Laura Loomer

An American far-right activist and media personality, Laura Loomer rose to prominence through her outspoken support for and informal advising of U.S. Pres. Donald Trump. Throughout Trump’s second term, Loomer has been credited with influencing the dismissal of a number of government officials she deemed insufficiently loyal to the president and his agenda. Before entering politics, she worked for several right-wing news organizations, including the provocateur James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas.

Loomer was born in Tucson, Arizona, in 1993 to a Jewish family. Her parents divorced when she was 11 years old. Shortly afterward, one of her two younger brothers was involved in an incident in which he violently attacked their mother. Following the occurrence, the brother was placed in a government-run residential care facility. Loomer and her siblings eventually went to live with their father, a rheumatologist, after a court granted him custody. He sent Loomer and her other brother to the Orme School, a racially diverse boarding school an hour north of Phoenix, while he kept their violent brother under watch.

While attending the Orme School, Loomer became manager of the school’s football and rodeo teams. Despite being active in campus life, she has said she struggled with anxiety and depression during that time. Some classmates at the Orme School also recalled that she occasionally expressed strong or controversial viewpoints, including critical opinions about Islam.

After high school, Loomer attended Mount Holyoke College for one semester before transferring to Barry University in south Florida. There she majored in broadcast journalism and became president of the school’s College Republicans. In 2015, a few months before her graduation, she was hired by O’Keefe to work for his organization Project Veritas. In that role she performed a number of undercover stunts, such as showing up at a polling place on the day of the presidential election, wearing a burqa, and asking for a ballot under the name Huma Abedin (one of Hillary Clinton’s advisers). Loomer also attended Black Lives Matter events and recorded people making negative remarks about Al Sharpton, which led to a front-page story in the New York Post.

In 2017 she left Project Veritas for The Rebel, a Canadian right-wing media outlet. Shortly after making the switch, she made headlines by interrupting a performance of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar held in Central Park, in which Caesar was presented as a Trump-like figure. Loomer shot a live video while she approached the stage, shouting, “Stop the normalization of political violence against the right!” and making comments that were widely perceived as inappropriate. She was arrested and charged with misdemeanor offenses.

Later that year, following an attack in New York City in which an Uzbek driver killed eight cyclists and pedestrians with his truck, Loomer stated on the social media platform Twitter (now X) that someone should create an alternative to Uber and Lyft that would refuse to hire Muslim drivers. In response, both companies subsequently banned her from using their platforms.

In 2018 Loomer criticized Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar on Twitter, saying the congresswoman belonged to a religion in which “homosexuals are oppressed” and “women are abused.” In response, Twitter also banned Loomer from its platform. Loomer attempted to regain access to her account by chaining herself to the company’s headquarters. She also publicly challenged Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey, who was speaking at a 2021 Bitcoin conference, by shouting, “Censorship is a human rights violation.” She was later banned from other social media platforms and payment services, including PayPal, Venmo, and Cash App.

Loomer moved back to Florida, and in 2020 she ran for a congressional seat representing Palm Beach county, a thoroughly Democratic district. She won the Republican primary and received an endorsement from Trump—but in the general election, she lost by nearly 20 points. She ran in Florida’s 11th congressional district in 2022, losing that primary race by approximately 7 points.

After Elon Musk purchased Twitter later that year, he restored Loomer’s account to the website. In the months that followed, Loomer used the platform to attack Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis during his 2024 race against Trump for the GOP presidential nomination, even alleging at one point that the governor’s wife was faking her breast cancer diagnosis. In February 2023, after Loomer disrupted a book-signing event for DeSantis, Trump called her, applauding the spectacle and inviting her to come meet him at Mar-a-Lago. After they met, Trump reportedly made plans to hire Loomer for his campaign, but the job offer was soon revoked. After the offer was canceled, the comedian Bill Maher suggested that Trump and Loomer might be in a intimate relationship. Loomer later sued Maher.

Since Trump’s return to office, Loomer has remained in close contact with him, frequently offering advice on personnel. In April 2025, for instance, Trump fired half a dozen National Security Council aides after she attacked them (first in a social media post, then during a meeting at the White House). Later in the spring and summer of that same year, Trump and his appointees fired or withdrew nominations or job offers for at least six other people whom Loomer had attacked. And over the summer Loomer campaigned successfully to have the State Department stop issuing visas to children from Gaza who needed medical care.

Amid these activities, Loomer started a consulting firm, Loomered Strategies, which specializes in “opposition research, executive-level vetting and advocacy.” She hosts a twice-weekly podcast called Loomer Unleashed.

The press has reported that many people in the president’s inner circle dislike Loomer, but she has Trump’s ear. “My point of access to the White House is Donald Trump,” she told The New York Times. “And that’s really hard for people to comprehend.”