A Congress Doing Its Duty Would Halt Trump’s Taxpayer-Funded Propaganda Ads
Donald Trump is using your hard-earned money on campaign-style ads glorifying himself, and Republican leaders in Congress are responding with little more than empty critiques.
The administration recently began airing what it describes as public-service announcements on Fox News and Newsmax. One features President Trump vowing to eradicate “communism, socialism, and Marxism” in America and touting what it calls “the largest tax cut in history.” Another recycles an advertisement from Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, complete with the predictable cast of villains including the “deep state,” “globalists,” and the “fake news media.”
These are not public service announcements. The Trump administration’s trampling of democratic norms was never subtle. But there is something particularly troubling about the president of the United States running campaign-style ads, intending to divide Americans, weeks before an election with public dollars.
The legal questions are serious. The Hatch Act restricts covered federal employees from using their official positions to influence elections. While the president himself is exempt, the staffers and agencies that created, funded, and placed these commercials are not. The use of congressionally appropriated funds also raises questions under federal restrictions on domestic “publicity and propaganda.” Richard Painter, former White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush, called the ads “sheer propaganda.”
To be sure, the government has a legitimate role in communicating with the public. It can tell people how to prepare for a hurricane, apply for benefits, or file their taxes. However, appropriated funds cannot legally be used to promote a president’s political grievances, attack his opponents, or tout his perceived accomplishments.
Trump knows the difference as do his advisors. If he wants to run political commercials, he has a campaign operation and wealthy donors who can pay for them.
The question before voters is not merely which party controls Congress. It is whether we have a Congress that will do its duty and serve as a check on a president who treats the Treasury as his campaign fund or a Congress ready to bend the knee and serve as a stable of sycophants defending whatever he does.
So who authorized these ads? Who signed off on presenting campaign-style propaganda as a public service? These questions demand answers, and Congress is the only body with the power to compel them.
So far, Republican leaders in Congress have largely declined to demand accountability as the president takes a wrecking ball to the rule of law and pads his bank accounts. A few have expressed “concern” at this latest offense. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said, “I don’t think any public official, including President Trump… should spend public money on private ads for themselves.” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said, it “feels like Viktor Orbán talking to the Hungarian people.” Rep. Thomas Massie wrote that using taxpayer dollars for presidential campaign ads is “completely legal… in banana republics.”
But selective, carefully worded critiques are not oversight. Oversight requires document reviews, hearings, subpoenas, and consequences for illegal actions.
This failure to demand accountability at this moment is part of a broader pattern. Congress has repeatedly watched as the administration blurs the line between official government business and the president’s personal interests and political operation. Minted gold coins bear his image. His likeness is on U.S. passports. Banners on federal buildings feature him. He keeps trying and failing to put his name on the Kennedy Center.
Trump keeps testing how far he can go, and who will go along with him. The response to using our dollars to fund political propaganda cannot be yet another collective shrug or yet another protracted debate over whether a norm has been shattered. It has. And laws may have been broken too.
The rule of law is its most potent when people with power are willing to enforce it.
That is what makes this election so critical. The question before voters is not merely which party controls Congress. It is whether we have a Congress that will do its duty and serve as a check on a president who treats the Treasury as his campaign fund or a Congress ready to bend the knee and serve as a stable of sycophants defending whatever he does. Every member of Congress swears an oath to the Constitution, not to a man. We need members of Congress who will live up to that oath.
Jenice R. Robinson is the communications director at Democracy Defenders Action and Susan Corke is the executive director of Democracy Defenders Action.
