Moon said he had spent between $900 million and $1 billion on The Washington Times. By 2002, Moon had spent between $1.7 billion and $2 billion according to different estimates. In November 2009, The New York Times reported that The Washington Times would no longer be receiving funds from the Unification movement and might have to cease publication or become an online publication only. Later that year, it fired 40 percent of its 370 employees and stopped its subscription service, instead distributing the paper free in some areas of Washington, including branches of the government. A subscription website owned by the paper, theconservatives.com, continued, as did the Times three-hour radio program, America's Morning News. The paper announced that it would cease publication of its Sunday edition, along with other changes, partly in order to end its reliance on subsidies from the Unification movement. On December 31, 2009, The Washington Times announced that it would no longer be a full-service newspaper, eliminating its metropolitan-news and sports sections. In March 2011, it announced that some former staffers would be rehired and that the paper would bring back its sports, metro, and life sections. It had its first profitable month in September 2015, ending the streak of losses in the paper's first 33 years. During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, The Washington Times received between $1 million and $2 million in federally backed small business loans from Citibank as part of the Paycheck Protection Program, which it said would help to retain 91 employees. Political stance The Washington Times holds a conservative political stance. In 1995, the Columbia Journalism Review wrote that it "is like no major city daily in America in the way that it wears its political heart on its sleeve. No major paper in America would dare be so partisan." In 2002, The Washington Post reported that it "was established by Moon to combat communism and be a conservative alternative to what he perceived as the liberal leanings of The Washington Post. Since then, the paper has fought to prove its editorial independence, trying to demonstrate that it is neither a "Moonie paper" nor a booster of the political right but rather a fair and balanced reporter of the news." In 2007, Mother Jones reported that The Washington Times had become "essential reading for political news junkies" soon after its founding, and described it as a "conservative newspaper with close ties