Well, that didn’t last too long. Katie Zacharia became White House press secretary just five days ago, but after President Donald Trump told reporters she should “reconsider,” the New York Times reported she’d been fired Friday afternoon.
Zacharia held the position for less than a week, but generated considerable controversy in that short time. Her first briefing on Tuesday lasted only 14 minutes as she took questions from just three reporters at Breitbart, Fox News and the Daily Mail, appearing flustered and disorganized. Meanwhile, questions about her credentials took center stage, as she identified herself as a lawyer but in fact had never passed the bar exam. Her long history of pushing far-right conspiracy theories like QAnon also resurfaced.
Then, Zacharia made two appearances on Fox News, both of which did not seem to go well. Sean Hannity grilled her on her false credentials Thursday night and told her, “I can give you some unsolicited advice. That’s never going to be a friendly room to you,” referring to the White House press pool. The next morning, she appeared on “Fox and Friends” and was asked if she still had the “confidence” of the president. “I-I-I’m standing here and I was able to travel with him through all of the midterm convention — or, excuse me — the midterm rallies, and I hope to be able to build the trust and confidence of everyone around me,” she replied.
Apparently, she did not have Trump’s confidence. Speaking to reporters at the White House Friday, the president said he told her “Honestly, if I were you, I’d reconsider.” He added that he would leave the decision to her, according to CNN, but said they would speak when he returned to the White House. “Katie, do you need this? I don’t think you need this,” he said he told her. A few hours later, she was out.
Numerous people online compared Zacharia’s short tenure was compared to Anthony Scaramucci, who was appointed White House Communications Director in 2017 during Trump’s first term, but just lasted 11 days. “To put it more precisely: a Zacharia is about .4 of a Scaramucci,” Anna Bower, a senior editor at Lawfare, posted on Blue Sky. The Mooch, as Scaramucci is popularly known, posted on X that “Records are made to be broken. But I take no pleasure in other people’s pain.”
Zacharia replaced secretary Karoline Leavitt, who resigned from the position in August.
😳 Zacharia flames out on Fox News for the second time in 12 hours 😳
With the wreckage still smoldering from her debacle on Hannity, Katie went on Fox & Friends and received another grilling from Fox hosts
LAWRENCE JONES: It’s been a tough week for you. Do you wish you would’ve disclosed to the president about not passing the bar?
Donald Trump’s new White House “pep secretary,” Katie Zacharia, introduced herself to America in the Brady Briefing Room this week, to anticipated criticism from Democrats and some unexpected criticism from Republicans.
At first, the press pool acted like that was just business as usual. It didn’t last long. As of Friday afternoon, multiple news reports indicate that Trump has already seen enough, and has asked Zacharia to step down from her role at the White House after just five days on the job.
According to a post on X by reporter Aaron Rupar, Trump told the press corps he had said to Zacharia that “she was treated very, very unfairly by the news. Let’s call it the fake news. I said, ‘Katie, do you need this? I don’t think you need this.’ We’re talking about doing something. I want her to have a good life. She’s being brutalized by the media.”
In all likelihood, that will end one of the shortest tenures of any Trump White House official, only about half the length of the notorious Anthony Scaramucci during Trump’s first term.
Maybe Zacharia was just unlucky. After all, she made her debut on Oct. 13. She showed up 15 minutes late. She spent the next eight minutes telling us how great Trump was. She took questions from just three people. She was gone 15 minutes later. In her praise of Trump, Zacharia sounded like former press secretary Sean Spicer talking about Trump’s inaugural crowds nearly a decade ago as she made dubious claims about the number of attendees at the president’s recent campaign rallies in high school gymnasiums and small arenas.
“Attendance is at record highs as enthusiastic, hard-working Americans are lining up and packing arenas to support President Trump,” she said with a straight face. Yep. The lies have already begun. Don’t act surprised.
When she finally took questions, only Breitbart (which lavished her with praise for allowing them in the building), Fox News and the Daily Mail got to ask questions. She dropped one legitimate piece of news: The president had asked for Kimberly Guilfoyle’s resignation as U.S. ambassador to Greece, based on her evident corruption and widely reported misbehavior, which even Trump didn’t try to defend. The punchline to that incident came a short time later as Trump was departing the White House, when he barely acknowledged Guilfoyle’s existence: Kimberly? Kimberly who?
A handful of defenders noted that the new press secretary had only a day to get ready for her debut. “Katie Zacharia had less than 24 hours to prepare for her inaugural briefing, as she juggled a cross-country move, and only received briefing materials this morning,” the Wall Street Journal reported. OK, so who forced her to go on stage, and why?
She could have taken all the time she needed. It’s not like we were getting press briefings every day anyway, and Trump always says he’s his own best press secretary. So there was no pressure from the press, although more reporters than usual showed up to be part of Zacharia’s inaugural standup routine.
Zacharia didn’t take the time to get to know us, and as a result we once again got a low-grade sideshow at the White House. Don’t expect anything more, and don’t expect the press to push back.
I’ve worked with incoming press secretaries at all levels, from City Hall to the White House. The best of them took the time to study policy briefings, meet department heads and the most active beat reporters before holding their first briefing. By doing that, they avoided being criticized for a lack of preparation and having to look for names on an index card. They also got a feel for the issues and questions they needed to address. Getting to know someone is the key to any long-term relationship, whether professional or personal.
That sort of protocol has long since been forgotten and abandoned, at least at the White House. Today we can’t get into the upper press area of the West Wing to talk with the press secretary. She didn’t take the time to get to know us, and as a result we once again got a low-grade sideshow. Don’t expect anything more, and don’t expect the press to push back. The White House Correspondents’ Association is in “go along to get along” mode. It’s cringeworthy to watch and heartbreaking to endure.
There was no reason to expect much of Zacharia’s first staged appearance, and that’s why no one should be surprised to see her draw as much criticism for her attire and demeanor as for the content of the information she provided. She appeared nervous, at one point calling her husband “my president.” She giggled at herself for that: “That’s a good one.” That was self-deprecating, which I appreciate. As for her attire, it was professional, but not something I would wear. As for being nervous, that’s to be expected. But again, why did she feel the need to brief us on her first day in the office?
She called on Trump-friendly media exclusively, and then excused herself, saying she had to travel to Alaska with the president, who’s hoping to shore up support for incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan, one of many struggling Republicans this fall.
Mind you, if Zacharia had arrived on time, she could have doubled her time with us. Why start late and then cut it short? If she knew she was going to leave with Trump, there was no reason to soil her laundry doing a shortened briefing. Either show up on time or do it upon your return, after you get settled. Nobody would have said anything about that — and nobody would care if they did. That might have given the president another excuse to belittle the press.
I know some Republican lawmakers and even some reporters who believe that Trump set up Zacharia for failure by ordering her first appearance. That certainly isn’t beyond Trump. He’s the best when it comes to lowering expectations.
Those expectations at the moment are so low as to defy measurement.
Just this week Trump has announced his pleasure with a DHS investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar’s immigration papers, a deal to import diesel fuel from Russia, and possible new air strikes on Iran, while Vice President JD Vance made a weird homophobic joke about Texas Senate candidate James Talarico and Speaker Mike Johnson claimed to have no idea why gas prices are spiking. Meanwhile, Trump blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not ending a war that began with Russia’s invasion of his country.
Of course, none of these issues were brought up in the new pep secretary’s very short briefing, the strangest of those issues being the bizarre deal made with Russia. In an attempt to lower prices at the pump, which have spiked because of the war Trump started, the president now says he’s ready to buy diesel from Vladimir Putin’s government.
In essence, Trump has agreed to pay an enemy government that is helping those trying to kill Americans in a war that’s entirely his doing. All to eradicate a supposed threat that he claimed he had “obliterated” a year earlier.
Just to refresh everyone’s memory, Russia is backing Iran in its war with the U.S., reportedly providing intelligence on U.S. bases to the Iranian military. In essence, Trump agreed to pay an enemy government that is helping those trying to kill Americans in a war that’s entirely his doing. And all this to eradicate a supposed threat that Trump had claimed didn’t exist at all because he “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year earlier.
Come to think of it, a two-hour briefing on just that subject wouldn’t have been enough to explain that insanity. How do you tell the press that we’re paying our enemies to attack us?
Even so, that wasn’t the peak of insanity this week.
A few days earlier, a judge in Virginia ruled that the Trump administration had misled the public with a long list of false accusations about Mary Comans, the former chief financial officer of FEMA.
“Armed only with false statements, high-ranking government officials undertook a premeditated campaign to impugn the personal and professional integrity of Ms. Comans, a non-partisan, career public servant,” U.S. Magistrate Judge William E. Fitzpatrick said. “Their intent was to disseminate false and derogatory information about Ms. Comans as widely as possible.”
Comans was accused of money laundering, willfully violating a presidential executive order, undermining public safety and misspending federal funds. As the judge found, none of that was ultimately true. He added that “high-ranking” government officials accused her of such things while “knowing they were false.”
Dealing with that insanity might also require a two-hour press briefing.
Finally, there’s the matter of the lawsuit filed by CNN, MSNOW and Politico against the Trump administration. Judge Timothy Kelly ruled Tuesday night that the temporary restraining order preventing Trump from banning those outlets from the White House would remain in force while their lawsuit proceeded.
Trump had also engaged in “unlawful viewpoint discrimination” by banning those reporters, Kelly said. The president also apparently never gave those news organizations any meaningful list of standards they had to comply with or risk losing their press passes. Trump’s actions, the judge said, “likely did not … come close to satisfying Karem.”
Yes, that’s me. He was referring to the Karem v. Trump case in 2019, when I beat the administration in court on three occasions and got my press credentials back. And the judge is right, by the way: Trump’s actions don’t satisfy me. But unpacking my own victory over Trump would be a tough task for the best press secretary. So would dealing with any of this week’s issues, let alone dealing with a president who seems to have reached peak insanity, especially for a brand new press secretary who just moved to town with questionable credentials.
To be completely fair, Trump threw Zacharia to the dogs with no prep time, no knowledge of the issues she would have to handle and no readiness to handle even the straightforward questions about her own legal background. (She graduated from law school but is not a licensed attorney in any state.)
Zacharia read a bunch of lies off a written statement, smiled at us and got out of there. It now seems possible that her first day briefing the White House press will also be her best day, as well as her last day. The aforementioned Anthony Scaramucci publicly mused that she may not last as long as he did at the White House (which was 11 days). I’ve heard some reporters saying they won’t even bother to learn how to spell her name.
But what we saw in the briefing room this week was far more troubling than one woman falling on her face. It was a panicky president approaching peak insanity throwing a scapegoat on stage in an effort to deflect attention from his ruthless and corrupt conduct. True to form, the press corps took the bait, and seemed more interested in what Zacharia was wearing and whether she’d exaggerated her qualifications than in the important issues facing this country as a result of the president’s insanity.
I have plenty of empathy for anyone working in the Trump White House, but no sympathy for anyone who willingly joins the lunacy, particularly at this late date.
The midterm elections are at hand. Trump is criminally negligent and mentally unwell. Anyone who goes to work for him now is just asking for trouble.
Three Moments From Last Night’s Ossoff-Collins Debate
Sen. Jon Ossoff (D) and Rep. Mike Collins (R) held their second debate in the Georgia Senate race Tuesday, and many of the themes of the first reemerged. Ossoff turned over the many ways in which, even within the context of today’s Republican Party, Collins’ radicalism is on the surface. Collins struggled to return a blow, or to distance himself from the unpopular president.
Who won in 2020?
One of the moderators, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein, noted that Collins said Trump “won” the 2020 election as recently as June. Does he still beleive that?
Collins dodged, saying that “Joe Biden went into office” before pivoting to criticizing his presidency.
Ten minutes later, Ossoff returned to the question. “You didn’t answer earlier. Answer now. Did Donald Trump win the 2020 election?”
“They know my views on that,” Collins replied. “There was a lot of doubt in that election.”
Fifteen minutes after that, Ossoff returned to it a third time. “You still haven’t answered tonight whether you believe Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election,” he said. “Here’s your third chance. Did Donald Trump really win the 2020 election? You want to answer, Mike?”
“I have said numerous times that Joe Biden was the president in 2021,” Collins said.
“Not what I asked,” Ossoff replied.
OSSOFF: You didn't answer earlier. Answer now. Did Donald Trump win the 2020 election?MIKE COLLINS: You know, the 2020 election. Everybody has seen my views on thatOSSOFF: What are they?COLLINS: There was a lot of doubt in that election OSSOFF: I didn't hear an answer
What’s up with all the white nationalists around Collins?
Collins’ white nationalism problem was again a theme of this debate.
Moderator Faith Jessie of Atlanta news station 11 Alive reminded Collins of Ossoff’s line last week — that he had “hired half the Third Reich” — and asked for his response. “Are you a white nationalist?” Jessie asked. “And what do you say to Black Georgians who question whether you will represent them equally?”
“I condemn any sort a hate speech,” he said. “Antisemitism, hate of any kind. It’s abhorrent. And I’ve fired people when things happen, fired them,” he added, a possible reference to his former chief of staff, who bragged of his efforts trying to get a Holocaust denier out of prison.
He then went on to suggest a link between people who feel “forgotten” and rising antisemitism. “We do have a problem with antisemitism and war and hate around the world,” he said. “These young people feel like they’ve forgotten and they’re just lashing out. And this hate speech has got to stop and we’ve got to educate them.”
Mike Collins makes apologies for white nationalists like his son in law: "These people feel like they've been forgotten. And they're just lashing out."
Ossoff asked Collins about a joke he repeatedly made online, suggesting immigrants to the U.S. be tossed from helicopters — an allusion to extrajudicial killings carried out by right-wing Latin American dictators, including Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, a meme that the very online right loves to invoke.
“Mike Collins called for killing immigrants by throwing them to their deaths out of helicopters,” Ossoff said. “I’d like to hear if Mike Collins stands by that statement. Do you still believe in the extrajudicial killing of immigrants?”
Collins did not answer the question and pivoted to talking about the Laken Riley Act and border enforcement.
OSSOFF: Mike Collins called for killing immigrants by throwing them to their deaths out of helicopters. I'd like to hear if Mike Collins stands by that statement. Do you still believe in the extrajudicial killing of immigrants?MIKE COLLINS: *changes topic*
CASTLE ROCK, CO – JUNE 26: Former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters speaks during the first day of the Rocky Mountain Voice Freedom Festival on Friday, June 26, 2026, at the Douglas County Fairgrounds in Castle Rock, Colo. (Photo by Timothy Hurst/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
The election-denying former Colorado county Clerk Tina Peters, who met with Trump earlier this month, has been pushing an idea that the 2026 midterms will need instant “manual verification.” She’s got a whole website where she lays out “the Tina Plan,” though in fairly opaque language.
In an interview that has been floating around since September but that I first saw surfaced by Newsweek, her lawyer, Trump’s longtime friend Peter Ticktin, makes plain what she’s talking about: “Her idea is grab, get control over the ballots as soon as the machines spit them through and then do a recount,” he told a right-wing podcaster.
He went on to explain that, if Trump does not trust the results of a future election, he “is not going to relinquish control again.”
“It’s better if we’re going to have a civil war of any sort that it be martial law with our side in control of the armaments,” Ticktin outrageously declared.
That this is (likely) all big talk, and illegal, does not make it any less wild that these ideas may have been presented in the Oval Office when Peters recently met with Trump. Peters has also reportedly met with the DOJ and Department of Commerce.
Even by first-day-on-the-job standards, Donald Trump‘s new press secretary is shockingly incompetent. Katie Zacharia has some media experience as a cable news pundit, albeit mostly on far-right channels like Newsmax and One America News. She’s even had a communications job before, when she replaced the infamous Tricia McLaughlin as the spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security. But her stint there last only six weeks, which in retrospect should have been the first sign of trouble.
At her first White House briefing on Tuesday, Zacharia kicked things off by haltingly reading a lengthy statement about how she hopes to “only build on, only amplify, and only multiply, to the extent possible, all of the wins” of Trump’s second term.
The situation only grew worse. Zacharia took questions from just three reporters. Even though they were from friendly media outlets — Fox News, Breitbart and the Daily Mail — she still seemed overwhelmed. Her response to a softball question about her family was painful to watch; she said “my president” before correcting herself and saying “my husband.” After about seven minutes of questions, Zacharia threw in the towel, directing reporters to the tarmac where Trump would be boarding Marine One. “You can ask him all of the questions there!” she announced.
Reviews of her performance were brutal.
“Trump managed to find a press secretary who can barely read,” independent journalist Aaron Rupar posted.
Nikki McCann Ramirez, a political reporter for Rolling Stone, dubbed it a “Chat-GPT-ass first speech from the new press secretary.”
But Zacharia found a defender in the only audience that ultimately matters. “I thought she was very good,” Trump shouted minutes later over the roar of Marine One’s engines while Zacharia, taking a spot usually held by presidential aide Natalie Harp, stood smiling over his shoulder.
Of course the president thinks she’s great. Zacharia has the only traits that matter to Trump: She’s blonde, skinny and she appears to worship him passionately. Harp had better watch out; she’s got real competition for the role of most fervent Trump devotee. The president confirmed this by praising Zacharia not for any special skills but for being a “devoted fan” with “an unblemished record of support” for himself.
But taking a step back, Zacharia’s hiring is revealing — and encouraging. It’s yet another sign that the president is putting his own cravings for adulation over political considerations.
But taking a step back, Zacharia’s hiring is revealing — and encouraging. It’s yet another sign that the president is putting his own cravings for adulation over political considerations like winning the upcoming midterms for his party.
“When stressed, Donald Trump retreats to his comfort zone,” investigative journalist Lindsay Beyerstein told me. Beyerstein, who is working on a book about conspiracy theorists called “Angry Minds,” noted that “Zacharia has a long history of pushing QAnon.”
The term “QAnon” may seem like a blast from the past, and for good reason. According to a February 2022 report from PRRI, tens of millions of Americans — including 25% of Republican voters — affirmed the QAnon conspiracy theory that Democrats sexually abuse and kill children to drink their blood. In the haze of the Covid-19 pandemic and the disaster of Jan. 6, millions of Trump supporters turned to the myth that Trump was God’s emissary sent to earth to destroy this Satanic cabal of child-killers. After Trump blocked the release of Justice Department files on his long-time friend, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the fantasy that the former reality TV host is a holy warrior against pedophilia lost a lot of public appeal.
But as far as Trump is concerned, QAnon is forever. Even as many of his voters quietly pretend the whole QAnon thing never happened, the White House was trying to revive the conspiracy cult over the summer. As The Bulwark’s Will Sommer reported in June, “The Trump administration launched a bizarre QAnon-themed social media campaign,” with various departments tweeting QAnon slogans. Sommer followed up his report by telling CNN that even “as the president faces persistently low approval rating,” the White House is trying to tell his voters something else: “[R]emember when you thought Trump was going to save the world?”
As a political move, it’s a bad idea. Trump’s apparent narcissism and corruption were easier for voters to laugh off when the economy was doing well. But now that he’s goosed inflation with tariffs and the war on Iran, his methods are not so funny anymore. For his part, Trump seems increasingly less concerned with political realities and more worried about saving face and fluffing his own ego, even if that means pulling deeper into a bubble where he’s only surrounded by people who flatter him all day with pleasing lies about his greatness.
“He’s reliving QAnon because it represents the bygone days when his supporters worshipped him like a god,” Beyerstein said. “Trump may not realized how played out QAnon has become because he doesn’t live in the real world.”
Zacharia’s QAnon history is deep and troubling. As Popular Information’s Judd Legum reported, “Zacharia repeatedly used Truth Social to promote Pizzagate and other fringe conspiracy theories.” (Pizzagate is the original QAnon conspiracy theory — that Democrats sexually abuse and cannibalize children.) She repeatedly accused John Podesta, who headed Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, of being a “pedophile,” posting in 2022, “The radical left Hollywood elitists are sick pedo cannibals.” Zacharia also reposted the false claims of another Trump sycophant, Ali Alexander, who wrote, “Democrats want to mask and rape your children. That’s their satanic platform.”
Popular Information also looked into Zacharia’s claims that she was a lawyer and found “there is no evidence that [she] ever passed a bar exam.” The press secretary is not a member of the bar association in any state where she’s worked. In fact, according to Legum and his team, there is no whiff of documentation that she’s licensed to practice law anywhere.
When she was standing next to Trump after her disastrous briefing, a reporter asked, “Where did she pass the bar exam?”
The president looked quizzically at Zacharia, who replied, “When I moved to China.” Sharp readers will notice that China has no authority to grant law licenses anywhere in the United States.
Such a clumsy diversion would never have happened under Karoline Leavitt, Zacharia’s predecessor who was, if nothing else, good at her job. A smooth character and fast talker, Leavitt deployed cartoonish Christian piety and a non-stop act of aggrieved victimhood to keep reporters too discombobulated to hold her feet to the fire about the administration’s various failures. There was little sense that she legitimately worshipped Trump; instead, she appeared to see him as a stepping stone for her own ambitions. This theory got another shot in the arm when Leavitt left the White House, implying she was going to be a housewife, only to walk right into a cushy job as a Fox News commentator.
Trump reportedly floated Harp as Leavitt’s replacement, a move that was spun as a “joke” — even though “jokes” are not about humor for the president but instead a way to test boundaries. While press secretaries have long been spin doctors, under Trump the job morphed into one where blatant lies and gaslighting are readily employed to create over-the-top praise for the president. But clearly, this outward-facing propaganda was not enough for the president.
Being Trump’s press secretary isn’t as much about distorting press coverage or bamboozling the public anymore. The position has been refocused on the task of giving the president more of the hardcore Natalie Harp treatment. Even as the midterms grow closer, Trump is abandoning the task of winning the public over, choosing instead to retreat deeper into a fantasy world.
With three weeks until Election Day, those who evaluate the electoral landscape — race raters and prognosticators — are bringing their analyses of various contests in line with the ongoing wave of rosy polls for Democratic candidates. Toward the end of last week, one race rater, Cook Political Report, moved its assessment of 18 House contests toward Democrats. Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia, another race rater, changed its assessment of Alaska’s governor and Senate races, which it had rated as “toss-ups,” to “leans Democratic,” and shifted four House races toward Democrats.
TPM also obtained a not-previously-reported memo from Eurasia Group, the political risk consultancy that advises hedge funds and institutional investors about what to expect from global elections, among other topics. It upgrades the odds for Democrats in both chambers of Congress. The consultancy now places the odds that Democrats flip the House at 90% (up from 85%) and the odds that they flip the Senate at 60% (up from 55% at the end of September).
It predicts a growing likelihood (40%) of Democrats winning a 20-plus seat majority in Congress, based in part of Democrats’ growing numbers on the generic congressional ballot. That’s a far cry from the outlook for the GOP last spring, amid its post-Callais gerrymandering onslaught. And the memo predicts that Republicans’ last-minute deluge of money is “probably too late” and will not be enough to save them. “Evidence that spending has swayed voters is scant,” it reads.
This is all going on as the Democratic Party’s approval rating remains not-great, though recentpolling shows it to be rising. Here at TPM, we have a theory of what’s going on there: Voters are not happy with how Democrats have fought Trump. That does not mean they are happy with Trump — in fact, the Democratic Party’s low approval, per this theory, is an outgrowth of Trump’s low approval. It leaves room for voters to rally behind new Democratic candidates while maintaining their discontent with the party writ large.
But that could, of course, be wrong, and, under other theories, it may speak to weakness in Democratic support that the polls are not otherwise flushing out.
The Eurasia Group memo sees Republicans’ best hope now as the possibility of a massive polling error. “We think that polling misses in 2020 and 2024 mostly resulted from underestimating Republican support, especially among voters without a college degree, when President Donald Trump was on the ballot, and that there is no reason to expect similar bias this year,” it reads. “However, this kind of polling error is impossible to predict in advance, and the possibility that it recurs is a major reason our odds for Democrats are not higher.”
Trump and His DOJ Go All In In Minnesota
US Attorney General Todd Blanche listens to US President Donald Trump speak at a rally at Gastonia Municipal Airport in Gastonia, North Carolina, on September 16, 2026. Trump is campaigning for Republican US Senate candidate Michael Whatley. (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images)
This electoral backdrop is essential for understanding the latest travesty in Minnesota, where Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D) house was raided Monday as part of a criminal investigation that “Border Czar” Tom Homan teased a month ago.
Reports suggest the investigation focuses on immigration paperwork Omar’s father filed on her behalf decades ago.
The right has been agitating for awhile to denaturalize Omar, with Fox News and the New York Post even publishing explainers on why doing so would be so hard in order to keep their readers’ expectations in check.
The November election looms over all of this. Some polling has suggested the contest between Peggy Flanagan (D) and Michele Tafoya (R) in Minnesota is close. Trump has, accordingly, been stoking anti-Somali hate in the state, as we noted on Friday. That continued over the weekend, with Trump stating in Ohio: “The Republican Party, we believe that Somalia bandits, third-world gangs, and jihadist sympathizers do not belong in Ohio, they do not belong in America. We got to get them the hell out of here.”
The DOJ typically has a “blackout” period within 60 days of an election during which it refrains from taking steps in political cases. That was ignored here, with Attorney General Todd Blanche, per the Washington Post, signing off on the raid.
TPM will have more on this developing story later today.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, 28, the youngest person to hold the role, served as one of the biggest and most controversial mouthpieces for President Donald Trump, describing Democrats as “terrorists,” making “your mom” jokes and organizing a White House “media offender” list. In August, Leavitt announced her resignation, saying she wanted to focus on her family. In May, Leavitt took time off from work for the birth of her daughter. She also has a two-year-old son.
Rumors swirled around her departure that it was due to Trump’s ruse of switching planes on the way home from a NATO summit in Turkey in July, with the president reportedly hiding in a catering truck and taking a different plane, Air Force C-32A, instead of the former Air Force One, like he claimed on social media. Those Trump brought with him included the president’s aides, like Natalie Harp, who fawns over Trump with love letters, body man Walt Nauta and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
On the might’ve-gotten-blown-up decoy plane were Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the White House press pool and others. Leavitt announced her resignation only a few days after The Washington Post and The New York Times reported on Trump’s disappearing act.
However, there’s no evidence she was even on the trip. Yet it doesn’t seem like Leavitt is going to be a full-time stay-at-home mom or trad wife either, as it was announced in early October that she will join Fox News next month as an on-air contributor. For nearly two months, it has been unclear who would replace Leavitt at the White House, but perhaps unsurprisingly, it turns out to be another Fox News and Newsmax favorite.
On Friday, Trump announced his new pick for White House press secretary, Katie Zacharia, a 42-year-old conservative commentator and public relations liaison who frequently appears on Fox. Trump made the announcement on his website Truth Social, saying “She has an unblemished record of support, and has been a loyal and brilliant supporter, right from the beginning. She is, likewise, a devoted fan and member of MAGA! I am confident that Katie will deliver strong results for our country as the next White House Press Secretary, as she has the respect of, and will work fantastically with, the media, the American People, and my administration.”
Zacharia will now be at the center of Trump’s administration as it navigates record low approval ratings, record high energy prices and entrenchment in the Iran war all before the November midterms. CNN reported the president sought Leavitt’s counsel before making a final decision and offering Zacharia the position. She is married to film producer Tyler Zacharia and they have four children. Zacharia’s most recent job was as a communications advisor for Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Truth Social. Before that, Zacharia worked as a deputy assistant secretary of Homeland Security for Public Affairs, starting in February 2026, but resigned just weeks later in March.
She was allegedly ousted from DHS over her close ties to Corey Lewandowski, chief of staff to then Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, who were alleged to be having a romantic affair together. Mocked as “Concentration Camp Barbie,” Noem saw the high-profile sieges of American cities she ordered attract negative media attention, especially when two protesters, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, were killed by federal ICE officers in Minneapolis. Noem was summoned before Congress over those scandals and others, including her alleged misuse of government funds on television advertisements and private luxury jets. She was later fired by Trump, reassigned as “special envoy” for the Shield of the Americas, and replaced by Markwayne Mullin, who currently heads DHS. Noem filed for divorce in late September.
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