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Midterm elections are around the corner, and for months, while strategists have predicted a Democratic sweep, the GOP has been throwing everything and the kitchen sink at its base in hopes of mitigating the anticipated blue wave. This past week, those efforts took the form of a series of television ads, each one featuring President Donald Trump and highlighting his administration’s policies while also warning against unspecified threats of communism. The ads themselves, though, were not the most disturbing thing. The most alarming part of the ads is a small disclaimer at the bottom of the screen: “Paid for by the U.S. government.” It appears that Trump was using our taxpayer dollars to fund his midterm political efforts. Using taxpayer dollars for ads that are clearly political is a blatant violation of federal law, but the unfortunate reality is that there may not be a clear-cut way to actually stop the Trump administration from continuing to air them.

At least three ads began airing over the past week across national and local TV networks, one of them a montage of Trump as president with a voice-over of him saying, “America will never be a communist country,” and the song “Love Me” by JMSN playing. Another ad is nearly identical to one aired during Trump’s 2024 campaign for president, in which he vows to “throw off the sick political class that hates our country” and “rout the fake news media.” Of course, in 2024 that ad was paid for by campaign funds, not taxpayers. By Sunday evening, the Wall Street Journal estimated that the ads had aired nearly 90 times across national TV networks and cost about $337,000. They also ran in local TV stations, with about 2,000 airings estimated to cost $1.4 million. The Journal also reported that the ads were paid for with taxpayer dollars that Congress appropriated to Homeland Security for Customs and Border Protection, an agency that regularly runs ads about immigration policies. Indeed, former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was fired after she spent $220 million on an ad blitz featuring her on a horse in front of Mount Rushmore.

The White House has insisted these ads are merely public service announcements “reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad.” However, it’s obvious that these are not PSAs, as they do not attempt to........

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