White House offers reassurance on federal funding pause after reports of Medicaid disruption

The White House has sought to clarify whether the Medicaid programme has been affected by a freeze on federal aid, after reimbursement portals went down in all 50 states on Tuesday (28 January).

In her first briefing with the media, new White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said beneficiaries of programs like Social Security and Medicare would not be affected by the pause - but declined to say whether Medicaid would be impacted.

Leavitt later posted a message on X acknowledging the outage, confirming service would be "back online shortly".