Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president would open the briefing room to bloggers, podcasters and social-media influencers.

The grant pause is perhaps most similar to a federal government shutdown, when a congressional impasse on spending legislation delays federal payments for some state and local services.

Medicaid recipients on Tuesday reported an outage that has them worried about their health insurance coverage.

Karoline Leavitt used her first briefing in the role to warn veteran reporters that they were increasingly irrelevant.

A federal judge blocked the funding freeze from going into effect, after a day in which Trump's White House scrambled to contain confusion.

The website that states use to get Medicaid payments from the federal government is down, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

The White House Office of Management and Budget on Wednesday rescinded a memo that froze federal grants and loans and created widespread confusion this week.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt took to social media to clarify that state Medicaid portals are still being processed despite any outages.

Illinois and other states were shut out of the Medicaid system Tuesday. The White House confirmed the portal “outage,” but insisted payments would be unaffected.

WASHINGTON— Press secretary Karoline Leavitt made her debut in the White House briefing room, where she defended President Donald Trump's plans to slash federal spending and its mass deportation efforts.

The online system for federal health funding warned of delays due to executive orders after the Trump administration announced a freeze.