‘The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now,’ White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
After reports surfaced that the federal government may have paid for subscriptions to media companies like Politico, the White House announced on Feb. 5 that those payments “will no longer be happening.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a Feb. 5 press briefing that those contracts would cease immediately.
“So upon coming out here to the briefing room, I was made aware of the funding from USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development] to media outlets, including Politico, who I know has a seat in this room, and I can confirm that the more than 8 million taxpayer dollars that have gone to essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayer will no longer be happening,” Leavitt said.
“The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now. … This is a whole of government effort to ensure that we are going line by line when it comes to the federal government’s books,” she said.
Politico received $8.2 million in subscription payments from the entire federal government, and $44,000 came from USAID, according to USAspending.gov.
A breakdown of contracts on the Federal Procurement Data System indicates that much of the funding was for agency-wide employee subscriptions to the company’s news service.
In a contract with the Department of State totaling more than $250,000, the description indicates the contract includes a “one-year order with the Politico Pro … for access to the Politico Pro US, Politico Pro EU, and E&E News platforms and exclusive reporting and analysis.”
A similar description can be found in contracts with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Thomson Reuters Special Services, Reuters’ parent company that also includes data and technology services, received $13.6 million, while Reuters News & Media received $3.1 million from the federal government.
Additionally, a review of USAspending.gov indicates that The New York Times received $378,266 and The Associated Press received $619,968 from the federal government.
The payments have been cumulative across multiple government agencies for several years. While some of the individual contracts for the four companies lack descriptions, many of them say the payments are for news subscriptions.
Politico, Reuters, The New York Times, and The Associated Press did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.
Lawrence Wilson contributed to this report.