President Donald Trump has selected Katie Zacharia, a conservative commentator who worked briefly at the Department of Homeland Security, as his new press secretary.
Zacharia thanked Trump in a social media post Friday, writing, “Serving President Trump and the American people at this critical 250-year mark is the honor of a lifetime.”
In announcing her selection earlier Friday, Trump highlighted her work for Truth Social, the Trump Media & Technology Group and her frequent appearances on Fox and Newsmax.
“She has an unblemished record of support, and has been a loyal and brilliant supporter, right from the beginning,” he added.
Trump in recent days called a number of his close allies and advisers, including former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt to seek their opinion of Zacharia, a person familiar with the discussions said. And the president sought Leavitt’s counsel before making a final decision and offering Zacharia the position, they said.
CNN has reached out to Zacharia, who was in the Oval Office with Trump earlier Friday morning, according to a person familiar.
Zacharia’s selection came about quickly. As of last week, she was not being considered for the role, another person familiar said.
Throughout the search to replace Leavitt, the White House struggled with higher-profile names, several of whom had previously criticized Trump. On multiple occasions, senior officials had narrowed down the list, only to find that candidates had said something negative about the president, disqualifying them from the position, according a White House official.
“The work ahead is to continue delivering strong results for our Country and communicating to the American people the major wins that this Administration is making every single day,” Zacharia wrote on X.
“I look forward to working with the White House press corps, and with reporters across the country, to get that record out,” she said, adding that “following the fabulous Karoline Leavitt is a high standard, and one worth meeting.”
Zacharia’s been a frequent guest on Fox, Newsmax and CNN.
“She’s a friend of most of you,” Trump told reporters while leaving the White House on Friday. “I know she likes people — she likes all of you. Actually, I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but we just hired a new press secretary, and she’s going to be, I think, terrific.”
Zacharia served as a senior communications adviser at the Trump Media and Technology Group and Truth Social since June, which followed a two-month stint as a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security — experiences that Trump also highlighted in his social media post, along with her work in his campaigns.
Zacharia, who has young children and lives in California, commuted back and forth to Washington when she was filling in at DHS. At the time, she told a friend the commute was not sustainable, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Zacharia has also served as a legal adviser for Fix California, a conservative group founded by Trump ally Richard Grenell.
She first came to Washington as an intern for the Republican National Committee during the George W. Bush administration in 2006.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
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Some supporters of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement have begun to publicly turn against their leader, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the Trump administration as a whole as they demand tougher crackdowns on food dyes and pesticides.
A scorecard released Thursday by MAHA activists, including former members of Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign, claims the Trump administration broke more than 85% of its promises to MAHA on food, agriculture and environmental health. The makers of the scorecard include Dave Murphy, a former fundraiser for Kennedy’s campaign, and Charles Eisenstein, Kennedy’s former chief speechwriter.
NBC News is first to report on the scorecard, which offers a window into how MAHA views the administration, and Kennedy himself, ahead of the midterm elections. It accuses the Trump administration of doling out favors to the chemical industry, pointing to its decision to approve new pesticides and hire industry lobbyists and executives.
“We’re asking the Trump administration to deliver on even the most basic promises they’ve made to the MAHA movement, and we’ve seen over and over again not just a lack of interest in doing so, but a blatant slap in the face,” said former Kennedy campaign adviser Tiffany Cianci, a MAHA advocate who authored the scorecard.
About 41% of adults in the U.S. say they support MAHA ideals, according to an April poll from KFF, a nonprofit health think tank. Most are Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, according to the poll, though alignment with Kennedy or President Donald Trump wasn’t a primary reason for supporting the movement.
MAHA coalesced during Kennedy’s presidential bid in 2024, then threw its support behind Trump when Kennedy endorsed him. It brought together multiple social movements, including food safety, environmentalism and vaccine skepticism, under the umbrella of taking on big corporations whose products may contribute to chronic diseases.
But many of these advocates have become Kennedy’s harshest critics as of late, arguing that their priorities are being ignored by the Trump administration.
Covid vaccine skeptics such as Dr. Mary Talley Bowden have criticized Kennedy and Trump for allowing mRNA vaccines to stay on the market. Food safety advocates say Kennedy hasn’t put enough pressure on companies to remove synthetic dyes and other additives from their products. And advocates for reducing pesticide exposure claim Trump undermined their mission by issuing an executive order to boost the supply of the weed killer glyphosate in the U.S.
That dissatisfaction has led to infighting between Kennedy loyalists — including those appointed to key government positions — and activists faithful to their original cause.
“What started out as a hairline crack in the coalition is now widened to be a gaping fissure,” said Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on nutrition and food safety.
White House spokeswoman Allison Schuster said the Trump administration “has already secured extensive victories for the MAHA Agenda, including overhauling the dietary guidelines for Americans, axing artificial ingredients in our food supply, and investing in regenerative farming.”
“After years of being on the political sidelines, the MAHA coalition has found a champion in President Trump, who has made incredible strides to Make America Healthy Again,” Schuster said in a statement.
Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, said Kennedy “remains focused on delivering lasting reforms grounded in science, transparency, and accountability.”
“President Trump and Secretary Kennedy are delivering the fundamental change Americans voted for. In just 20 months, this Administration has moved at a historic pace to advance MAHA across the federal government,” she said in a statement.
Cianci acknowledged that many of the administration’s actions on environmental toxins and food additives have been outside of Kennedy’s purview. But his time in the administration has done “obvious harm” to his reputation, she said, noting that Kennedy’s career history involved suing the very pharmaceutical and pesticide companies the administration is now working with.
“To see him not speaking out on the issues that are so obviously against everything that was promised is very hard because I believe ethically it’s probably working against his own inclinations,” Cianci said.
Kelly Ryerson, a well-known MAHA advocate who goes by the moniker “Glyphosate Girl” and helped develop the scorecard, said she doesn’t fault Kennedy as much as the rest of Trump’s Cabinet because she knows “where his heart lies.”
“I know how deep the forces are in terms of corporate influence on regulators, and it’s something that he himself has criticized for years,” she said. “[But] the actions of the administration have worked really in opposition to everything that we hoped and everything that Trump promised.”
Pamela Herd, a professor of social policy at the University of Michigan, said the MAHA movement was always vulnerable to conflict because it consists of unusual bedfellows: liberal moms who feed their kids organic produce, fringe doctors who falsely claim that vaccines cause autism and Trump supporters who want to remove corporate influence from the federal government.
Over time, though, MAHA’s main goals have solidified. A March poll from Politico suggests that removing ultra-processed foods from American diets and limiting exposure to PFAS, microplastics and pesticides were key priorities for people who self-identified as part of the movement.
“What the MAHA movement has always been especially interested in is chemicals,” Lurie said.
Much of Cianci’s scorecard focuses on actions taken by the Environmental Protection Agency and Agriculture Department — agencies Kennedy does not oversee. For instance, it considers the EPA’s decisions to weaken mercury emissions standards and roll back drinking water limits for certain PFAS as broken promises.
Several of the promises that were “partially kept,” according to the scorecard, come directly from Kennedy-led agencies like the Food and Drug Administration.
For instance, the FDA asked food companies to voluntarily phase out certain dyes and banned two others that were not widely used. It also proposed a requirement for food manufacturers to notify the FDA when they determine that an additive is “generally recognized as safe.” The rule would not remove the additives already in food or prevent manufacturers from adding more, however.
Lurie said Kennedy campaigned on fixing these issues, but “never took into account the practical aspects on the ground: What do the regulations actually look like? What authority do these agencies actually have?”
The scorecard does not mention an action Kennedy has touted often: his January overhaul of the federal dietary guidelines, which encourages Americans to eat more protein and cut out ultra-processed foods.
It also does not address Kennedy’s vaccination policies. Both Kennedy and Trump have attempted to reduce the number of universally recommended vaccines for children. And Kennedy last year fired the longtime members of a federal vaccine advisory committee, replacing them with vaccine skeptics. (A federal judge temporarily blocked the change, which is still being challenged in court.)
“If you’re going to pick one thing that RFK was successful at, it’s very much how he has influenced government policy on vaccines,” Herd, the University of Michigan professor, said.
Kennedy reassured anti-vaccine activists last month that they have “a strong and steadfast friend at the White House.”
But as tensions mount, many MAHA supporters insist the movement does not need a political affiliation. Ryerson said MAHA voters will likely sit out the upcoming midterm elections.
“The disappointments with Obama and Biden are similar to the disappointments with Trump,” she said. “The difference with this administration is that we are promised something very, very different in a very real way, so I think that that burn feels especially raw.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com