**White House Press Secretary Abruptly Ends Briefing After Contentious Exchange**

WASHINGTON — Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, abruptly ended a contentious briefing on Thursday afternoon and left the podium after a heated exchange with reporters over the administration’s handling of the partial government shutdown and President Trump’s performance at the G20 summit in Brazil, marking one of the most chaotic moments in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room in recent memory.

The briefing, which lasted only 17 minutes, began with Ms. Leavitt defending the president’s decision to walk out of a bilateral meeting with President Emmanuel Macron of France after a disagreement over trade tariffs and Ukraine aid. She described Mr. Trump’s exit as “a masterclass in strength” and insisted that “the world respects a leader who refuses to be lectured.”

Reporters quickly turned to the domestic crisis: the continuing partial shutdown of the Department of Education, now in its ninth day, after Congress failed to pass a funding bill amid Republican demands to eliminate diversity programs and convert federal student loans to private vouchers. More than 400,000 federal workers have been furloughed, and student-aid processing nationwide has ground to a halt.

When NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell asked Ms. Leavitt to reconcile the president’s campaign promise that “no one will lose their job under Trump” with the current layoffs, the press secretary grew visibly agitated.

“Those are Obama-Biden holdovers who spent years indoctrinating children,” Ms. Leavitt said, her voice rising. “The president is draining the swamp, and sometimes the swamp fights back.”

The tension peaked when The Associated Press’s Seung Min Kim pressed on reports that Mr. Trump had privately told Republican senators he would sign a clean funding bill if they delivered it, only to reverse himself after a call from the Heritage Foundation.

“That is categorically false,” Ms. Leavitt declared. “Fake news.”

Ms. Kim followed up: “The senator’s office confirmed the conversation on background yesterday.”

Ms. Leavitt’s face flushed. “I’m not going to dignify activist stenography with a response,” she snapped, then gathered her binder and walked off the stage as cameras flashed and reporters shouted questions. The podium microphone remained live for several seconds, catching an aide off-mic urging, “Karoline, come on.”

Within minutes, the clip was viewed tens of millions of times, with #LeavittMeltdown trending worldwide. Late-night hosts seized on it immediately; Stephen Colbert opened his show with a reenactment featuring a staffer storming off set mid-sentence.

The White House later released a statement calling the briefing “a deliberate ambush by corporate media protecting the education cartel” and announcing that Ms. Leavitt would take questions only from “accredited, fair-minded outlets” in the future.

Democratic leaders were quick to pounce. “This is what happens when you put a 27-year-old former campaign spokesperson in charge of explaining chaos she helped create,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader. House Speaker Mike Johnson, facing a revolt from moderates in his own conference, told reporters the shutdown “will be resolved soon” but offered no timeline.

Behind the scenes, aides described a White House under strain. Mr. Trump, returning overnight from the G20, was said to have watched the briefing on Air Force One and called Ms. Leavitt personally to express frustration that she had been “baited.” Two administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the president spent much of Thursday evening dictating angry posts on Truth Social, including one that labeled the press corps “enemies of the people” and threatened to move briefings to the South Lawn “where real Americans can ask real questions.”

The episode has intensified scrutiny of Ms. Leavitt, who at 27 is the youngest press secretary in history and whose combative style has drawn comparisons to both Sean Spicer and Kayleigh McEnany. Critics, including some Republicans privately, worry that her confrontational approach is exacerbating an already fractious moment.

As the Education Department shutdown enters its second week and the G20 fallout continues to dominate international headlines, the image of an empty podium and an open microphone has come to symbolize, for many, an administration struggling to control its own narrative.