Politics
White House Announces Cancellation of $8 Million in Politico Subscriptions
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a briefing Wednesday that the US government will no longer spend money on Politico subscriptions after paying millions of dollars to the news outlet last year.
According to Leavitt, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency will handle the termination of Politico’s payments.
Her comment came after X user Adam Townsend revealed that Politico had received $8.1 million in taxpayer funding.
According to USASpending.gov, this included several contracts for website subscriptions totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“I can confirm that the more than $8 million taxpayer dollars that have gone to essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayers’ dime will no longer be happening,” the White House Press Secretary told CNN on Wednesday.
“The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now,” she told me.
Politico representatives did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
Leavitt says the Trump administration is “going line-by-line when it comes to the federal government’s books.” She stated that anything that does not “serve the interests of the American people” will be eliminated.
Politico had already had a difficult news week heading into Wednesday, with Semafor reporting on Tuesday that the company had missed its latest payroll run. Semafor later reported that the missed payments had been resolved.
Her Wednesday White House press briefing came as Musk worked tirelessly to cut trillions of dollars from the US government’s budget. This includes defunding National Public Radio, which the X owner suggested on Tuesday.
Musk has faced criticism from various media figures and politicians, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who described him as “morally vacant” and “not smart” as he seeks to aggressively reduce the federal bureaucracy.
Earlier this week, President Trump stated that Musk “can’t and won’t do” anything with his administration’s approval.
Politico is not the only news outlet to receive government funding in recent years. According to USASpending.gov, the Associated Press has $619,968 in government funding, while Reuters will receive $3.1 million. The New York Times reported its Q4 earnings on Wednesday and has $378,266 from the government.
