representatives from her home state of New Hampshire in 2022.
She has also worked as a communications director for Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, whom Trump has nominated to be UN ambassador.
"I didn't grow up in a political family. I grew up like most Americans in a middle-class business family here in my home state of New Hampshire," she told the Fox News podcast. "I just dove into politics at my college, Saint Anselm College, in Manchester (New Hampshire)."
Trump's 27-year-old secretary
Karoline Leavitt, President-elect Donald Trump's 27-year-old pick for White House press secretary, has had a meteoric rise since getting her break as a student assistant for Fox News during his 2016 campaign for the White House.
After serving as an assistant press secretary during Trump's first stint as president, she is set to return as the youngest person ever in the high-pressure top press job.
Leavitt "is smart, tough and has proven to be a highly effective communicator. I have the utmost confidence she will excel at the podium, and help deliver our message to the American People," Trump said in a statement announcing her appointment.
The conservative from New Hampshire has been a regular presence at Trump's side in 2024, serving as his campaign spokeswoman at his rallies, as well as his multiple court appearances.
The mother-of-one, who took nine days off to give birth to her son during the campaign in July, is a fervent believer in Trump's "America First" anti-immigrant agenda and shares his disdain for traditional media companies.
She told a Fox News podcast posted online on Friday that she had spent the campaign "battling a lot of 'fake news' reporters. I hate to call them that, but it's true."
"There are a lot of journalists who aren't interested in journalism any more and we deal with them every day," she added.
As press secretary, she will face enormous pressure from Trump, who is known to closely scrutinize cable news coverage.
- Identity politics -
Leavitt began her rise through the Republican party ranks after Trump and other contenders for the 2016 presidential nomination visited her university campus in Manchester, New Hampshire, for a primary debate that was broadcast by Fox News.
"As one of the lone conservatives on campus, they appointed me to be an assistant running around that week for Fox News. I was just running around backstage and that's when I decided what I wanted to do with my career," she said on the network's "The Untold Story" podcast.
She went on to pen a column for the student newspaper at Saint Anselm College entitled "Why Donald Trump just keeps on winning and the media doesn't get it," where she opposed the "identity politics" professed by many of her fellow students.
"I didn't believe ... that the color of your skin or your gender can hold you back in this country. I don't believe that's true. That's the foundation of my conservative beliefs," she told the podcast.
After leaving the White House following Trump's election defeat in 2020, she ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the House of Representatives representing New Hampshire during the 2022 midterm elections.
She also worked as a communications director for Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, whom Trump has nominated to be UN ambassador.
Asked what was different about Trump as he prepares to take office again, she said he was more experienced in politics.
"I think he is more wise about the 'deep state,' the establishment in Washington DC and the lengths to which they were willing to go to derail his campaign and his success," she said.
Criminal defence lawyers to top justice jobs
US President-elect Donald Trump is stacking his administration's legal team with veteran lawyers who defended him in his multiple criminal cases, following his stunning pick of former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz to be attorney general.
Trump, the first former US president ever to be convicted of a crime, named Todd Blanche, his lawyer in his hush money trial in New York and two federal cases, to serve as deputy attorney general, the second highest-ranking job in the Justice Department.
Emil Bove, who also defended Trump in the hush money trial and the federal cases, was named principal associate deputy attorney general, the third-ranking job, and acting deputy attorney general while Blanche undergoes Senate confirmation.
D. John Sauer, who successfully argued Trump's presidential immunity case before the Supreme Court, was named solicitor general, the lawyer in the Justice Department who represents the federal government in cases before the nation's highest court.
Blanche, Bove and Sauer would serve under Gaetz provided the scandal-plagued ex-lawmaker can receive confirmation in the Senate, where some members of Trump's own Republican Party have expressed concerns about the choice.
Blanche, a graduate of Brooklyn Law School, and Bove, who earned his law degree from Georgetown University, defended Trump in the New York case that ended in his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to a porn star.
Trump was scheduled to be sentenced in July, but his lawyers asked that his conviction be tossed in light of the Supreme Court ruling that an ex-president has broad immunity from criminal prosecution.
Judge Juan Merchan is to rule on the dismissal motion on November 19 and has set sentencing -- should it still be necessary -- for November 26.
- 'Broken System of Justice' -
Blanche and Bove, both former federal prosecutors in New York, represented Trump in the two federal cases brought against the former president by Special Counsel Jack Smith.
Trump was charged in Washington with conspiracy to defraud the United States over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
He was charged in Florida with mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House.
The documents case was dismissed by a Trump-appointed judge while the election interference case was delayed by Trump's claims of presidential immunity and never came to trial.
Smith is currently winding down both federal cases in light of a Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.
Sauer, Trump's pick to be solicitor general, earned his law degree from Harvard and attended Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. A former federal prosecutor, he served as solicitor general of the midwestern state of Missouri from 2017 to 2023.
Announcing Sauer's nomination on Truth Social, Trump praised him for his "Historic Victory on Presidential Immunity, which was key to defeating the unConstitutional campaign of Lawfare against me and the entire MAGA Movement."
"(Blanche) will be a crucial leader in the Justice Department, fixing what has been a broken System of Justice for far too long," Trump said, while Bove "will be a crucial part of the Justice Department, rooting out corruption and crime."
Trump has called for retribution against his political foes, and his Justice Department nominees were condemned by Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, the outgoing chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
"These selections show Donald Trump intends to weaponize the Justice Department to seek vengeance," Durbin said.
"Donald Trump viewed the Justice Department as his personal law firm during his first term, and these selections -- his personal attorneys -- are poised to do his bidding."
Rod Rosenstein, who served as deputy attorney general during Trump's first term in the White House, suggested the fears were overblown.
In a post on X, Rosenstein welcomed the nominations of Blanche and Bove while notably failing to mention Gaetz.
"Critics of unfit appointees should applaud when the president picks qualified people with integrity," he said. "As Deputy AG, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove won't allow partisanship to sway DOJ prosecutions. The rule of law prevails."
Doug Burgum as energy czar
US President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum will head a new energy council -- on top of serving as his Secretary of the Interior.
Burgum will be at the helm of a newly created National Energy Council, which Trump said "will consist of all Departments and Agencies involved in the permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, transportation, of ALL forms of American Energy."
Trump added in a statement that the council is expected to oversee a path to US energy dominance "by cutting red tape, enhancing private sector investments" and focusing on innovation over regulation.
The position will give Burgum a seat on the National Security Council, Trump added, although it remains uncertain if the National Energy Council will be based in the White House as well.
The aim is to expand all forms of energy production and restore the United States' "fabulous Oil and Gas advantage," Trump said.
Trump, who is set to return to the White House in January, has pledged to reverse the green policies of his Democratic predecessor President Joe Biden.
He could also pull the United States out of international efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial times.
On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly said he would "unleash" the US oil sector by boosting production and curbing the move towards renewable energy pushed by Biden.
Experts have warned that a second Trump presidency would slam the brakes on the transition to green energy, crushing hopes of hitting crucial long-term climate targets.
Burgum's appointment at the Interior Department was criticized by climate group Evergreen Action.
In a statement Friday, Evergreen Action executive director Lena Moffitt called his nomination "nothing more than a reward for a career of putting fossil fuel corporations and special interests ahead of the American people."
Moffitt raised concerns that Burgum could turn the agency into "a tool for fossil fuel corporations to exploit public resources."