Moments after the U.S. Department of Justice filed an appeal seeking to ban Claude, the U.S. federal procurement agency struck a new deal with a 40% discount.

Beating AI News Flash, October 26 – The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has just filed an appeal seeking to reinstate a full federal ban on Anthropic. The next day, the General Services Administration (GSA), the federal agency in charge of government procurement, announced an expanded partnership allowing government agencies to use Claude at a 40% discount, with pay-as-you-go billing and no minimum spending commitments. Back in February, GSA publicly supported the Trump administration’s ban on Anthropic and removed Claude from its government procurement list. In March, a California court halted the full ban, and GSA restored Claude’s procurement eligibility in April. In August, the court further ruled the government’s broad ban was illegal. While the DOJ has now filed the appeal, the ruling does not automatically become invalid. Anthropic disclosed that roughly 500 U.S. federal, state, and local government organizations are currently using Claude, with usage by federal civilian agencies growing approximately 20-fold over the past year. This has created a delicate situation: while the DOJ is still in court fighting to reinstate the ban, the government’s procurement arm has proactively secured a new discounted agreement for Claude.