Trump's Midterm Campaign Tactics Draw Legal Scrutiny Over Taxpayer-Funded Ads

On Monday, President Trump announced he would stop funding a series of campaign advertisements with taxpayer money—a reversal that came only after the ads had already saturated American television in September. The commercials, which ran between Saturday Night Live and football games, carried a simple label: "paid for by the US government." They showed footage of US troops capturing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, but mostly featured Trump himself, with messages promising to "expel the warmongers" and prevent the country from becoming communist. The Department of Homeland Security had contracted with an agency for what it called a "national media campaign," spending $20 million on the effort.

Trump defended the spending on Truth Social, calling it a "positive promotion for our great USA" and claiming that funding partisan advertisements with public money was "rather standard." He promised future ads would come from campaign donations instead. But legal experts and advocacy groups immediately challenged both the practice and the claim. Federal law explicitly prohibits using appropriated public funds for partisan political advertising or government self-promotion. Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy nonprofit, filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission, arguing that Trump's ads violated this prohibition precisely because they mixed taxpayer dollars with campaign messaging weeks before the midterm elections.

Patrick Malone, a professor of public administration and policy at American University, explained the legal problem in precise terms. Trump was not technically campaigning—he was not asking voters to elect him. But the timing created what Malone called "a real big issue." Running ads that promoted the president and his administration's achievements just weeks before voters would choose members of Congress blurred the line between legitimate government communication and partisan electioneering. "You're not supposed to use taxpayer dollars to pay for anything that's campaign-related," Malone told Deutsche Welle.

The ads arrived at a moment when Republicans faced real political headwinds. The party currently holds 53 of 100 Senate seats and 219 of 435 House seats—a majority that has allowed Trump to pass his proposals with relative ease. But a Reuters/Ipsos poll released the same week showed erosion. Among voters over 50, Republicans held only a 2-point advantage over Democrats, down from an 8-point lead in December. Among younger voters, Democrats led by 18 points. Trump's own approval rating sat at 32 percent, matching the lowest point of his presidency. Many Americans associated him with high living costs and an ongoing war with Iran that had stretched past six months.

This political weakness may explain why Republican candidates were keeping their distance from the president. Several senators whose seats were contested—Susan Collins of Maine and Dan Sullivan of Alaska—skipped Trump's party convention in September, an event typically reserved for presidential races but which Trump used to campaign for midterm candidates. House candidates from swing states including Arizona, Iowa, and Michigan also stayed away. One Republican operative told Politico, on condition of anonymity, that if Trump visited a battleground state to campaign, they suspected their candidates would "come down with COVID" to avoid attending.

At that same convention, Trump had made an unusual pitch to supporters: he asked them to "pretend" he was on the ballot, as if his presence on the ticket might drive turnout. He also promised a $5,000 payout to every eligible American voter if Republicans maintained their congressional majority. Keeping that pledge would cost the federal government over $1.2 trillion—a figure that observers dismissed as fantasy. Malone compared it to Trump's earlier promise that Mexico would pay for a border wall. "He has no money to do that with," Malone said. "It would have to be authorized and appropriated by Congress. I think the likelihood is very slim."

As the midterm elections approached on November 3, when voters would choose all House members and roughly a third of the Senate, the question remained whether Trump's advertisements, his promises, or his party's record would be enough to preserve Republican control. The ads themselves had already drawn legal scrutiny and forced a reversal. The broader political picture suggested that Trump's efforts to energize his party were meeting resistance from the very candidates he was trying to help.