Who Will Replace Karoline Leavitt as White House Press Secretary? 2026 Predictions

No successor has been named. President Trump announced on Wednesday 12 August 2026 that Karoline Leavitt will leave the White House at the end of the month, and — as the Associated Press put it plainly — he outlined no plans for who might replace her. The job is not one the Senate confirms, so there is no nominee to track, no hearing date, and no paper trail to read. There is only a decision one person will make, possibly within days.

That makes it a genuine prediction question, so here is our answer to it. What follows checks all fifteen names now in circulation and ranks the eight with a real case, against four things that can actually be checked: where each person works today according to the White House’s own staff filing, how Trump’s five previous press secretaries were hired, who has real experience at a briefing podium, and whether the reporting naming them is on the record or anonymous.

Who will replace Karoline Leavitt as White House press secretary?

Our ranking puts principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly first, communications director Steven Cheung second and CNN commentator Scott Jennings third — and rates “nobody, for now” above all but the first of them. These are the eight people we rank, and where each works today.

Anna Kelly ranks first because she is the only person who clears every test at once. She is inside the building, she sits in the chair one previous Trump press secretary was promoted out of, and she has been doing television and radio for the administration already. She also arrived the way Leavitt did, through the 2024 campaign press operation and straight into the West Wing — in Kelly’s case after running Republican National Committee press work first.

Steven Cheung ranks second on seniority rather than fit. He is already at the top staff pay band, so this would be a sideways move, and the two jobs have been merged before: both Sean Spicer and Stephanie Grisham held the press secretary and communications director titles at the same time. The argument against him is simple and specific — he has not sought the on-camera briefing role at any point in this term.

Scott Jennings ranks third because he is the only name any outlet has called a frontrunner, and because he fits what Trump has actually rewarded: a fluent television defender with a national profile. The caveats are equally clear. That report rests on anonymous sources, he has never worked in this White House, and asked about the job on air he answered by praising Leavitt rather than expressing interest.

Alina Habba at four is the closest parallel to a hire Trump has already made once — Kayleigh McEnany was a television lawyer-advocate before she was press secretary. Habba is inside the administration, at the Justice Department, where she has been senior adviser to the attorney general for US attorneys since 8 December 2025.

Below that the case thins. Matthew Boyle would be the friendly-correspondent pick, crossing from Breitbart’s Washington bureau to the other side of the podium. Margo Martin is in the building and close to the president, but her role has been travelling communications rather than briefing. Kingsley Wilson does this exact job already at the War Department, which makes her the cleanest lateral move available and the one least likely to need any training; her colleague Sean Parnell, the department’s chief spokesman, is the same case one rung up and would rank alongside her. Kari Lake has the broadcast background the job rewards, but a federal judge ruled in March 2026 that her tenure running the US Agency for Global Media was invalid, which is a live complication.

Why is Karoline Leavitt leaving?

She said she cannot do the job and be the parent she wants to be. Leavitt, 28, announced her departure alongside Trump’s post, calling the decision bittersweet and writing that she “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.” Her son was born in July 2024 and her daughter, Viviana, on 1 May 2026.

Trump wrote on Truth Social that she is “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!” and that she will become “one of my top outside advisors.” He also called her one of the best press secretaries in the history of the office.

She has held the job alone for the whole of the second term — appointed on 15 November 2024, sworn in on 20 January 2025, and the youngest press secretary in the history of the role. Trump’s first term ran through four.

Who is actually in the White House press office right now?

There are nine people with “press secretary” in their title, and the gap between the top job and the next one down is $73,700. These are the exact titles and salaries filed by the White House in its annual staff report to Congress, dated 1 July 2026.

Two things follow from that table. The first is that promoting from inside means a jump of three rungs and roughly sixty per cent in pay: $195,200 is the top of the White House staff scale, and only 19 of the office’s 365 direct employees are on it. The second is that the bench is thinner than the candidate lists suggest. Below Kelly, Desai and Jackson, everyone is an assistant press secretary — a grade that sits about $103,000 below the job itself.

The communications shop next door is a separate ladder. Steven Cheung is director of communications at $195,200 — the same band as Leavitt. Kaelan Dorr is principal deputy communications director at $175,000, and Margo Martin is communications advisor at $150,000.

Who took the podium the last time the job was empty?

Nobody was promoted. Cabinet-rank officials rotated through instead, and there were fewer briefings. Leavitt gave her last briefing in late April 2026, had her daughter on 1 May, and did not return to the podium until 16 July — roughly eleven weeks in which the press secretary’s lectern needed filling every day.

The White House did not name an acting press secretary. It did not hand the podium to the principal deputy either. Instead Secretary of State Marco Rubio took the first briefing on 5 May, and Vice President JD Vance briefed on 19 May and again on 18 June, with other senior officials filling in around them. Briefings became noticeably less frequent.

This is the single most useful piece of evidence available, because it is the only time this administration has faced this exact problem. It cuts two ways. It argues against assuming the deputy inherits the job, because when the podium was actually free the deputy did not get it. And it puts an option on the board that no candidate list includes: Trump may simply not fill the role quickly, or may fill it with whoever is most useful that week.

How did Trump’s last five press secretaries get the job?

Only one of five was the sitting White House deputy. Two came straight from his campaign press shop, and that route no longer exists.

Sean Spicer arrived from the Republican National Committee, where he was communications director and chief strategist. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was the deputy press secretary and was promoted in July 2017 — the one internal elevation on the list. Stephanie Grisham came from the East Wing, where she had been press secretary to the first lady. Kayleigh McEnany and Karoline Leavitt were both national press secretary for a Trump presidential campaign immediately before taking the job.

That last row matters more than it looks. The most common single path to this job under Trump — two of five — runs through his own presidential campaign press operation, and he cannot run again. There is no equivalent shop to hire from in August 2026. Whoever gets it will have to come from somewhere the pattern has only used once or twice.

Who else has been floated, and where do they actually work?

Fifteen names have been published across five outlets, and only five of them are on the White House payroll. The table below is every name we found, checked against the July 2026 staff report and against each person’s current employer.

Three of those names left government in 2025 and have not come back. Harrison Fields resigned as principal deputy press secretary on 22 August 2025 to join a lobbying firm, and does not appear anywhere in the July 2026 staff report — though at least one candidate list still gives him the title, and so does his Wikipedia entry. Katie Miller left with Elon Musk at the end of May 2025 and now runs her own podcast. Taylor Budowich left the deputy chief of staff job in September 2025 and started a public affairs firm.

Monica Crowley is a different kind of long shot: she is a Senate-confirmed ambassador, sworn in as chief of protocol on 30 May 2025, and taking this job would mean giving that up in an unusually busy year for protocol.

When will Trump name a replacement?

No date has been set, and the only fixed point is the end of August. Leavitt leaves at the end of the month. Because the press secretary is a White House Office staff position rather than a Senate-confirmed one, there is no confirmation gap to plan around: an announcement and the start date can be the same day, exactly as they were when McEnany was hired in April 2020 and announced the next day.

That is also why this is genuinely hard to predict rather than merely unannounced. There is no shortlist filed anywhere, no committee, and no vetting timetable that leaks. The only structural constraint is that somebody has to stand in the briefing room, and the record of the last eleven-week vacancy says the administration is comfortable improvising that for a while.

What this ranking cannot tell you

It cannot tell you what Trump is thinking, and it does not claim to. Every one of his five previous picks was announced by him without a process anyone outside could observe, and two of the five — Grisham from the East Wing, Leavitt at 27 — would not have topped a ranking built on seniority the day before they were named.

What the record does support is narrower and more durable. The bench inside the press office is three people deep before it drops to assistant level. The one time this podium was actually empty, the administration reached for Cabinet secretaries rather than promoting anyone. And the path that has produced the most Trump press secretaries is closed. Those three facts will still be true whoever is announced, and they are the reason our first pick and the outcome we cannot put a number on — Anna Kelly, and no one at all — sit closer together than they look.

We have not put a probability on any of this, and we have not printed anyone’s betting-market price. If you want the version of this question that does come with published, methodical ratings, the 2026 Senate control map is the closest thing American politics currently offers.