Washington Post cancels ad from groups calling for Trump to fire Musk

An advertisement that was set to run in some editions of The Washington Post on Tuesday calling for Elon Musk to be fired from his role in government was abruptly canceled, according to one of the advocacy groups that had ordered the ad.

Common Cause said it was told by the newspaper Friday that the ad was being pulled. The full-page ad, known as a wraparound, would have covered the front and back pages of editions delivered to the White House, the Pentagon and Congress, and was planned in collaboration with the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund.

A separate, full-page ad with the same themes would have been allowed to run inside the newspaper, but the two groups chose to cancel the internal ad as well. Both ads would have cost the groups $115,000.

"We asked why they wouldn't run the wrap when we clearly met the guidelines if they were allowing the internal ad," said Virginia Kase Solomón, president and CEO of Common Cause. "They said they were not at liberty to give us a reason."

News of The Washington Post cancelling the ad was earlier reported by The Hill.

Although it is unclear who made the decision to pull the ad or why, the move comes amid growing concern about the changing mission of the Washington Post newsroom under the ownership of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. The newspaper's decision last fall to end its long-standing tradition of presidential endorsements and Bezos' front-row seat at President Donald Trump's inauguration have led some to wonder whether the news organisation has been accommodating a Trump administration.

Last month, more than 400 employees sent a letter to Bezos requesting a meeting to discuss leadership decisions that they said "led readers to question the integrity of this institution."

Kase Solomón said that all content for the ad -- art and text -- had been sent to the Post's advertisement department last Tuesday and that "no alarm bells were rung" by anyone from the newspaper at that time. She said she did not know who inside the organisation made the decision to pull the wrap.

The ad featured an image of Musk laughing over a picture of the White House with text that reads: "Who's Running This Country: Donald Trump or Elon Musk?" The ad called for readers to contact their senators and tell them it's time for Trump to fire Musk.

A Washington Post spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the newspaper did not comment on internal decisions related to specific advertising campaigns and pointed to its publicly available general guidelines for advertising.

Common Cause and the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund began a campaign this month to remove Musk from his position as head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which is not a formal executive-branch department.

Musk, the world's richest man who controls six companies, including Tesla, SpaceX and the social media platform X, has been given far-reaching power by the president, who has allowed Musk to dismantle federal agencies and freeze funding for various grants and programs.

Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund, said the disappearance of crucial programs and grants would have a direct and negative effect mostly on lower-income individuals and people of color.

"Our goal with this campaign is accountability," Huang said. "People in government should either be elected or have to comply with all of the standards of federal government official obligations, such as reporting conflicts of interest, things that all of the other Trump nominees for Cabinet positions have had to go through."

"We are concerned Musk and DOGE are acting without appropriate oversight and accountability," she added, referring to the acronym for the government efficiency initiative Musk has been put in charge of.

This isn't the first time politics and ads have clashed within news organisations. This month, Fox News didn't run an ad from a Democratic group that had planned to attack Trump's federal spending freeze, according to a report in Semafor. A spokesperson for Fox told Semafor that the ad had become moot after the president pulled his executive order.

Huang said she was both surprised and not when the ad was pulled.

"I'm surprised because I still think of the Post as deeply committed to publishing news that is essential to our democracy," she said. "But no, because the Post has been making other decisions lately that reflect a new kind of leadership at the organisation."