The Trump administration has cut news access to some American foreign service employees, even as they clamor that the up-to-date information is essential for their work.
“It is critical to our jobs,” one employee anonymously told HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery on Friday.
The employee added that the content is crucial as the news industry covers policy developments, information on meetings, and more. They added that the loss of Politico Pro was particularly damaging, as the digital publication serves as a popular channel to publish leaked documents.
DOGE severed the government’s subscriptions after a MAGA conspiracy emerged that revenue for Politico—which had a lapse in payroll on Tuesday—was dependent on subscriptions paid for through USAID, which was under a budget freeze at the time. In truth, USAID paid roughly $24,000 for its subscriptions to Politico Pro, while the rest of the government spent $8.4 million on the premium news subscription in 2024. But federal subscriptions to Politico Pro began under Trump’s first administration, according to public data from USASpending.
“I was made aware of the funding of USAID to media outlets, including Politico.… And I can confirm that the more than eight million taxpayer dollars that have gone to essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayer’s dime will no longer be happening,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week. “The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now.”
Politico bosses sent a memo to staff saying they “welcome” the conversation around the value of their products, which provide in-depth policy analysis and hard-hitting government scoops.
The company had “never been the beneficiary of government programs or subsidies,” Politico CEO Goli Sheikholeslami and global editor in chief John Harris wrote in the memo, and the “overwhelming majority” of subscriptions stemmed from the private sector. “Please know that our business is strong and enduring,” they wrote.
But that doesn’t mean that the White House isn’t still benefiting from the news wires.
“My guess,” the anonymous foreign service person told HuffPost, “is the White House kept their access.”
Musk and his team similarly attacked Reuters, misleadingly claiming that DOGE had “uncovered” details that the news organization had been “paid millions of dollars by the US government for ‘large scale social deception.’” In actuality, the public contract to Reuters’s data division was authorized by Trump during his first administration and had tasked Reuters to research potential defenses against deception.
