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WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Wednesday that the federal government would cancel $8 million worth of Politico subscriptions.
Leavitt responded to a claim spreading on social media that Politico and the Associated Press have for years received millions of dollars from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have targeted by placing staff on leave. According to USASpending.gov., the payments represented the whole of the federal government's subscriptions to the news outlet's services. All federal agencies combined spent $8.2 million last year on Politico.
At a White House press briefing, Leavitt told reporters that she had been made aware of USAID funding to media outlets, including Politico, and noted that taxpayer dollars that have been allocated toward "essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayers' dime will no longer be happening."
"The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now," Leavitt said.
"I looked at these contracts and I have my own fun fact," Byron Tau, an investigative reporter at the Associated Press, said via X. "This is occurring because agencies (not just USAID) are buying subscriptions to Politico's Pro editorial product, not because Politico is getting grants or other federal funding."
Politico and the Associated Press did not respond to a request for comment.
This is not the first time the Trump administration has caused a stir over federal employees' subscriptions to news organizations. In 2019, the Trump administration urged all federal agencies to end their subscriptions to the Washington Post and the New York Times after the White House announced it would "terminate" its subscriptions to the newspapers. It's unclear whether federal staffers were actually forced to end their subscriptions to the news outlets at the time.
