White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announces she’s pregnant
The White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks at the White House press briefing room in Washington DC, United States, on December 11, 2025. (Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced on Friday that she is pregnant with her second child.
“The greatest Christmas gift we could ever ask for – a baby girl coming in May 2026,” Leavitt wrote in a post to Instagram.
“My husband and I are thrilled to grow our family and can’t wait to watch our son become a big brother. My heart is overflowing with gratitude to God for the blessing of motherhood, which I truly believe is the closest thing to Heaven on Earth,” she wrote.
“I am also extremely grateful to President Trump and our Chief of Staff Susie Wiles for their support, and for fostering a pro-family environment in the White House. 2026 is going to be a great year and I am so excited to be a girl mom!” Leavitt added in the social media post.
Leavitt is 28 years old and is the youngest person to serve as White House press secretary. She previously worked in the press office during President Donald Trump’s first term and also served as the press secretary for his 2024 campaign.
Leavitt ran a failed bid for Congress in New Hampshire, her home state, in 2022.
She and her husband, Nicholas Riccio, welcomed their first child, Nicholas “Niko” Robert Riccio, in 2024.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Thursday called several Democratic veterans “traitors” who should face the death penalty for releasing a joint video where they said that U.S. service members could refuse illegal orders — a move that has prompted some lawmakers to call the president’s rhetoric “dangerous” and “a threat.”
“This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???,” Trump wrote on social media Thursday morning.
On Thursday morning, Trump reshared a social media post responding to the Washington Examiner’s article about the veteran Democrats, calling for them to be hanged.
In another post, the president said “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”
In the video directed at military members, Democratic veterans — including Sens. Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelly — said that military service members can refuse illegal orders.
“This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens,” the congressional Democrats said in the video posted Tuesday.
“The threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from aboard, but from right here right at home. Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders,” the group continued. “No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.”
None of the Democrats mentioned any specific illegal orders given to service members.
ABC News reached out to Slotkin’s and Kelly’s offices for comment.
Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Trump’s rhetoric in his social media posts “makes political violence more likely” and called for Trump to be condemned for his posts.
“Let’s be crystal clear, the president of the United States is calling for the execution of elected officials. This is a threat, and it’s deadly serious,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Thursday. “We have already seen what happens when Donald Trump tells his followers that his political opponents are enemies of the state. Every time Donald Trump posts things like this, he makes political violence more likely.”
Schumer said Trump’s rhetoric could be dangerous in a political contentious environment.
“He is lighting a match in a country soaked with political gasoline, every senator, every representative, every American, regardless of party, should condemn this immediately, without qualification, because if we don’t draw a line here, there is no line left to draw,” Schumer said.
Republican Sen. Rand Paul also said rhetoric like this could be dangerous.
“I don’t think it’s a really — a good idea to talk about jailing your political opponents or hanging them or whatever else. I think we have political disagreements and we need to work them out in a political way,” Paul said.
Paul warned the rhetoric in Trump’s posts could inspire violence.
“That kind of rhetoric isn’t good and it stirs up people among us who may not be stable who may think well ‘traitors,’ what do we do with traitors? It’s the death penalty. Maybe I’ll just take matters into my own hands, which is not something we should be encouraging,” Paul said. “So I have a lot of disagreement with Democrats but I try to keep it on a civil level and try not to call any of them ‘traitors’ or anything like that because I think that’s something that could inspire some people among us who aren’t stable.”
House Democratic leaders on Thursday issued a joint statement condemning Trump’s posts on social media, calling on him to delete them “before he gets someone killed.”
“We unequivocally condemn Donald Trump’s disgusting and dangerous death threats against Members of Congress and call on House Republicans to forcefully do the same,” said the statement signed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Whip Katherine Clark and Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar.
The Democrats called on Trump to “immediately delete these unhinged social media posts and recant his violent rhetoric before he gets someone killed.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson downplayed Trump’s social media comments, telling reporters Thursday that the president did not make a call to incite violence.
“He’s defining a crime,” Johnson said. “He, I’m sure, acknowledges that the attorneys have to figure all that out.”
A reporter pressed the speaker that Trump’s statement contended it was punishable by death.
“What I read was he was defining the crime of sedition,” Johnson said. “That is a factual statement. But obviously attorneys have to parse the language and determine all that.”
Johnson criticized the Democrats involved in the video, calling it a “wildly inappropriate thing for so-called leaders in Congress to do to encourage young troops to disobey orders.”
Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
(LOS ANGELES) – One of 2025’s major elections could have major reverberations for the 2026 midterms.
Californians are voting on a ballot initiative, “Proposition 50,” to determine if the state will adopt a new congressional map that redraws five districts to be more Democratic-leaning, potentially allowing Democrats to flip them in the midterms.
Supporters of Proposition 50 — including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and former President Barack Obama — have pushed for the new map.
Texas Republicans, encouraged by President Donald Trump, revised their maps in a rare mid-decade redistricting move that could allow Republicans to gain five seats in 2026 — and insulate the GOP from the historic midterm headwinds a president’s party can face.
“We have a chance at least to create a level playing field in the upcoming midterm elections,” Obama said during a recent call with supporters of the campaign to vote “yes”.
Hannah Milgrom, a spokesperson for Yes on 50, the political committee supported by Newsom, told ABC News that the group has been working with over 230 community organizations on the ground.
National Democrats have largely supported the initiative, hoping it will be the first of other Democratic efforts to push back on Republican-led redistricting in Texas, Missouri, and other states.
But Rep. Kevin Kiley, a California Republican whose district would be reshaped and made significantly more Democratic-leaning, told ABC News partisan gerrymandering is a “plague on democracy,” and has unsuccessfully pushed House Speaker Mike Johnson to take up a bill banning the practice.
“I think it takes power away from voters, undermines the fairness of elections and degrades representative government,” he said.
Spokespeople for two of the political committees opposing Proposition 50, which are supported by megadonor Charles T. Munger Jr. and former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, respectively, told ABC News they were focused in the final weeks before the election on reaching persuadable voters and to emphasizing arguments about allowing voters to choose their politicians, not the other way around.
Actor and former governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger, who supported independent redistricting as governor, has also spoken out against the proposition. He said in September, “If you vote yes on that, you’re going backwards.”
“Prop 50 will have a big impact on the midterms … the U.S. House margin right now is so narrow that every seat in every state could make a difference for which party controls Congress,” Christian Grose, a professor of political science at the University of Southern California, told ABC News.
If the proposition passes, Grose added, a large margin of support could signal to Democratic donors that there’s enthusiasm for the party — and could impact whether other blue or red states decide to redraw their congressional maps as well.
Grose said Democrats are likely more fired up in part because campaigning towards Democratic voters is how to win with ballot propositions in California, Grose said, but also because of what they see as national stakes: “Democrats, maybe nationally, are viewing things as an existential threat; are viewing Trump as an existential threat. So anything that pushes back against Trump, anything that helps Democrats, is resonating.”
Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Thursday called former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi an “evil woman” when asked to comment on her retirement announcement.
“I’m glad she’s retiring,” Trump said as he took reporter questions in the Oval Office during a news conference on reducing the cost of weight loss drugs for Americans.
“I think she did the country a great service by retiring,” Trump continued. “I think she was a tremendous liability for the country. I thought she was an evil woman who did a poor job, who cost the country a lot in damages and in reputation. I thought she was terrible.”
Pelosi became one of Trump’s fiercest critics, and their tensions were well-documented as she led the House in the final years of his first term.
She presided over both of Trump’s impeachments, the first in 2019 over allegations of abuse of power and the second in 2021 after a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
In 2020, she went viral for ripping up a copy of Trump’s State of the Union speech as she stood behind him.
Pelosi did not attend Trump’s inauguration this past January.
More recently, she called Trump a “vile creature” in an interview with CNN.
“The worst thing on the face of the Earth, but anyway,” Pelosi said. When asked to explain why she described him that way, Pelosi said he “does not honor the Constitution.”
Trump, too, has spared no criticism of Pelosi over the years. He regularly targeted her in his 2024 campaign speeches and rallies, calling her a “crooked person,” “evil” and “sick.”
Pelosi, 85, announced early Thursday morning in a video message that she was retiring at the end of her current term in 2027 representing San Francisco in Congress.
The first woman elected speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and the first woman to lead a major political party in either chamber of Congress, Pelosi will leave Washington after nearly 40 years as one of the most powerful elected women in history.
“I say to my colleagues in the House all the time, no matter what title they have bestowed upon me, speaker, leader, whip, there has been no greater honor for me than to stand on the House floor and say, I speak for the people of San Francisco. I have truly loved serving as your voice,” Pelosi said in her announcement on Thursday.
