White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, responding Wednesday to a question about a right-wing conspiracy theory, announced that the federal government would cancel $8 million worth of Politico subscriptions.
Leavitt elevated a bogus claim spreading on social media that Politico and the Associated Press for years received millions of dollars from the US Agency for International Development, which President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have targeted by placing staff on leave. In reality, the payments represented the whole of the federal government’s subscriptions to the news outlets’ services. All federal agencies combined spent $8.2 million last year on Politico Pro, according to USASpending.gov.
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.
But as reporters quickly pointed out in response to false statements on social media, the payments are not exclusively USAID funds.
“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.”
The Trump administration’s focus on the false narrative that Politico received USAID funds follows an erroneous claim by Kyle Becker, a conservative political commentator, on Wednesday. In an X thread, Becker tied a Tuesday report from Semafor that showed Politico staffers hadn’t been paid over a “technical error” that was subsequently fixed to a USASpending.gov page that shows Politico received $8.2 million across 237 transactions.
“Fun Fact: @Politico received USAID funds,” Becker said via X. “Everything makes sense now.”
Becker attempted to tie the “technical error” reported by Semafor to USAID funds, claiming the funds have been fueling Politico’s premium subscriptions. In the thread, Becker also claimed that the Associated Press has received millions of taxpayer dollars for years.
Becker’s posts quickly caught the attention of far-right media personalities, including Benny Johnson, Charlie Kirk, and Dana Loesch, the latter of whom called for protests outside Politico’s offices. In an X post, Will Sommer, a media reporter at The Washington Post, pointed out that Johnson, who helped buoy the false theory, ironically received secret, illegal payments from the Russian government
Musk, who oversees the Department of Government Efficiency, also chimed in on Becker’s post, calling the alleged payments “a huge waste of taxpayer money!”
Politico’s leaders, Goli Sheikholeslami and John Harris in a memo to staff Wednesday, denied that the media company has received any funding from the government.
“POLITICO has never been a beneficiary of government programs or subsidies — not one cent, ever, in 18 years,” the news outlet’s leaders wrote in the memo.
The media company acknowledged government agencies subscribe to its pro service, just like corporations do. “The value of this journalism is clear, as evidenced by our subscription re-enlistment rates,” Politico’s leaders said. The news outlet said it welcomes conversations with government subscribers “and are confident that most will see the continued value.”
In a statement, the AP said that the federal government has “long been an AP customer — through both Democratic and Republican administrations.”
“It licenses AP’s nonpartisan journalism, just like thousands of news outlets and customers around the world,” the AP said. “It’s quite common for governments to have contracts with news organizations for their content.”
It is not uncommon for federal employees to expense premium news subscriptions that provide the facts and analysis they require to do their jobs. Isaac Saul, who founded the independent Tangle newsletter, called the false narrative “DOGE nonsense.”
“Politico has a super expensive pro subscription with very valuable info that loads of US agencies and employees want and pay for,” Saul said on X. “As do other news orgs.”
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.
