WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security has tapped $20 million to pay for the campaign-style ads glorifying President Trump that have drawn widespread criticism from Republicans and Democrats as a blatant misuse of taxpayer dollars that probably runs afoul of anti-propaganda law.
The White House has fiercely defended the ads, calling them public service announcements.
“Don’t let the Fake News get away with their lies about our epic Public Service Announcements that have been running on tv,” White House communications director Steven Cheung posted Sunday on X.
But the Republican administration’s ads have attracted mounting criticism, including from members of Trump’s party.
“It shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters.
“It would not have been something that I would have done,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, another South Dakota Republican.
Multiple legal experts said the ads appear to run afoul of federal statutes, including a law against congressionally appropriated funds being used for “publicity or propaganda” and a law that limits the partisan political activities of government employees.
They said the new ads, which are airing on network and cable TV and streaming, differ from other administrations’ PSAs because they aren’t designed to help Americans access any specific program.
Three ads have aired in less than a week.
The first ad in the campaign, which began airing Wednesday, features clips of Trump talking about defeating communism interspersed with onscreen text promoting the “largest tax cuts in history,” “reigniting American manufacturing” and a call to “defend law and order and police.”
Later in the week, a second ad began running, showing scenic videos of Mt. Rushmore at night with quotes and clips from Trump’s Fourth of July weekend speech there honoring the country’s 250th anniversary.
The latest of the ads, a spot that first aired over the weekend, is virtually identical to an ad for Trump’s Republican reelection campaign in 2024. It shows him walking down a hallway as his voice can be heard warning of a “final battle” against “globalists” and “warmongers.”
All three ads end with a message that says: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” The White House hasn’t responded to inquiries about which part of the government is paying.
“You watch all three ads, they’re sheer propaganda,” said Richard Painter, a former White House ethics advisor under Republican President George W. Bush. “This is increasingly looking like what authoritarian governments do to promote their leaders.”
The heightened scrutiny comes as the Trump administration has increased spending on the ads and bought time on popular TV shows, including college football and National Football League programming.
With both chambers of Congress led by Republicans, any oversight would probably have to come from Trump’s allies, decreasing the likelihood of hearings or other accountability efforts before November’s midterm elections.
In a letter Tuesday to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, two top Democratic senators said that the money is being drawn from Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act and was supposed to go to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“We should not have to remind you that using government funding to create or air political ads like the ones that have been running over the last few days is illegal and a shockingly corrupt misuse of taxpayer dollars,” wrote Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee that handles Homeland Security funding.
The senators, in their letter to Mullin, demanded answers within the next 48 hours about “how this president is literally stealing their tax dollars to air campaign ads celebrating himself.”
They asked the secretary whether the department plans to use additional federal funds to air these ads or create new ones, and if so to share contracting information with the Congress. They also asked Mullin whether he had spoken to Trump about using the taxpayer funds for the ads.
The political uproar over Trump’s hagiographic ads has not abated as critics on the left and right raise alarms about the use of taxpayer funds, particularly so close to the midterm elections.
Ad spend tops $2.5 million; criticism and legal scrutiny grow
Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, compared Trump’s ads to those used by authoritarian former leader Viktor Orban of Hungary.
Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that no public official should spend public money on private ads for themselves.
And Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger, had his own harsh words for the administration on Monday.
“Don’t worry, using taxpayer dollars to run ominous campaign ads of the President has been done before and is completely legal … in banana republics,” he wrote on X.
Data from the outside firm AdImpact shows more than $2.5 million was spent on the three ads over the last seven days. The actual amount spent could be significantly more, depending on whether networks classified the ads as political.
The senators said that Homeland Security has committed $20 million to the campaign.
A person who was unauthorized to discuss the situation and granted anonymity confirmed the findings, which were first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Trump’s ads use taxpayer dollars, probably skirting the law
The unusual ad campaign comes as Republicans face an increasingly volatile midterm election season with their control of the House and Senate — and Trump’s future agenda — all at risk.
Voters say they are struggling with high prices of gas and groceries, and are concerned about the lengthy U.S. war against Iran, now in its eighth month. Democrats are gearing up for vast oversight of Trump and his administration if they seize power, and impeachment is not off the table.
House Democrats said Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, moved the money from Homeland Security to the ad campaign on Sept. 19.
The Homeland Security funds are part of a whopping $175 billion Congress gave the department in the Big Beautiful Bill as part of his immigration enforcement and deportation agenda. Democrats voted against that package, which Trump signed into law in the summer last year, in part because of its steep cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, and Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, the ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security subcommittee, said that after gutting $1 trillion from Medicaid and social services and “more than quadrupling funding for mass deportations, it turns out the Trump administration used Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill to pay for President Trump’s political ads.”
They said when Democrats regain control, they “will work to uncover and reverse misuses of taxpayer money like this and hold those who abused their power accountable.”
What’s also striking about the administration’s use of taxpayer dollars for the ads is that Trump’s own political campaign committee MAGA Inc. is sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars of funding that could be used during the midterm season. Groups aligned with MAGA Inc. have started shelling out funds for the House and Senate races.
In defending the campaign, the White House published a list of PSAs from recent Democratic and Republican administrations.
Among the examples it cited were Bush’s Republican administration touting a Medicare law, Barack Obama’s Democratic administration promoting Affordable Care Act subsidies and Joe Biden’s Democratic administration running ads promoting COVID-19 vaccinations.
“The announcements are very clearly not campaign ads; President Trump is not on the ballot and there is no call to action,” the White House wrote. “Instead, the announcements are a reminder for Americans to love their country and know why it’s worth defending — at home, at the border, and abroad.”
Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said in her view the new ads differ from the examples the White House provided because they aren’t aimed at helping members of the public benefit from specific government programs.
“These ads are nothing more than government propaganda, aimed at helping Trump,” she said.
Mascaro and Swenson write for the Associated Press. AP writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Steven Sloan contributed to this report.
