Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Briefs Members of the Media, Mar. 30, 2026

March 30, 2026 · The White House · 0:33:19

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt briefed members of the media at the White House on March 30, 2026, opening in Holy Week: the President and the First Lady, she said, were joining in prayer with Christians celebrating the resurrection, and on Wednesday the President would host an Easter lunch in the East Room with faith leaders. On the war: “With respect to the ongoing major combat operations in Iran, Operation Epic Fury is moving ahead successfully and according to plan. With each passing day, the United States military is increasing its advantage over the terrorist Iranian regime.”

The briefing ranged across the DHS funding fight — Leavitt called it “despicable that Democrats are currently defunding the department that’s responsible for removing illegal aliens” — and presented a survey of network coverage time devoted to the case of Sheridan Gorman, a young woman whose killing she laid to an unauthorized immigrant from Venezuela. In the question period she defended the President’s posture toward Iran’s infrastructure in the administration’s terms: “their best move is to make a deal or else the United States armed forces has capabilities beyond their wildest imagination and the president is not afraid to use them.” She also answered a question on Pope Leo’s statement that “God does not listen to the prayer of those who wage war,” replying that the nation was founded “on Judeo-Christian values.”

Why it matters

The March 30 briefing is the administration’s status statement two days before the President’s address to the nation — the war on plan, the DHS shutdown blamed on Democrats, and the deal-or-force framing stated by the Press Secretary. It is recorded on the Foreign Policy & Defense hub.

Scoreboard watch

The “moving ahead successfully and according to plan” assessment, as stated at the briefing, is recorded here against the April 1 address and the April 7 ceasefire that followed.

Sources: The White House, “Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Briefs Members of the Media, Mar. 30, 2026,” The White House, March 30, 2026 (official upload, embedded above). All figures and characterizations as stated by Press Secretary Leavitt at the briefing.