Who is Katie Zacharia, potential new White House press secretary?

Katie Zacharia, a conservative lawyer and commentator, may be the next person to lead the White House briefing room, having been offered the press secretary position by President Trump.

Zacharia brings a stint as spokesperson and deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Former DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, in a post on social platform X in February as she resigned, called Zacharia “a dynamic and effective voice in media.”

Zacharia was a commentator for Newsmax and also appeared as a guest on Fox News.

Upon her DHS appointment, Zacharia said she was “honored and proud to serve” President Trump and then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “as the new Spokesperson and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs.”

“I will continue to work tirelessly to Make America Great Again!” she added.

Zacharia got her undergraduate and law degrees from Pepperdine University, according to her LinkedIn. While an undergraduate, she interned for the Republican National Committee and in the White House Office of Political Affairs during former President George W. Bush’s second term.

During law school, she worked at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas and served as a law clerk to the director of Advocates International, a global network of Christian lawyers that serves the “poor, vulnerable and oppressed,” according to its website.

She also spent time after graduating from law school working internationally at a firm in Beijing and for an organization focused on caring for children of migrant workers. More recently, she served on the Dean’s Council at Pepperdine Law and as director of development at the school.

Zacharia has also worked as a legal adviser to Fix California, a group looking to advance conservative policies in the Golden State that was founded by Richard Grenell, an ally of President Trump who is the interim president of the Kennedy Center.

In a New York Post op-ed published in mid-February, Zacharia called Trump “the greatest president in U.S. history” and criticized liberal activists for “obstructing” the work of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

At the time, ICE and Customs and Border Protection faced scrutiny in the wake of the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration officers in January in Minneapolis, which sparked protests and blowback for the administration.