Weather 
The Washington Post scrapped an upcoming print ad from a pair of advocacy groups calling for the firing of Elon Musk as head of the Department of Government Efficiency.
The nixed wrap ad one of two ads purchased for $115,000 by Common Cause and the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund that were slated to run on Tuesday shows the White House superimposed over Musk with a bright red backdrop and the caption “Who’s running this country: Donald Trump or Elon Musk?” The wrap adds that Musk has “created chaos and confusion” and “is accountable to no one by himself.”
“The Constitution only allows for one president at a time,” the wrap notes.
The pair of ads are part of a petition from Common Cause and SPLC to “raise a massive public outcry demanding US lawmakers take action before more damage is done.” At the time of publication, the petition had 95,556 signatures.
The ads come as President Trump has given Musk’s DOGE apparent free rein to bulldoze the federal workforce as the duo looks to slash the federal budget, though Trump insists Musk does nothing without his approval. Musk and his staff have been hampered to some degree by recent lawsuits, but the media mogul’s carte blanche has led to speculation that he is the real power behind the Resolute Desk.
After sending the Post the artwork on February 11, Common Cause was told three days later that the Post would not be able to run the wrap, a spokesperson for the group told . The advocacy groups had signed a contract with the Post and were waiting for a final review from the newspaper before sending over the funds.
When the advocacy group asked the Jeff Bezos-owned outlet whether there was anything they could do to alter the wrap to make it more suitable, they were simply told that the Post could not run it.
“When we asked questions, they said they couldn’t tell us, but they didn’t want to lose the whole commission, so they were wanting to run the interior ad,” the spokesperson said. “The interior ad was not a problem.”
The second ad, which was slated to appear inside the paper’s physical Tuesday edition, echoes the wrap’s messaging, featuring a full-sized photo of Musk with the caption “no one elected Elon Musk to any office.” Though the Post was amenable to publishing the inside ad, Common Cause told the paper to forget it and walked away.
The Post does not comment on internal decisions related to specific ad campaigns and declined to comment when asked whether Bezos was involved with the decision. However, the paper’s ad policy specifies that the paper “reserves the right to position, revise, or refuse to publish any advertisement for failure to comply with the guidelines set forth below, or for any other reason.”
Virginia Kase Solomón, Common Cause’s president and chief executive, told the Post’s decision was “concerning,” saying the paper which uses the slogan “Democracy dies in the darkness” “seems to have forgotten that democracy also dies when a free press operates from a place of fear or compliance.”
“Yet now, we are forced to ask ourselves if The Washington Post a pillar of investigative journalism during Watergate is unwilling to challenge those in power,” Solomón said. “Under Jeff Bezos’ ownership, concerns about corporate influence over the press have only grown, and this decision raises serious questions about the paper’s independence.”
“If even a media outlet of its stature bows to pressure, what hope is there for smaller, hometown newspapers,” Solomón added. “At a time when the free press is already under attack, we cannot allow political or corporate influences to dictate what stories get told.”
The Post’s decision to cut the wrap, a premium and highly visible ad buy that covers a newspaper and immediately confronts readers, also comes as Trump has directed the White House to end subscriptions for media publishers whose coverage he dislikes, including Politico and the Associated Press. The White House’s grievance with the AP, which last week was exacerbated by the wire service’s refusal to call the “Gulf of Mexico” the “Gulf of America,” has also led to the publisher being indefinitely banned from the Oval Office and Air Force One, hindering its coverage.
The provocative anti-Musk wrap would have been received by around 500 White House subscribers who have opted to receive wraps, a Common Cause spokesperson told . Running the ad would have risked placing the paper whose ailing finances were exacerbated in October when 250,000 Post readers canceled their subscriptions following Bezos’ decision to block the paper’s endorsement for Kamala Harris directly in the administration’s crosshairs.
