At twenty-eight, Karoline Leavitt became the youngest person to stand at the White House podium and speak for a presidency — and now, at that same age, she is stepping away to stand more fully for her children. Her departure at the end of August reflects a tension as old as ambition itself: the cost of proximity to power, measured not in scandal or defeat, but in the quiet arithmetic of a mother's hours. President Trump praised her loyalty and promised her a continued role as an outside advisor, even as the administration enters the charged season of midterm politics without a named successor.