Agencies across the Trump administration have taken out subscriptions in recent months to news organizations that officials had very publicly cut off this year, reversing an earlier decision to cancel them that Elon Musk, senior White House aides and President Donald Trump had declared was necessary to end what they called a scandal.
The administration canceled subscriptions en masse in February after Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service posted copies of contracts with news sites. Trump said government contracts for media subscriptions “COULD BE THE BIGGEST SCANDAL OF THEM ALL, PERHAPS THE BIGGEST IN HISTORY!”
But the White House, State Department, Department of Homeland Security and dozens of other agencies are still spending tens of thousands of dollars to access paywalled news sites, including Politico, Bloomberg and The Washington Post, according to federal contract data posted publicly and reviewed by Post reporters. (The Post’s news staff does not have access to internal data about subscribers.)
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement that “unfortunately we are forced to read the Fake News so we know what lies we have to debunk.” A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal decisions, said the administration “has made efforts to decrease the amount spent on media subscriptions.”