White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Wednesday that Politico will not receive another dime of taxpayer money after it was revealed that the politics-focused news outlet has taken in more than $8 million via subscriptions and other government contracts.
Leavitt said the Department of Government Efficiency, run by Elon Musk, will handle ending Politico’s payments.
Her comment came after X user Adam Townsend posted that Politico had received $8.1 million in taxpayer support. This included several contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for website subscriptions, according to USASpending.gov.
“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,” Leavitt said Wednesday.
“The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now,” she said.
Representatives for Politico did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
Leavitt added the Trump Administration is “going line-by-line when it comes to the Federal Government’s books.” Anything that does not “serve the interests of the American people” will be cut, she said.
It had already been a rough news week for Politico heading into Wednesday, with Semafor reporting on Tuesday the company had missed its latest payroll run. Those missed payments have since been resolved, Semafor later reported.
Her Wednesday press briefing as Musk has been on a breakneck pace to cut trillions of dollars from the U.S. government’s budget. That includes defunding National Public Radio, which the X owner suggested Tuesday.
Musk has been the target of criticism from many media figures and politicians — including from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who said he is “morally vacant” and “not smart” — as he looks to aggressively trim the federal bureaucracy.
President Trump said earlier this week that Musk “can’t do and won’t do” anything with receiving his administration’s approval.
Politico is not the only news outlet to receive government funds in recent years. The Associated Press, according to USASpending.gov, has $619,968 worth of government funding, and Reuters is slated to receive $3.1 million. The New York Times, meanwhile, which reported its Q4 earnings on Wednesday, has $378,266 earmarked from the government.
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